Be Visible And Own Your Authority Without Being Called A B**ch With Dr. Alessandra Wall

Have you ever been afraid to speak up at work for fear of being labeled bossy, pushy, or aggressive?

I have, and for the longest time, I stayed quiet because of it. I was too busy criticizing my own thoughts and worrying about what others thought, rather than sharing my ideas, asking questions, or stating my opinions based on my education and experience.

When I have shared my opinions, asked questions, or presented ideas, I’ve been labeled as “too this or that,” but it doesn’t stop me anymore. I’ve probably even been called a bitch behind my back, and that’s okay. My guest today, Dr. Alessandra Wall, and I discuss how to be a powerhouse, avoid negative labels, and stop worrying about backlash.

During our conversation, Dr. Alessandra and I discuss:

• Her transition from a full-time counseling practice to her work as an executive coach for women
• What led her to start her company, Noteworthy
• The importance of visibility for women who want to get promoted
• How women can be visible and own their authority without being called a bitch
• The science behind this process
• The internal resistance that executive women face when seeking visibility and authority, and how to overcome it
• The systems that executive women need to put in place
• How Dr. Alessandra works with her female executive clients

Believe me, I learned some valuable lessons during this conversation that I wish I had known when whispers of “she’s a bitch” were being said behind my back. Let’s learn together how to artfully gain visibility, get promoted, and own our authority. Shall we?

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Listen to the episode here

Be Visible And Own Your Authority Without Being Called A B**ch With Dr. Alessandra Wall

Everyone, how are you doing out there? Have you ever had a situation when you were afraid to speak up at work because you didn’t want people to think you were too bossy or maybe too pushy, aggressive, or enter other derogatory adjectives here? I have. For the longest time, I would remain quiet because I was afraid. I was just truly afraid. I was too busy criticizing my own thoughts and being worried about what other people thought rather than just sharing my ideas, asking my questions, or stating my opinion based on my education and my experience. In the times where I’ve shared my opinion and I’ve gone for it, I’ve asked the question or shared the idea, I have been told I’m to this or to that, but it doesn’t stop me anymore.

I’m sure I’ve even been called sacrilegious, a bitch behind my back. That’s okay. My guest today, Dr. Alessandra Wall, and I talk about this very topic and how we can be a powerhouse without worrying about the backlash. During our conversation, Dr. Alessandra and I discussed her transition from a full-time psychologist practice to her work as an executive coach for women. What led her to start her company noteworthy? The importance of visibility for women who want to get promoted. How women can be visible and own their authority without being called a bitch. The science behind this process. 

The internal resistance that many executive women face when attempting to get that visibility and authority and what they can do about it. The systems that working women need to put in place. how Dr. Alessandra works with her clients. Believe me, I learned some lessons during this conversation that I wish I would have had when whispers of, “She’s a bitch,” were being said behind my back. Let’s learn together how we can artfully yet visibly get promoted, and own our authority. Let’s do all of those things, shall we? Here is more about Dr. Alessandra.

Dr. Alessandra Wall elevates women leaders in STEM and finance and trains companies that understand the incredible benefit of retaining, rewarding, and attracting women in senior leadership. Dr. Alessandra’s background in clinical psychology makes her uniquely qualified to combine practical, proven strategies with business insights into our internal roadblocks and motivations. She knows what questions to ask, what answers to listen for, and how to make it easy for women to say out loud what they need and give up what they desperately need to drop. 

As a business owner and founder, Dr. Alessandra knows firsthand what it’s like to be known as a woman in her space instead of an expert, even if she is both. She understands the challenges of recruiting, retaining, and developing talent. She also gets what it’s like to burn out, to feel unfulfilled and overwhelmed while looking like she has it all together. As an industry partner and community contributor, Dr. Alessandra partners with women forward organizations nationally and internationally to elevate female leadership, including Athena, Women in Bio, and E2W London. 

As a successful, high-performing woman, she has built a career in a business on her own terms. She used to believe failure was unacceptable but now she knows that it is both unavoidable and extremely valuable. What’s unacceptable is building success at the cost of fulfillment and burning out our women. Dr. Alessandra has spent thousands of hours speaking with hundreds of women and developed solution-focused strategies, starting with individual women in leadership and designing business systems that get the best from them and not the best of them.

If this show has made an impact on you, please be sure to share it with a family member, friend, or colleague. Of course, your readings and reviews help the show continue to gain traction and grow. If you can leave a rating or review, I would so appreciate it. Hit the plus sign and subscribe to Brave Woman at Work so you can get the show in your weekly feeds on Thursdays. If you’ve already left a rating and review, I thank you again. Your encouragement means the absolute world to me. Also, if you still need to download one or all of the freebies from my website, check them out at BraveWomanAtWork.com. 

There are 24 career and leadership affirmations, five ways to manage your imposter syndrome, and getting paid 10 negotiation tips. You can find more information at BraveWomanAtWork.com. One last thing, my latest book, Brave Women at Work: Lessons in Leadership, is available for pre-order in hardcover. Yes, it is. It is now available. The author team and I have some big audacious goals for this book. We’re going to shoot for, yes, you’re hearing it here first, a New York Times bestseller. I would so appreciate it if you could pre-order a copy before it comes out in late September.

