We're here to talk about women in the C Suite, what we can learn from them. OK. So the struggle is real.If you're anything like me, you are here because you wanna know what steps to take as a professional in tech, what it means to actually have a personal brand. You know that the women that are in the C suite, the women that you admire, they have personal brand and they're professionals. What does it take to have a personal brand in this day and age as a professional? And how can we stand out without breaks? We're going to talk about all of those things and more today. Now, I totally understand if you are concerned and you're kinda like, I don't know how to share the value of my work. I don't know how to talk about myself without bragging. Uh Being humble is really, really important to me. Listen, I totally, totally get that. OK. So I've been there and I have done that and I have written a number of blogs about it. OK, so you're in the right place today. We're gonna talk about overcoming self doubt, building confidence.

I want to talk to you about what myself and my clients have found works for senior level roles and what the research also tells us that women in the cc have done that has made a huge impact on their careers. Ok. So I want to take you back in time. I wanna tell you a story about years ago when I was a communications advisor, working at one of the largest nonprofits in Canada. That's where I'm from. And I was really driven. I still am. Um But I was making some mistakes and I didn't realize it, I believed and I was sort of told by other people around me that it was really important to work hard, you know, put your head down, work hard, put in all of the hours, do great work and that great work will speak for itself and it will speak for you.

And that's how you build a great reputation for yourself. And that is how you advance your career. So what's happening to me at this point in my career is really nothing. Um I'm working hard. I'm getting good and really positive feedback on my work, but I'm starting to look around and see my peers on my team getting to do the really cool projects, the things that I joined the organization because I wanted to work on these kinds of things and they're advancing, they're becoming leaders, they're getting pulled into other cool meetings that I want to be in and so I start to go what is going on?

Well, I maybe just need to work harder. Um Maybe I need to start thinking about another degree or something like that. Anyways, fast forward a little while and a new vice president of marketing Communications joins the team and she comes into my office one day and this is after her noticing me and realizing like, ok, there's something with this young woman. Um I'm, I'm seeing a lot of talent in her, but she isn't getting anywhere. And so she was asking me about what my goals were and things like that. So after this conversation, initially, she comes back into my office one afternoon and she closes the door behind her. So it was a moment that I knew, ok, she's gonna say something. She goes, Kristen, I know why you're not getting the jobs and the projects that you want. And I'm like, OK, why? And she says to me, Kristen, you do great work, but here's the thing, no one knows who you are. And it was honestly one of those punch to the gut moments for me. Uh I won that I won't forget I wanted to disagree with her. I kind of wanted to hide and put my tail between my legs, but I, I let it sink in and I realized she was right. I was working really hard, but I was actually hiding behind my work.

I didn't know how to stand in front of it and own it and communicate it and communicate about myself. As a result, I wasn't really going anywhere in my career. So I knew I had to make a change. And with some support from a great leader and mentor and my own um drive and willingness to push myself out of my comfort zone. I started to build my personal brand without knowing that that's really what I was even doing and things started to change for me. I got my first leadership role. Then I went on to become the manager of the department. Then I got to become the advisor to the president of the organization and be leading her personal brand, sharing um media information on her behalf, all of these things. So I literally went in a couple of years from being told, no one knows who you are to advising the president and CEO. Did I start working harder in more hours? No. Did I go on and get an advanced degree? No, my work style didn't change. The one thing that did was that I built a personal brand. So that is what I want to talk to you about today because I realized that other women who are at the top who are in the C suite, they're senior leaders, they do many of the same things. So let's uncover what those are.

So I haven't had the pleasure of meeting you yet. My name is Kristen Dick. I am an international speaker workshop, facilitator and personal branding strategist. That means that I guide driven women like you to reach your career goals using my signature personal branding process.

That is a QR code right there. That will lead you to my linkedin profile where I'd love it if you connect it or follow me there, if you want to know how to create your very own linkedin QR code, right In the platform with like two clicks of a mouse. Um I've got a very short tutorial on my linkedin profile that will show you exactly how to do that. So maybe you have experienced something like this too, something where you, you just felt stuck, you felt like you weren't going anywhere in your career and I know how disappointing it can feel and frustrating it can feel and you can really kind of start to question things, right?

OK. Well, no more because I know you are here. You're part of women tech, you're taking time out of your very busy day. Some of you might be here at very odd hours. It might be the middle of the night for you, but you're here because you want to have a bigger impact and you're in tech. So you were in the place to do that, right? But how, how well doesn't have to be this way. OK. There are some things that we can do to change this because I bet you do great work. So I want to talk about first and foremost what is personal branding because that is the core of my business. And that is really what all of the pieces that I'm talking to you about today are grounded in. So there's so many different definitions out there of personal branding. You've heard all of them. I'm sure you can do a quick Google search and it'll be page after page after page of, you know, different ideas, but many of the same things come up. Um The Jeff Bezos quote, uh your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room. That's one them, your brand is your essence. It's your reputation.

