Women In Leadership Roles – Sarah Kaler
MUST HAVE RESOURCES
SUMMARY
On this episode with Sarah Kaler, an executive leadership coach and a business mentor, she talks about how women in leadership can deal the problems they encounter. She adds that it is crucial for women to leverage the gifts they have and focus in their zone of genius.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
It’s important for women in leadership roles to know what they bring to the table and focus on their zone of genius.
Women think, behave, lead, and make choices and decision differently than men do.
When you’re in a leadership role, and especially if you’re working on leading a team, it’s key that you know your strengths and weaknesses.
Look for ways to bring more of your strengths forward.
Don’t spend time doing things that are weakening to you. Spend time on areas where you’re a genius.
TRANSCRIPTION: WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP ROLES – SARAH KALER
Women In Leadership Roles
Kamala Chambers
In this episode, we’re going to be talking about women in leadership roles.
On this episode, we’re here with Sarah Kaler. She’s an executive leadership coach and a business mentor. For over 17 years, she has developed business leaders across various industries, working with Fortune 500 companies, female CEOs scaling them up. She’s been featured on a ton of other places like Fox News.
We’re so excited to be have her here on Thriving Launch.
Welcome to the show, Sarah. Are you ready to launch?
Sarah Kaler
Hi. I’m so happy to be here.
Kamala Chambers
Well, one thing that I would love to hear from you is about women in leadership roles. Because as a woman who is a CEO of our company. I’ve done a lot to try to build myself up to be seen as at least an equal to Luis, my partner. It’s a struggle.
There’s a struggle of being able to be seen as an equal to men in a male dominated space. I’d love to hear about your views, your take, or your experience with that.
Sarah Kaler
Absolutely.
I think more and more women CEOs are stepping into that role for the first time. Statistically, we have over 12,000 women opening a small business just in The U.S today every day.
We’ve got women in leadership roles just like you’re speaking about. And working with women at a small business level all the way to big billion dollar companies is real. What’s most important for women leaders is to know what you bring to the table.
Women In Leadership Roles And The Competitive Advantage
Sarah Kaler
In essence, what’s your competitive advantage? Not from a sense of competing with the men or your team, but what’s the value that you bring, what’s your point of view. What do you bring to the ability to make a decision that brings your company that unique edge? That allows you to stand out and gives your service or product indeed that edge in the marketplace.
Without you bringing that point of view, that voice, your talents, and your strengths to the table, you’re missing something in the marketplace. Because, women think, behave, lead, and make choices and decisions differently than men do typically in business and leadership.
Luis Congdon
Reminds me a lot of when I made job applications to take my weaknesses and turn them into strengths. I took my strengths and turned them into areas where I’m providing something incredibly unique. And even took my weaknesses or differences to a job and how that allows me to bring something that no one else can.
For example, I remember applying for my job where I was going to work with Dr. John and Julie Gottman and utilize their work. I was 24 years old at that time. I’d never had a job working in the psychology self-improvement world. So, here I was in a job interview where I was going to be helping married couples improve their marriage, their relationship, and their parenting.
Women In Leadership Roles And Market Competition
Luis Congdon
At the age of 24 years old when I ended up getting hired for the job. I was working with people that had kids my age or had been married a lot longer than I’ve been alive. When I was thinking about how to present myself. I knew that I could be competing with other people that had more time on me. Maybe had been married, had more degrees, and more accolades than I did.
But I knew that I offered something unique too by being younger. I was very gung-ho to learn about what makes relationships succeed. I was very interested in people’s lives. I was very passionate, and that added something. I believe that’s why I ended up getting a job that technically, I wasn’t qualified.
Sarah Kaler
Yeah. Absolutely. I love that example because it is exactly what I was speaking too. It’s that you uniquely bring a set of strengths and intrinsically who you are.
Let’s say your life experience at that time landed you to be someone in that room that had a different perspective. And a different ability to listen and relate to people in a way others wouldn’t have at that moment. That’s a breathtaking thing in business.