This book and the entire series have been a labor of love. This is the third in the series. The first one was on resilience. The second one was on confidence and now leadership. Please walk with the author team, with myself, and the Brave Woman at Work community as we lead out loud with this book. You can pre-order a copy of the book on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books a Million, or wherever books are sold. Let’s welcome Dr. Alessandra to the show.

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Alessandra, welcome to the show. How are you today? 

I’m here with you. I’m doing fabulously well. 

Background Story And Career Journey

Everybody, we just started talking about some fun stuff. Let’s jump in. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background story? You can start wherever you want to, Alessandra. I’d love to know how you’ve gotten to where you are today. 

You’re going to regret putting it that way. Listen, I’ll start with this, but I promise you it won’t be too painful. Once upon a time, there was a little girl which is really where my story starts. Once upon a time, there was a little girl who wanted to do the thing that all psychologists wanted to do, which was fix things in her family by becoming a therapist and fixing things for other people. That’s all she focused on. Middle school through high school, through college, through graduate school, through a post-doc, and she built a thriving clinical practice. 

She was so certain that she would love doing this work because she was the type of person who when she got too comfortable in a job was the worst employee. People are always changing. Coming back to the story being about me, really thought people are always changing. Every person is different. This is a career that will keep me intellectually stimulated, and excited, I’m making a difference in people’s lives. Unfortunately, by the time I was 34, I did not feel that way about this career, which was the only thing I had trained to do and be. 

Worse yet, it went from this isn’t that much fun to getting to a place where I would sit in my office, read the day, and then sometimes throughout the day, want to shake the people I was working with and say, “Do something about it.” Visions, I had this huge floor-to-ceiling glass sliding door to my office and I just had this vision of opening and running outside. 

Now, I just had this conversation with somebody yesterday. It’s not that at the moment there, I didn’t love the people I worked with in the work I did, but overall, I still woke up most mornings and dreaded going to work. I decided I needed to do something else, which was terrifying. You and I talked about being brave, which was terrifying because I hadn’t trained for anything. You know when you’re in your mid-30s, how you already think you’re so old. 

Yes. No, wait until you get into your mid-40s.

I’m already in my late forties. In a few days, I’ll be 47. When you’re in your mid-30s, you also think that you’re supposed to have made it. Anybody who’s listening, who’s in your mid-30s, you have another 30 years of career ahead of you. Trust me, you’re not supposed to have made it in your thirties but it felt that way. I didn’t have the distance to realize that I did what everybody who has a midlife crisis does. I became a life coach. I tried to build a business that was completely different than my therapy practice, which I was still running to fund my life coaching business. Created a completely different business that I actually hated and burnt myself out.

You were not happy in your first career and then you burnt yourself out in your entrepreneurial career.

Yes. A couple of years ahead of you, burnt myself out in June of 2017. I need to go back to the drawing board and still operate a therapy practice. Said worked 4.5 years at that point and really not made any money as a coach, but exhausted myself and created fabulous products because I was prototypical for many of the women I worked with as a therapist, for many of the women I worked with as a coach, for many of the women I still work with as a coach, which it felt like I had to do all the things excellently. I’d gotten over or thought I had my perfectionism, but still, everything I did was too high level, too many details. 

Burnt myself out, took six months off, stopped, and considered what I loved doing, and what I knew for a fact is I could not be a therapist for the rest of my life. I didn’t want to do it in a hospital, didn’t want to do it in prison, didn’t want to do it in my private practice. I came back and realized that the people I loved working with the most were professional women who were stuck in their careers. That is where this started. Over the last six years, that work has evolved a lot. At this point, I live when people ask me what I do. I don’t coach. Coaching is a tool. 

It’s one of the things that I do as this, whatever we want to call this career but I have the privilege of spending my day talking with really fascinating women who are very ambitious, very impressive. Some are downright intimidating when I first meet them and before I get to know them as people because they’re just, they challenge the status quo, they do things differently, they push themselves and then I help them. My goal is to help them. The top of their career is to make sure they have a voice at the table. All of them have some kind of a seat and make sure that their success is on their terms and they’re not burning themselves out or compromising their values or just miserably successful. 

Miserably successful. I like that term. How do you do that? I guess this is my question because we’re not putting gold stars around burnout everyone, but like you’re 2017, I am the class of burnout of 2019.

You never wanted.

Helping Women Achieve Success

Never wanted that one. How do you help your clients prevent or heal from burnout? What are the tools that you might use or want to share with others? 

At the fundamental level, preventing and healing is the same thing. I have to be honest that when we’re healing, we won’t necessarily start right at this point, but no matter what, we have to come to a place where you as an individual have a process to understand what you need to be fulfilled and satisfied. That comes from my background as a psychologist. I started off as a child psychologist, by the way. Initially, I started off as a child psychologist, then I was like, “I’ll tweak this.” That will make it more interesting.

I’ll just go back to the basics, which is being an adult psychologist. Then I specialized in anxiety in what now would be called burnout. There wasn’t a word for that in 2013, 2012. That’s not what we called it. What I found is in psychology, there’s all this literature, all this research on human development from age 0 to 18 or 25. Then after that, people don’t really talk about it until maybe you get into your 50s or 60s and then they talk about late-life development. We all know from experience that we continue evolving the whole time. 

