Good morning. We will go ahead and get started. My name is Lee Crockett. I'm a leadership development and career strategist and I'm really excited to be with you today. I'm super excited to speak with you about how you can fast track your promotion as a woman leader.Before we dive into the meat and potatoes of my talk today, I'd love to tell you more about me who I am, what I do and how I ended up coaching and helping women. I have a professional background in sales and people leadership. My previous experience is in business development, account management, operations, and training and development. So I have a professional background in sales and people leadership. My previous experience is in business development, account management, operations, and training and development.

I've worked in both consumer packaged goods in the food and beverage space as well as manufacturing. I received my BS from Boston University, concentrating in entrepreneurship and small business management. And I received my MB A from Babson College. All of the roles I've had have been in extremely male dominated industries. As I reflect back on the different roles that I've had. There are several pivotal moments that stand out to me and really shaped who I am as a person. And as a coach, I graduated from BU in 2009, which was a year early and started working right away as a front line sales leader. I was 21 and I was leading a team of men who could have all easily been my father or grandfather. I know that you see the bullets on the screen. But I wanna emphasize that at different places in my career. I've not only been some of the things you see listed. I've been all of the above. I've been the youngest, the only woman, the only woman of color, the only woman leader and the only woman of color in leadership. All. At the same time, as many of you can relate. Everywhere I went, there was a boys club and I was left to figure things out on my own. I didn't have the resources or advocates that I needed because of this. I really struggled in the beginning to figure things out. How do I get promoted?

How do I even get taken seriously? Also being in sales, I had double the challenges. I had to face comments and remarks internally from coworkers and employees, but also externally from customers. I had a really difficult time and formed a thick skin which was actually a blessing in disguise. Eventually, I was able to find my way and I started moving up the ranks. I noticed though that there was no formal training available as reinforcement. So taking the knowledge I learned along the way, I created training and coaching opportunities for as many employees as I could find this included my direct employees, but also the entire front line. I also helped coach and train my coworkers through mentorship. I put a huge focus on professional development. And after some time, I noticed that the people I had been coaching were starting to get promoted. A couple of years after grad school, I decided to launch my own business and become a coach. When I spent time thinking about not only what I could offer as a coach, but also what I was passionate in speaking and teaching about, I realized that I wanted to help as many women in the workplace as I could to combat the gender pay gap. It's been an an ongoing issue for decades, but let's bring you up to speed right now. Men have been promoted three times as often as women in this current pandemic alone. It's never been more real and the fight has never been more important.

So for those reasons, I help high achieving professional women fast track their promotions so that they can overcome imposter syndrome and take control of their careers. I believe in helping more women get a seat at the table and I help them do that by teaching them how to play the corporate game. Some call it politics. But I like to think of it more like a game of chess. The system is broken. So it's time we acknowledge it, fight to make things right and help women shatter the glass ceiling. So as we go through my presentation today, take a look back on your career history and I'm gonna ask you some questions. Let me know in the chat. Has this been you, have you ever been passed over for a promotion by someone less qualified? Maybe someone with less tenure? Do you feel like you're constantly putting out fires? Are you overworked and underpaid? Are you working later and later to get everything done? But still can't get to the bottom of your to do list. Are you heading for burnout or maybe you've already been there? Finally? Does it seem like everyone around you has a secret manual to success and you somehow just didn't get a copy if you answered yes to any or all of those questions. Trust me, you're not alone because I was you.

I thought that all I had to do was keep my head down and work hard and I would be recognized and promoted. Neither of those things happened. It took me years to understand the unwritten rules of getting promoted and playing the corporate game. Now that I know the rules, it's my mission to teach as many women as possible. This picture was taken before I knew what to do this particular day. I was hosting an executive leadership tour through my territory at work. Everything went perfectly. I crushed this tour at the end of the day when we dropped the team off, our senior vice president invited my team on the plane to take a look around. The pilot turned around to introduce himself and the SVP started yelling, Doug let Lee take a picture in the chair, take a picture for her. So he did the pilot of our company's corporate jet, took this picture for me on my cell phone. And before I left the SVP thanked me for such a job. Well done. He said the tour went extremely well. He said my market was flawless. My knowledge was impressive and I was a shining star to watch out for. I went home on a high thinking that I was bad ass and guess what happened? The answer is nothing. I didn't get promoted. I didn't get a raise. I didn't get anything. That's why knowing the rules and playing the game is so important.

