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The Confidence Effect
Every Woman’s Guide to the Attitude That Attracts
Success
GRACE KILLELEA
AMERICAN MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION
New York Atlanta Brussels Chicago Mexico City
San Francisco Shanghai Tokyo Toronto Washington, D. C.
For my mom, Audemia Ozvalda Killelea (Thea), who taught me
lessons that have lasted a lifetime. You were the first person to tell me
I could do anything and be anything I wanted to be, and with those
words you planted a seed of confidence. You left your handprint on
my heart.
Contents
Preface
Introduction: Moving from Competence to Confidence
Part One: Relationships
1 This Is Not Your Mother’s Networking
2 Delegation: Working Harder Isn’t the Answer
3 The Keys to Executive Presence
4 Coaching—and Being Coached
5 Building Your IPO (Information, Power, and Opportunity)
Part Two: Reputation
6 Seize Opportunities with Courageous Leadership
7 Recognizing Your Own Abilities
8 Building Your Personal Brand
9 Reputation Management
Part Three: Results
10 From Tactics to Strategy
11 Using Data to Your Advantage
12 The Power of Accountability
13 The Politics of Progress
Part Four: Resilience
14 Being a Change Agent
15 Competence, Confidence, and the Emotional Quotient
16 Learning to Bounce
17 The Importance of Stamina
18 Taking Control of Your Career
Conclusion
Index
About the Author
Free Sample Chapter from Stiletto Network by Pamela Ryckman
Copyright
Preface
Success and happiness are not just for the world’s richest, luckiest, thinnest, or
smartest women. We can be successful and happy even when we aren’t given
every opportunity or advantage. I know because I have never been the richest,
thinnest, most beautiful, luckiest, or smartest woman in the world. Yet, I’ve
created a life, career, and business that I love—despite significant challenges.
Along the way, I found that the negative voices in my head are lying, and that
by connecting my internal knowledge to my external energy—or, simply put, my
competence to my confidence—I could achieve both success and happiness. In
2013, at the age of 53, I ended my corporate career as a senior vice president of a
Fortune 50 company and launched what has become a premier leadership
program for high-potential women. I’m a woman who has been morbidly obese,
yet I’ve walked several 60-mile events and skydived to celebrate losing more
than 120 pounds. I survived a devastatingly bad marriage, and at 55, I met and
married a wonderful man.
I wrote this book because for many years I was the woman who believed just
working hard was “enough.” I was the classic “good girl” who said yes to
everything I was asked to do at work, yet never asked for anything in return. I
was the woman who spent too many years listening to the negative voices inside
my head and the ones forced upon me by society.
When I walked into a room, I’d have the “I’m not” conversation in my head.
You know how that conversation goes. I’m not:
Smart enough
Thin enough
Attractive enough
Experienced enough
Worthy enough
Deserving enough
I was always waiting for building security to come and haul me away—
feeling like a fraud, sure I’d be found out—and yet that never happened.
The Confidence Effect is my way to give you shortcuts and provide you with
tools to help you connect your confidence to your competence. This information
is based on my many years of experience, both personal and professional. In
addition, I interviewed a number of successful women about their experiences
with confidence. Once you meet them, I’m sure you’ll agree that this is a diverse
and amazing group. It includes entrepreneurs, senior executives, a senior leader
in the Girl Scouts, the first African-American female combat pilot, authors,
speakers, and media personalities. These powerhouses help drive home the
importance of The Confidence Effect. So let’s get started.
The Confidence + Competence Toolkit
Throughout her career, Laura has been putting in long hours. She rarely misses a
day. She prides herself on her hard work. She’s always the first to arrive at the
office and the last to leave. And she’s a busy mother in addition to holding her
full-time job. During meetings, she usually has ideas and valuable insights to
contribute to the conversation, but she doesn’t speak up unless she’s positive her
solution or response is pitch perfect. There are some new leadership
opportunities in her company, and Laura wants to move up.
What Laura doesn’t know, however, is that she’s unlikely to get a promotion.
Why? Like many women, Laura thinks working hard and doing a good job is
enough to get her promoted. Yet she lacks confidence and a strong professional
“brand.” She hasn’t yet learned to ask for what she deserves. Laura hasn’t built a
strong network of allies and champions, and sadly she doesn’t even know what
information she’s missing, because she also lacks awareness of her own style—
and how to go about changing it for optimized career success.