It's the um combination of all the things that make you who you are and that is in some ways true, but it's actually a little misleading because we don't have to share everything about ourselves ourselves to have a personal brand and to have a great personal brand. In fact, the most focused personal brands are actually the ones that are the most successful. So what does it mean to have a personal brand? Especially for those of us who are professionals who have jobs who aren't CEO S yet or who aren't celebrities. This is what it means to have a personal brand, trust people, trust you, have you read the book, the speed of trust or heard the saying nothing moves faster than the speed of trust it's one of my favorite things because it's so so true. Think about it, you would never hire someone you never wanna buy or, or work with someone unless you trusted them, right? So how, how can we get people to trust us? So the full definition that I've created about personal branding is this one? Personal branding is building trust by communicating your value to your target audience. OK. So we're going to talk about the different ways that you can be communicating your value to your target audience today. So your audience being the leadership within your company, um people inside your industry, your colleagues, things like that. OK. So let's just touch on this before we go any further because I know you might be thinking that this isn't gonna work for me.

And I just want to acknowledge that first. So maybe you're like a lot of people are thinking, but I'm not a celebrity or a CEO. I don't need a personal brand. I don't need to communicate my value. But here's the thing. If you don't talk about your impact, who will? It really is your job, you might think. No, that's my boss's job. No, your boss is out there communicating her value, communicating the work and the worth of the entire team. It's your job to talk about your own impact and talk about the value that you bring to the company or to your organization. Maybe you're thinking I don't want to be seen as Bragg, who can, who feels this one? This one was a really big one for me. But then I discovered there are ways to talk about ourselves and they don't feel bragging. And this one is kind of like a dual approach. OK. So on the one hand, there are ways that we can do it that don't feel as bragging. Ok, we're gonna talk about that today, but they're new to us. We're still talking about ourselves and we're talking about ourselves in a new way. And many of us have been socialized and conditioned to think that anytime we talk about ourselves, talk about something great that we've done that, that is bad.

I want you to sit in that discomfort and embrace that discomfort a little bit because I know how challenging this can be for many of us. But I'm encouraging you to push through it and think about the people that, you know, that you admire and see the ways in which they're building trust with people. They are talking about their work. They are talking about what they can do what their abilities are and it's not coming off like, oh, this person's bragging. Right. You're thinking, oh, good. I'm so glad she's here. I'm so glad they're on our team. So we're going to talk about that a little bit more. Here's another common one. What I do is really straightforward. It's not, it's not to everyone. Maybe to your colleagues. It is, but it's not to everybody else. You are people in the tech industry, you're probably getting phone calls and emails and texts from relatives going, hey, can you, can you come over this weekend and fix my computer? They don't really know what you do right now. That's one example. But think about it, if someone in your industry doesn't fully understand what you do or the potential of your work that can hold you back. So we want to make sure that we overcome that don't assume that people understand exactly what you do.

So I want to show you how to overcome this. But like I said, you gotta put in the work and the work means a little bit of discomfort. OK? So I'm going to ask you to just take baby steps, sit in some of that discomfort and little by little, it will become easier. So I want to share with you what I've learned through my own experience working with women leaders and what the research also tells us about women who are in the C suite and in other senior leadership roles. All right, I'm just popping over to see if there's any questions. I gotta get that voice out of my head. Mary a suffers. Yes. Fake it until you make it. Samantha says, yeah, and you know what, just embrace some of that discomfort. You don't have to fake anything. I don't, I believe you've got everything that it takes already. All right, Elena is ready. Awesome. Let's dive in. So this might feel so obvious to some of you and that's OK. Just know that for some of your peers, it's not, it's this clarify your goals. So clarify your goals first to yourself. OK? When I was um you know, in my story, when I was sharing with you, I was too afraid to, to clarify my goals to myself because I was so afraid of failure.