If you know the rules, you can learn how to advocate for yourself. This includes opening doors for yourself, not just waiting for someone to open them for you, you'll know what companies look for when they promote an employee. This is important so that you can identify when you're ready, not just in your eyes but in, in the eyes of an organization. And I didn't just say your organization but we'll get to that later. You'll also be able to leverage your skills even when no one's there to guide you. Most importantly, you'll be able to methodically navigate your career. This puts you back in the driver's seat. You get control with that being said, take a second to reflect. I'm gonna move on to the next slide and talk about the goals for today. But as I do that, tell me in the chat, what do you feel is holding you back from being promoted or getting where you wanna go in your career? Is it someone something? Maybe a combination of both? I'd like to get a sense from you. Now, before we go through the steps and then I'm gonna touch base with you again later to see if your thoughts have changed. By the end of this workshop, you'll learn about the mindset shift necessary to play the corporate game. You'll learn what the path to promotion pyramid is. And finally, you'll learn how to use the pyramid to develop a career plan that fast tracks you to your next great role.

Let's talk about goal number one, which is the mindset shift that's necessary for you to be able to play the game. You need to have a 30,000 ft view of your career. You can't do this. If you're stuck in the day to day, anxiety of your job. I call this being stuck in the whirlwind. You can't catch your breath before there's something else pulling you in a in another direction. It's important that you separate yourself from putting out fire mode and step into a macro level view of what's going on. Second, you need to shift from being too busy to think about your career to knowing that you need a strategy beginning with an end in mind, helps you stay on target and execute against your plan. Finally, you have to know that waiting for approval, appreciation and recognition is not going to help you win. You have to know the value that you bring to the table and be your own advocate in your career. Story time. The first story I told you was about a time before I knew how to play the game. This one is after I learned the rules, I was being considered for a promotion and was told that I hadn't checked all of the boxes in order to qualify. The company told me I needed to manage a different type of team to show my versatility. This required me to move out of state again. And as a sidebar, I had already moved twice for this company. Both were lateral positions with no pay raise.

However, my boss and hr told me that this move was a technicality. They needed me to go in and to deliver results and then I would be able to move up and get promoted. So that's exactly what I did. I took the business unit from red to black improved employee service standards and did everything I was told I needed to be, that needed to be done. When I talked to my boss in hr again about the promotion, I was told that I needed to be enrolled for 18 months minimum before I could be considered even though there were open roles and promotions available at the time. So think about this, if I hadn't have known how to play the game, where would I be? I was out of state and away from family all because of a promise that they were now backing out on. Luckily, I had been playing the game the whole time I had an external offer on the table and I moved to another company that gave me more leadership responsibility and 25% more pay. But let's move into goal number two, we're gonna dive into the path to promotion pyramid and how to use it to build a career plan as we go through, compare where you are in your career against the principles I'm gonna cover with you.

This is my path to promotion framework. It's a system that I developed and used in my own professional life. Using this system, I was able to get promoted several times and triple my salary along the way. It's a four step system that builds on itself. You start at the bottom with build your foundation once you have that up and going and are standing on solid ground. You move up to drive performance, then you can focus on building your bench. Finally, you make your move. Let's talk about each step one by one. Building your foundation is all about being on the offense versus the defense. It's about understanding the essentials. First and foremost, you need a baseline strategy. You have to understand where you are and where you need to go. So some of the questions to ask here are, how am I being perceived in the office? If you think you're a ray of sunshine, but everyone else thinks you're the employee from hell, you're not getting promoted. Understanding how you're perceived will inform how you need to package yourself to others. Other things to ask here are what are the things that you really need to be working on and what are the things you don't need to be working on? How should you be spending your time? It's important to align yourself and your activities with your business objectives. Otherwise you're gonna be shooting for the wrong target. Building your foundation also involves developing your network. Making the right friends at work is much more important than just making friends.

