Well, welcome. I'm actually in Majorca Spain today. Typically, I'm in Seattle, Washington, but I'm on sabbatical. I'm so happy to be here with you today.This workshop advancing to the C SUITE is really about my story and struggles in terms of where I was that in, in my career and to, to kind of frame it, I was zigzagging like a skier traversing a snow covered mountain when it came to my career. And I believe if I'd had a career plan that I would have taken a seat at the executive table sooner, I would also have garnered greater compensation as we all should as females. And also it would have made a bigger impact on the business. And like I said, I'm gonna be talking for the next 39 minutes about my mistakes as well as the success of my technology executive clients, as well as some of the people that I'm mentoring as part of the women tech network. And one of them happens to be joining us today. So thank you Lynn. So the first poll I'd like to do is to know if you could just put in the chat here if you are currently in or plan to be in the C suite, just put it in the chat, just say yes, fabulous. Good to know.

Well, we as females only represent a mere quarter of all the executives and the S and P standard and poors. So what that means for you is that if you're looking for a female as a internal corporate sponsor or mentor, the probability is kind of low. So what I would suggest that you do is find what I call a mentor. And yes, I made that up. If you put it in quotes, you can make it up and because they're occupying three quarters of the seats at the table, they can pull out the chair for you. So, what I'd like to talk about today is four topics. First of all, how to get unstuck in your career. Secondly, talk about CEO success traits that you can clone and own. Third. Talk about c suite top soft skills that once again you can identify your gaps and what you're good at and then wrap it up with some tactics that you can use to lead and influence before we start. I'd like you to either if you have a piece of paper and a pen or pencil or open up a Google doc or word doc, I'd like you to put on there two headers, one skills for expertise and then the second column skill gap because we're gonna wrap this up with some little homework for you to do at the end of this.

First of all, as far as getting unstuck in your career, I'm a certified career coach. I split my time between Austin, Texas and Seattle, Washington. And my clients are the, the typical executives at Microsoft as well as at Aws. And they come to me. Not because they don't have a job. They come to me because they're stuck. They're at a crossroads. I have a five part road map that I walk them through in terms of for them to gain their next big impact uh role. I actually wrote a book about it. It's available on Amazon. It's called Clicks Tricks in Golden handcuffs. I'm not gonna go through all five parts of this today, but I'm gonna hone it in on three people are stuck in their careers because they were passed over by an outside hire. The, the project they're working on got defunded or in the case of one of my clients at IBM, she had worked there for 19 years. She was a director of customer success and she had hit the glass ceiling. So what we did is we walked through how to get her unstuck. So first of all, you need to have a career vision, think of it as your gps in terms of your, you know, your professional goals. So we worked on that. We looked at where she wanted to be at 55 at 65 if she wanted to retire or not. And we looked at what her short term goals were and she wanted to either work at a cloud company, Microsoft Aws or Salesforce.

So that's what we worked on and we came up with her career vision. The other thing that we worked on was her personal brand. And for those of you that are not familiar with what a personal brand is, it's how you project yourself professionally if you will. She had done an awesome job. And so I was merely there to optimize what she had. We looked at her elevator speech. I'm not gonna get more into that here in a minute. We also looked at her three pillars of her personal brand. One was she was successful. She had worked at IBM for 19 years. It's a fortune 15 cup 50 company. She also focused on diversity and inclusion before it became, you know, what it has been today as far as uh you know, what you hear about a lot. She had developed committees, she had done mentoring, she had done things like that. And so we worked on these three pillars. So technology, success, diversity and inclusion and mentoring and coaching. We wove that into her bio. We wove that into her resume summary, her linkedin profile.

And also the other thing is when you interview the first question they asked you is, so tell me about yourself. So we worked on that elevator speech. The last but most important thing was having an execution plan. It's one thing to have a corporate, you know, AAA vision for yourself as a career. But if you don't execute on it, it doesn't mean anything. So don't be like me. I used to live in Dallas. I got a gold gym membership. I drove by every day and we on my way to Nortel Networks, but I never went in. So I had a vision, I paid for the membership, but I never went. So the good news is with this client. She ended up getting two offers at Microsoft and Aws. She went with Aws. She's now a senior director there for architecture and I spoke with her a couple of months ago and she's really happy. So there you go. We females have, um only represent 15% of CEO S in the Fortune 500 companies. And you can see here these are the top females in terms of ranked by corporate annual revenue. And I kind of researched them in terms of if there was a common thread or something that they had and they didn't, they didn't all have Ivy League degrees, they didn't all have, you know, technical or engineering degrees.

