Any day that I get a text like this is a good day:
This was from my client M, who is now a Senior Strategic Partner Manager at Google.
M was an ambitious, introverted client. She knew she did great work at Google. But she also knew that unless she was able to express her ideas and her wins with confidence – she may not get noticed or promoted.
But she was shy and under-confident – so shy that:
- She didn’t speak up in team meetings.
- She would get so nervous when she did speak up that she couldn’t control her speed and forgot words.
- She would stay up the night before a big presentation, memorizing everything she had to say word-for-word so she wouldn’t mess up.
How did M get promoted?
So we started working together.
This is the way we solved this major challenge for M:
- We analyzed her current speaking skills – what were her strengths and opportunities?
- We did a deep dive into what was making her nervous before she spoke. We created strategies for her to counter the nerves, center herself before and during her presentations.
- We worked on her speaking skills so that when she did speak up, she made impact.
- Now she felt more prepared to speak up in meetings and deliver presentations without memorizing a script.
- M started getting higher visibility speaking opportunities, culminating in her speaking at a TED-style talk for thousands of Google employees.
All of these strategically led to increasing M’s visibility and impact in her role. She got promoted within record time – and continues to grow.
As I write this, I know there are so many of you who:
- Do amazing work but don’t let yourselves shine.
- Deliver presentations with the mindset of “Let’s just get it over with”.
- Stop yourselves from being more visible and having more impact because it’s painful speaking up in front of an audience.
I’m here to tell you – there’s a way you can start speaking up more and make every opportunity count – without it being so very painful.
Because once you start being more visible:
- You get that promotion fast.
- You win that client without spending weeks following up.
- You become the go-to authority in your field and future-proof your career.
