welcome to nobody told me. I'm Jan Black and I'm Lora Owens. What does it take to get a raise, a promotion or a new job if you're a woman? The answer to those questions are different than they are for men. So says our guest Sally Helguson, who has been called the world's premier expert on women's leadership. Sally is the author of several books, the latest of which is called How Women Rise. Break the 12 Habits. Holding You Back From Your Next Raise. Promotion or Job. Sally, thank you so much for joining

us. It is a pleasure to be here with both of

you. We'd love to know how the book came about, because I know you've written several other ones. But how did this one come to be?

Yes, this is my seventh book in the fields of either women's leadership or geN our When our leadership in general and, uh, I love the way this one came about, Um, I have been for the left, I would say, seven or eight years delivering workshops all around the world to women leaders and aspiring leaders on developing more intentional approach to their career development and As I was doing that, I began using my co author on this book, Marshall Goldsmith Classic 1,000,000 Seller. What got You Here Won't get You There, a really terrific book about the behaviors that get in the way of successful people. I found the book very useful because Marshall makes the point that the same behaviors that often help people on the way up can become problematic for them as they seek to rise higher in the organization. That is a perfect example of something nobody ever tells you using I was using that book and that the overriding idea was great. But as I used it, I noticed that many of the behaviors that he focused on somewhere gender, gender neutral.

But many of them were very specifically male behaviors. And some of the behaviors that I had seen in 30 years of working with women leaders around the world were not included in that book. For example, Marshall talks about ah what he behavior he sees getting in the way of many of the male leaders. He works with being a refusal or discomfort with apologizing and as you both know and as I've seen for years, women have no problem apologizing and in fact, sometimes say, I'm sorry just for opening the door and coming in the room

way, tripping over themselves, apologizing,

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And, uh, in another behavior he has in there is talking constantly about how great you are. It's not a problem that most women have. So I went to Marshall, whom I've known for almost 25 years and said, You know, we really should collaborate on a book that takes this approach. You know what got you here won't necessarily get you there, and it's something nobody ever told you. But look specifically at the behaviors that get in the way of successful women. Not in orderto blame women for not having risen higher, but in order to help them by doing taking actions that lie within their control.

Before we get into these 12 behaviors, I just want to know what do most women think the definition of success is?

Ah, that's a really, really great question that, and it's fascinating. My work has indicated that women often tend to define success a little bit differently. Then men they often take satisfaction in leading teams in exercising their greatest talents in gaining recognition for what they do. But they tend to take less satisfaction in purely in terms of achieving, ah, high ranking position or in terms of what their salary is now. I am not saying that women salary women's financial prospects are not profoundly important to them, nor that women are not a spot don't aspire toe higher positions. But if they find that when they were in a higher position on earning a lot of money that that the job, the actual quality of their life in the job is profoundly dissatisfying, not just on a temporary basis, but over time they are less likely to be engaged and will often described the job as not worth it. So women define success a little bit differently. And I would say that the primary difference and research bears this out is that women like to feel that they have some control over their time,

the ability to build the time to build relationships that really matter to them and that they feel that the work that they're doing makes a real positive difference, that those things are very important to women and their that they're up there with salary and with position. So it's it's a kind of broader spectrum. So in this book, what we say is, um, we're we're aiming it at successful women. But the women get to define what success means to them what they feel would make their career a success.

And how did you determine the 12 habits that hold women back in the workplace?

Well, I would say that the maturity of those habits came from, uh, the work I've done with women. As I said to the last 30 years since my earlier book, The Female Advantage. Women's Ways of Leadership, was published. That was almost 30 years ago, And so I've I've been doing workshops Ah, with women half day or full day workshops over that period of time, and I've had a fantastic opportunity toe witness behaviors in conversations that have gotten in women's ways. I've also moderated probably thousands of panels with successful women and heard them talk about what helped them and what got in their way. So most of the behaviors, I would say probably nine, came directly from my experience, and probably another three came from Marshall's coaching practice.

Marshals ranked US in world number one executive coach and has been for the last eight years. And it's looking practice. I know Wow has been mostly because he coaches CEOs. It's been about 75 to 80% men, but he certainly has experienced coaching successful women, so he was also able to weigh in on that. And one of the things Marshall said to me early on when we were working on the book that made a real impact was he said, You know, whenever I am coaching a woman, no matter how high up she is or how successful she's been, how many accolades she has, how much money shares how famous she is, he said, I almost always have to say the same thing. Don't give yourself such a hard time. Um,

he said, because in his view, in his experience, women are so much more self critical than men are. And a number of the behaviors that we have in the book, such as seeking perfection or minimizing or being reluctant to claim your achievements I think, really reflect that characteristic of women being modest, being appropriate, trying to give other people credit and shine a light on other people's achievements. All of those a wonderful things. But but But holding on to and ruminating over mistakes that you may have made is not productive.

