Welcome to this super special episode of women at the top of telecoms and tech. So this is one of our farewell episodes. And today is a really special one, because we have got all the best bits from the podcast. So I haven’t had this difficult job of choosing what to bid in this episode. This is our, my podcast, my brilliant podcast editor. So we’ve gone through the 100 episodes that we’ve had today. And we’ve picked out the bits that we think are the most important and the most impactful, the most powerful. And we’ve edited them into a best of episode for today’s podcast. So we are looking back on the brilliant conversations that we’ve had with guests, we’re looking back on the times that my thinking has changed in the light bulb, I’ve had a lightbulb realisation from some of the brilliant guests that I’ve had on the podcast. And we’re also covering the podcasts that have been some of the most popular with our audience. So the most downloaded episodes. So today should be you a brilliant snapshot of what we’ve covered in this podcast and the time that we’ve had it, which is just will be nearly two years by the time we finish. And I would love to know what you think. So do drop me a message, all my contact details are in the show notes. And then we’re on to our final ever episode for episode 100. And then we will be launching a brand new podcast, we’ll share the details off. But if you want to know what that is, if you want to know what it is, when it’s launching and you want to be on the waitlist for future details, there’s a link in the show notes just to pop your email address in and we can send you the information. Huge thanks for me being a regular listener. This is not the end of the journey, we’re just going down a slightly different path. So I really invite you to join us on where we’re going next. And I’m really excited for today’s episode. So hope you enjoy it as much as I’ve enjoyed listening back and thinking about all the brilliant guests that have had and everything that we’ve covered. And yeah, thank you for being part of this and come and join me on the brand new journey. So speak to you soon. Thank you. Over a lifetime 92% of us, which I believe will experience impostor syndrome at some point, and 75% of women of all women in the world of work and in the corporate world, I’ve experienced it at some point. So if you feel the symptoms, if you if you feel at times that you just feel like you’re going to be found out feel like a fraud. Who am I to do this? Know that you’re not alone, the vast majority of people feel this, and they feel the symptoms, what are the actual symptoms of impostor syndrome, it’s that self doubt, you know, when you might feel a bit anxious when you feel like you just don’t have that confidence in that presentation or in speaking up. That means that you have an inability and a lack of being able to really assess your own competence and your own skills, you downplay everything, you don’t take compliments, well, you attribute your success to external factors like luck, or you just happen to get on well with a boss or your face just fitted. You overanalyze your performance, and you put yourself down. And you have this real fear that you won’t live up to your expectations of others, where actually the highest expectations to live up to you are very much your own. So you keep pushing, you keep hustling, you keep working, which leads to almost over achieving and over delivering. But at times, you’re gonna get so burnt out that you always end up sabotaging your success, because you don’t feel you’re worthy of it. So you almost do something to bring yourself back down, and to make yourself smaller. And you also set yourself mile high, challenging goals, and you feel brokenhearted and you just berate yourself when you don’t hit them yet, they were never really real in the first place. Who’s done that? You’ve set yourself this huge challenging goal. And I’m all for like, I’m all for challenging. I’m all for really stretching yourself and growing and developing. But when you do it to such an extent that it’s just not possible, it was never possible. And you feel disappointed as a result, even though you’ve probably achieved so much. That’s all part of this feeling like an imposter. So I had a client that I worked with, on and off for a very long time, actually. And she was a sales director. And she was in a very male dominated industry. And for her she part of the reason she came to work with me is because she always felt like an imposter. So in this very male dominated part of the business, working within sales, she felt like she had to behave a certain way. She felt like she couldn’t really be herself. She felt like she couldn’t show that she was vulnerable that she was feeling that she was an empathetic leader. She didn’t feel she could Show those qualities or that she was actually incredibly funny about this amazing sense of humour that just drew people in. And she had this resilience and energy that was just constantly there because she did look after herself. But she always felt like an impostor because she was never herself. And I remember the particular coaching call that we were on when she realised this, and just that simple light bulb, but incredibly powerful realisation that she’s been pretending to be someone else for so long that she felt like an imposter because she was not being herself. She spent years trying to fit in, she spent spent years trying to be one of the lads spent years trying to be take on that powerful persona and want those more Alpha qualities. And, actually, for her, that wasn’t who she was. And she lost those hard edges of herself. And when we started to help her really identify who she was, and then become more of herself at work, she felt less and less of imposter. And she, at one point, she did a huge presentation, to the whole business when you when we could actually meet up and have huge, huge corporate meetings. And she was funny, she was vulnerable. She was empathetic, she encouraged everyone to speak up, and just be part of the conversation. And she had the most powerful and impactful presentation that day. And she was blown away by the comments and feedback and support she got all because she gone through that process of really knowing herself and understanding yourself. And then that meant she could show up as a self and speak up as herself and shake things up in her business as herself. Men are four times more likely to ask for pay rise. So because they asked more, they tend to get more. And they don’t have an attachment to what it means when they ask they simply ask and it’s a yes or no. And they also tend to negotiate more at the beginning of a jobs, they just start at a higher level. So if we look at some of the deepest stats behind this, there was a report from a company called Randstad. And they surveyed 1200 employed us adults and majority of women 60% 60% say they’d never get negotiate with an employer overpay. So six out of 10 women have never asked for a pay raise, never negotiated harder at the start of the job. Never asked for more, whether that’s salary or more holiday or different ways of being rewarded. And what that actually leads to that might be maybe leading women to changing jobs more frequently. So 72% from this survey say that they’ll leave an employer to get a salary increase somewhere else, rather than asking. So women are more likely to move company than asking that question. Rather than going through that awkward potentially awkward conversation or challenging or difficult conversation. And men are more four times more likely to ask for a raise or promotion. And it goes back to me rather than having a conversation that might be challenging, that might be awkward, that might be out of your comfort zone to ask for your value and ask for what you’re worth. You just swallow it up. Instead, just take what you’re offered. And then when you want to have that you want to increase your salary you want what you’re worth, when you’re getting so frustrated and feeling so unfulfilled, you would rather women would rather generally move company than asked for what they’re worth. And if we go back to something I’ve talked about before it goes back to Glenn and Doyle mentioned this example in her podcasts that women would rather choke quietly in the toilets of a restaurant rather than just stay in the room and ask for help. They would rather take themselves away and risk dying rather than inconvenience and someone else eating their dinner and the stat behind that was more women died from choking in orderly more women die from choking in restaurants than men. So it’s that it gets back to rather than undersell yourself daily. Why not have that potentially awkward or challenging conversation? Why not know exactly where you stand? Why not know where your prospects are in that business. And this might sound like quite a dramatic example. But we are rather than rather than impacting on someone or inconvenience someone eating their dinner by creating a scene or being an inconvenience, rather go to the bathroom and quietly choke on your own rather than ask for help. And this is reflected that in not asking for a pay rise not asking for what your what your value what your worth is, and not having that potentially awkward or challenging conversation. But instead just maybe the resentments building, maybe the frustrations building. Maybe you’re seeing other people move up when you’re not because you’re not asking. You’re not asking and you can get what you don’t ask for. So it’s not an option for you. I have a brilliant guest here today. I have a And then an event is going to be talking to us about really how to own your value and worth as a woman at the top in what you wear. For women that have that, that worry that there’ll be judged on how they look at work for women at the top how, what advice would you give them for that acceptance of themselves first,