What I realized though was when I started to create goals for myself, I had great things happen to me. I was working in a certain direction. I could communicate those values with the people that needed to know them. And new opportunities came up like being becoming the advisor to the president and CEO was not on my radar, but that opportunity presented itself to me and I took it because my initial goal was to grow and become more of a leader. It doesn't mean that you're stuck with that and it doesn't mean that you're a failure if you don't reach that because you're probably going to go in another direction and find something else that's even better than what you could have imagined. OK. So clarify your goals, think of, you know, think big, what do you dream of? What are ways that you can contribute more fully and make sure that you are directing your time more strategically so that you're working in effort to reach your goals. OK? Now, now that you've gotten clear with your goals for yourself and your behavior is changing around them, you're focusing your attention on them, share them. So think about the people who can help you reach your goals. So these are people both in your professional life, but also in your personal life, right? Who can support you get creative, maybe create um a small mentorship group or an accountability group.

And the really cool thing about sharing your goals is you're going to start to see a natural way to progress in your career towards your goals. These are your stepping stones, but when you share your goals with a mentor with a friend or a colleague or your boss, they're going to be able to point out to you other stepping stones that exist or hopefully kindly point out to you something that you need to develop, whether it's a skill or some kind of certification that you may be missing, that you need to overcome and achieve so that you get to where you're going and you won't get that information if you are not sharing your goals.

Ok, let's talk about self advocacy. So we think of self advocacy as kind of talking about ourselves, right? And that's, that's a good thing. We need to be advocates for ourselves. We think about this. Um If you've ever been in the healthcare system, it's important that we advocate for ourselves. We've got to do this within our careers as well. What the research tells us that women are often challenged with is influencing us. Now, women who overcome this often move on to high levels within their organization. And according to the research from Le Hes Harrison that I have reviewed, they say that the women that they have surveyed and studied claim that they influence up and they make it a big priority.

So what does it mean to influence us? This might be a new language to you. So let's start with, you know, the influence, the influence and impact you have within your company, within your industry. When we get to those leadership roles, oftentimes we think about our influence and I'm talking about a traditional organizational hierarchy which um in North America is very like up and down. So when I realized that um we're speaking globally today and for many other countries, it's more flat, but I want you to look at it um as if it were that that vertical. So you are influencing your colleagues and you're influencing the people that report into you. So the people that are lower than you inside that traditional organizational hierarchy. Now, that's great. You're nurturing them, you're growing them, you're helping them develop in their career. This is a great sign of a leader. What I don't want you to lose sight of though is looking up, influencing up, look at your boss, look at her boss how are you communicating with them? Are you building a relationship with them? Because if you wanna move yourself and your team forward, show the value that you and your team are bringing to the company. It's really important that you look up, you influence upward and you have relationships with those people. OK.

So this also includes delegating because this is another struggle that is commonly felt uh or experienced by women. It's delegating. So that's one way that you can free up some of your time so that you are influencing up. You are picking up the phone booking meetings, asking for time on someone's agenda so that you can influence up. It's important to learn how to delegate to other members of your team to do the work. And then I'll also be looking at who can support you in doing this. I don't see any other questions yet, but we've got time for questions at the end. So this is, this is a big one. Your value is not your title. So I know that we talk about um the word value a lot here today. And I wanna be really, really clear that when I say communicate your value and how you're communicating your value. This isn't how uh this is, this is not about your worth. Your worth is never in question. We're talking about your value in the sense of the profitability, the impact that you have within your company, the impact of your work. So talking about your work and talking about yourself using your job title is not how you do that. Ok. So when you, when you talk about yourself as your job title, people are bringing their own biases, they're bringing their own ideas of what your job is to you. And in some cases, that's really, really great.

Um But for some of us that's going to be really limiting and that's not going to be telling the whole story. So for example, someone may have worked with someone like you that has the same job title as you in a different industry, in a different um field and had did not have a good experience or maybe your title isn't as highly uh respected in other industries. It's really, really important that we talk about your work specifically because as you know, many of you will have the same job title as someone else on your team as your peers in the industry, but you're doing different things and people need to know what those specifics are so that they can call on you for those specific things.

So how do we talk about our value first? We need to understand what it is. OK. So let's look at the most obvious way which is to look at the company's business plan and how are you impacting that business plan? So if you have access to your company's business plan, pull it open, if you got the hard copy of it or go and download it from your internet or website. Look at, you know, if you can say I my work aligned specifically to goal number two B and how is that measured? That's how you talk about your work because that is how the board, that is how the C suite is looking at your job. They don't wanna know all of the minutia of your day to day work. They wanna know the results that you're getting in that specific area. That's how they're being measured by their board, by their investors. So think like they are, they're thinking about the board, they're thinking about global investors, they're thinking about geopolitics. So think really high level and strategic like they are. So it's not just the work you do, it's the reasons for that work, it's the result of that work.