So the point being we as females can rise to the C suite based on different backgrounds. What I'd like to talk to you about next is the uh 10 year genome project. Was it tracked 2600 CEO s and it came up with four success traits that, like I said, you can clone and on and they're listed here. Now, one of the things that they didn't all have all four of these traits, but the one thing that they had, uh, in common was that they were relentlessly reliable. And what I mean by that is that they were reliable when it came to outcomes. When you're a CEO of a publicly traded company, it's all about results. And I think the person that comes to mind here is Warren Buffett from Berkshire Hathaway, he delivers results year after year because a ward wants someone with a steady hand and employees want someone that they can count on. I'm gonna check here in the chat if someone's put anything in there, I don't have a moderator. So it's just me.

The next thing was being decisive and it's important because once again, if you're a CEO of a publicly traded company, you have to forecast quarterly results as well as end results and then you also have to deliver on them. And I don't know about you, but I've never really been in a meeting where there was like 100% agreement. So you have to be decisive in terms of what you plan on doing. The next thing is being boldly adapting and we have to look no further than two years back when COVID happened. How many of you work for someone that actually kind of took a, a stand early on in terms of whether you could work from home or not work from home or whatever. And they're probably the same kind of leaders today that haven't quite figured it out either. When I was looking at who was the uh a great CEO that represented this. It's Eric Lewy and he's the CEO of Zoom kind of makes sense because we've all done a Zoom um over the last two years and he was very good at being adaptable. And it made sense because they produce product that can do that. The next uh trait that you can have as far as for success as A CEO is being engaging with stakeholders and not shying away from conflict.

Because think about it, if you're a CEO, you kind of have four constituents, you have your board of directors, you have your employees, you have your stockholders and you have your customers and those are four different kinds of constituents. And the person that comes to mind here, believe it or not is Elon Musk. Um When I was looking at who is the biggest influencer on Twitter, he ranks in number four, he has over 90 million followers. And so he's a big influencer and he certainly doesn't shy away from conflict. As a matter of fact, I think he creates a lot of it. So here's what I'd like you to do on your piece of paper or your word doc or whatever you've done. I'd like you to write down one of these traits that you have optimized yourself so that you can take a seat at uh at the table, executive table and then the other column, I'd like you to put the one down. That's a gap that you wanna work on. And here's something really cool. If you look at this self assessment here at the CEO genome, you can take this. It's a free quiz. It took me about two minutes. I think it's like eight questions and I will um give you kind of an answer in terms of how you rate on all these different traits. And what's really cool is it kind of shows how you align with peers if they were CEO S So check that out.

And for me, I ranked highest on adaptability as 100%. Makes sense on my own company. Yeah. So here's something um I'm gonna have a hard time dropping it in the chat. Um If you just do um Jacqueline, if you just do CEO Genome Project, uh you can do that. My ipad is not very good about um I have two screens going. So I'm sorry about that. Gartner did a survey of 450 CEO job postings and they came up with the top 10 soft skills and they're listed here. Once again, we see that adaptability. So that's something that is very pertinent. Apparently. Um what I'd like you once again on that piece of paper is to select the one trait that you're good at and then to put in the other column, the one that you want to work on. And I don't know about you. But I think it's kind of weird that Gartner thinks a soft skill is uh uh data governance or demand planning. Those are kind of weird. So I'd like to ask you if you can put it in the chat, how many of you picked sales leadership or sales skills as either a gap or something that you're good at? Just say yes, cool, great.

Um I think it's important for two reasons when I worked at Sprint, I noticed when they brought people in for CEO S uh succession, I called it the gift and talented program that these folks, whether they had a finance degree, hr degree, engineering degree, they all went into sales and it's for a number of reasons.