It was fundamentally different at 26 than I was at 21. At 33, I was a different human being. Even if the needs were static, how those needs needed to be expressed was different. A lot of the work where we start is I will talk to women who have had what I call reactive careers, like I did, right? You go to school, you get a degree, you look at what the job market has to offer, you get your first job, and then you just react to opportunities as they come, but you don’t slow down to think about who you are, and what you need. 

You are like speaking my language totally.

That’s usually where we start at some point in time. We need to come back and have these women clearly define what they need in order to be fulfilled and satisfied, not happy, not joyous, not excellent, not filled and satisfied. Then we can look at the real world and say, “What does that look like given your circumstances? If you’re a parent or you’re not a parent, if you’re a caretaker, if the job market is strong or not.” If I say I need a job where a lot of because you’re at this level too. A lot of the women I work with want to be strategic thinkers. 

I want to use my brain. I want to be at that place where I get to think strategically. We can really look at it, but what does that look like in this role? What would the upgrade from this role look like? That’s where we start. Then there are better practices, there are better habits. I often say to my clients, “Pot, my name’s Kettle or Kettle, my name’s Pot.” I will absolutely not say I’m perfect at these things but I will say I’m really good at helping other people get good at some of the things even I’m still learning to do. 

I think as we mentioned before we hit record, boundaries, and what you want things to look like. I make this kind of akin to you get out of college, you start your career, you work really hard and you get into this like boat. You’re flowing downstream and you just flow where it goes and you don’t actually have any time as you’re advancing down this river to think about what you want. I think that you’re doing a great service by having these women pause and say, “What do you want versus what everybody else wants for you?”

Actually, your imagery is very beautiful, but that is exactly it. In sharing my story, that was my problem. I read and watched the Prince of Tides, a good family when I was born, I have a sister who drowned. Then my parents decided the terrible mistake of adopting a child in the midst of that grief and then conceiving me immediately. I would say I was conceived within two weeks of my sister’s drowning. 

What a horrible story. 

There’s a lot of turmoil in this family of mine. I mean it when I say if you talk to any psychologist or any therapist and you look at their family background, you can see why they’re doing what they’re doing. Once I looked at the value of therapy, how therapy could heal, and how therapy could help, I knew that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to help them to heal. I wanted to help people in hindsight. Here’s where it ties back to what I do today. I watched my family allow an event, a terrible event, to dictate the terms of their life. I, as somebody who hadn’t experienced a terrible event, was having the terms of my life dictated by it. 

My inner adolescent, my inner rebellious streak said, “I know, I don’t want this.” When I look at why I became a psychologist, I look at what makes me do the work I do even as a coach, my Simonson X, and my Y. My Y is to help people take ownership of their lives through action so that they can look back on their lives with minimal regret. We all have things we’d want to do differently, things that in hindsight, we probably wouldn’t even choose to embark on anyhow. There’s a difference between recognizing that I could have done things differently and having deep regret about how I live my life. When I said I wanted to be a psychologist, I didn’t even think of anything and I didn’t approach college considering what other options were there. 

Impact Of Having Children On Career Ambition

I didn’t exit college. It was an undergrad to PhD, PhD to postdoc, and postdoc to private practice. I had to have children. That’s what threw me off. I had my own kids. What happened with my children is suddenly I became ambitious in a way I hadn’t been before. I think being limited by children, and I love my kids, but seeing the scope of what I could do as a young mother but suddenly made me realize that the world was this really big place and I wanted to have a much bigger impact in it. 

Interesting. I was the exact opposite. I had postpartum anxiety and depression, so the world became a really small place and then I felt like I should be at home all the time. I kind of wanted to almost like abandon my ambitions. It’s interesting that you were the opposite. I mean, everybody’s story is their own.

I just had one of my clients just had her first baby and we started working before, which is perfect because it could help her work through, she just got into a promotion, just got into a new role, and worked through setting herself up to leave on maternity leave. There were all these questions about what would things look like after. I said, “You won’t know,” because that really annoying phrase that parents say, not yet parents, you don’t know until you know, is so true. 

I’m like, we don’t know. We don’t know if having this baby is actually going to make you look at your career and go, this isn’t a priority for me right now. These ambitions I have. These CFO ambitions, like that’s not my thing, or if you’re going to stay the same or if it’s going to have like the impact that having children had for me. She just got back a month ago, we’re orienting right now and we’re figuring things out. 

That’s so cool because it’s with women that listen to this show, it sounds like many of the women you work with, it’s like, “It’s this notched plan, like where it’s gotta be a certain way.” You’re like, “No, feel into it.” Feel into the changes in your life because you don’t know until you get there.

I always joke. I have reinvented my career so many times. The thing is, for anybody who’s thinking about a career change, you and I had this conversation about being the bravest thing I’ve ever done. I’ve done certain things. I’ve stood up to people who were neo-Nazis, who were harassing somebody on a train and that was great. That essay got me into college. The act was terrifying as a 16-year-old. Truly, the bravest thing I’ve probably ever done was, “abandoning my PhD.” It was really hard. It took me a year and a half to admit to others that I wanted to move away from this career to become a coach. 

Since everybody and their mom can become a coach, which by the way, I love. Please don’t regulate the field. What it would mean? The truth is I use exactly the same skills. When you’re pivoting, when you’re thinking of doing a major pivot in your career, chances are you’re only just leveraging your skills in different ways. It’s like that need thing I said before. A lot of our needs tend to be stable throughout our lives, not all of them, but the expression of those needs shifts. 