 

10:19

we often feel self critical because we have the current image of ourselves. And then we have some image about ourselves ideal ourself almost. Yeah, so when there’s a gap, you feel your, you’ll feel like low self esteem. But in a way, we need to really kind of analysing where is this being more objective? Where is this ideal self coming from? Yeah, because often I found, I’ve had clients last, like few stones, of weight. And he or she actually, she thought that this is, you know, this is a place she’d like to be and everything will change, because of her weight. But when she actually reached that point, the self image of who she really is, did not change. Yeah. Because when we are happy, we always strive for a different level of next level, isn’t it? We try and to be an the next step and going somewhere. But if we don’t accept who we are right now, at this moment, it’s almost impossible to be happy with, well, you know, what your ideal and self in your head, you make up this out yourself yourself. So how can we, instead of thinking I’m not good enough? I’m always going to be few steps away from my ideal self, like ideal image, ideal weight, ideal look. And often these ideal look from social influence. Yeah, so if you have, if it’s media, media, imaginary, yeah, we put out we constantly compare to what’s publication or imaginary on social media, or people close to us, whether you are thinner, or you know, they are prettier, or they are more put together, we constantly constantly compare to other people, this is how we judging ourselves. But we need to make sure that we always, we always need to almost think ourselves, we are good enough as as we are right now. Yeah, absolutely. And stand on this ground. We can strive to be better, you can be better, you can be more active, active exercise, and be more healthy tomorrow than today, for sure. You take the action and do what you think it’s right for you in terms of your whole well being. But if we keep thinking there’s some, you know, somewhere, your ideal self is out there far after rich, we never gonna be happy.

 

Nicola  13:05

So excited that you’re here today, gainer, and thank you so much for your time, a lot of the interviews that I’ve had women that have very in those very senior roles, they’ll see your role and busy demanding role. But then there’s also the role plus, that you have a responsibility as a role model to make yourself accessible for mentoring to be on panels and discussions and be, you know, shared your lived experience to kind of this is how I’ve done it, this is what I found this is what’s changed is what maybe still needs to change. So it’s almost the job job plus part of what you do, and the more that we can support women like you to, you know, have that clarity and confidence and have that impact. It’s like, well, actually, that’s only gonna, that’s going to filter down brilliantly to women that are moving on up and have aspirations.

