Are people undervaluing your contribution? Do you feel like your expertise goes unnoticed or under appreciated? Despite being excellent at what you do, do you sometimes feel invisible while others get credit for your ideas?
If you’re tired of being passed over for promotions, or people not perceiving you as the valuable strategic leader that you are, this is the episode for you.
In this episode of The Career Rx we’ll discuss:
- What it means to “audition” for a role you already have
- Charmaine McClarie and her Executive Success Principles
- Common mistakes you need to quit, and what to do instead
- Three ways to transform how people perceive you as a leader
I recently had the opportunity to virtually attend the Pennsylvania Conference for Women and it was really enlightening. As I was listening to the speakers, one in particular stood out to me because she got me to think about one of my favorite topics in an entirely new way. You know I’m all about professional branding – how others perceive you, and ultimately, promote you. This session was an excellent take on the same overall topic.
The speaker was Charmaine McClarie, an executive coach focused on helping leaders get more visibility and get promoted. She was presenting her paradigm of 6 “Executive Success Principles” but there was one specifically that captured my attention. She said “stop auditioning for the role”. Essentially, she was making the case that lots of folks who get passed up for promotions and recognition at work aren’t fully owning their roles, and instead come across as if they are “auditioning” to be a leader.
As I was listening I couldn’t help but think of ways that you could stop auditioning and start showing leadership in your role. If you want more responsibility, opportunity, and visibility for your contributions, you’ve got to show up in a different way.
Listen in to hear three ways that you can show yourself as a leader in your role. I’m sharing why you need to stop waiting to share your opinions, why you need to stop apologizing for those opinions, and how you can take control of your opportunity universe and show that you are ready for more.
“Do the thing that you are already charged to do and do it fully.” – Marjorie Stiegler
In this Episode:
[01:28] Why you should attend a variety of events that aren’t specific to your career (hello, Pennsylvania Conference for Women!).
[02:25] What Charmaine McClarie means by “stop auditioning for the role”
[04:00] Why it’s so important that you stop auditioning for the role you already have
[04:22] You’re the expert. Why are you waiting to be asked for your opinions?
[5:56] If you’re doing this, you aren’t actually behaving like a strategic thought partner
[07:02] What your language actually says about you,
[8:10] How to upgrade your word choice so you sound like a leader
[09:17] Expand your universe of professional possibilities. Here’s how.
[11:29] Strategies for taking charge of your network and build your expert reputation
[13:14] Reality check – if you’re being passed over, you probably aren’t doing what you’ve already been hired to do!
Links and Resources:
Pennsylvania Conference for Women
Charmain McClarie – Executive Success Principles
The Branding Rx 18 hours of CME, mastering digital strategies for advancing your career, building your business, and growing your professional brand
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TRANSCRIPT: Episode 40 – Stop Auditioning, Start Leading
Hey there, welcome to the Career Prescription. I’m your host, Marjorie Stiegler. This podcast is all about the important stuff. They don’t teach you in medical school, about how to treat your career, like the business it really is, and how to be strategic about your success. I’ll show you how to use modern strategies to get ahead, create your own path and do more of what you love. Every episode is inspired by questions from listeners just like you. So be sure to subscribe. And of course, send me those questions, so I can use them on a future episode. so you don’t miss anything. Be sure to always check the show notes on my website. Are you ready? Let’s get into it.
Hey, there, welcome back.
Today, I want to share with you some very wise words that I heard at a conference recently, that got me thinking about a topic many of us have been talking about or thinking about for a long time. It got me thinking about leadership and sort of owning your own career development and your own career trajectory in a slightly different way. So I’m going to share with you what I heard and then I’m going to tell you what I think are three of the ways that you can make this actionable in your own life.
So very recently, I attended the Pennsylvania Conference for Women. This is a fabulous event, an annual event. This year was the first year that it was virtual, unfortunately. So many great speakers. This is not limited to medicine, and by the way, it’s not at all focused in medicine. It is a professional development conference for women. And I strongly recommend that if you have the opportunity, you consider attending this event or some other event like this, that really helps you to kind of branch out from your usual circles. And the usual advice that you hear or the usual speakers that you hear.
So one of the sessions was led by an executive coach Charmaine McClarie, and she has a series of principles, she has six of them, I’ll put the link in the show notes. So if you want to go check out her work, you can certainly do that. But as she was going through this, in one of her presentations, one of these principles really stood out to me for how we should be taking ownership of our executive presence, and therefore, our own determination of success.