You think about the need for companionship. Early on in our lives, it might be a group of friends, then it becomes a life partner, a romantic partner. Then you talk to lots of women around my age or in their early 50s, and they’re like, romantic partner, especially in heterosexual relationships, and they’re like, romantic partner, I just want my girlfriends. I don’t need a guy. I got my girlfriends. That’s all I need. It’s the same need for partnership for deep meaningful relationships. The expression of that need changes over time.

I love that so much. 

You have two different careers. Are you using the same skills in your coaching? 

Yes. I’m using the same skills and actually, my coaching makes me a better corporate leader. People ask me all the time. I get this. Like I want to practice what I preach here with my clients. I don’t want to burn out again. I didn’t know that you could burn out twice. Everybody likes news flash, you can actually burn out multiple times. I thought once I checked that box, I was like, “I’m done.” Apparently, no. People will ask me, “How are you doing all this?” What happens is when you really are doing what you’re passionate about and you’re listening to your soul or intuitions calling, I take that energy and those skills and I’m actually a better corporate leader.

It makes so much sense. You can burn out twice. I actually had a conversation with my husband last week. I’ve not burned out, but I was bone tired. I am so tired. I’m COVID tired. During COVID, when my business was just suddenly massively picking up all the work I’d done over the previous two years. It was coming to fruition and everything shut down. I had this moment of panic.

What I did is not what you’re supposed to do. I reactively leaned into panic and then was scheduling pen-plus connection calls with people online, just having a conversation. I’m an introvert, I’m a social introvert. Love people, and love hanging out with people, but neurologically it burns me out. I remember one day this is while talking to patients, so I was still running my practice at the time. 

You were doing the moonlighting in both too.

Having the kids in the living room trying to do their work. Of course, the second I’d opened up my office door, everybody would come to me like, I don’t know, I’d been on vacation. Suddenly I had all this energy to take care of the rest of the family. I remember sitting on my floor in my office crying one day, going, “I just cannot, I had one patient, it was grandparents who were stuck in New York and his grandmother died of COVID.”

I told my husband, “I’m like, I feel COVID tired.” This is just a reminder that I overbooked my schedule. I’m back to having a lot of conversations and it’s so much fun. I went a little bit overdrive because I’m like, “Summer’s here. Things are slow. Let’s like schedule all these conversations. I scheduled too many.” Right before this call, I was talking to my program manager and she and I were our agenda meeting was taking back control of our calendars. 

I have a question on that. What are you guys doing to do that? I just put a post out on social media about a time audit. It sounds so geeky but so worth it. Just look at what you’re doing, see where the time leaks are, all that stuff. What are you all doing to take your calendar back and get it to work for you and not be the enemy? 

One of the things we just went ahead with is to look at all the times that I was booked for coaching and make sure my clients sign up with me for a year at a time. We pre-schedule all their calls. If we need, of course, like my schedule changes, their schedule changes, we move it around. One of the things I noticed is I’m like April, the 2nd and the 4th week of the month, there is no breathing room in those weeks. As we bring in new clients and I don’t do a volume business, I have max, maybe 25 clients at a time. We need to move those to the 1st and 3rd weeks. 

The other thing is I had set up initially that Mondays for sure and Fridays for the most part were no-call days. Meaning, I definitely don’t have client coaching calls on those days. In general, I was really trying to minimize any other costs that would allow me to work on my business, which I actually love. I love strategizing. I love thinking about what to build. I love having the time to just slow down, and create content. That’s fun for me as well but we’d slowly been moving people who were like, “Could I get a Friday into Fridays?” It was slowly starting to schedule things into Mondays. 

Taking control of that calendar was saying, “No.” We blocked off those days again. I do focus time. It is 10:34 AM Pacific time right now. We started at 10 because normally from 8:30 to 10:00 is the time for me to check my email to set my to-do’s to just check in with myself. Being really conscious to set aside some focused time. I work best in the morning. For me, it’s in the morning to take stock of where I am, and what I need to do. Those are the first things. Do an energy audit, mental energy, physical energy, then set my to-do’s and never more than three to-do’s in a day. Then I’ll get started. 

There are certain things. My clients are on Slack, so they’re the first people I check in with before I check email. I do not check my email before I start my work day. That’s important from an energetic, if you don’t want to burn yourself out, don’t use your phone as your alarm, and don’t make checking with the external world the first thing you do in your day. As a psychologist, who worked with deeply anxious people, that prescription alone made me look like a miracle worker. 

I love the three a day. Based on your energy audit could be like three smaller things. It doesn’t have to be a massive task. I mean, how do you determine what those three are? 

It doesn’t. One is I have to look at how many meetings I have in the day. I get a sense of how much time I have to work on things. Then based on the time that we’re doing, some of it is your same old what’s urgent, what’s important. I’m going to set, and I totally stole this from Tim Ferriss. I don’t know if it was his original idea or he got it from somebody else, but I, I’m going to give him credit. The first item is something that if for any reason, it’s the only thing I can get done that day, I will feel deeply accomplished. Like the sense of relief and the sense of that was good. We’ll kick it. 

That’s good. It’s like a gut level. It’s like, okay, what’s going to make me feel you said relieved and accomplished. 

