The company you keep can make all the difference to your career success

It’s not your job to contort yourself to fit the lens of someone else’s bias.

Women in particular often mute themselves because they fear being told they’re difficult, stroppy, aggressive, hysterical or a ball-breaking bitch. In 10 years of helping people to develop their presence, impact and position themselves for seniority, I’ve never once heard a man share this concern.

Your job is to stay in your own lane, speak up and get your message across. Don’t dim your light because some may find it dazzles them. You may attract the odd moth, but don’t let it put you off. I love Schwarzberg’s message here.

Find your courage and speak up and out.

To position yourself for success and seniority, you need to be heard, despite those who hear something different when you open your mouth and speak.

The Company You Keep Matters

Surrounding yourself with the right kind of support makes this easier. Choose to spend time with the people who share your values, understand your message and who get ‘it’ and ‘you’. That doesn’t mean never being open to challenge or creating an echo chamber but it does mean having people who will back you up, be your cheerleaders, celebrate your wins, be there when the world wants to shut you down and give you the motivation to carry on.

These people are important. In the workplace, hunt out allies for mutual support. In your personal life, choose your company wisely. And when you look around you, if the company you keep joins in that general nay-saying noise, then maybe it’s time to start distancing yourself a little? You need people who will have your back, not stab you in it.

Speaking up is a fundamental way to work on positioning yourself for a more senior role, so don’t let fear stop you. My second  book,  Strategies for Being Visible can help you to formulate plan for doing this.

I’m Susan Ritchie and I can help you to position yourself for seniority. You can read my books, attend my (virtual) workshops or work with me on the Visible Leadership Programme.

To find out more, email me at hello@susanritchie.co.uk

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Overthinking can be managed so you can make your presence felt

Overthinking stops us in our tracks. It can mean that we miss the chance to speak up, feel frustrated and unheard, tie ourselves up in knots and never make a decision. When it comes to your career and positioning yourself for seniority, thinking is good, overthinking, less so.

If you’re someone who finds speaking up in meetings challenging, and you tend to sit there thinking about when to say something and what to say, then here are some ideas to help you exercise that muscle a little more.

Do your thinking beforehand

Hands up if you’ve ever been to a meeting and tried to wing it, or sat there feeling that you don’t know your stuff properly, because you’ve not prepared as thoroughly as you needed to. Spend some time reading the agenda, and thinking about what’s on it and where you can  – or are expected  – to contribute.

Do some research

A bit of digging around and researching topics on the agenda where necessary can help you to feel more prepared – what’s the current thinking on the subject? What do you need to know to help you feel more informed? Don’t wait to be supplied with information; use your initiative, ditch the tiara and create your own opportunities to impress.

Form an opinion

Have something to say by considering your take on what’s being presented – do you agree, vehemently disagree, question why certain actions are being taken? Set yourself a time limit for the research and opinion forming and stick to it.

Consider what you don’t know

Asking pertinent questions is a way of speaking up and contributing without having to feel pressured into making clever points if you’re initially unsure of the topic – which happens to us all, especially if you’re new to a role or meeting. And that, dear reader, is one powerful way to make your presence felt. A question that stops everyone in their tracks will be a question that will serve you well. Make it part of your preparation.

Asking questions can help you to position yourself for seniority

Pay attention

Instead of spending ages in your head mulling over what you’re going to say, switch your attention to teh person speaking and really listen to what they’re saying. When you respond, you’ll be responding from the moment, and won’t be missing what’s actually being said. You’ll be able to pick up on the subtleties and nuances that you may miss if you’re grappling with your inner decisions.

The icing on the cake

When you’ve been doing your research, make sure that you keep links of any useful articles, books, ideas, podcasts and so on. As part of your meeting follow up (which you make sure you do, right?) consider what may be useful to share with any meeting attendees. The relationships you may build in this way can help you to feel more relaxed and comfortable enough to speak up more easily.

Meetings can feel challenging and it’s easy to feel out of your depth sometimes. Theses ideas can help you to make your presence felt, and help you position yourself for your next role. And if you’d like some help with this, take a look at the Visible Leadership Programme

I’m Susan Ritchie and I can help you to position yourself for seniority. You can read my books, attend my (virtual) workshops or work with me on the Visible Leadership Programme.

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Practice leading before you become a leader – learn to show up as one

What are you waiting for? It’s a mistake to wait to lead.