I have a two part question here. Which one of these habits do you think holds back most women and which held you back professionally the most?

Uh huh. Well, okay, I would say that, uh, the number ones in the experience I have, I should say the one I did a couple workshops book just came out on April 10th but I was doing a couple preliminary workshops and by far the behaviors when I said, you know how many, Uh, how many of you feel this behaviour applies to you? The ones that got the most hands in the air were attempting to be perfect. The perfection trap the disease to please feeling that you have to be a wonderful person, toe everyone, uh, and also overvaluing expertise. That's a big one. Uh,

focusing all your attention on mastering the details of your job, doing a great job, but not at the same time building the kind of relationships and visibility that will get you rewarded for the job that you're doing? You have to do all of those at one time. Now, um, the other one that gets a lot is expecting other people. This is my favorite of all the behaviors expecting other people to spontaneously notice and reward your contributions rather than having to some degree advertise those yourself. So often women feel that you know, when I say, Are you good at at, um, drawing notice toe what you've achieved the women who say that they're not Not usually the preponderance in the programs I deliver will sell. I'll say, Why aren't you good? And I'll hear one of two responses.

The first is if I have to act like that jerk down the hall to get noticed. No, thank you, which betrays a kind of either or mind set. You know, either you're constantly talking about yourself and sucking up all the air, or you're just hanging back, hoping to be noticed on. The other thing I hear is I feel that if I do great work, people should notice, and maybe in a perfect world, they should. But people are really busy, and unless you're able to find a way that's comfortable for you to bring notice to what you dio. Um, Then I would say,

you you you know, you really you're not gonna be able to draw the attention you need to You need to draw in order to be visible. Um, as far as I go myself, I would say that is has been a problematic behavior for me, expecting others to notice and reward What I achieve and the other really has also been, um, seeking perfection at fear of mistakes going over and over and over everything I do. Probably investing a little bit too much effort in it. Um, I began to notice I do a lot of programs as, uh, as I've eluded Teoh. And I began to notice that, you know, I was putting so much work into them that by the time I delivered them,

I was kind of stressed out, almost looking for it to be over. So I have had to force myself to do a little bit less perfectionistic preparation and, um, you know, trust the process. Trust the questions I asked and trust the groups that I work with to respond.

So that leads to another question. Then how would you suggest someone examine themselves to see if they have any of these habits that are holding them back from their next raise or promotion or job.

Well, my first suggestion, of course, would be to go into their favorite bookstore on or onto any online bookseller and order how women rise. And then once they've done that, I would ask them to read the book and think through what ones of those behaviors, Uh do they feel may have held maybe holding them back And again, it's important to recognize that these very behaviors may have been helpful. Ah, to you as a woman earlier in your career and may in fact have been instrumental in helping you to get where you are. But if you think intentionally through wait, what does success look like for me? Where do I want to rise to in terms of my position? What would be the most satisfying use of my talents in this world? And what is the path to get there as you ask yourself that question, Think about you know what one of these behaviors might get you away because we provide really vivid examples in the book I haven't found anybody who who said I can identify with some of these behaviors. In fact, often the problem is people can email me or are in touch with me only again and say Help identify with town of these Where do I start knowing where to start is key?

Why is it that millennial women seem to be held back by the same beliefs that women in my mother's generation were held back by?

Is that interesting? I know it. I think that there is, you know, particularly around this word. And around this concept of ambition, there's a lot of ambivalence. Ambition has has been often viewed is almost a dirty word for women. Oh, she's so ambitious. Um, you know, she's really eager to, you know, to rise in this organization. People will say that critically, and I think that that that general,

you know, cut cultural bias, eyes you still exists and organizations I will say that I don't think that it exists to the I know it doesn't exist to the extent that it did in most organisations, certainly in good organizations. When I started my journey and women's uh, working with women leaders and writing about women's leadership 30 years ago. It is much better than it Waas, but there still is a sort of scepticism and often from women themselves about ambitious women. And I think that holds women back and makes them feel as if they have to justify, um, you justify what they're doing. I worked with I interviewed in this book, a woman who is a psychiatrist on the Upper East Side of New York City of Manhattan, New York City, and she works with some of the most successful women in financial services and in big law firms. And she said something amazing,