Then the other two items up to other two items are based on how much time I have left in the day. Again, it’s kind of looking at those things for today. For example, the very first thing I have is really small. You and I were talking about how I had a call with a CFO earlier and I need to call her CHRO and say, “We had a great call. It looks like we want to work together. What’s the next step?” That’s the only thing I got done today. I’d be like, “Good because I don’t want that to hold off.”

That helps a lot. I’m sure there are going to be women taking notes on that, those little nuggets. Thank you so much for that information. I wanted to also pivot here for a second because you have some good wisdom around with the women you work with like building visibility and authority without guilt and shame. I will tell a small story on this and then we’ll jump in. When I got my first VP spot, I’ll never forget this. It was a woman on my team. I’ve shared this on the show before, but I don’t know, maybe that was 50 episodes ago. It bears repeating. 

The woman that was in my team, I had heard rumors that when I got to that VP level, I was moving on to another organization instead of her saying congratulations to other people saying, “I’m excited for her. I’m excited for Jen.” She said, “She’s such an opportunist.” It made me feel actually like building my authority, like advancing. I actually felt then like ashamed about my own promotion. I’d love your thoughts around that visibility, their authority, writing the wave of promotion, earning that wave without the shame, the guilt, or like I was called an opportunist. She may have probably followed up with calling me a bitch. I don’t know. I just want you to kind of go in here because I know you have a lot of wisdom in this area.

Importance Of Articulating Value

Let’s talk about visibility for a second, and then let’s talk about authority without being labeled a bitch. Visibility is the number one factor associated with advancement for women. I’m going to repeat that for everybody listening. Visibility is the number one factor associated with advancement for women. Now, as far as I’m concerned, that goes all the way up to senior leadership, because according to the World Economic Forum, Wharton, Harvard, and Oxford, the number one thing that senior women in leadership need to be successful is sponsorship. 

The most important thing senior leaders who are women need to be successful is sponsorship. How do you get a sponsor? By having visibility. The way the world is set up is we have all been taught from the time we were little girls to play nice, to be collaborative, not brag, be humble, all the things my mom used to, I would leave the house, and this would make my friends laugh so much. I grew up in France. I’m half by passports of French, Italian, and American. Then by blood, technically fifty percent of the time, my mom was a first-born French and American. 

I grew up in France and my mom would go, “Alessandra, remember, behave like a lady,” every time I would exit. To this day, she says it’s not true, but I asked my brother and he confirmed with me, I never remember my mother saying, “Christopher, remember, behave like a gentleman.” My friends thought it was hilarious that I was told to behave like a lady. I was what back in the day we would call the tomboy and loved it, but also wore skirts and was fairly charming, a little. In any case, there was no need for that caveat. There was nothing in my behavior that required a reminder. 

I think we all have that experience. What it translates into as an adult is we have these grown-ass women who are smart, who are driven, who have significant skill sets, and who feel incredibly uncomfortable with communicating that value, that skill set, and their impact in their careers. Visibility is the number one factor associated with advancement for women. Here’s this thing that you need, visibility, to be seen, to be selected, to get access to opportunities, to get the right mentors, to get the right sponsors, and you don’t feel comfortable walking into a room or when a project is being proposed and saying, “I actually think I would be a great candidate for this project,” because to be successful, here are the kinds of skills that would be needed. 

Not only do I have a lot of experience in these spaces or maybe I don’t have much experience, but these are things I’m good at. Here’s the proof and then you share what you’ve been able to accomplish. We don’t feel comfortable doing that because, “Alessandra, remember, behave like a lady.” The problem is everybody’s talking about speak up, speak up. Even I did that. If you don’t speak up in the right ways, what happens is you walk into a room and say, “I would like to put my name in the hat for this project.” These are things I’m good at. I know that because I have that skillset, I can unlock these kinds of wins. Super useful information, except everybody else has also been socialized and told girls to translate to women. 

Could be humble, team players, because this is all audio, but imagine somebody shifting to one hip, turning their head to the side, and looking slightly down with that, who does she think she is? That’s a mannerism I take when I do it. Then that’s what happens. Women and men alike, some of us don’t even notice that we do it, but we have this discomfort. Unless you’re Beyonce being Sasha Fierce, unless you’re a celebrity coming out. Cate Blanchett stood on the steps of Catten recently. Talking about, there were 78 women I think behind her and she’s like, “These are the total number of women who have received a golden palm for I think it was more than just directing.

In that time, 1,000 X men went through. Unless you’re a celebrity, in which case we love you for doing that. What happens is there’s this reaction. A lot of the work I do with the women I coach, but not just women. I do it a lot. I do talks, I do training around, first of all, owning that value. It’s really important to know what you excel at and that you love doing and to be really clear about what you want to do with that skill set. For example, we talked about how the skillset I use as a coach is exactly the same skillset I use as a therapist but I have no interest in having that skillset be used as a therapist. 

I get recruiters calling me all the time, not interested. Not only do I need to explain I’m good at building rapport, but I’m also great at kind of getting to the bottom of things, identifying, and moving people into action, then I have to be clear and because I’m good at that, this is what I can do with female leaders in the corporate space as a leadership development expert, as an executive coach. The more I do that, the more people who need that service and help will know where to come. 

If you’re listening to me and you’re like, “Sounds good Alessandra, but seriously, that’s bragging.” It’s not. This is about making sure that the people who need your skillset and your talent are clear about where to go when they need that. If you are not the person broadcasting this information, what you are saying is, “I am so important. Everybody should know what I’m good at. Everybody should know what I want to do.” 

