One key to preserving your energy

I’ve been working for a few months with a client whose company hired me because she had a strained relationship with a C-suite executive. What unfolded last week in our work is a lesson for all women.

As the lead of her function, the company needed her to get along with the executive. She came into the coaching feeling like months of effort had been ineffective. The executive was consuming her headspace and killing her confidence. She was making no headway. 

After three months of us working together, she'd shifted their working relationship. In last week’s session, we spent time honoring the dramatic shift in her experience. In the prior week, she’d had a positive interaction with that executive. He’d come to her proactively for input. He’d both expressed appreciation for her perspective and committed resources to it. 

Over our months of work together, she'd garnered the support of other executives, as well. The shift was palpable. 

I invited her to reflect on how she’d contributed to creating a different impact.
 

Advocating for herself

One big change this client had made was expanding her network of support within the organization. 

Until our work together, she’d been relying solely on her manager to be a proxy for her function with senior leadership. What he’d done instead was gaslight her and dismantle her thinking without providing alternatives. He didn’t take on the role of advocating for her as a leader or her function with the executive team. 

Instead of continuing to depend on her manager to represent her, she began to take on that role herself. She didn’t wait for her manager’s buy-in before getting wider support from his peer set. She created channels around him, and other people began to support her work.

I see women do this all the time. I fell into the trap myself of relying on a manager to advocate for a location transfer. He never did it. Like my client, I eventually had to step in and advocate for myself.

We want our managers to take on this role. Many of us see it as part of their jobs. But it’s up to us to respond to what they’re actually doing, not what we want them to be doing. 
 

The temptation to dismantle the positive change in impact

With the additional support she'd fostered, my client gained new confidence and validation. From that, she up-leveled her thinking. She went from day-to-day thinking to developing a brilliant strategy for her function. She was ready to socialize the strategy for input from key stakeholders — but she paused. 

She considered stopping her own momentum for fear of leaving her manager behind. She could see him falling out of the loop on what was becoming important to the organization. He began to struggle with fostering relationships with executives whose trust she'd secured. 

She asked me — should I go to my manager first?

Women work their butts off to find people who will support them. It’s not assumed for women in the way it often is for men. We have to earn support over time. Some people, no matter what you do to earn their support, will never budge. Their bias will block their willingness to support you. My client’s manager was one of those people. 

When you have success with some people, you learn that you’re able to garner support. It makes those whose support you don’t earn all the more frustrating. It's hard to accept that you won’t receive support from everyone. And with some people, there’s nothing you can do to earn their support.

When you gain new resources and confidence, the single greatest thing that will kill those gains is going back to a dead end, like my client was tempted to do with her manager. That will erase the traction you’ve made with all your work. 

This doesn’t mean you end all interactions with the people failing to support you. In my client’s case, she didn’t want to ignore her manager. But she had to focus first on the people who supported her. 

Give the people who do support you time to nurture your ideas. Doing so will make it harder for those who don't support you to kill your ideas. 

Don’t go back into the lion’s den without a pack to support you.

Call for reflection: 

Who is not supporting you? How might you foster a greater network of support?

Shine On, 

Alicia