Doing the work and then sitting back and waiting for others to notice is in all probability one of the slowest career-games you can play. The truth is, unless we demonstrate our skills and talents, and tell people what we can do, we’ll be waiting a long time for that new role. The Tiara Syndrome (Kolb and Frohlinger), is another of those workplace phenomenons that can hold our progress back; we’re not going to get crowned in glory unless others know what we’re achieving. Unfortunately, not everything comes to those who wait.

Many years ago, a client came to me because they’d observed  how differently a colleague had started showing up in the office. The colleague was a client; this new client wanted some of what the existing client had. Both of them have long since moved onward and upwards.

The truth is, you can’t wait for your boss or anyone else, to notice your achievements. In an ideal world of course, that’s all it would take to be offered that ideal role, but we are far from that, and a little carefully orchestrated visibility planning will go a long way. You can wait for the boss to notice you, or you can help them to notice you. I’d say the latter will be quicker, and more effective too.

You don’t need a personality transplant to create the impact you’d like to have.

You do need the ability to move outside your comfort zone, however much this scares you. This post On Confidence can help you with that, as will this post about Vulnerability 

One approach that will get you noticed if you do it the right way, is to lead before you have the title. That has been key to my client’s success (you can check out the Visible Leader Programme here). Show up as though you already have the title. This isn’t about throwing your weight around, telling your colleagues what to do or ingratiating yourself with every senior leader who walks through your office door.

It’s about embodying the very essence and qualities of what it means to be a leader. It’s about your attitude, your demeanor, your values, your communication style, your body language, your physical presence, your work ethic, your energy…the list could go on. You can lead without the title.

Sit down and ask yourself what you value in a leader – how do you know a leader you admire when you see one? Make a list, then ask yourself how you compare, honestly. What is one thing you could do that would have a big impact on how you show up? Commit to doing it. Notice what happens. Tweak if necessary. Repeat.

And at the same time, plan your visibility strategy. Don’t wait for the tiara – you could be waiting a very long time.

I’m Susan Ritchie and I can help you to position yourself for seniority. You can read my books, attend my (virtual) workshops or work with me on the Visible Leadership Programme.

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Learn to tell yourself a new story and position yourself for seniority

People tell me things. Over the years I’ve heard similar stories from people I meet – sometimes these are in the formality of a client session, at other times they are passing remarks made by people I meet in a variety of places.

The story I hear most often – especially from women, although men aren’t immune to this – is the ‘I lack self-belief’ or a version of that. It’s what I call a sticky story – it can hang around for years unless well and truly put to bed. I’ve noticed that this, or something like it, is what some people fall back on when they’re not making the progress they want, or think they ought to be making. Rather than interrogating the real, root cause of what’s going on for them, it’s easier and less painful to put their stalled progress or inertia down to their lack of belief that they can achieve what they’ve set their hearts on. Often this turns out to be fear and is nothing to do with self-belief at all – this is a normal and healthy reaction to a perceived danger lurking in the environment. I mainly help clients position themselves for more senior roles, and this is a perfectly understandable reaction.

The self-belief label can be incredibly unhelpful. It’s too general and vague and as such, is a challenge to deal with – and  in lots of cases, it’s not actually the truth. Like it’s counterpart, confidence, I think it’s an over-used term.

Here’s a process I use with clients, that is aimed at helping them uncover what’s really going on.

Start at the beginning.

Ask yourself what you really want, and what is that going to give you. I do think that sometimes the reason we don’t achieve something is because we actually really don’t want it! I’ve met a few people who have spent years pursuing a goal, only to finally admit that it’s not what they want in their heart of hearts – and never was. Subconsciously they’d been putting the breaks on themselves. Admitting it freed them up to look at the alternative. Now this might feel just as much of a challenge, but at least it’s one with some energy behind it, and no unhelpful story sitting in the background.

Still want it?

Now’s the time to examine what you do and don’t believe in a little more detail, in order to find out what’s really getting in the way and causing you to think that you lack self-belief. What could you be afraid of?

The example I’m going to use here is for promotion to a new role, which is a frequent scenario my clients face. Putting themselves forward for a significant step up career-wise is something lots of people find daunting, as is the work to raise your profile beforehand. If you want to make progress, making yourself visible to the right people is part of journey, and I talk about a way to do that in my second book, Strategies for Being Visible

Create a granular list of everything that this new job entails (or your own situation), detail by detail, referring to the job or person spec, or anything else that you know doing this job would involve, for example, catching the 7.50 train every morning, or presenting sales figures at the board meeting, or liaising with the MD, or cold-calling over the telephone.