 

13:50

Yeah, yeah, I think it’s good to have the conversations is we say, like, ambiguity makes people feel uncomfortable. People feel awkward in certain situations. And it’s actually understanding that actually, everybody feels like that. Yeah. You know, we all think it’s just ourselves that feel, you know, nervous in certain situations, or feel anxious, or feel uncomfortable or worry about certain things. And actually, we’re all we’re all in the same boat, we just present different faces sometimes. So just being able to have some of those conversations and say, you know, I felt like this in the situation, how do you deal with it, then you can, you know, that shared experience and guidance can be really

 

Nicola  14:26

useful. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And it’s really interesting around something like impostor syndrome that’s very much attributed to women and women struggle with it, we almost kind of give that label to women more so they kind of step into it, but you look at some of the research behind it, those feelings of you know, the fear of doing something new and first of all, that’s completely natural. It’s a brain responsible. So men and women both feel that it’s just like you said, they probably show it differently. And maybe it’s a very scary whereas Mary like, Oh, I’ll try it anyway. See what happens.

 

14:57

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I think I mean, gender I found male colleagues have just been generally very supportive. But yeah, you do have those funny environments. And for years, I’ve gone to sort of conferences and meetings being the only woman in the room and it can feel a little bit strange. But generally, it’s not been too bad. And I guess I tried to not dwell on some of the more negative situations, you know, too much. Really?

 

Nicola  15:23

Yeah, absolutely. And we can all learn from those as well. Can we, you know, what was acceptable use of except there was no longer acceptable and having that environment where you can call out and give feedback to people, maybe behaviours that are appropriate now, as maybe we’re on point. So? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And when you go into those rooms, and you are the only woman in the room, how do you kind of prep yourself and get ready? And do you see it as part of it? Or do you see it actually have just focused on the task and focus on the delivery? Or what I need to get out of this meeting? Or what what message I have?

 

15:57

Yeah, I tend to focus on on the task. I mean, I guess it depends on on the type of meeting. But yeah, I tend to be more focused on on what it is I’m trying to deliver. And I guess, bringing them around to my point of view, in some ways, but I also look at it, particularly if it’s a new situation, or a group that I don’t know, it is, again, I sort of talked to do step back and take that sort of people view. And so try to sort of evaluate from a personality perspective, what might be the best way of approaching those individuals at the next, communication engagement and thinking about how you do that, because nine times out of 10, whether it’s whether they’re male or female, it is about what their agenda is, what their time should be, and what their hot buttons are. And then it’s putting what you’re trying to deliver maybe into the context of how it marries up with what they’re trying to deliver. But also understanding I think you’ve got you’ve got to be, you need to actively listen in those situations as well. And untaken, because there’s a lot that people will give away, just in talking about, even how they defend against something tells you quite a lot about people. And then you can think about how do we, I’m always looking for positive ways to break down those barriers to achieve what I need to achieve for the organisation. And I always bear in mind, what the organisation is trying to achieve. So it’s not just what I’m trying to achieve from my own personal agenda. Yeah. I generally find if it’s in the context of the good of the company, and what the organisation is trying to achieve, then then there’s a route through. Yeah,

 

Nicola  17:33

yeah, absolutely. So it’s almost coming. It’s understanding the personalities, how to communicate and how to support them with what they need, whilst holding. This is this is what my priority is what my focus is.

 

17:45

Yeah, yeah. And I guess the sort of the focus I have on data as well as, is part of that, because having having the data to hand takes emotion out of the discussion, absolutely. To better illustrate whatever it is, you know, depending on the conversation, but it takes emotion out of it. So it’s not an emotive discussion. It’s, it’s very factually based. And I do try encourage my team to think about things in that way to understand you know, understand, equally what the, the the customer or the, you know, the other part of the organisation is trying to achieve.

 

18:31

Is Nick here,

 

Nicola  18:32

I just want to take a moment just to say thank you for listening. When I’m sat recording a podcast in the deepest depths of Cornwall, it’s incredible to think it is reaching women across the world in 30 different countries, and we have 1000s of downloads a month. So thank you so much for being part of that. And being part of the audience means well to me, but I do want to grow this audience, I would love you to help me reach more women like you, so that we can really drive positive change in the corporate world. So you can do that one of three ways. First of all, you can subscribe to the podcast, you never miss an episode, as always, and new episodes always delivered straight to your inbox. You can review the podcast and leave us a rating. And the more ratings we have, we also go up in the podcast charts. And finally, you can just share a favourite podcast with a peer with a colleague or on your social media. So I would love you to do that. Thank you for all your help, and I can’t wait for what’s next