So one of the principles as she puts it, is “don’t audition for the part”. She goes on to say you, you are the part basically your organization, your employer, your group, your clients, whomever it is, have already employed you, they have already hired you to do a certain job, they have already sort of subscribed to the idea that you have the skills and the expertise, and the value to do the role that you that you’re in right that they have paid you to do. And so many of us get stuck in that role. Because as she describes it, we are presenting ourselves, as if we are auditioning for that role, that role, which we already have, therefore, then the wheels just keep turning and you get stuck where you are, because you appear to be sort of not fully, you haven’t fully mastered where you are just yet.
So the rest of this podcast, these are not necessarily her words, these are my my interpretations and some of my adaptations, what I was thinking about, as I was listening to her, and as I was digesting her presentation, and then as I’ve thought about it, in connection to my own work, which as you know, one of the main things that I focus on is the importance of professional branding. And I saw a lot of similarities between her topics and mine. Obviously, I always love to have you guys come check out the Branding Prescription. And you’ll learn a ton through that. So I’ll link to that here as well.
But let’s get into what it means to be sort of auditioning for the part and really, more importantly, three ways that you can stop auditioning for the part. As I’ve already said, The reason it’s important to stop auditioning for the part is because there’s no reason to promote you, there’s no reason to view you in a different way. You haven’t fully achieved mastery of where you are already and what you’re doing already. Therefore people aren’t going to perceive you to be ready for what’s next. So that’s what we need to overcome. I’m going to give you three ways to do it.
Okay, one very important thing we all need to do in order to sort of stop auditioning for the part that we have, and to really come into our own as leaders ready for what’s next ready for new growth. And a new opportunity is when you just stop waiting to be asked for our opinions. You already know that you have certain subject matter expertise. You already know the vision that you have, for what things would go if you were in charge. You already know the flaws that you see in the way that things are operating around you and how you might improve it and likely you just don’t feel like it’s up to you to make those changes. So you wait right? You wait for your opinion, you wait for somebody to ask you.
There’s two main problems with this. One problem is that just because you have that expertise, just because you have that vision, and you can provide that value, doesn’t mean everybody knows you have it. And so although you have been hired for a certain skill set, not everybody is going to know that you have it. And not everybody is going to know the way in which it would make the organization better, or how you would change the direction to steer the success of the organization, because they are not reading your mind, they are not inside your head. So they don’t necessarily know what you have. So if you’re waiting to be asked for your opinion, you may be waiting a long time.
The other problem with waiting to be asked. So aside from the fact that people may not realize they should ask you or they may not realize the amount of expertise that you have, or the amount of creativity or new vision that you have. The other problem with waiting, is that it means that you are simply just not acting like a thought leader, you are not acting like a strategic partner, you are not acting like a thought partner if you’re waiting for permission to give your thoughts. So this is another reason where if you are you are waiting and waiting to be asked. And then of course, when you are asked, I’m sure you provide outstanding inputs and feedback. But if you’re waiting to be asked that that’s one of the reasons that you kind of stay stuck, because that’s as if you are, as charmian puts it, auditioning for the part, waiting there to be given that permission slip, to bring that value, bring that expertise, bring that perspective forward, when in fact, that’s what you’re doing there already. If you’re at the proverbial table, you are already in that part, you are that part.
So in order to act like that part, you’ve got to stop waiting to be asked, because people may not know when they ought to ask you. And if they have to ask you, you are not acting like that thought leader, that strategic partner that gets promoted.
The second thing we have to focus on so that you can stop auditioning for the part that you already have. And of course, really fully embody that and therefore be ready to move on and be perceived as the right person to promote, and to grow and to develop, is you have to modify your language. So many people will begin their recommendations, frankly, with phrases that say, you know, I don’t know, if you’ll think this is interesting, maybe you’ve already thought about this. I don’t know, I’m not sure all of those little qualifiers, where we are essentially downplaying the significance or the importance of our idea. We’re sort of apologizing for it as if it’s already flawed. Maybe even apologizing just for ourselves to be speaking, which gets back to number one, not waiting for that permission, but also really fully having ownership of our speech, right of our ideas when we share them.
So, really shifting your language away from apologies, and from tentative suggestions, instead to recommendations, strategic thoughts, commands, even this is a small change. But it’s really, really impactful. And it will change the way that people perceive you. It will change the way that people listen to you. So instead of saying, I don’t know if this would work, you could say, based on what I am observing or based on what I’m hearing, I recommend XYZ. And then you can open the floor for discussion. You can say I’m interested to know what others think, instead of, you know, do you have any questions?