So start a notebook, start a file, a spreadsheet and start tracking and measuring the impact of your work. You will thank me the next time you go to apply for a job because you will have that information to pop into your resume, you can use it not only then, but when you are negotiating for more resources or more money. So your value is the result of working with you. And this is also a really great tool anytime you're experiencing those moments of self doubt because we all experience those moments from time to time. But if you know, and you can say objectively that you are helping move the business forward in this specific way and you can share that with others too, that can be really, really powerful, intrinsically in motivating you to keep going and knowing that you are making an impact.

So your personal brand statement. So this is one of the tools that we have in our toolbox to talk about ourselves without. OK. So I wanna share with you a personal brand statement. Probably you've heard this before. Um It's not the same as an elevator pitch. You're not pitching anything really though. Um What I want you to take away from the personal brand statement because I'm gonna share my own framework with you. The one that uh I I used with all of my clients. It works, I promise you it's very effective. Um Well, what I want you to know as, as you're evolving your own statement as you're trying this out for the first time is that this is all about trust? OK. So yes, it's gonna be a little bit uncomfortable to introduce yourself and say uh rather than hi, I'm Kristen and I'm a personal branding strategist to say hi, I'm Kristen. I'm a personal branding strategist and speaker and I work with driven women to help them communicate their value using my signature personal branding process that those are very, very different, right? One, when I say I'm a personal branding strategist, if I only say that if I only leave it at that and I've tested this out, what do you think? People say? Does anyone want to guess what or what? When I say what they say what they think?

I do. What does that mean? Yeah, a lot of what does that mean? What's a personal branding strategist? So they say that they also say, oh another one, it's not very specialized. They also say, oh, you work with influencers. You know, I don't work with um Instagram influencers.

It's not what I do. I work with driven professionals who are women. So it's really leaving a lot of great conversations on the table. It's leaving. Um It's, I'm missing out on an opportunity to really connect with someone. And um yeah, so when I do share with people what my personal brand statement is, even if it's someone who does not see themselves as a woman or as a woman who is driven, they're, they go, oh, you should speak to my partner. Oh um I know someone who could have you in for a workshop. Let me connect you with them or they ask or they do see themselves as that driven woman and then they ask, ask really, really um specific questions and we have a great conversation. So it might feel like, oh, you know, she's, she's leaving out people because I'm I'm really saying like this is who I am, this is who I I work with. And I work for, but that's ok because the people who do see themselves as the, the person I described in my brand statement, they're like, oh, that's me or, oh, I know that I know someone like that I can connect them. So, yeah, it felt, feels, it felt really scary at first, but it is really effective. So what is a personal brand statement? What needs to be in it?

Well, things that are going to hope people trust you and people can't trust what they don't know, they can't trust what they don't see, right? So just like if I say I'm a personal branding, strategist, they're going to bring their own ideas, their own experience with that word, personal brand to the table. They can't understand what I am because I'm not showing them, I'm not bringing that to them. They can't trust me.

So what could they do or what could I do? And what can you do instead? Well, you can use my framework and I'll share it in a second. Get it down to one sentence though. Whatever you do, you can change it up if you'd like but get it to one sentence. So you can remember it and this brand statement, it's positioning you, but it can absolutely evolve with you. We've all seen our favorite brands that we know and love evolve over time, right? We are personal brands. The expectation is that we're growing and evolving more rapidly than a business brand, but really the power of a personal brand and a brand statement is we have the opportunity to shape how other people see us. OK? We get to shape how other people see us. So I want you to visualize cause I've gotten really good feedback on this um which is to think of your personal brand like a Venn diagram. So here's you in, in circle one and it's all the things about you, your, your personality, your qualities, the education that you have, all of the things, your passions, uh your family life. And then over here is your audience.

What's important to them in your industry, it's evolving um All of the things right now, where do they, they intersect? Where do they overlap this, this intersection here? That is your personal brand. You don't need to share everything with, with your audience, but what do they need to know about you so that they can trust you? OK. They don't need to know um your favorite breakfast hangout. They don't need to know, you don't have to go and tell everyone your personal super personal stories. Take that pressure off. What do they need to know about you so that they trust you and they trust that you can do the job. So what you want to have in this framework is the value or the solution that you provide in your work. So we talked about that a few minutes ago and we clarified what our value is, the impact of our works. You really want to make sure that you have that in there. And this is another way that we can be talking about ourselves without bragging how you do it. So your, your how could be your job title? You don't need to overthink it, who you do it for. So the customers, your industry think like that. So here are some examples and I want to show you some side by side. So I could say if you look on the left hand side here. So I'm a marketing manager while I don't know what that means.

