Have you ever spent your weekend working on a presentation, rehearsing every word, reviewing every slide, making it perfect and making sure that other people recognize that you are competent to speak on this topic?
If that's you, this episode might sting, but in a really good way.
Welcome back to Speak Up, the podcast for high-performing introverts, including you, social introverts where we reveal the communication and charisma secrets of the A-listers, 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.
By the end of today's episode, you will know how over preparation, risk aversion and comparison are hurting your leadership, brand and reputation.
The mindset shift that proves your intelligence while owning your brilliance.
And three practical strategies to speak with more magnetism, clarity and executive presence.
Okay, so this episode is inspired by several conversations I've had with clients or other podcast listeners.
And sometimes I feel like this should be the executive presence for men's members podcasts.
You who are listening, have been rewarded for delivering solutions results, doing great work, extremely intelligent.
I mean, sometimes when I talk to you, I'm like, so impressed.
But there's something that you may not be managing as well as you could be.
Because what I don't want to happen is that you are stuck in execution mode.
Like you're the problem solver for the people making more money than you.
I don't want that to happen.
I want you to be at the top.
I want you to be the one nailing the strategy and being the ambassador for the company and training other people to report to you as great problem solvers and people getting those results.
I think it's unintentional.
But you may hear somebody or have a colleague who... is great talker, right?
And they often win the argument because they're a great talker, but you know, their technical chops are really not there.
And so you try to win visibility or get green lights based on your competence, right?
And this is what it can look like.
So I know you're not out there trying to prove how smart you are, but that's how it can be interpreted.
This is common among high performing leaders with 10 to 15 years of experience who are heading for more senior roles which frankly, it is a lot more competitive going for vice president than it is senior manager.
And you may even be pressuring yourself to always appear like the most brilliant person in the room.
So what does that look like over preparation?
First of all, you're losing your weekends, but it's too much emphasis on perfecting the slides or writing out every word of what you're going to say, scripting it.
Some people I know that are good communicators do write their script, but they usually don't read it.
They just know it so well.
I don't even think it's memorized because you...
Don't want to be dependent on a script.
If you're doing a keynote speaker and they're paying you 100000 for that, script it, but not for something that you know like a quarterly business review kind of thing.
Over preparation keeps you questioning yourself and keeps you tweaking, and it keeps you so focused on the presentation and not on the audience, not on what does the audience need.
What would make it more interesting?
Just making this slide show something that's supposed to be like a Nobel Prize winning document, and I think it's going to be much better if it's less perfect and more interesting.
Okay, so that's one aspect.
You know, I believe in preparation, but are you overdosing on that?
I don't know.
Maybe.
Risk aversion.
You don't speak up unless your idea is bulletproof.
That you hesitate.
And it could be that you, you know, posited an idea many years ago that was not fully baked and it got shot down and you're like well, I'm not going to do that again.
Let me tell you, the higher up you go in any organization or in life, there's risk.
Managing risk is something you have to do.
And avoiding risk will definitely keep you in execution mode, because there's unlimited problems to be solved.
So you might want to ask yourself, what's your appetite for career risk?
All right, number three, and a thing that can hold you back is the comparison trap.
You know, you're comparing yourself to people who have different strengths.
Like their strength may be off the cuff, impromptu speaking and being entertaining.
And your strength is actually thinking.
Comparing yourself is not a good thing.
The person you want to compare yourself with is who you were yesterday.
And then all of these things lead to you're not being present.
Number four is because you're in your head.
People complain that you're in your head.
You're just overthinking.
You're reviewing previous mistakes.
By the way, if you are thinking, am I an overthinker or not?
Episode 448 was on that topic.
It was about overthinking and that was a big hit.
So you might want to listen to that.
The problem with overthinking or overpreparing is the same.
It's that you're focusing on the wrong thing.
Focusing on how you have the competence to make your claim is not interesting to the audience.
They're not questioning that.
Nobody is thinking, oh, do you really know what you're talking about?
Unless you're getting outside of your domain and speaking on a different topic, say fall fashion trends.
People are assuming at work that you know what you're talking about.
So don't try to prove it.
I want you to focus more on being entertaining than on being thought of as brilliant.
These are the consequences of this overthinking, over preparation, is that you stay quiet too often.
You may sound like a robot when you talk in high stakes situations.
You may get your brain so addled and flustered that you don't speak coherently, and so you think, oh well, I shouldn't be speaking at all because I need to be more prepared.
Well, you need to trust yourself more and you need to build that muscle of speaking up in meetings.
When you don't have 100 of the facts in your hand, emotionally is exhausted.
You can be chasing validation.
That's why some of you have so many degrees of and certifications.
I mean, I have a few myself.
I have followed in that path.
You don't need another certification.
I don't want you to be dreading any meetings or feeling inadequate.
Externally, the fear of looking less intelligent is expensive.
It's distracting you from the real, deeper work you need to do, which can cause you to be passive or for promotions.
You're not showing up with the presence that makes people pay attention.
So the spotlight is going to go to the people who have a vision, who speak with clarity and ease.
And even if they don't know as much as you do, or even if they're not as competent as you, if they have a vision, if they can present it in a compelling way, that's who people want to represent in their company.
Because let's face it, senior leadership is not about delivering results only.
What makes you magnetic is not perfection.
It's being real.
The smartness is like a bonus that you have.
Congratulations.
But if you can be more than just the smarty pants, you are going to have a stronger leadership brand.
You're going to have more executive presence.
So here are some things for you to think about.
You know, don't try to earn your spot in every room.
You've already earned it.
You already belong there.
If you've been invited, you belong in that meeting.
You don't need to prove it.
You need to shift that focus from proving yourself to helping others.
Understand that you're going to stumble.
You know, I have realized in my years of doing this podcast that I stutter.
You don't hear it because I edit it out.
But if you've coached with me or if you've spoken with me, you may notice that I stutter.
Well, I'm still able to do my job, so it's fine.
Also, number three, shift from proving to connecting.
People can be intimidated by the smartest person in the room.
Go for being the most curious person.
Talk about other people.
Shift the attention to others.
That's really the trick.
You're so smart.
Well, OK, but let's connect.
Let's talk about other people.
Nobody really cares how smart you are, how much you know that.
What they are concerned about is how do you make them feel?
So anyway, if you've been leading for 10 or 15 years and you're aiming for a senior role and you're holding back in meetings unless your ideas fail, bulletproof.
If the fear of looking dumb is costing you, you may be paying for that in terms of lost visibility, influence and impact.
That is exactly why I created the Executive Presence Mastery System.
It's an executive coaching program that will help you shift from overthinking and overpreparing to showing up with a kind of confident clarity that gets you noticed, gets you promoted.
And yes, you will definitely be more friendly with risk, not that you're going to do something crazy, but you're going to really just do more in life.
If you want if this sounds interesting to you, the executive presence mastery system there's a link in the show notes or you can visit my website at wwwspeakupwithlauracom.
There's a page where you book a strategy call and we can see if this would be a good next step for you.
Have a fantastic day and I will catch you on the next episode.