Now interrogate your list, point by point. The more detailed the list is, the more accurate results you will get for this.

Then ask yourself this question, out loud preferably, and write down the answers.

In what ways do I believe in myself enough to get this job?

Alternatively, enlist someone to ask you ‘Do you believe you could…?’ This is phenomenally powerful and when I’ve used this approach with clients, it changes things quickly.

Use this sentence to answer the question:

I believe I could…

Finish the sentence every time with reference to the list you have just made and start as small as you need to, for example:

I believe I could catch the 7.50 train every day (I believe I could set an alarm, get up every day etc…)

I believe I could write a sales report (I believe I could ask for monthly sales figures, open an Excel spreadsheet etc, learn how to…)

Back up your sentences with evidence – I’ve written sales reports in my current role, or I’ve presented in front of senior leaders in my first role…

Write the longest list you can, and then notice how you feel at the end of it. In fact, notice how you feel as you write it -tune in to what’s going on for you. Where do you sense reluctance, discomfort, butterflies? When you’re aware of these feelings, dig a little deeper…what’s really going on for you now? Is it really a lack of self-belief or is it that you don’t want to do it perhaps? Or is it nerves? There’s a difference. And if your story is about ‘lacking confidence’, here’s another post that may help On Confidence

Make a note of any areas where you feel you truly don’t believe you could do that. What do you believe you could do instead? Learn, research, ask, practice, get qualified, be brave enough to take a calculated risk? Do you believe that you could learn how to write a sales report for example? Or get more comfortable presenting sales figures to the board? This may take you some time, but identifying practical steps is more helpful than living in cloudy fear. And if you really, truly don’t believe you could learn, ask, research, get more comfortable, take a chance or risk – then you’ll know that it’s not for you.

When you break most things down like this, you may well see that their component parts are usually very achievable and that you do believe you can do most of them, probably because you’re already doing most of them!

The ‘lacking self-belief’ story is just that – a story that you’re telling yourself.

Belief = an acceptance that something exists or is true

Belief = trust or faith in

In the end, self-belief boils down to a choice about believing the evidence in front of us. 

This is about telling yourself a different story to the ‘lacking self-belief’ title. This new story is rooted in reality and evidence, as opposed to the old story which is more likely based on out-of-date thoughts, feelings and memories that no longer serve you. This is the kind of supportive story you’ll benefit from hearing as you begin to create the impact you need to position yourself for seniority.

What would you call your new story? If you’d like some help to re-write your own story and then tell others about it so you can position yourself for seniority, you might want to take a look at The Visible Leadership Programme 

I’m Susan Ritchie and I can help you to position yourself for seniority. You can read my books, attend my (virtual) workshops or work with me on the Visible Leadership Programme.

If you’d like to be a better, stronger leader, and have a happier, more fulfilling career, Click Here To Email Me 

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Cultivating leadership courage means more career success, less career chaos

Opportunities are around us all the time, but it’s  a rare individual that truly seizes them.

Mostly, we’ll spend too long fussing over making a decision (not to be confused with the real and proper work of weighing things up of course), then fussing over whether it’s for us and fussing over whether we’re for it.

There’s a power that comes from developing the courage to seize opportunities.

I read an excellent article this week, You Need To Practice Being Your Future Self  

In it, Peter Bregman argues that we’re so focussed on what’s going on for us right now, that we fail to consider what and who we might need to be in a future role.

Instead of being so busy with the day job, he advises that “you need to spend time on the future even when there are more important things to do in the present.”

This of course presents us with a potential conflict – how do we do the ‘day job’ while preparing for the future one? Bregman writes “Sometimes you need to be irresponsible with your current challenges in order to make real progress on your future self…you may not end up with an empty inbox…you may not please everyone.”

He goes on, “The wildly important stuff that never gets done because there’s not time or it’s not urgent or it’s too hard or risky or terrifying…” These are things we should work on if we want to move forward.

Years ago, I sat opposite a client as she reflected how a colleague booked himself into the Head of Department’s diary regularly. She didn’t know what they talked about, but he was on first name terms with their Senior Leadership Team, positioning himself for a senior role – and she wasn’t. Another academic client  pondered how her colleague managed to find time to take on high profile, visible projects when she was bogged down by the necessities of the day job. He was talking at conferences, building connections – and she wasn’t.