she said. The majority of the women come into my office, and the first thing they tell me is I'm not really ambitious. Um, and if she said, she's floored because if you're not ambitious, how did you manage to make partner at one of the top 10 law firms on the planet? That doesn't really add up, and what the woman is really saying is, I'm a nice person. I'm a helpful person. I'm not someone who eats nails for brother steps over my colleagues boat, but that and that and that that that may be true But we don't need Teoh either. No, you know, to conceive of ambition and women as being that kind of behavior.

We can be ambitious for achieving our own goals. We can claim that. And I think the more we're willing to do that, the easier it will become for younger women, millennials and the generation following them. To be able to do that,

you know, one of the habits that you say can hold women back in the workplace is building rather than leveraging relationships. Tell us more about that.

Well, that is something I become, you know, really aware of over the years in the female Advantage, which, as I said, was the first book that I wrote in this series that was published in 1990. Very proud to say was the first book to focus on what women had to contribute rather than how they needed to change and adapt. And what I focused in that book on describing the leadership style of some of America's best women leaders, and what stuck out to me immediately when I began studying those leaders was how good they were at building relationships at creating strong relationships, not only with other people but making sure that they, people in their organizations also had strong and good in which and rewarding relationships. And I think one of the things that we see when we when we look at research that that, um that leaders say their women are best at is building and maintaining relationships. So I began to think a number of years ago. Well, if women are so great at building relationships,

and if the skill of building relationships is becoming ever more valued at a leadership level, which I believe it ISS it was not necessarily in the 19 eighties, seen as something that was part of a profile of a leader. If women are great at it and it's so valued, how come that's not helping? More women rise to positions of power? And one thing I began to recognize as I dug down deeply with my workshop participants was that while women were building networks while they were, they were, um, they were building relationships with people broadly. They often hung back when it came to using those relationships in any way, strategically or with reciprocity, to try to use those relationships to achieve a goal at work to achieve an ambition to get to the next level in their work, or even just to to get the task done. They would often hang back at using these very robust and well developed networks because they say things like, I,

you know, are you good at this? And they say, No, I'm not. But I want someone so know that I really value her as a friend that I'm not using her. So I think that that that women often feel that engaging the people in their network, engaging people with whom they have a relationship to try to achieve an objective, is somehow very transactional and indicates that you don't necessarily really like that person and are are open to using that person. So instead of seeing things and those kind of black and white terms, I think it's really good to think about, you know, how can I use these relationships reciprocally? How can I ask people to help me but also offer myself as a resource to help them because that's really how leveraging relationships works. It's a very reciprocal kind of process and sometimes I think the reason women struggle with it is because they don't necessarily see themselves as a great resource for people who know them. They don't, you know, they're not looking at themselves. Once you see yourself as a player, as someone who other people could really benefit by knowing it's much easier to enlist help because you know that person recognizes that you can be helpful to them also in the future.

I love that I haven't heard anything like that, and I think that makes so much sense and going along with that. I know a lot of women are tougher on other women because they view them as competition. And there's just something about I don't know, cattiness and girl fights that are kind of different than a man's relationship with a woman. But how important is it for women to support other women? And how can we do that, even though sometimes it goes against our nature?

I think it's one of the most important things and I want to say this, I have you know, again, I've been doing this 30 years and I have witnessed over the years remarkable and repeated examples of women helping other women. I do think women sometimes get a bad rap for not helping other women. Because guess what? Men never walk into a room and say, Hey, how can I help the men here? It's not something men are necessarily expected to do is to help one another. They help one another in the kind of reciprocal way where they say, You know, you help me on this and I'll help you there but they're not necessarily thinking in terms of how can I help other men? So I do think women to some degree get a bad rap on it. But also, I think that that some of the behaviors, such as gossiping or criticizing,

are more common among women when they're young. You see that kind of, you know, catfight behavior, that sort of masked aggression. If you will, um, that among young girls and particularly among teenage girls and it's often accepted and so women can in those cases for whether naturally into being critical of other women, it's always a mistake, especially in our social media environment. You never want to say anything. You never want to say anything negative about anybody, and you certainly don't want to say it in any, um, in any venue that could become public because it it it stirs up trouble and it can be a bullying behavior. I think we tend often to think of bullying as something ah,

