The Leadership Leap

Episode Transcript

Kelly Callahan-Poe: If you want to step into leadership with confidence, this episode is your roadmap. Welcome to the Two Marketing Moms podcast. I'm Kelly Callahan-Poe and today's episode is called The Leadership Leap with Rosie Zilinskas. Rosie is a certified high performance career coach and former Fortune 500 executive who helps women step into leadership with confidence, earn the recognition they deserve, and close the corporate gender gap. Welcome, Rosie.

Rosie Zilinskas: Kelly, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to chat with you about all things leadership.

Kelly: You have a lot of tools that you've created to help women assess if they're promotion ready. Can you walk us through what it measures and how it works?

Rosie: One of the tools I have is a promotion readiness roadmap with an assessment to match. It's the tactical components of: are you ready if that opportunity opens up tomorrow? Do you have your resume and your LinkedIn and your Story Vault for the interview? The assessment tells you how ready are you so that you're not scrambling.

Kelly: What are the key areas that women need to address before becoming promotion ready?

Rosie: I did a training the other day on the hierarchy of needs by Maslow. One thing that's really important for women to understand is if you're in some kind of crisis—it could be mini or major—you have to get your house and your brain in order before you can start seeking that promotion. The time to start working on your career is when you actually feel that the majority of your life is in a good spot, and then you're seeking fulfillment and the next level up to grow.

Kelly: You had five key areas that women need to address. But first, can you tell us about the four core wounds?

Rosie: A lot of times we go through problems and try to push our emotions away or stuff them down. Through the work I've been doing, I realized there's four different buckets people fall into.

The first core wound is "I'm not worthy." It could be imposter syndrome, like "I just don't feel I'm going to get the job." People either discount themselves, defeat themselves, or disqualify themselves.

The second bucket is "I'm not lovable" or "I'm not likable"—the popularity blocker. You're not the golden boy or girl at work, and you think "if they're always promoting the popular people, I'm not even going to bother."

Then there's the skills blocker. You're doing really good work but you don't feel ready to advocate for yourself. You think you need more certifications or more degrees before you're ready to advocate.

The last one is the visibility blocker. You could be doing all those things and advocating, but you're not putting yourself out there—you don't want to do a presentation or training, you don't want to comment on social media.

Kelly: There was a stat on your website about only 20% of adult women negotiating at work. That's really powerful.

Rosie: Yes, that's a horrifying stat. All the women that are not negotiating lose about $2 million worth of income over an entire lifetime. So if you're in your mid-20s and you don't negotiate over your entire career, that could translate to having $2 million less than your male counterparts just by not negotiating.

And there's another statistic—everybody talks about Hewlett Packard's study: men apply for jobs having 50% of the skills on the description and women wait till they have 100%. The consequence is that by the time you apply, the job is gone. But most importantly, if you have all the skills on that job description, then you're overqualified. Because if you know how to do every single thing, what challenge are you going to have? You're not going to have any growth.

Kelly: Tell me about the five phases of the promotion readiness roadmap.

Rosie: The first phase is Aspire. What is it that you aspire to do? What's the one or two things at work that you get lost in or look forward to? What are your core values? What lights you up? Are you in the right job?

The second phase is Assess—all your skills, your knowledge skills and transferable skills, your personal value proposition. Mine is "I empower women in the corporate world to advance their careers with intention and confidence." This is also when you work on your resume, LinkedIn, and turn your accomplishments into actionable stories for your Story Vault.

The third phase is Advise—seek feedback. I tell people feedback is fuel. Go and solicit "what do I do well and what can I do better?" Talk to senior people who've been in the job five or ten years longer and ask "How did you get to where you are and what advice could you give me?"

The fourth phase is Advertise—start telling people what you want. At 40 years old, I was sitting at my desk just waiting for something to happen, and nothing ever happened.

The fifth area is Advocacy—advocating for yourself, asking for specific opportunities. A lot of people take their foot off the pedal in the fourth quarter, but this is when you should have those quiet conversations. With advertising, you're telling people "this is what I want to do." With advocacy, you're getting people in your corner who can champion you. You champion yourself and then champion others.

People are like, "I don't have time to do all that." Two hours a month. Two hours a month helps you move all of these things forward.

Kelly: What is really holding women back from getting leadership roles?

Rosie: The very first thing is just getting to know themselves. If you don't know yourself, you're not going to be able to explain that to somebody else. What do you like? What are you good at? What's your big picture? What's your why?

The second thing is that you can't tell others how you are helping them solve their problems. Those two things are so key when advocating for yourself. What are your skills? What is your knowledge? How can you help? And then how can you explain it so that they perceive the value you're bringing?

Kelly: Do you have any other strategies to help women advocate for themselves at work?

Rosie: I'm also a certified high performance coach focused on mindset. The other day, one of my clients said "my little job" and I was like, "Hold up—why did you say little?" She said "I didn't!" But yes, you did. Those are the beliefs you think about yourself that may not be true. We're making ourselves small.

Through certified high performance coaching, we literally start unraveling all our thoughts and ideas. It's three months, we meet once a week, and at the end the person is transformed. Every session they get an aha about themselves.

Kelly: What is the number one challenge that you hear over and over again from women?

Rosie: "Rosie, can you help me gain confidence so that I can advocate for myself?" That's what it boils down to. "I want to advance in my career. I don't know how to do it. I don't have the confidence to do it." And through high performance coaching, it's all about confidence building.

Kelly: Thank you, Rosie. These tips are really helpful to help women advocate for themselves and make their own leadership leap. Find her contact information at twomarketingmoms.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. Don't forget to subscribe and share.