You need to cultivate a network of advocates and allies, people who can put you on the fast track list, which is the third point, whether you've experienced it directly or not, you need to know that there is a fast track list at work and you're not on it. The fast track list is what employers use to select candidates for promotion. It's how they choose who to tap on the shoulder. So, do you remember last month when Chad got promoted into a role, you didn't even know was available even though he's clueless for the most part and had a horrible performance review. It's because he's on the fast track list and you have to get on it too. The next step up the pyramid is where you drive performance. The goal here is to get you and your team's performance on autopilot. Here you want efficiencies, processes in place the whole nine yards. In order to do that, you have to make development decisions. Looking at your team who stays and who goes, who needs more development and attention from you to enhance their performance, who can be developed into a stretch role, knowing where you stand with your team tells you where you need to spend your time and up. Leveling your team is an investment that will have you reaping rewards for months to come by cutting through the noise and continuing to focus on activities that directly align with your objectives. Things become simpler clearer and allow you to take your performance up a notch.

Building your bench is the next step of the pyramid. And this step allows you to set the stage for the final phase of the process. Here, you're gonna optimize your bandwidth, get rid of or delegate the task that don't serve you or your objectives. This allows you to take on the right kind of work, taking on work just for work's sake, doesn't get you anywhere. It can actually paint you in a negative light. So often we think that by staying late to get the job done, we're showing our boss that we're hard working and worthy of promotion. What it can actually do is paint a picture of an employee who can't handle their workload. We also think that taking on more of our bosses responsibilities shows that the shows them that we're capable of higher level thinking and are ready to be promoted. What it can actually do is keep you stuck because your boss likes you doing their job for them. The kind of work you're looking for here specifically is stretch assignments that allow you to show growth, strength and leadership assignments that showcase your skills finally and build your bench. You take out an insurance policy. And what I mean by this is that companies don't want to train you. This also extends to them not wanting to train your replacement. Functional leaders in hr are strapped for time and time is always money by having someone ready to step into your job.

And at the same time showing them that you can easily step into your next role without training, eliminates excuses on their end of why you can't move forward. The final step in the path to promotion system is make your move. This is where you take everything you've learned into high gear. The stretch assignments and networking you've been doing is gonna get you the visibility you deserve internally. Additionally, the work you've been doing is showcasing your skill set and is gonna look great on your resume.

Use this time to work on a plan B. This is the time you check all of the boxes, you make sure nothing's been skipped. And once you've done these things, you decide what happens next. Basically, you have three options, you get paid, you get paid or you get paid. The first, get paid means you get a raise while you're waiting for a promotion to become available. The second means you move up the ladder in your organization and get promoted or the third means you move out because you've gotten an amazing external offer. No matter what happens in this last step, you decide what to do. This system is really designed to put you back in the driver's seat. There you go. So before we move on and wrap up, let's just take a breather. That was a lot and a little bit of time. Um But now that you know the steps, I'm gonna ask you again, let me know in the chat which stage is really holding you back from getting promoted. Understanding where you are is paramount to you making a plan for your career. So we've covered so much. We've talked about the cardinal rule, how navigating corporate America requires you to understand that there is a game being played. You have to know the rules to get where you wanna go. The first step is adopting the right mindset.

You have to step back, begin with an end in mind and craft your strategy. Second, the path to promotion pyramid is a systematic way for you to plan the steps. you need to get promoted. Using this system allowed me to move up the ladder and triple my salary. And third, once you understand where you are in the pyramid, you can create a career plan to help you make your move. So I wanted to give you some more information quickly about the work I do and extend a special offer to you. As I mentioned, I help high achieving professional women fast track their promotions so that they can overcome imposter syndrome and take control of their careers. I work with women who feel passed over, undervalued, underutilized and underpaid. My clients have been ignored and gas lighted for so long that they've started questioning themselves and their talents. They really wonder if they need more experience, maybe another degree or maybe they're in the wrong industry altogether because things haven't been going their way.

These women are working late, they're overwhelmed and they've lost the fire and the passion that they once had, not just professionally but personally as well. They feel lost and feel like that. This is just the best they can do. So, if any of this sounds like you and you wanna move forward in your career, I'd love to offer you a complimentary breakthrough session with me to learn more about what it would be like to work with me in one of my programs, the links on the screen and I'll drop it in the chat as well.

I'd love to talk to you about how to get you back on the path to promotion and get you the confidence and the pay that you deserve. I thank you so much for your time and if there are any questions, you can feel free to reach out to me via email or by scheduling a session. Thank you. Have a great day.