When I first got the opportunity to join a community of Silicon Valley leaders, I was really intimidated.I grew up in a community where, basically, you worked hard and did your best to have the best life you can. But navigating this elite stratosphere seemed out of touch. And there was somebody who tried to give me really great advice. She said, hey. You should change the way you dress. You dress like an accountant. And your research is really great, but you talk about it in such a boring way. You need to get more creative. And while that was really good advice, the outside input really hurt my inside. I felt like maybe I wasn't the person who was going to be able to navigate this this new community that I was entering.

And I realized that I wasn't alone. When these outside advice or pressures make our inside feel like we're not enough, it can sometimes dampen our enthusiasm to achieve our goals. So in our research at the Stanford VMware Women's Leadership Innovation Lab, and, yes, that's the longest name ever, We look at the barriers facing women in order to find solutions to move everyone forward. And I developed this lens of seeing how the outside impacts the inside. And the conundrum we all face is how much should we respond to all of these pressures and how much should we hold our lines? And that's what we're gonna talk about today.

So the scenario Anna referred to in the beginning, imagine yourself, and maybe you've experienced this, I know I have, you didn't get the next step. It could be a promotion. It could be funding for your start up. It could be a new job. And when you hear from the outside all the advice of what you should have done, you internally should negotiate harder, negotiate like a man. And others would say, well, I'm not surprised. Women need to work twice as hard to get half the credit. And you're often left feeling like you don't know how to develop and move forward. What is it? The outside or the inside? Well, what if it's not either or? What if one of our strategies as women navigating this world of tech is to understand the outside in order to develop inside the strategies you need, the skill sets you need to succeed, and then to change the game.

So the first step I wanna talk about is to recognize what those outside barriers are. Learn the ways that the playing field might be uneven for you. Because in order to navigate this inside outside conundrum, we need to we need to first understand the rules before we can become the author of our pathway forward. Now what is the most significant barriers facing women is what is often called the double bind or the likability competence trade off. Now what does that mean? Well, let's see if you've ever had one of these experiences. One, you're told from the outside, assert yourself. So you do. And now you're not seen as a team player. You're seen as too aggressive. Then they're told, don't take up space. Then you might be overlooked and not seen as a leader. Or you might be naturally warm and collaborative, and people love to work with you.

But then when it comes time for that promotion, you are told that you're really light, but people don't take you seriously for the next level. You see, for women, likability and competence are negatively correlated, either likable or competent. It shows that women are often judged as competent as a leader, but liked less. This kind of correlation doesn't work for men. Their likability and competence tends to go up together. So you can feel like it's a no win situation. That's why it's called called a double bind. So this is a a barrier facing many women from the outside, and many of us have found an inside strategy of managing through it, which you might call code switching or self monitoring. Noticing that when you're facing too much judgment for not being liked and you step back and warm up, or you're warm and people aren't taking you as seriously, so you assert yourself.

It's a lot of extra work we have to do, but it demonstrates this interplay between the inside and the outside. But not being aware of this barrier can lead to mistakes. That advice to negotiate like a man doesn't account for the kinds of barriers women can face when they assert themselves without being aware of this double bind. And later, I'm gonna talk about a strategy to overcome it. The second outside dilemma is something we discovered in research and has been widely shown throughout research about promotions. We went to a chief technical officer's team, and we asked them what it takes to succeed at their level. And they said, having technical competence, being able to manage a team, Right? And have a history of producing results.

And then we ask them, what does it take to get promoted? And all those words disappeared. And the one word that came up was visibility. And here's the rep. We're often told from the outside, put your head down and work hard and your work will be noticed. But without that visibility, that hard work may not pay off as a promotion. Imagine, for example, there's a promotion committee, and they're talking about all the people that they could promote. Oftentimes, when a leader in that room has never heard of your work, they're less likely to say, yes. We should promote that person. So it may be unfair, but it's one of the roles we should all think about from the outside. Without visibility, sometimes that well earned promotion might not be accessible.

And lastly, let's think about bias. Women are often held to a higher standard. With the same qualifications, we're likely to be rated lower. So with this outside knowledge, how can we learn to navigate the system? Now let's go back to the inside. If you've been deemed sharp elbows over time due to the likability, competence trade off, You've been held to a higher standard. You had all the qualifications, and you still didn't get the job. And you've been kept invisible from leaders. It's not just the outside. This is where that barrier becomes permeable. You may have absorbed these dynamics and thought inside that maybe I don't have what it takes to get this next promotion to do the great job I'm here to do.

And that leads me to thinking about how to shore up your inside with what I'll call building inner resilience, ways to recharge your batteries and own your truth. I'm gonna take from the words of Audre Lorde, who is an activist, a queer poet, and she said, caring for myself is not self indulgence. It is self preservation. And what she meant by that, or how I interpret it, is that when we're working in a field where maybe there might be fewer of us, maybe where our representation really matters because there's so few of us, there's extra work we might be doing like that self monitoring. It's not just indulgent to take care of ourselves. It might be an imperative, not only for ourselves, but for the whole movement. So I wanna refer to the wise words of Wendy Suzuki. Now here's a secret about Wendy. She and I were college roommates. Now, of course, now she is a neuroscientist and dean at NYU. Wendy's off author of these two books about neuroscience.

And one of the things Wendy talks about in her TED talk and other ways that she shares her work is the power of your breath. At any moment, you can use your your breath to calm your nervous system. It's a gift you can give to yourself in any situation. You can do box breathing, which is in for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four. Or what I like, four four six two, because it releases some of the stale air in our lungs. In for four, hold for four, out for six, hold for two. In this way, at any time, you can build your inner resilience regardless of what is happening on the outside.