How are people going to find you if you’re not telling them? I know a lot of people get frustrated that they’re like my manager should know. Very few of us have managers who only manage a single individual. Most of us have managers who manage 3, 4, 5, 50 different people. It’s not realistic to assume that our manager should know exactly what we love doing and excel at, where we want that skill set to be deployed, and what we’re able to unlock with that skill set. It’s your job to share that. 

We’re not taught because we’re taught to be ladies, be quiet, be humble, or whatever. 

Just be a team player. Raise your hand for all the things. When we do this exercise with my clients, one of the things we do is I do is if you could do it right now, you grab a do a two-column table. The first column is love it. The second column is soul-crushing. Then you do three rows, excel at, emerging skill, and then you suck it but you love it. Some things we are not good at but we love. I’m still trying to figure out how to make a really good loaf of sourdough bread but I love it. 

I’ll continue doing it and we’ll just throw them away when they’re not good enough. That’s what the compost bin is for. I bet when you do that exercise, dear listener, that you will notice that there are a whole bunch of things that you excel at that you hate doing, they’re soul-crushing when you think if your whole day were filled with these activities, you’d want to stay in bed. Because you’re good at them, people keep on asking you to step into that line of work into that role. Because of that, and because you continue operating at a high level in that space, you’re building a brand around doing work that makes you miserable. 

The inevitable consequence will be burnout. The inevitable consequence will be misery. Once you’re clear about what you love doing that you excel at, once you’re clear about what impact you want to make with that, you can start sharing that information. Suddenly you position yourself to create a lot of value for people but with work when you look at your schedule at the beginning of the day, you’re like, “This day is going to be awesome.”

Big difference than seeing a wall of meetings and you’re like, this day is going to suck.

It’s a confidence thing. People talk about imposter syndrome all the time. Actually, I don’t know about you. I hear about it a lot less now. When you can position yourself to do stuff, when you’re clear about what you excel at, and when you’re clear that you’re not BS-ing, but you have data to back this statement, I know this because I’ve been able to achieve this, because I’ve done this, this is what people say about me. You can feel grounded in your worth and your value. Even when you’re having a day where you’re like, I don’t know what I bring to it, you can say, “What I know to be true is this. I’m really good at these things and I can do these things. 

This is where my value comes.” For women who are moving into senior leadership, this becomes really important because most of us are past the senior leadership, is we’re individual contributors. As an individual contributor, that pathway from I do A, I get result B, that’s how I know I’m doing A well. That starts disappearing as you lead. As a leader, A is motivating, managing people, getting the right people on the ground to run a project, and helping them through. It’s coaching. It’s mentoring. A leads to person B being excellent. Person B achieves outcome C. Sometimes it’s really hard to see as a leader what your value was in producing that outcome C.

It’s interesting, I was just having a conversation with a client about this and she was saying earlier in her career, she got all of these atta girls because you’re an individual contributor and you’re getting all like the praise and accolades, and the promotions and it comes fast and furious like when you’re younger, if you’re working really hard and all that. As you do get up that chain and you are in leadership, it is fewer and farther between and that’s why you have to have that fuel that worry-ness, that good foundation of yourself as you’re moving up the ladder, or you could get burned because you’re wondering, why am I not getting the same accolades that I was before? 

It’s hard. I have so many of my clients who will say they become anxious because they want to prove their worth, and we use this. When we’re talking about articulating your value, it might be that as a leader, you’re onboarding somebody and you get to know about them and you can use this process with them and you can say, “Listen, we’re going to get to know each other a lot better over the coming months and years. 

The most important thing you need to know about me is I love doing the following things, and I’m good at them too and because I’m good at them, I’m able to talk about what you can unlock. The impact you want to make. I’m sharing this with you because as you need help if you need help in any of these spaces, this is where I can provide the greatest value.” You’ve just articulated your value. 

If you’re not at that level, even if you are at that level, you’re being onboarded, you’re meeting a new team and they give you three minutes to introduce yourself at the first team meeting. “I’m so excited to be part of this team. There is a lot that we’ll get to know about each other in the coming weeks and months. There are a few things just to start off that I want you to know about me, where I derive the most sense of fulfillment or joy. With women, what I do is if we bring joy and passion to the conversation, we can bypass who she thinks she is.” 

That’s the preamble to then say, “I’m really good at it. When I’m doing the following things, and I happen to be very good at these things. In my past role, I’ve been able to do X, Y, and Z. What I’m hoping to do in this role is achieve these kinds of outcomes or bring this kind of value. I’m sharing this with you because if you ever need help with any of this, I’m right here, I would love to have a conversation with you about it.” Now we’re positioning. I just talked about myself. I “bragged” but you didn’t, but I positioned it in a way where people understand, I just want you to know how I can help. 

This is very important for women because it touches on teamwork and it shows like, “I’m a team player, but you’ve also positioned your strengths.” That’s a beautiful formula you’ve got going there. Thank you for sharing it. 

Strategies For Building Authority

You’re welcome. Do you want to talk about being a bitch or not being labeled a bitch now?

Let’s do it really quick. I know I could talk to you all day, but I know I want to be sensitive to your time. Let’s talk about the bitch part. 