That's very general marketing is like the most broad field. What if you said this instead, I'm a marketer on a mission to help brands in highly competitive industries, connect with customers. So their product is top of mind. So the result of the impact of her work is getting a product top of mind, she does this by so how is by connecting with customers and her audience? The the co the companies that she works for are brands in highly competitive industries or this one? This is another one of my clients. I'm the managing director of agriculture. Well, how about it's my job to make sure our banks, a customers become loyal fans by accelerating internal change. Do you see how that changes everything? And you still might be thinking? Ok, don't still don't you know, fully understand what she does there, but it's going to pique your interest. It's going to make you ask some much better questions than you would have. If you just heard, I'm the managing director of Agriculture and think about it from someone on the board of your company, someone in the C suite or a senior leader. They hear these two examples like light bulbs are going off in their head, right? Ok. So this is what influential women do, women who are in the C suite and in other senior leader positions, they are clear on their goals and they share them, they advocate for themselves and they remember to influence up and they have a brand statement and use it as a tool to introduce themselves repeatedly, whether it's on the company internet, introducing themselves in meetings all the time at events.

They use that statement, that's like their humble brag. That's how you talk about the great work that you do. And if there is only one thing that you take away from this presentation, I want it to be this. You do great work and it is a time to make sure people know about it. OK. Thank you so much. Everybody. I've got a download on my website that helps you ca uh communicate your value if you want to check it out. Um There's a QR code if you want to use it and um let's get to questions. OK. So I think we have five minutes left. If anyone would like to ask questions, I would love to answer your questions. Mhm. How did you start your business? Ok. I started my business after I became the communications advisor to the president and CEO and I started to work with her and realized that although we were in the nonprofit industry which is um dominated by women, I realized that she is one of the few women who uh is in the C suite, even in the nonprofit field.

And her and I, you know, we really got to talking and I, she shared with me some of the, some of how she got there, some of her challenges and I was sitting in her corner office meeting all these people across Canada. Um And in the United States and thinking there needs to be more people like this. We need more diversity, we need more women and non binary people in these corner offices, making these big decisions and I made the jump to start my business. Um That was a big how um and then it's a whole messy roller coaster ride after that, when you say uh learn the business plan of the company we work for, can we ask our leaders if they do not have anything online number out to ask that question? That is such a good question if you are not. So some companies are really transparent about their business plan, some aren't um ask for, ask for that. Information, something that you can ask for if you're interviewing for a job too. Just say, you know, can you tell me about how this role impacts the business plan? Can you tell me which goals and objectives this work rolls up to within the business plan and, and talk about it? Like I really want to be as strategic as possible with my time and I'd like to have a better understanding of how my work impacts the business plan. Can I have access to it? Um For some companies, they're going to be less transparent about that.

But if you explain why you're looking for that information, I would hope that they would um give it to you even if they're just sort of copying and pasting the information from it for you. Um I joined late, but this is a super session. Oh, thank you so much. I can use the personal brand statement as a 32nd pitch in the interviews. Yeah, you absolutely can, you can use it all the time Usha. Um So definitely use it when you're doing job interviews. Definitely use it. You know, if you're introducing yourself in other future sessions like this, honestly, when you're in meetings and you, you're going to meetings or you're in a virtual meeting and you're doing that round table where you're introducing yourself, share your personal brand statement.

I know it's gonna feel uncomfortable, just try it. Oh, do you have more information about how to manage up? Yeah. So this is um this is, this is challenging and I think asking your boss to be invited to meetings is one way you can do it. Um Ask, you know, if he or she or they are not able to attend, say, hey, can I come in your as your proxy? Can I, can I come to this meeting and sit in with you? I'm looking to learn. That's one way you can do it influencing up can also look like. And this is helpful in over the remote world that many of us are working in sending a weekly or um every other week email to your boss saying these are the things that I worked on. Um These are, these are the results that I've seen. We might, you know, we might kind of criticize or, or challenge our boss with, you know, you're not paying enough attention. You don't understand what I do, make it really clear and easy for them to understand what you do. And again, if you have access to that business plan or you're working toward team goals for your department, then you're also able to say on a weekly or monthly basis that you're measuring things you're really on track or you're not on track. I need help here.

Um That's another way that you can manage up. Uh There's lots of informal ways that you can do it too just by asking for 10 minute coffee meetings with people when you are, especially in this virtual remote world that we're in. Um You can do that too. Uh And then, you know, Sena, that's a really great question. I have some more ideas, but Google, Google influencing up and you should see some other articles about it too. Thank you all so much for joining me today. Um I hope we can continue some of this conversation on linkedin. I know some of you shared your, your handles, your linkedin handles already. So keep in touch with everybody and let's continue the conversation.