Okay. Well, hello, everyone. I am Michelle Boseman. I have about thirty years of IT experience as a director at Microsoft and a senior leader in AWS professional services.And I help high achieving women go from being overworked and overlooked to strategic leaders in their organizations who are visible, have a voice, and are moving up fast. So in my three decades as a consultant manager, I have led customer facing organizations, built early career programs, and led, well, built leader development programs as well and helped launch the careers of hundreds of men and women who excel at companies including Microsoft, AWS, Google, Deloitte, PWC, Accenture, to name a few.

So while I continue to work as a digital transformation leader, I started my own company focused on executive coaching and the development of women in tech. And due to our size, we're a small business. We limit our focus to clients who demonstrate high achievement, adaptability, and the commitment required to leap forward in their careers to senior and executive roles. So our focus today, we're gonna explore three common EQ pitfalls that high achieving women in tech often encounter. Rather than just identifying problems, we'll focus on strategies to transform these challenges into leadership advantages. The research is clear. Emotional intelligence drives concrete business outcomes. McKinsey research shows leaders with high EQ scores outperform revenue targets by 20%, and Google's Project Aristotle found psychological safety a direct product of emotional intelligent leadership.

It was the number one predictor of team success. So by applying EQ effectively, we can overcome, a lot of challenges that we face. So before we get started, let's make sure we're all on the same page about what emotional intelligence actually is. So emotional intelligence, EQ, I'll probably say both on this call. It encompasses four components. The first is self awareness, the ability to recognize and understand your own emotions and how they affect your thoughts and behaviors. Also, self management, that's the ability to control impulses and behaviors, manage your emotions, and adapt to change. The third is social awareness. That includes empathy and the ability to understand organizational dynamics. And fourth is relationship management, which includes influence, conflict management, and collaboration skills.

And these four domains work together to create our overall emotional intelligence. It's been shown to be twice as important as IQ and technical skills combined when it comes to leadership effectiveness. So you might be wondering why we're focusing on EQ in a technical context specifically. So the data is compelling. According to research from Talent Smart, 90% of top performers across industries have high EQ scores. Teams led by managers with high emotional intelligence are 20% more productive than those that aren't. And what's fascinating is that while technical knowledge is obviously important in our field, it's actually the EQ related skills that create distinguished leadership.

In tech specifically, where we're often managing complex projects, diverse teams, rapid change, emotional intelligence becomes a critical differentiator. In environments historically dominated by tech metrics, bringing high EQ to your leadership creates a significant competitive advantage. So women often score higher on many aspects of EQ. We demonstrate stronger skills in reading, nonverbal cues, active listening, collaborative problem solving, emotional awareness, and empathy, and these natural strengths represent a powerful leadership advantage in today's workplace that values connection, collaboration, and psychological safety.

The most innovative companies are recognizing that traditionally soft skills are actually essential for driving results in complex creative environments. However, these same strengths can create challenges when not strategically managed. So let's take a look at three common EQ related challenges that women in technical leadership often face. So the first pitfall or challenge, as I like to call it, is overaccommodation. That's overaccommodating at the expense of authenticity. So does this sound familiar? In a technical meeting, you're carefully modulating your tone to sound confident but not aggressive. You preface your ideas with qualifiers. You catch yourself apologizing when there's nothing to apologize for, and you spend mental energy monitoring how you're being perceived rather than fully engaging in the discussion. So this constant self monitoring is actually exhausting. It's actively undermining your leadership effectiveness. So when you're filtering your authentic self, you're operating at reduced capacity.

Women often spend up to 30% of their mental resources monitoring and adjusting their self presentation, energy that could be directed toward problem solving and inner in innovation. The authenticity tax correlates with higher stress levels and reduced creative output. Why? Because cognitive resources are finite. Every bit of mental bandwidth dedicated to self promote self monitoring is bandwidth unavailable for actual work. The challenge is further complicated by the double bind. You need to be assertive enough to be respected, but not so assertive that you're labeled as difficult. So empathetic enough to build relationships, but not so emotional that you're seen as too soft for technical leadership. Another challenge that we'll talk about is what we call the empathy burden or overload.

As women, we often score higher on empathy measures, the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. This is a tremendous leadership strength that helps us build strong relationships and create psychologically safe environments. A recent study found that sixty eight percent of women leaders report experiencing compassion fatigue, emotional exhaustion resulting from carrying others' emotional burdens. This isn't just personally depleting. It can also undermine your leadership effectiveness. So leaders who function as emotional caretakers without boundaries are often perceived as having less authority in in technical context. Excuse me. So the very empathy that makes you effective becomes reframed as maternal rather than leadership. More concerning, teams that become emotionally dependent on a single leader show decreased resilience. They adapt poorly to change and struggle when that leader is unavailable. Your compassion intended to strengthen the team inadvertently creates weakness, yet empathy remains a critical leadership strength.