Sarah Kaler
What we’re doing at the end of the day is we’re relating to our market. Whoever our target market is and our audience is. We’re learning to be in a relationship with them, and we have to be able to that in a genuine and caring way.
So that we understand who they are and what’s important to them. The more you can see that your perspective and your ability to listen. And the way that you can communicate and then make strategic decisions from that place of really is going to come from you.
Women In Leadership Roles Have Distinct Characteristics
Sarah Kaler
How you do that is entirely different from somebody else. Also, may bring value but also, is together going to be collaborative and yet distinctly different.
Kamala Chambers
I’d love to hear from you how we bring these gifts to the forefront.
I have ways that I do that and ways that I support people to do that, but I want to hear it from you. What’s the best way to highlight, focus, and leverage those gifts?
Sarah Kaler
The first thing may seem somewhat obvious, but it’s to identify what those are.
Identify what the strengths that you have in your leadership are. Some people say “Wow. I got to, first of all, consider that I am a leader. I’m in a leadership role, and I need to take that seriously.”
So, what are the things that you do bring to the table?
Then, how do you spend more of your time in those activities? Or, how do you start to bring more of your strengths forward? That’s where you’re productive, you’re effective, and you get more results. Not to mention, you’re going to be more energized. You’re going to be more engaged in what you’re doing.
And so, that’s something that’s crucial and important when you are in a leadership role, and especially if you’re working on a leadership team. I think that’s the first and second thing.
- Identify.
- Look for “How do I bring more of this?”
Working Among Women In Leadership Roles
Sarah Kaler
When thinking about how we work amongst our teams even if we have a small team. We need to look at how do we bring our strengths forward. And bring the best of ourselves and not so much focusing on the things that we’re not so great at.
We can delegate and hire other people to do stuff, and we look at the Oprahs of the world or the Arianna Huffingtons of the world. They’re not spending loads of time doing things that are weakening to them. They’re spending their time on areas that they’re a genius in, where they’re strengthened and not going to look very different person to person.
There’s not one way to lead or run a business, and yet, you need to identify that and then turn up the volume and leverage those areas for yourself.
Kamala Chambers
This is powerful stuff because when we identify those gifts, and we focus on those, it’s a game changer. Everything shifts for us. When we are living in our zone of genius and supporting other people in living in theirs. And taking on the things that we’re not good at because I think women want to be superwomen. We want to be able to do everything.
I see these a lot, and I’m sure men have this too. But, I see this mostly in women where they get the superwoman complex. They try to do it all and then it kind of affects the sense of self because we just can’t do it all. It propels us to a state of burnout, and we need other people.
Women In Leadership Roles Are Powerful
Kamala Chambers
I think the success you’re talking about that women can move into is stepping into that space where they are in their zone of genius. They are in that place of passion about what they’re working on, and seen for that rather than trying to be everything to everyone.
Sarah Kaler
That’s right.
That state you’re talking about, the do-it-all mentality. I call it the “Chief Everything Officer,” because it’s like this mentality where you’re just spinning, doing it all, and you’re wearing every hat probably in your business and your life. Let’s be honest. That’s what starts to happen.
The difference is that most women in leadership roles I speak to are really in this both for passion but also purpose. They want their businesses and lives to be a force for good. They want to contribute to something bigger, and they want to create lasting and sustainable change in the world.
To do that, you’ve got to build a support system. You’ve got to have a high-performance team, and you’ve got to be able to not only lead from your genius, but you have to be able to be living and leading from that sense of, “What are my values?” “What’s most important to me and how do I take personal responsibility for making sure that happens both for the people around me and me?”
Women In Leadership Roles
Sarah Kaler
I think that comes down to doing business with integrity because we all want our services and our products to be of integrity in the world.
We have to reel in our integrity as women because that’s the foundation of which we’re operating, and leadership starts with the self.
Sarah Kaler
Leading yourself first and looking at what’s there and it needs to be tightened up or what needs to cross checked regarding “Where are you compromising yourself” and then, saying “Okay. I need to spend time getting back in integrity with myself, possibly my values, possibly leading more powerfully in my strengths. Maybe I need to have a better connection with my team and be a better team leader so that I can create those results in the world that I know I’m meant to lead and that significant impact that’s in the vision.”