Next is some work that I did with professor Deborah Gunfeld and Melissa Jones Briggs. Because sometimes, despite your best intentions, the way you're presenting yourself externally and behaving doesn't match what's going on inside with your intention. So mantra in this piece in Harvard Business Review is a tool of repeating a strong and simple statement silently to yourself to produce a match between your internal intention and your nonverbal communication. Now not just any statement will do. It needs to be pure, not Machiavellian, not like you're up to get something. It has to be authentic. If it's something you would never say, it's probably not gonna work. And it has to be prosocial. I love this word. What it means is it has to be about out there, about others. It's not self affirmation like you're good enough, Lori. It's about your intention out there.

I'm gonna give you an example, and I would love if you practice with me. We're just gonna say this statement. Hi. I'm Laurie McKenzie. What brings you to this conference? But first, we're gonna say a warm mantra silently in your head. Here are two that you can try. So I'm gonna silently say it in my head and say those lines. Hi. I'm Laurie. What brings you to this conference? Now I'm gonna try a cold mantra. I'm gonna say it silently in my head, and I'm gonna say the same statement. Hi. I'm Laurie. What brings you to this conference? Sometimes you need to warm up. Sometimes you need to cool down. Mantra is a tool you can use to match your inside intention with your outside presentation. Next is thinking about your board of directors, and here's something I've learned.

Board of directors are people who will advocate for you when you're not in the room and give you the kind of advice you need. But importantly, the best board of directors are people who are aware of this outside pressure facing uniquely facing women and will give you outsized wise strategies. Let me give you an example of my board of directors. Remember that conundrum I was facing where I was entering a room and felt like I wasn't able to be up to par? Well, professor Margaret Neal gave me some advice. She's a professor of negotiation. The first thing she said was this, women are more effective negotiating on behalf of others. So when I'm entering a room, instead of focusing on myself, I think about all the women who are counting on me to have the impact they want me to have.

When I bring that to a room, I'm able to negotiate the inside to meet the outside challenge. Next is professor Jennifer Acker. So I work at a university so I meet a lot of professors. She talked about this power of stories. If you notice all leaders are great storytellers, but storytelling takes up space. It's something I had to learn to do. So Jennifer helped me understand the power of story, but also that sometimes it's time to retire the stories that no longer serve us. And lastly is professor Deborah Gunfeld. Deb teaches acting with power. And through her work, like with mantra, I've been able to harness my often nonverbal communication to hold still, to speak powerfully, to hold the silence, or to warm it up, to lean in, and give people what they need to broaden my range of my abilities to act with power.

Deb says, we all know what power looks like when it's used poorly, But what does it look like to use power well? Now as we take all of this advice, all these ideas to grow, we may feel like we're giving up too much. Like, we're being told to assimilate into a culture that's really not us. And that's where I rely on the words of Harmonia Abara, who's a leadership professor at London Business School. She talks about this idea of authenticity. She says many people claim to authenticity as an excuse not to adapt, saying things like, that's just not me. But true leadership growth requires stretching into new ways of thinking, acting, and engaging while integrating, not abandoning our core values.

So as you journey through your own leadership journey, learn where to draw the line to hold on to those core values and where to grow in order to fulfill your vision. Now finally, how do you offer your own path? I'm gonna give you three tips. One is to harness the power of criteria. Remember I said that women are often held to a higher standard? It turns out that criteria can be a tool a tool to hold the line steady. If you notice that people are using a different way to evaluate somebody, you might say, hey. What criteria are we using to make that decision? That helps everyone align on on the decision making and keeping it steady. Or if you notice that a woman is being evaluated for her creativity while a man is being evaluated purely based on his results, you could say, hey.

Creativity isn't the the standard we used last time. Let's hold to the same standard. These two ways can help you start to block bias, and building this into the system can start to change the game. Finally, think about framing the conversation. If you're like me when you're excited, you wanna jump right in with the facts. But notice that great leaders start by framing the conversation. They set or reinforce the strategic imperative. You might try this. For example, just try saying, hey. More diversity of ideas are needed. What's that narrow down too quickly? Then state specifically what the goal of the meeting is. Some people don't know why they're there. It could be information sharing, so your job is really to listen. It could be information gathering, so your job in the meeting is to participate.

And it could be decision making, and your job is to form a point of view and weigh in. You can be the one that sets the stage. And lastly, don't forget that you can create space wherever you are. It could be a very small space like the inside of the circle. It can be a larger space that emanates out. You could be the leader where decisions are made fairly, where you have courage to take time to breathe and give space to others. That microculture around you can really empower people to deliver on their best intention and to do their best work. And I continue with my story. So working with these amazing leaders, I was able to take a national stage. This is a picture of me a few years ago.

You noticed my hair was black back then, and that's Megan Rapinoe and Hillary Clinton looking at me. I used all of the techniques everyone told me to grow into this opportunity. And as you can see from this picture, they were listening to me. Not necessarily because I was special, but I was there to have research have an impact. And that vision, that mission was stronger than any doubts or concerns I had. But my story doesn't end there. I'm often the one in the audience who's smiling and listening to others, making sure that they feel valued. I wanna leave you with this, the story of The Wizard of Oz. These three were on a journey trying to find what was missing from them. And what they discovered on their journey wasn't that things were missing, but they had it all along. And I share that with you. You have inside what it takes.

You can manage the outside and grow. The goal isn't just to win the game. It's to change the rules so everyone thrives by diagnosing the outside barriers, building your inner resistance, finding and holding on to your line. And then with knowledge, intention, and community, author your own path forward for yourself and for bringing others