Did that make sense all of those things that are again, sort of an apology already, for whether or not you were clear whether or not your idea is a good one sensible one. So using your language and being really, really mindful of, of your power in that moment, and the strength of your ideas and communicating them. So they will be viewed that way is really, really important. So you got to stop auditioning, start owning it by modifying your language.
The third way that you can really start to inhabit your role, stop auditioning for your role, at least in my view is that you can start to take charge of your universe. And by that I mean, you can take charge of your own networking. You can take charge more of sort of curating your highlight reel, making sure that you fly your flag a little bit and that people are aware of your contributions, that people see you for your value, and that you are cultivating opportunities and making your own luck as we’ve talked about in prior episodes.
So this is my own personal extension on what I was thinking about as I was listening to Charmaine at this conference. One of the most amazing ways in which we can now in the modern day, stop waiting for permission is by starting to reach out using so much of the digital and social space that’s available to us so that people that we might otherwise need an introduction to, we can now just go reach, we can reach out directly, we can share content that is of interest and a value and begin to position ourselves in public forums, as those thought leaders that we are, without having to wait now to be noticed, so to speak, without having to wait for a leader in your organization to feel like they would like to introduce you to somebody else.
And as you well know, this is how, you know, by sharing your ideas on your professional platforms, and by engaging in some of the activity that we talked about in the Branding Prescription in terms of making sure that you’re able to be found, for your expertise, your subject matter expertise, and being able to sort of create and curate all of that social proof of the achievements and the contributions that you’ve made so far, so that it can be found by anybody right out there on the internet, regardless of what your organization, your immediate boss, or colleagues are willing to go out on, on a limb and introduce you or, you know, take that extra effort for them to try to develop you. You don’t need to wait for any of that anymore. You can create your own opportunities and your own luck, by really establishing that really solid, professional brand, that outstanding value proposition of what it’s like to have somebody like you, as a leader in that organization, or working together as a partner, or working with those clients taking care of those patients.
However it might be, you can begin to do that on your own at any time, for essentially very little investment. And in a way that will help you to be able to be found and recognized in your local community, more regionally, perhaps nationally, or even around the world. So if you’re doing very good work, and you are taking the the effort to let people know about it in a way in which you are not auditioning, but really owning that space, that will lead to additional opportunities, and growth and development that otherwise would take years and years to just sort of come to you if you had to wait for them to come to you or you had to wait for permission, you had to wait for an introduction.
Today, you can take advantage of so much of this on your own on your own time. Therefore, fast tracking your advancement, and really accelerating your career.
So I mentioned at the beginning, this is sort of a different way of thinking about what many of us have already heard, it’s fairly standard advice for people to say now that you don’t need a title to be a leader or you don’t need permission to be a leader. And certainly this is true. Leadership is all about behavior. But listening to Charmaine at this conference, the one thing that struck me a slightly different about don’t audition for the part.
What struck me about that phrase and in listening to her describe that phrase is it was less about permission, and more of an imperative. She’s really highlighting and bringing home the point that you’re already hired, someone is already paying you, someone is already trusting you, someone is already tasking you with a certain amount of deliverable based on your knowledge and your expertise, your vision or strategy, what your value proposition, whatever you bring to the table, if you’re already being paid to do that. And you are either waiting to be asked for your opinion, using that apologetic language, or not really taking charge of advancing your career, then you aren’t fully delivering what you’ve already been paid to do.
And she didn’t say that specifically. But that was sort of my aha moment. If you’re already in that role, already thought to be the person to fill that gap. If you aren’t filling it completely, if you aren’t embodying it, and you aren’t really delivering in a way that is unapologetic, that is not waiting for permission. And that is complete, that is willing to share your successes to discuss your contributions to really bring visibility to what you’re doing. If you aren’t doing those things, then you aren’t really doing what you’ve already been hired to do. So this is less about saying you don’t have to wait for permission and more of an imperative to say step up and step in to the role that you already have. Do the thing that you are already charged to do and do it fully. And when you do that people will see that you’ve already mastered the space where you are and you’re ready for what’s next.
I hope today’s episode has given you a new way of thinking about whether you are waiting for permission Whether you are auditioning for their part and what to do differently. That’s it for today. Bye for now.
Thanks for joining me on this episode of the Career Prescription. Be sure to leave me a review on Apple podcasts or whatever podcast player you’re using to listen today. And definitely send me those questions so I can answer them and give you a shout out on a future episode. Bye for now.