Kamala Chambers
This is such great stuff.
I just want to talk through something with you and see what your experiences been, where your wisdom lies with it. What I found in certain environments where I’m working with a team of men, and I can clearly see that my opinions aren’t respected or that my skills are intimidating, and I’m being blown off.
It’s hard for me to talk about but I’m just wondering. One thing that I struggle with is wanting to demand the respect. There’s “I could demand the respect,” “I could shrink down,” and “There’s another way to do things.” There’s a different way rather than demanding the respect or just shrinking away.
Women In Leadership Roles
Kamala Chambers
A balanced way that’s going to be received by men rather than asking them for permission for them to receive me to actually stepping into a new space, and I would love to hear about that space from you.
Sarah Kaler
Yeah. I love this question because it’s real on so many levels so we have to talk about it and I think preparing and practicing.
Being in the practice of what does this requires of us as women to be ourselves and yet, practice a skill. Cultivate a skill when it’s called forth.
Here’s what I think. It comes down to a couple of things.
- Social connection.
- Communication
They intertwined and they’re connected here. They’re not completely separate.
What I mean by social connection is being able to cultivate a relationship with anyone. This could be a peer, a colleague, someone you met once, a prospect, an influencer, or anyone frankly.
Women In Leadership Roles Are Dynamic
Sarah Kaler
If you’re running into that dynamic that you have to create a connection wherein you understand the other person’s perspective, what they value, and have enough of awareness of that as much as you have an awareness of yourself, your feelings, your sense of self at that moment.
To establish a real connection with another human being takes a different level of awareness.
So, in that moment where you’re feeling disrespected or small, what does it actually take from you as a leader? Acknowledge that, have an awareness of that, and then make a new conscious choice about what’s happening for that other person right now. Who is that other person? What do they value? This doesn’t condone or make right what is taking place in the interaction by the way.
I’m not saying that how you have been made to feel is okay.
Expand your awareness of who the other person is in order to start to build a connection with them and to find a way to be in relationship with that person.
That might look different than the one you started out to have.
Kamala Chambers
I just absolutely love what you’ve shared about women in leadership.
It’s been fantastic to be here on the Thriving Launch podcast with Sarah Kaler talking about women leadership.
Keep thriving everyone.
Sarah Kaler
As we graduate high school and getting into our early 20s and we have this version of success that we’ve typically adopted from what we’ve seen in culture and media and maybe those that we’ve looked up to. I think as we get smacked in the face by reality, as we go through relationships, and as we looked in at certain people and go, “Gosh, I don’t like that about you,” and looked at other people and go, “I really admire that person.” It really starts to form in shape what success really looks like and I don’t think that success is very relative.
The key to success is not very specific. I think that there are different channels of success but I think to have it all, if you will. This has been one of my aim on my journey of success is to have it all. Meaning to have strong relationship with my wife, my family, and my kids, to have a really have strong spiritual life that I’m a Christian guy but just to make sure that’s a priority in my life, which suggests that the key to success is a wide term. To make sure I have good reputation, and that I protect that and the day of the internet where the internet never forgets whatever you say can be construed and pushed against you. We got to be very careful to protect our names and our reputation. And then, my physical health, on top of that, my finances. Together, those kinds of things really make up my success and really help in defining the key to success.
You can tell it. I don’t talk about my business. My business is not something that I do and I think it’s fairly successful as a channel but for the most part, I don’t want to become the wealthiest guy that nobody likes. Mere being wealthy is not the key to success. I don’t want to become the guy that got too busy making a living that I forgot to make a life. There are all these puns that I can just keep going with in terms I don’t want to be the richest guy in the graveyard. That’s the life that I want to stay away from and I define the key to success on my own terms.
I might not be the wealthiest guy that you’ve ever meet but my hope is to become one of the most successful people you’ve ever meet.