First of all, if you're a CEO, you need to know the different functional areas. And the second thing is sales kind of drives revenue, which is what the street's all about. So that's very important. And as a CEO, you need to understand what your gaps are. So when they brought these people in, they could find someone that could, you know, fit and kind of drive the charge if you will for sprint. And here's another thing, I was eight years away from, uh, early retirement from centurylink, which is now Lumen. It's a Fortune 200 company. And, uh, I was in marketing and my boss called me on the phone. Yes. People used to call people on the phone and he said I have great news, you get to keep your job. But he had to move to Monroe, Louisiana. Now, I don't have anything against Louisiana. But my husband and I had just built our dream home north of Seattle on the Olympic Peninsula and I don't wanna move. So I said, so I hired a career consultant coach like myself and we went through the pros and cons in terms of whether to stay since I have eight more years or whether to leave. Ultimately, I stayed for two reasons. First of all, uh I would receive early retirement health care benefits and if you're of my age, that was very important at the time. And secondly, I had a pension which most people don't have a pension to pay for it.

So I did a pivot and I went from being in marketing to being a sales executive. And I'll tell you the first two years, there were some tears that actually did fall as my husband can attest to and because I didn't have a really good coach or mentor in my boss. But here's the great news. One year prior to my early retirement, I managed to be in the top 3% of technology sales at centurylink. So it shows first of all, you can pivot later in your life. And secondly, it shows I had no idea they made 2 to 3 times more money than anybody else did in the company. So something to think about. So these are, what rank ordered were the top soft skills revealed. So I don't know if these resonate with you or not. But anyway, if you're looking to get in the C suite, it's important that you kind of hone in on these different kind of skills. The next thing I wanna talk to you about is leading or influence. And I don't know if you're familiar with Daniel Pink. He's a New York Times best selling author. He writes about the human condition and he states that we spend all of us spend 40% of our time influencing.

And I thought, I thought about it and I thought, hm, well, it kind of makes sense. You influence your partner to do things, you influence your kids to do things you even influence the dog to go in or come back or do whatever. And if you're in sales, you influence more. So, influence is a big thing. So I want to look at what can we do as women to have tactics to drive our influence. So the Harvard Business Review came up with this, um there was an article and they came up with these four different traits. So first of all, it's kind of a no brainer, it's to develop expertise. And so we developed that by whether we went to college, whether we focused on a certain degree, whether we have certifications, I currently have a client that decided to go and get his MB A at Oxford University. He lives in Seattle, but he's going to Oxford um in Great Britain. I have another client that took an A I certification course at UT Austin. It's a six month leader led course online. And what's good about it is you get to network with other people and different companies and networking is very impor important in terms of being in the C suite.

And myself, I retired early and I was bored because there's only so much paddle boarding or rose all day that you can do. So I became a certified consultant, certified coach. It was a six month leader led program as well with the global cohort. So these are things that you can do. The other thing is to develop allies and I don't know if you're familiar with the term allies. One of my clients, she's currently a GM at H PE and she is the poster woman for this. She had a uh strong history in terms of working for the federal government. So when she first worked at an enterprise company, she made a point of having allies inside the company. She created stem committees for women diversity inclusion. It could be peers, it could be uh uh team members, it could be, you know, superiors or whatever. She also did it outside her company as well for um her expertise is high performance computing. And so what she did was she was the chairperson for that for many years. She was also uh on committees. And so it's important to develop not only allies inside your company but outside your company. And I believe in part that the reason she has her job, she just got it this year at uh at H PE was because of those relationships.

So don't be like me when I was at Sprint, I just stayed inside my little corporate bubble and you know, I might go out to conferences and things like that. I think it's really important to network outside your company as well as in the other thing that I talked about early on was having an elevator speech and an elevator speech. I don't know if you're familiar with this either is, it's the question is how you answer the question when you're in an interview and said, so tell me about yourself. I come up with a, well, not just me but experts have come up with a 3 to 4 part thing that you would say. First of all, you kind of base it on your uh experience, a summary of that. Also the second part you throw in a success story in terms of dragon slaying what you've done. The third thing is what's so different about you. What's your differentiator? So here's my elevator speech. I've come full circle. I sort, I started off as a corporate brand consultant for Coca Cola GM and the US military and I did a pivot and I became a personal brand consultant for technology executives. I spent 18 years as a marketing and sales executive at two fortune 200 companies.