The challenge is transforming it from a potential liability into a sustainable asset. And the final challenge is perfectionism and internalization of negative feedback. So research shows that women tend to set higher standards for themselves and internalize criticism. Does that sound familiar? A Cornell University study found that women need an average certainty level of 80% before making decisions, while male counterparts moved forward with around 65% certainty. This higher bar that we set for ourselves also extends to how we process feedback. When we receive constructive criticism, we're more likely to ruminate on it, take it personally, let it affect our confidence. Women are 22% more likely than men to attribute failures or mistakes to internal factors rather than external circumstances.

So this pattern fuels imposter syndrome and creates a negative feedback loop that makes us overly cautious, slows decision making, it slows innovation, which is critical in leadership. And here's the good news. The heightened sensitivity to feedback, when properly channeled, can actually become a leadership superpower. So before we dive into solutions, I wanna share some encouraging science. Research in neuroplasticity shows that we can literally rewire our emotional responses through consistent practice. So unlike IQ, which is stable throughout life, EQ can be developed at any age. So now let's take a look at some solutions to the challenges that we discussed. So over accommodation. The antidote is is not abandoning all filters. That's not what authenticity means in leadership. True authenticity is the intentional alignment between your internal values and your external expression. This is where emotional intelligence becomes your superpower.

High EQ enables what I call strategic authenticity, the ability to express your genuine self in ways that advance your goals and values. Research shows leaders rated as authentic by their team outperform their peers by 22% on virtually all leadership effectiveness measures. Authenticity builds trust, and trust accelerates everything in technology environment from communication to innovation to execution. So here are three practical techniques to move from over accommodation to authentic leadership. First, there's the emotional audit. Before important interactions, take two minutes, check-in with yourself. What am I feeling? How might these emotions influence my communication? What's my intention? This prevents unexamined emotions from driving your behavior. Second, value aligned decision making. Keep your nonnegotiable, values visible. Before significant decisions. Ask, does this align with who I truly am? And third, authentic voice journaling. Reflect weekly on moments when you felt fully authentic versus when you overaccommodated, and look for patterns to recognize your accommodation triggers.

Next step, for the challenge of empathy overload, the solution is not to care less. It's to care more, more strategically. This is where the practice of compassionate detachment comes in. Compassionate detachment means maintaining your empathy while creating healthy boundaries. Research from organizational psychology shows that leaders who practice this approach actually demonstrate more consistent empathy over time because they avoid burnout. So here's a few practical techniques. First, schedule specific times for deep emotional support rather than being constantly available. This creates predictability from both you and your team. Second, create clear mental and physical boundaries. This might mean designating certain days as no emotional labor days where you focus purely on strategic work. And third, practice the observe, support, release technique. When confronted with team members' emotional challenges, consciously observe their feelings, offer appropriate support, and then mentally release responsibility for their emotions.

Studies show that leaders who implement these practices report 40% less emotional exhaustion while maintaining strong team relationships. Shift from being the team's emotional manager to becoming their emotional capacity builder. Ask questions like, what emotional patterns have you noticed in this situation, instead of managing the emotions for them. And for perfectionism and feedback internalization, I recommend the three two one feedback method. So when you receive feedback, especially critical feedback, this method helps you process it constructively rather than ruminating on it. So here's a little bit about how it works. So first, identify three objective truths in the feedback. This forces you to look at the feedback analytically rather than emotionally and write them down.

There's a lot of power in writing things down. I journal and write down a lot, right? Second, create two concrete actions based on those truths. What will you actually do differently? And be specific about what that success looks like. And then the third thing, this is crucial consciously identify one aspect of the feedback that you will intentionally let go. That might be, some subjective criticism, something that is outside of your control or simply not aligned with your values and goals. So studies in cognitive behavior therapy show that this structured approach reduces rumination by 60% and helps convert feedback into growth rather than self doubt. So putting it together, these three challenges often work together as a system. The good news is that addressing one typically creates positive effects on the others.

So what's exciting about emotional intelligence development is that small changes create ripple effects across your entire leadership approach. Research from the Center for Creative Leadership shows that leaders who focus on developing these specific EQ skills report 34% higher leadership effectiveness scores within six months. The goal isn't to fundamentally change who you are. It's to strategically refine how you express your authentic leadership style. So to translate all of this into action, I recommend creating a simple thirty day EQ action plan. Focusing on just a few specific behaviors creates a much better result than trying to change everything at once. So choose just one, you know, technique for each challenge area that resonated most strongly with you. You know, try try one thing and see see what happens. Right?

And like I said, the goal isn't to change who you are. It's just to make small adjustments. So with that, I wanna share an opportunity for you. At TBW, my my company, coaching is the foundation of our business. We help those high achievers gain clarity and purpose, vision to build the career of their dreams. This is my passion. And because we're a small company, we limit our focus to those who are demonstrating that high achievement and adaptability and commitment to leap forward in their careers. So today, I would love to offer, complimentary coaching sessions to each of you. Yes. That's crazy, but, yes, I'll do it. I would I would love this. This my ask is that as you, you know, look at yourselves, you know, and schedule these sessions, that you come prepared to discuss what are you stuck on and what goal do you want to achieve in the next six months.

I love doing these calls. I love talking to all of you, especially women in tech. It is my passion. So I look forward to working with each of you, and thank you for coming to my session.