In today's episode, you will understand the role that your origin that means where you are from makes a difference for you in reaching the C-suite or not.
Welcome back to Speak Up, the podcast for high-performing introverts, including you, social introverts where we reveal the charisma and communication secrets of the A-listers, who are often from elite locations, so that you get the recognition and the opportunities you have earned.
I am your host, Laura Camacho, your magical executive presence coach, godmother, and strategist.
And by the end of today's episode, you will know why self-silencing habits are blocking your path to senior leadership roles.
The invisible difference between confidence and executive presence, and how to leverage your roots and authenticity into tremendous professional impact.
And at the end I'm sharing a number of name brand executives with plenty of executive presence who came from modest backgrounds.
So, first of all, I have never addressed this topic before in a podcast, but I have discussed it with many of you on coaching calls.
And I also am from a very small town in a very small state.
And that's Hampton, South Carolina.
I haven't lived there. in a long, long, long time.
But that is where my father's family is from and where I was born.
And a lot of you you know.
Maybe you're from a larger city but in a small country or a less like name brand location.
So I know that When you're with people in the room that seem to be very elite, it can be a little bit of a downer.
And today we're exploring all about that.
Because those rural or small town roots can have this unintended consequence of making you think well, I'm not the kind of person who would have executive presence, or I'm not that strategic because I'm from this small town.
And There is definitely discrimination or prejudice against people from small towns.
You know what they call flyover country.
But in the corporate world, it doesn't need to hold you back.
Nobody actually knows where you're from, probably.
But if it's causing you to be quiet, to hesitate, it's making you invisible.
And that's absolutely crazy.
You do belong there.
But the way you're showing up, possibly because of that doubt you have around your non-elite roots, can have an impact.
So I'm going to tell you a quick story.
I have a client who grew up in a village in a European-type country, less than 1,000 people.
He now works for a global company overseeing operations all over the world.
He's brilliant.
He's driven.
He's respected.
But there was a time when he would enter a room with senior leaders and he felt like he didn't belong there.
He felt like he was the village kid who really didn't have a place at the table.
And that's just not accurate.
You can see people who went to Harvard or Oxford or regional elite universities and locations and just feel like that you're not at the level, but that's not the accurate criteria you need to be using.
But where it causes harm is in your head.
If you start over analyzing everything before it comes out of your mouth, or you overthink your tone, your timing, your message.
You wait for the right moment to speak.
And then by the time you're ready, you know, they've moved on. and you second-guess yourself.
So, even though you know logically, that you have a seat at the table, that you've earned it, you can still have this belief that you're the lucky one, that you're the outsider, the exception, and that people might find out.
But I want you to know that you've made it here where you are and where you're going, based on your grit, your execution, your performance, and it should not feel like you don't belong there.
The harm is, again, The self-monitoring, the not relaxing, the overcompensation.
One woman said to me that she rehearses her comments in her head five times and then, when she's ready to speak, the topic has changed.
And this is where you're giving room to that inner critic to get louder.
It's not even noticeable.
People are never guessing that that's going on inside your head.
That's why you're quiet.
That's why you're reserved.
You tell yourself you're being professional, but in reality it is a fear of not being good enough or at the level before I tell you the solution.
I want you to realize this is expensive.
Other people, the people who make the decisions about your future, can see you as not ready for a director level, VP level, whatever you're going for.
And just because you don't sound quite as confident, because confidence is like money in the bank and this can cause your name not to come up in the key conversations.
And then you see other people who do come from maybe elite backgrounds or they are more confident, and maybe you don't even know where they're from, but they seem to be so sure of themselves that you assume that they have those elite credentials.
So it is not true that people from small towns, rural backgrounds, housing projects don't make it to the top.
I mean, maybe it's not everyone, but there are plenty of people who have made it from the top.
But the thing is, you may have these voices in your head from people of your childhood like don't get too big for your britches, or people like us.
We're the victims, or we're overlooked because we're not like those other people, or you may be fearing appearing as arrogant.
But let me be clear there's a massive difference between self-promotion and value-laden communication, right.
What you may be calling arrogance can be just clarity.
So you aren't being overlooked because you're not good enough.
It's because you're not speaking up in the right way.
So let's flip the script for a minute, because the reality is this is the reality being from a small town, being from a non-traditional background, is not a liability.
It is a tremendous leadership asset.
People who come from, you know, more difficult backgrounds, smaller towns, rural, urban, poor.
You grow up with more resourcefulness because you have to.
You know what it's like to work hard and not get that validation, not get that applause.
You are more resilient.
You understand the power of relationships, of community, humility.
Those are the qualities that leaders actually need more of.
And that makes you even more relatable and like more of a person that others will want to follow.
The problem is not where you are from.
It could be, though, that you're not leveraging the strengths that it gave you.
You need to own that, own who you are.
You need a strategy to help high performers like yourself communicate that value with clarity, credibility and presence.
When you learn to speak of in a way that lands communicate your ideas with authority, package your value in language that decision makers respect, things are going to change for you.
So if you want to know, how can I make that happen?
I have created the executive presence mastery system. coaching program.
And if you would like to talk to me about it to see if it's a logical next step, there's a link in the show notes or you can head over to my website at speakupwithlauracom backslash.
Speak up and set up time.
And before I close this, this is one of the last episodes of this year.
I'm just going to run through a list of celebrity CEOs who come from humble or rural or small town backgrounds.
Starting with Tim Cook, CEO of Apple.
And I think he was the first CEO to bring his company past the trillion valuation mark.
He is from Mobile, Alabama, and he was raised in Robertsdale, Alabama.
It doesn't get much more rural than that.
Sam Walton, founder of Sam's Club.
I was born in Kingfisher, Oklahoma, a modest rural background.
B.
Kevin Turner, former COO of Microsoft and a senior executive of Walmart, began his career as a cashier.
Howard Schultz, formerly CEO of Starbucks, raised in a low-income housing project.
John Paul DeGioia, He's the co-founder of John Paul Mitchell Systems.
It's a hair product line.
He once lived in his car.
He grew up with extreme financial hardship.
Stu Leonard, president and CEO of Stu Leonard's Grocery Store, comes from a family business rooted in dairy and farming.
Sandra Day O'Connor She was the first woman on the Supreme Court was raised on a cattle ranch in rural Arizona.
Jeff Bezos, hello.
The founder of Amazon grew up with very modest means and his mom was a teenage mom.
Oprah Winfrey, you all know, was born in rural Mississippi.
Elon Musk was born in a small town in South Africa, very modest background.
Jan Koum, K-O-U-M, co-founder of What's Up, immigrated to the United States in a working class family, Indra Nooyi, the former CEO of PepsiCo, comes from suburban middle-class India, a place I'm sure most people here would never have heard of.
Ursula Burns, former CEO of Xerox, was raised in a housing project in New York Public Housing.
She was the first Black woman to lead a Fortune 500.
And finally, Mary Barra, the CEO of General Motors, comes from Middle class background.
She was the first in her family to go to college.
So folks, if they can do it, you can do it too.
Have a fantastic day and I will catch you on the next episode.