It allowed me to retire early but I got bored. So I became a certified career consultant and now I help technology executives land their next big impact role. So that's my elevator speech. If you'd like to learn more about elevator speeches on my website, resume tech dot guru, I have examples of that. You can also follow and connect with me, Monique Marino on linkedin and I have a cadence of writing two articles about technology leadership uh once a month. Now, the other thing is creating a power map and I don't know Lynn, you're on here. We talked about having a power map. There's different reasons. My husband likes police procedurals and you know how they have on these like crime um shows, they'll have like the victims and they'll have the crime and they'll have the perpetrators or all, all that. I'm not saying that to do that for a corporation, but it's kind of like the same thing you can use this if you're trying to pitch a project or, you know, pitch uh uh if you have a start up in terms of creating a power map of the people that are influencers and decision makers in terms of what their skills are and what their gaps are.

Um And so, one of the people that is on this call uh joined the company earlier this year and her goal is to be a ciso and part of it was to figure out she knew who the co is, but how can she strengthen that relationship with that person? So we talked about, you know, uh connecting with him, not only internally but following him online. If he has a Twitter feed, people kind of reveal a lot of things they probably shouldn't be doing and connecting with him on linkedin following speeches that he did. And then also looking at his direct reports in terms of seeing what, what their skills are, what their gaps are and how she could kind of fill that in. And that's how you kind of like strengthen relationships. And so it's a power map. I've also used it for a lot of my clients in terms of, for example, the, the client at IBM, we, we kind of researched the people she was going to be talking to at Aws to understand what their backgrounds were, what they had in common and um how she could kind of add things to the, the party.

So it's a power map so you can write it out put on a word doc, Google doc or whatever. So those are um different things that you can do. Let me look at the chat here. OK. So what I'd like you to do is I'd like you to put on that piece of paper or electronic document if you will on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being a big impact maker. How do you think of yourself as a influencer? So write a number down, put it in the chat. Maybe no one's bold enough to say they're at 10. OK. So what I'd like you to do is come next Monday, I'd like you to commit to a skill that you're gonna work on and we've kind of gone through some skills and gaps in terms of we've talked about ceo success traits. So what is a gap that you have there in your column? What about what is a skill or gap that you have for the Gartner traits in terms of um those 10 things as well? And then even with these tactics, what one of these tactics do you think is a gap so that you can take a seat at the executive table that you wanna work on?

So what, what is a skill that you're willing to commit to on Monday that you're gonna do a 30 60 90 day plan? Guess what for yourself? So let me give you an example. I was never very good at public speaking. I lack the confidence. And here's why both my parents were from Holland and I'm first generation American. And I was born and raised early on in San Francisco. I spoke and learned English from my mother who spoke very limited English. So I developed a lisp in a stutter. She could not say sh or ch those are very hard things to say when you're Dutch. So it sounds charming that I would have a Dutch accent, but it wasn't when you were in high school. So I went and took drama classes to, to help kind of get out of my shell if you will. And it helped a little bit in my twenties. I took a Dale Carnegie course and Dale Carnegie is over here. It was a 10 week class we met in person in Dallas. It was a cohort of 15 to 20 people. It forced me to do one ad hoc speech, one practice speech every week for 10 weeks. In addition, Dale Carnegie, he's still wanna go with us, but he wrote a book and it's, it's still very relatable. It's available on Amazon. I checked how to win friends and influence people.

It really kind of helped me think about things differently, but also being forced to speak in front of a group of people, help me with my confidence, which helped me with my confidence. So I would suggest that you find resources for that one gap that you wanna work on so that you can take a seat at the executive table and it can be courses that you can take whether it's Coursera or something else, a certification, it can be finding a mentor or a coach. It can be finding books on that topic. It can be following people online. There's a lot of people that are, you know, the best of the best, you know, whether they're TED speakers or whatever, go find one of them is a virtual mentor. If you can't find one. Also, I'd like to do a plug here for women tech network. They have a mentor program. So if you sign up, I'm a member of Women Tech Network and it's, I think the basic membership is only $100 and hopefully your company can write it off. They have a cohort, I believe twice a year that you can sign up for and find a mentor in a specific field, whether it's a I or myself as a certified career coach or whatever or you can become a mentor yourself, which I think is another great skill that you need to get a seat at the table.