But there is hope. Laura already has the solutions to her own problems. She
needs to build a “confidence + competence toolkit” to help move her out of the
role she is in. Part of her problem is that she is not connected to people who can
inform her about opportunities. Consequently, other people get picked for roles
for which she would have been perfect, but she never knew that the opportunities
existed. Laura is one of her company’s biggest assets—and her own worst
enemy.
As you can imagine, Laura isn’t alone. Many female employees face silent,
challenging realities on a daily basis. This is inspiring some of the nation’s
strongest and most celebrated female business leaders to speak out about the
future of women in corporate America.
When it comes to women in business, Laura is in the majority, i.e., not in a
leadership position. In fact, according to Forbes magazine, while women make
up almost half, or 46.9 percent, of the modern workforce, “40 percent of large
companies have no women on their boards and only 5 percent of startups are
owned by women.”
And, according to “Unlocking the Full Potential of Women at Work,” a
special report by McKinsey & Company, “Leaders make gender diversity a
priority because they see the prize: a talent advantage that’s hard to replicate.
But few companies are winning that prize. The top circles of leadership remain
male bastions; women make up just 14 percent of Fortune 500 executive
committees, and there are few women CEOs. Although corporate leaders are
working hard to change this, progress remains elusive.”
With so few women in positions of leadership, those who are feel a
responsibility to speak out on behalf of the marked disparity between female and
male leaders in the workforce.
According to Arianna Huffington, Founder of The Huffington Post, “Women
still have an uneasy relationship with power and the traits necessary to be a
leader. There is the internalized fear that if we are really powerful, we are going
to be considered ruthless or pushy or strident—all those epithets that strike at our
femininity. We are still working at trying to overcome the fear that power and
womanliness are mutually exclusive.”
This could explain why in 2014, 95 percent of all venture capital went to
men; of the top 2,500 corporate executives in America, only 63 were women;
only three Fortune 500 companies were headed by women; and Congress was 90
percent male!
Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, former VP of online sales and
operations for Google, and author of the bestselling book Lean In: Women,
Work, and the Will to Lead, says, “We need women at all levels, including the
top, to change the dynamic, reshape the conversation, to make sure women’s
voices are heard and heeded, not overlooked and ignored.”
Sandberg’s words are particularly resonant in the technology industry from
which she hails, where only 25 percent of the workforce and less than 5 percent
of startup owners are women. Recently, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella made
front-page news around the world when he suggested women should not ask for
raises but simply rely on “karma” to take care of them. Nadella’s comments
highlighted the pervasive and unconscious bias that affects so many women in
the workplace today.
And finally, in a fiery call to arms, Rachel Sklar—blogger and Founder of
Change the Ratio, a group that seeks to increase visibility and opportunity for
women in technology and new media—sums up the way many women in
business feel: “There’s a benefit to including women, there’s a benefit to
considering women, there’s a benefit to writing about women, and there’s a
benefit to having women included in everything. And I think it’s ridiculous that
this is a situation I have to be defensive about.”
Clearly, I couldn’t agree more!
The Confidence Effect
With nearly 35 years of corporate and executive coaching experience, and as an
author, consultant, trainer, speaker, and CEO, I have seen too many similar
stories and felt the pain of rejection alongside my clients. Many of them, like
Laura, come to me confused and feeling as if they are missing something, and
they leave feeling clued in, competent and, above all, confident.
At the Half The Sky Leadership Institute, my program for women who want
to strengthen their leadership skills, business acumen, and executive presence, I
work with many women like Laura. I have learned a great deal through these
experiences, and this book allows me the opportunity to share the skills women
need to navigate the political culture in the workplace in order to receive that
next promotion—and so much more.
Every woman is the CEO of her own career and life. Through one-on-one
executive coaching, group workshops, and keynote presentations, I have helped
thousands of women advance their leadership skills, develop their personal
brands, and reach for the next level in their careers.
My goal is to inspire people to move beyond barriers to achieve sustainable
success, both professionally and in their personal lives. My company provides
executive coaching, leadership development, and consulting in the Birkman
Method,® a powerful assessment tool that identifies a client’s interests,