Same thing. We’re talking about bias. The bias that we’re seeing with women is there’s this whole idea of how we’re supposed to be. We’re supposed to be charming and collaborative and we’re supposed to be helpful. Again, as women rise the ranks, we’re also supposed to be decisive and direct and assertive and all these things. I’ve literally seen women in meetings and people say, I think she’s too assertive. As a psychologist, I’m just going to tell you right now, that assertiveness is the highest form of communication. Assertiveness is not a bad thing. 

Aggression is a bad thing. Yelling at people, belittling them, that’s aggression. Getting to the point and being clear, saying this is not okay and it’s not okay for the following reasons. That’s being assertive. I’ve been in meetings, I’ve heard, I’ve had clients when somebody says, “We worry she’s a little bit too assertive. I’ll jump in.” I’m like, that’s not a problem. As a psychologist, that was the highest form of communication. We were trying to teach people, what are you actually saying? “She’s not using padding. She’s walking into a room and she’s calling the meeting to order immediately.

She’s not using all the social nice cities.” There are things that as allies for other women, we can do to deal with that. When I’m talking to women about building authority, the idea is that to lead, you have to have authority. Authority simply being street cred. Think about it that way. You have to be able to walk into a room and when you speak, people stop, they listen to you, they consider what you say. If you don’t have authority, you don’t have street cred. People might love you, but if they don’t listen to you if they don’t follow through when you set a deadline or anything, it doesn’t matter. 

If you have to repeat, back up, explain, which is women’s experience, everything you say, that’s problematic. When we talk about building authority, one piece is that value articulation. The more you help people understand what you know, what you’re good at, and what you bring to the table, the more authority you’ll have. The other piece that we talk a lot about with authority is realizing that 55% of what people think of you, especially people’s initial impressions, is entirely based on nonverbal cues. For anybody walking around going, that’s not fair that I don’t care.

I don’t care that you think it’s not fair. It’s human evolution. It’s millennia of evolution. It’s not the 21st century. It’s not advertising. It’s millennia of evolution. We as humans have evolved to use our eyes and our brains already use a ton of energy and we want to minimize the amount of energy that’s required. We try to make snap judgments quickly. Nobody looks at a bird of paradise and says, “She’s so superficial to judge this male bird based on what his plumage looks like. I cannot believe that. What kind of a bird is she?” We accept that birds do this all the time. 

Humans do this too. We want to judge each other based on what we look like, how we show up in the world, and what we sound like. That counts for way more than what we say and way more than what we do. When I’m working with my clients, yes, we want to make sure that they’re consistent. I want to make sure that they’re good at what they do. Want to make sure they put that out of the world. We’re also talking about making sure that they stand up straight and throw their shoulders back, which is not the same thing as arching your back and creating lower back pain. 

I want to make sure that when they show up on screen, I’m on screen all day long. You probably are on screen a fair amount of the day that they take up a third of their screen size. They’re square on the screen, they’re well lit so people won’t need to make an effort to look at them, and there’s some color because all of these things affect the human brain They can give us an edge on being seen or perceived as a leader, as an authority figure. 

Once we have that perception, then people are much more likely to listen to what we have to say. We’re using all the pieces, not just one, but you cannot look good and have no substance. Like that’s not going to hold up very long. What I know is if you don’t look the part, you don’t sound the part, speak slowly, take your time, keeping, I think, which is my one, right, maybe out of your vocabulary. If you don’t edit those out, if you start with all those things, then it’s an uphill battle.

You sound not confident, uncertain?

It sounds uncertain and not confident. With women that is used all the time. We’re not entirely sure that you’re going to have the right kind of presence or authority to lead this team because I might’ve come in with a ton of knowledge but prefaced everything I said with, I think. I think that what we could do with this project right now would be to use this approach because I think that would be the best way to get there. 

I think that it’s possible that as opposed to based on what I know, based on my experience, my suggestion would be for us to approach this project using this methodology. Everything I’m seeing right now indicates that this would allow us to do X, Y, and Z. I come from an academic background, I hypothesize, especially when I’m unsure about something. Instead of saying, “I don’t know, but I think it could be this.” I’d say, “I don’t know.” My hypothesis is that it would be this for the following reasons.

It automatically, and people listening, I’d love for you to check in with yourself. Like the two examples that you gave, it feels different. It feels markedly different. Whereas I use them, I think, and they don’t see your facial expressions, but it looks a little more wishy-washy. My body’s like queuing in differently in how you present yourself. 

I mean, it’s completely different. Think about voice if you’re just listening. For anybody who has to make phone calls, do that you can hear a smile on voice? I’m smiling right now. I’m not necessarily changing my voice to go with the smile, but just because my mouth is shifting, my voice changes. Whereas I can say the same thing and now I’m trying to keep in the upper register just because I started this way, but I’m not smiling. You can hear the difference between not smiling and smiling. 

Your voice, keeping vocal fry. Vocal fry happens when we get tired. I cannot do it very well, but it’s that thing where you get really tired and your voice starts getting a little croaky. The reason vocal fry is an issue other than if you have somebody who talks entirely in vocal fry, it’s a little unnerving, is because the brain encodes that as she’s anxious. Why is she anxious? Is she tired? Is she lying? What’s going on? I tell my client, I have a client who’s applying for jobs right now, her vocal fry is pretty bad and she pointed out she’s fluent but she’s not a native speaker. 