So within that 30 days, please do that the next 60 days, I would say practice makes perfect and practice every week in terms of that skill that you're working on, like in my case, trying to be better at communication and presentations and confidence and work on that. And then in 90 days, I'd like you to come back to this number that you came up with and no one had a 10. We had different numbers here and I believe if you do the work that your number is gonna increase and that, that will help you get a seat at the executive table. Now, the other thing I wanted to share with you is I had recently learned, like I said, I live part time in Seattle. I had someone reach out to me as a career coach and dot A I is a A I based uh app. You actually use it on your computer and it helps you strengthen your communication and presentation skills because I've seen anybody who's successful in the C suite is very good at communication. It was something like I said that I lacked the JU dot A I, it's free right now.

And what's great about it is you can practice things like I practice this workshop presentation. For example, when I practice for my book debut and what's great about it in addition, is it helps you with your tone, your cadence, your hedging words, the ums and sos and things like that and it gives you a transcript of it. And it's really cool. Linkedin also has one. If you go to linkedin and then go to jobs, they have all these interviewing questions for free. Once again that you can use that you can um help you gain confidence as far as speaking. So with that, I'd like to open it up. We have, I started at 20. So we have like nine minutes. If anybody has a question that they'd like to ask about ascending to the C suite, a certain assertiveness. For what purpose, I guess is the question? Can you describe that a little bit more? Is it confidence, overworked by saying yes to everything? Oh, gotcha. I think one of the things that I've learned is there's like three buckets of things. It's like the have to do things when it comes to profe I'm talking about professional stuff. Have to do kind of things because your boss is expecting that from you, the things that, that you wanna do and then the things that other people want you to do.

And here's one of the things that I learned when I was in sales, being in sales, I learned a tremendous amount, even though I've only did it for eight years as part of my entire career. My boss used to say to me, do the one thing in the morning that will make you money and hit your quota. So I guess what I would say to you is what's the one thing that you need to work on? Um, that is important for you to do your job and be effective. So at the end of the year that your boss gives you a bonus. So I would think of it more in terms of that versus people pleasing because you can be nice and kind to everybody in the world. But I don't necessarily think that at the end of the year your boss is gonna give you credit for that unless that's part of what, what, what, what you do. So establishing boundaries. There you go. I think one of the things that I used to do is I used to do the easy stuff. First thing in the morning, like look at email. I don't, I don't do that anymore.

My, my life's a little bit different now as far as being a career coaching consultant, but maybe you kind of prioritize during your one on one with your boss, check with him or her in terms of what, you know, what are the things that will help me grow? What are the things that are gonna help me grow to be in the C suite? Um Also check with your mentor and if you don't have a mentor, I would strongly suggest that you get one they're free. So, and you can establish that not only inside your company, but you can also do that. Join a professional organization like women type network as well. Any other questions? OK. So with that, here's my contact information. And as I mentioned, I'm, I'll actually be in right now.

I'm in Majorca Spain. I'm on sabbatical this month, but I will next week, I'll be in Seattle. Feel free to connect with me on linkedin. I'd like to hear more. I'd like to hear in 90 days what your number is in terms of being a big impact maker. And I'd like to thank you for joining me today. Any suggestions for career development and influence as someone who's introverted and maybe isn't as dynamic? Oh, it's a good thing to join is uh Emily, is Toastmasters. Have you ever heard of Toastmasters? They have like one everywhere around the world. And I think it's a nominal fee. You get to meet with different people and you get to practice speaking. I don't know. I'm, I'm, I talk a lot about, um, public speaking because I think that helps you with your confidence. That's one thing I would do. Another thing I would do is I would join like when the tech network is, is great and they have different things that you can do. But I think I triple E, for example, if you're more on technology, they have different groups, you can join and you can be a chair, a chairperson of that. Or also there's other like women that code. There's also a lot of not for profits that you can join. I was a, um, I'm a career advocate for dress for success in Seattle and Austin as a career advocate for women in transition. And that's another thing that you're helping other people. And I think that that will help you out as well. Flipping back to the soft skills.

Ok. I'll flip back to the soft skills. Here. Here are the soft skills. Well, thank you everyone for your time today. I appreciate it. Look forward to connecting with you.