What if the skills that made you the star that you are today are now holding you back from the executive table?
In today's episode, I'll uncover why your instincts are betraying you and what to do about it.
Welcome back to Speak Up, the podcast for high-performing introverts, including you, social introverts where we reveal the charisma and communication secrets of 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.
And today we're diving into the high-performer trap.
In today's episode, you'll learn the three most impactful behaviors keeping high performing introverts in worker bee roles, even with incredible performance reviews.
Why the winning strategy that got you here so fast is now sabotaging your future and the secret to scaling your impact without faking it.
So let's get into it.
So the behavior number one is that you have built your career on this winning strategy.
You're an incredible problem solver.
In fact, you're so good, it's really hard to stop.
I totally relate.
And then as an introvert, you're really good at it because you're able to focus.
You get things that are complex.
You're able to break them down.
You're able to deliver results that really are impressive.
That is in your zone of genius.
But if you're aiming for a senior director role, vice president, you're going to hear oh, you need to be more strategic.
But of course, like all big changes, it needs to come from the inside out.
So there are some things you can do.
You can maybe observe more carefully the way senior executives at your company speak.
You can always think, why are we solving this problem?
Like, where is that going?
Because The mission, the purpose of the company, of your team even, is what's motivating and that's what you need to focus on, more than solving all the millions of problems that are coming up.
Career consequences for staying in problem solving mood are harsh.
It will definitely stall your growth.
You will be passed over for promotions because people are looking for something different in senior leadership and there's fewer roles.
And so you are competing against the best and the rules of the game have changed significantly.
And it's not, you know, that expectations have increased linearly.
They have increased exponentially.
So you need to become more visionary.
All right.
So pain point number two is that you're not scaling your influence.
You have deep influence with your team and your immediate stakeholders, but you're not scaling, influencing necessarily the direction that the company is taking.
As an introvert, you may be great at one-on-one conversations even your team like they.
They would die for you, they put their hands in the fire for you.
But organization-wide impact is a different scale.
It's like you have a puzzle with missing pieces.
You don't have a guide.
You may have training, but not specific to what you really need.
You just hear buzzwords like, set the direction, inspire alignment.
And high performers confess to me, hey, I'm solving things myself because it's just easier.
Yet to be a VP, I need to amplify through others.
So how do I do that?
And it is not easy.
Delegating feels like a gamble, and giving people just a to-do list is not enough.
That's a good starting point, but you really have to think about how the people are going to be successful doing these things and how to inspire them.
To give you know what they call discretionary effort.
Discretionary effort is the official name for going a little bit above and beyond, And then you also have to have things in place in case they mess up massively or fail in some way.
It's just hard when you're so efficient at solving problems.
Building coalitions take time.
It feels like politics, not progress.
And so you can even feel a little bit guilty like you're just offloading your work, right?
Because you might not be quite...
As busy.
Sometimes in that transition period you actually have a little bit less to do because the new meetings haven't sucked up all your time yet and you're just not doing quite as much.
But that will change.
It's doing less but doing more important tasks.
So again, this is where your executive presence helps.
Because you're, you know, of course, being warm and authoritative, not authoritarian, but you are competent and confident and charming.
And so you're hitting all those points, but you have a vision, right?
The vision of where the team is going, what the outcomes we're looking for, why they matter.
And so you have to communicate more about those things which are intangible sometimes, and and less about what you're getting graded on your KPIs.
If you don't do this, you're going to hit that ceiling.
Companies love high performers in middle to low management because they overperform.
They deliver to the company more than what the company pays them.
That's the truth.
You're a definite return on the investment for the company, but you actually could do more.
You could contribute more if you were put to a place of higher influence.
So you want to make that change not be the one who's doing the things, but the one who's leading, visioning and aligning people, getting them excited about the work.
That's called influence, by the way.
And point number three is this is more of a fear than the actual thing that you do.
But you're afraid that doing what I've been talking about is going to be fake or it's going to be arrogant, like you're going to be miss or, mister you know, too big for your britches because you're telling people what to do.
That is not true.
It's like being so sold on your mission, on the point, on why this is important.
What are the people who work for you?
What are they going to gain by working smarter on this thing?
You have to find the point that working harder, solving the problems, learning this, upskilling themselves where that's good for them.
They need to know that, yes, this is gonna be harder.
I'm not gonna tell you how to solve this problem anymore, but you're gonna learn.
You're gonna be a more marketable executive yourself.
And that's being authentic, right?
Because it's not about you.
It's about helping the people that work for you in a deeper way.
And that actually can be more authentic and a lot more meaningful, so that you become like that's what it takes to be considered the leader, the senior leader.
You don't need to be fearful of coming across as arrogant.
Here's the secret.
The people who are worried about coming across as arrogant never do.
The people who don't ever like it.
Never crosses their mind, not saying they all come across as arrogant, but they do.
So if you actually have the mindfulness to be aware of that, you're fine.
All right.
To sum up, These are the problems that you're a brilliant problem solver, that you're not scaling your influence and you have fears of not being authentic.
And that's a vicious cycle that can block you from executive success, missed opportunities and so forth.
And so I want you to see executive presence as the antidote.
So if you're listening to this on a regular basis, you're getting a drip of all the things that it takes as far as the way you change your thinking.
I mean, I'm giving you tools.
Most of the tools that you have from this podcast are about from the inside out.
Look at it differently.
Then of course, I also give you little templates and questions to ask, because it's not one thing to have that executive presence that's influential and impactful.
It's a lot of little things.
So, You don't need to act extroverted.
Being Miss Chatty Cathy or Mr. Chatty Charles is not the answer.
You can be more impactful leaning on your introvertness by asking more questions.
I mean, if you only take away one thing, it's ask more questions from this.
We've gone through a process of what you need to do to stop being the worker bee, to scale your influence and to stop worrying about being arrogant.
When people master this, they tell me that this is my daily bread.
They're like oh, now I feel like I'm even more my true self because I'm delivering.
I'm working on something bigger and deeper from before.
And you know if you're stuck in that painful loop where the very skills that made you successful are now keeping you out of the executive room.
If you're constantly hearing, oh, you need to be more strategic, but nobody tells you how.
Well, that's why I created the Executive Presence Mastery System.
It's for strategic rewiring of your brain in real time coaching.
So there's a link in the show notes or you can visit my website at wwwspeakupwithlauracom.
Have a fantastic day and I will catch you on the next episode.
