Name: Show Your Worth
Author: Shelmina Babai Abji

What’s in it for me? A roadmap for women aiming high in their careers.

Women in the workplace hear a lot about the glass ceiling. But for most professional women, problems start long before they reach the ceiling – it would be more appropriate to say that the ladder to the glass ceiling has a lot of missing and broken rungs. At the highest level, only ten percent of corporate roles are filled by women, and only a small percentage of those roles are filled by women of color.

The statistics are depressing – but they’re not a reason to despair. Smart, driven, dedicated women can reach their full professional potential, by deploying targeted strategies to define success on their own terms, negotiate the competing demands of work and life, and brand themselves as leaders. Do you want to join their ranks, and do your bit to mend the ladder and shatter the glass ceiling? Then this Blink is for you.

Define success on your terms

To achieve success, you can’t simply follow a roadmap – you have to program the GPS yourself. Think about it. Allowing other people to define your success is like setting off on a road trip where someone else has picked your destination. Take a moment, and intentionally define what success might look and feel like for you.

Here’s how you can uncover your personal conception of success: Begin by cultivating self-awareness. Delve into your personality and past experiences and ask questions like, "What does success look like to me?" and "What truly energizes or depletes me?" These inquiries are vital because they unearth your unique aspirations and desires.

Next, merge your professional and personal goals into a long-term vision of success. This holistic approach acknowledges that life is more than just a paycheck and a title. For instance, you might aspire to reach the pinnacle of your career while also nurturing a loving, happy home for your children. It's about prioritizing personal needs alongside professional ones, recognizing that these priorities may shift at different life stages.

Defining your long-term success also involves picturing where you want to be in five years. This serves as a roadmap, providing direction and motivation. Simultaneously, it's essential to outline short-term definitions of success. These tangible, actionable steps bridge the gap between your current reality and your long-term vision. What milestones will mark your progress along the way?

Set aside a dedicated weekly time for reflection and celebration. This practice helps solidify a success-oriented mindset. It's about acknowledging the hurdles you've overcome, the lessons you've learned, and the milestones you've achieved. In celebrating your achievements, you're reinforcing your self-belief and nurturing your motivation to keep moving forward.

For inspiration, look to the story of Verna Meyers. Meyers is the Vice President of Inclusion Strategy at Netflix. Prior to that, the star Harvard grad worked at a prestigious law firm. Despite her high-status legal career and impressive salary, she felt unfulfilled. Her journey took a turn when she chose to follow her passion for Diversity and Inclusion. She ventured into her consultancy in this field, a bold move that ultimately led to an enticing offer from Netflix, which even allowed her to retain her own consultancy alongside her leadership position at Netflix. Verna's story illustrates that success isn't just about prestige and a hefty paycheck – it's about aligning with your true calling, even if it means taking a leap into the unknown.

Allocate your most precious resource with intention

Your attention is a valuable yet limited resource, so you need to make sure you’re allocating it effectively and investing it for maximum returns. The key word here? Priorities. Just ask Johanna Maska, the White House Director of Press Advance for President Barack Obama.

Maska came onto Obama’s team when he was still a senator from Illinois. In the space of a few short months, she found herself working on a Presidential campaign, then organizing a Presidential inauguration, until, finally, she was one of the most senior aides to the President of the United States of America. Working as part of his Scheduling and Advance department, Maska was in charge of allocating the President’s most valuable resource – his attention. Obama’s schedule was not only incredibly full – each day, new conflicts and concerns arose that also needed to be addressed. How did Maska decide which people, and problems, made the cut? She swears by trusting your judgment, even under pressure, and cultivating a deep understanding of the context you’re working within. But above all else? Navigating by your north star priorities. In Maska’s case, any time she had to make a quick call, she’d come back to her number one priority and ask: What would the American people want the President to pay attention to?

Believe in balance

Oprah Winfrey once said that you can have it all, just not all at once. If even Oprah finds it challenging to balance the demands of professional and personal life, where does that leave the rest of us working women?

It turns out that effectively negotiating the professional and the personal is the key challenge many women face in the workplace. Let’s leave aside the admittedly infuriating question of why women, on the whole, are far more pressured to balance caregiving and domestic responsibilities alongside their careers than man, and talk solutions.

Your authenticity is your strength

Kathleen Hogan is Chief People Officer at Microsoft. She wants people to see her for the capable, experienced, highly successful professional woman she is. So, in 2007, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, Kathleen kept the devastating news to herself. In the workplace she wanted to stay “Kathleen the executive” and not transform into “Kathleen who has cancer”. She wore a wig throughout chemo and only confided her diagnosis in a few people. But she found the subterfuge exhausting. Kathleen recovered. But in 2018 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer again, she decided to do things differently. She didn’t want to overengineer her outward image. She wanted to be real. When she shared her diagnosis she was overwhelmed by her colleagues’ support. The lesson? There’s strength in bringing your whole self to work. Kathleen is now cancer free.

In the workplace, the value you create is the cornerstone of your success, and the more unique your contribution, the more indispensable you become. Having the confidence to bring your full self and experiences to your work is the key to creating significant value.

Brand yourself as a strong leader

How you are known, and who knows you, are two things that will define your professional success. Consider this your invitation to make yourself known as a leader, to the people who can place you in that position.

Your personal brand is essentially what people think of when they hear your name. So, how can you elevate this into a personal leadership brand? Think of it this way: you want to integrate strong leadership qualities into what people already associate with you. Start by identifying the type of leader you aspire to become. Reflect on those leaders who've inspired you and those who haven't. Their examples can clarify what you aim to achieve in your own leadership style.

Key ideas in Show Your Worth