She said in her native language, she doesn’t have vocal fry, her voice is stronger. Part of it is how her mouth needs to move, and how things move to make English sounds. I tell her, I say, “Put a picture of somebody behind your computer. Pretend you’re talking to the person behind your computer. The need to project your voice will help eliminate vocal fry. Talking more slowly. Pausing at the end of sentences.” All these things, if you think of your, like the most confident women and when they make speeches and they look powerful, these are the small strategies, they’re not tricks that they use. 

Again, you might say, “It’s not fair, it’s superficial.” The human brain just encodes it. It’s not that the person sitting there going, “Local fries, such a millennial thing, it’s terrible when people talk like this.” No. If I put an FMRI on you, and we look at what happens in your brain when you hear a vocal frown, the centers of your brain that are associated with, that get lit up when we think we’re hearing liars, suddenly get lit up. Part of it again is owning your value. That’s a huge piece. The other piece is presence, but presence in small ways. It’s not about having the most expensive clothes, although I just gave a women’s week talk in March where on this topic, and I said, “You do need to iron your clothes. 

Tools For Preventing Burnout

They do need to be clean, dress the part.” Birds of paradise again, ladies. He’s going to judge a hummingbird for choosing her mate by looking at the hummingbird with the most beautiful plumage. Humans are not that different. You’re our leaders and we want to say, does the plumage match my expectation for what a leader’s plumage should look like? Then it’s just standing straight. It’s like embodying that confidence and the people you lead, they need that. They need to look at you and have trust that your shit. 

These are all good tools. We’re at our hour already. Can you come back, you will? You’ll come back like maybe? 

That would be great. This was delightful. 

It was delightful. It was super fun. We’ll keep the conversation going, but given us so many good tools that I often will say to women listening, go back and listen to it again, or take some notes when you’re not driving, of course, and you have a little bit, but you’ve given us some great things. Thank you for sharing all of those wonderful nuggets. 

You’re welcome. If your listeners would want, I will forward you a link to the process that we use for value articulation. 

That would be great. 

It’s a great place to start. I’ll also share, that there’s a link to a LinkedIn learning course that I recorded on, it’s a 38-minute or a few 2X things like I do 16-minute audio. It’s really quick and dirty, but it will help set you up in the right frame of mind to then do the worksheet. Doing the worksheet is super helpful. A great place to start. 

Great. Thank you. Send those and we’ll put those in the show notes. Before we end, I have to ask you this because I want to know your insight. I ask every guest, just wanted to ask one more time, what are 1 to 2 ways that you believe women can be braver at work today?

Start by being clear about what you need. The easiest exercise you can do, this does not come from me, it comes from a coach named Rich Litvin. I’ll just be like, I want to give everybody the props that they deserve, is do an energy audit. Two columns. One is what things drain you and what things energize you. In that draining column, when we’re talking about work, look at things being people, situations, or thoughts, like the thinking patterns in your head.

For work specifically, try to see if you can identify what’s draining you at work and try to work on one of those things, just one. When it’s done, attack the next one. Start easy. Don’t take the hardest thing. Start with the low-hanging fruit. Flex those muscles a little bit until you feel more and more courageous. Confidence is a byproduct of action. Courage is necessary for confidence because if you want to build confidence, you need to take action, you need to have the courage to act despite fear, despite discomfort. 

You must have been looking at one of my presentations because I put the definition or the math equation for confidence as courage plus action equals confidence. 

You and I, we’re on the same wavelength. I’ve been talking about that for a long time because everybody wants more confidence. I tell people, I’m like if you read the confidence code, spoiler. The bottom line is how do you build more confidence by doing things that feel uncomfortable? Really what you need is to flex your courage muscle. What courage is? Taking action despite fear or discomfort. If you just realize like, it’s not that it should feel okay. It’s like it should be scary. It should be uncomfortable, but I’m going to do it anyhow because I know it’s right for me and I will accept that I’m going to feel, I’m going to tolerate feeling uncomfortable or scared. You’ll often find out that your fears were unfounded. Out of that equation that you just shared will come more confidence. 

Thank you for sharing that insight and all of the wonderful advice and tools. You’ve been so generous. If women want to find you online, and I need to mention your company name, so Note Worthy, which I love that name, by the way, how do they find you and all of the wonderful work you do online?

The website is NoteWorthyInc.co. You can go there. There are some things there. Then another, probably the second best place to find out anything is on LinkedIn. On LinkedIn, I’m under Dr. Alessandra Wall. Dr. Alessandra is one L two S’s. It’s like Alexandra, but we move the X, but two S’s, and then the Wall is like the brick wall. 

Thank you so much for being on the show. I have learned a lot from our conversation. We’ll definitely have you back. 

I look forward to that. It’s been a lot of fun. Thank you so much. 

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That does it for my discussion with Dr. Alessandra. I hope you found our conversation both valuable and inspiring. As a reminder, please rate, review, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The show is also available on any other podcast platform you enjoy. Until next time, show up, own your authority, and be brave.

Important Links:

• Dr. Alessandra Wall – LinkedIn
• Women in Bio
• E2W 
• Brave Women at Work: Lessons in Leadership
• Note Worthy
• Apple Podcasts – Brave Women at Work
• Spotify – Brave Women at Work

About Dr. Alessandra Wall

Dr. Alessandra Wall elevates women leaders in STEM and finance—and trains companies that understand the incredible benefit of retaining, rewarding, and attracting women in senior leadership.