one way street with men to women but women. Also, we need to admit, when women are nasty toe one another, it is a bullying behavior. So I think we need to be a little more honest about what some of those impacts can be, and we need to hold one another to account. I know that for myself, often people will come to me and say, Oh, did you see what she did? That was just ridiculous. And I always say, You know, why are you coming to me with that? If you really feel that that that the person that you're upset with did something that you object to,

why don't you go to her? I don't want to talk with you about it on, and it kind of brings people up short, so I think it's really important. Teoh, uh, stop any kind of gossip train in its tracks. When people try to enlist you often, it's a way of people trying to make themselves feel better, but it's also a sign of powerlessness, and one of the things that struck me right from the get go and I started doing research under women's leadership is learning that the more women who were in positions of influence and authority in organisations, the more women tended to support one another. It's when you have situations with very few women who are in positions of influence and power, very few of them that a scarcity mentality kicks off and women tend to snipe and undermine each other. So, really, the the the solution to women undermining one another is more women in positions of influence and authority who don't tolerate that and who set a positive tone, um, and show women what they can aspire to.

What other words to the wise would you have two women with regard to their social media activity holding them back in terms of the workplace?

Well, that's really interesting, and, you know, being on a book tour right now, I'm struggling with it in a way that I never have. I hear the most frequent. Um, I don't want to call it a criticism or complaint. I'll call it an observation that I hear from women in positions of authority and influence about a younger generation of women is that they have a difficult time being present because there's so accustomed to interacting on technology. And I think that in today's very technology, which environment every one of us call it has to become almost their own H R department. That is, they

happen. I think about,

you know, what are my policies? What are my practices around, how I communicate? Because for every one of us, it's really important that we maintain enough calmness and enough centeredness that we can really authentically communicate with other people who are before us instead of being distracted by constantly. I mean, I'm in airports all the time. People are elevators and escalators and getting on the train, and they're all staring at their phone. They're all communicating that way, and they're not even really looking up. And, you know, your brain gets used, Teoh, the way you act,

and then it becomes more and more difficult not to act. I'm sure you've seen some of those studies that show that that some you know, people in their early twenties are actually having difficulty recognizing people's facial expressions because they've become so there's so unused to interacting with people one on one. So I think that, you know, it's not strictly a social media question. It's more technology question. But social media is also is often the culprit there. And one of the behaviors in the book we have, you know, really has to do with with minimizing your presence. And that is using words and body language in a way that doesn't take up space. And think about it. When you are constantly interacting with your technology up, say, on social media and other people are actively present.

You're not taking up any off the real space in the world. You are only taking up virtual space on that just weakens your ability to be present for people and and to exert and have a leadership presence. I think there's a real reason that the word presence and present are the same word. If we're not present for the people were with then we don't really have ah presence. We don't have a leadership presence and that's going to weaken us as we seek to rise.

Sadly, we've got one final question for you. Our program is called Nobody told me, and we always like to ask our guests. What is your Nobody told me lesson. So in your case, you you are called the premier expert on women's leadership. What lesson do you wish you had learned along the way? Learned at the beginning that would have saved you. Ah, lot of headache and heartache.

I think the lesson that I wish I would have learned was toe have more confidence when using my voice when speaking up. I'm I came at this, you know, I became Forbes said, that you know the world's premier women's leadership expert. That's pretty

humbling. Amazing.

Yeah, but you know, that has happened because I've been able to use my voice as a speaker, and I've been able to become comfortable inhabiting the role of an expert. When I first started in this field, I came at it as a writer. A lot of my colleagues came at it as behavioral psychologists or organizational psychologist, and I felt like I was hiding behind my writing and that that's where my expertise lay. So becoming comfortable inhabiting the role of being a an expert has been part of my real journey to becoming one.

And the other quick question. How can people find out more about you and your work and your website?

Uh, they can visit me at sally Helguson dot com or go to the How Women Rise Website that my publisher is put up. If you visit me it. Sally, it's sally Helguson dot com. You can. There's a contact button and you can also connect with May or my co author Marshall Goldsmith on Linkin Were very active on Lincoln.

All right, well, Sally, thank you so much for joining us. This has been very enlightening.

Thank you. It's been my pleasure.

Sally Helguson has been our guest again. Her book, co authored with Marshall Goldsmith, is called How Women Rise. Break the 12 habits. Holding you back from your next raise Promotion or job. I'm Jan Black and I'm Lora Owens. You've been listening to Nobody told me.