Sitting back and watching someone else walk off with the prize hurts.

The price we pay is resentment, discouragement and deflation. The price of ‘yes mode’ can be high – maybe try doing it differently? Try Disabling Yes Mode in a way that will help you feel in control.

Cultivating the courage to put yourself and your career first can seem daunting, selfish and un-team-like behaviour. The truth is, we’ll never be noticed from the comfort zone of the day job, and understanding what we need to have, be and do to move our careers onwards and upwards is non-negotiable; success follows.

It’s a habit you can get into, as Charlotte Sweeney shared with me in my second book, Strategies for Being Visible,  “Throughout my career I’ve thought about two things. As soon as I’ve got one job, I’ve been focussed on doing it brilliantly – and then, what’s my next job?”

If the word irresponsible grates, how about considering your priorities – and making yourself and your own career top of the list? It’s not your job to please everyone and an empty email inbox is a displacement activity for the challenge and fear of stepping up and out. Don’t get too bogged down in the weeds that you lose sight of the green shoots around you.

It’s safe for you to have opportunities and for others not to have them.

We need hold a vision of our future and be courageous in what we say yes and what we say no to. There will be some wriggle room for us all if we really want to find it, so find it.

If you need some help cultivating your courage, this post On Confidence, may help.

I’m Susan Ritchie and I can help you to position yourself for seniority. You can read my books, attend my (virtual) workshops or work with me on the Visible Leadership Programme.

If you’d like to be a better, stronger leader, and have a happier, more fulfilling career, Click Here To Email Me  

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You can learn to lead with more impact in challenging times

How can you help support your team through challenge?

If you already lead a remote or global team, the chances are that you’ve probably got everything in place that you need in normal circumstances, and those processes work well for you. However, in times of challenge, things change, and you may need to support your team emotionally more than ever. This may require a different approach.

I’ve been helping clients with this over the last few weeks and here are some practical ideas and thoughts for you if you already lead a remote or global team and need some ideas for adapting your leadership to be more people-focused and emotionally supportive.

Put your own oxygen mask on first

One of your roles in times of crisis or challenge will be to remain calm and reassure your team. This will be tricky if you’re in the grip of fear or panic yourself. Ensure that you have support – someone to contact and help you work through your own emotions and processes them. Make sure that you are doing everything you can to look after yourself – the message below sums this up

Gauge the needs of your team

How are people feeling and what do you think they need? What’s your sense of the challenges some may be facing? What will they need from you? Ensure you know what specific individual challenges may be and be prepared to support those on a case by case basis. Acknowledge how you’re feeling too, but this is not the time to lean on them – you need to get your support from elsewhere.

Signal support for those who need it

Make sure that you know what formal support is in place in your organisation for those who may need it, and be clear how your team can access it.

Communicate more than normal

Be there. Now is the time to show up. Consider how you can do this.

You’ll have your comms processes and systems already set up, but is the frequency adequate at the moment? Do you need to communicate daily? At the beginning and end of the week?  In challenging times, people need more communication, not less, so consider how you can put ‘little and often’ extra processes in place, to make your calm, reassuring presence felt. Your team will want to know that you are there and will look to you for leadership.

Manage what is discussed

Online team meetings where the sole topic of conversation is the current crisis may not be helpful. Your role might be to manage this, acknowledging the situation, but not letting it dominate. Lead as you’d like others to follow – set the tone. Emotions are contagious, so make sure yours is worth catching!

Have a clear message, foster some optimism, manage yourself. Find different approaches to lift the mood – maybe encourage people to share the view of their desk, the view from their window, their favourite mug or  for those in different times-zones, their best pajamas and dressing gowns, with a mug of cocoa? In these times you’re doing what we call in coaching ‘holding a space’ for others.

Be Social

Think about what you can do to encourage some more informal contact between your team members. Can you set up virtual coffees, lunches, end of day/week drinks, using an online platform? While you may not be able to be present at them all, encouraging your team to set these informal networks up if they don’t already do so may provide a lifeline to those who may be feeling isolated

Role-model what you’d like to see – this is your chance to show up and be the leader you’d need if you were in your team’s shoes.

I’m Susan Ritchie, an author, leadership and executive coach and trainer. I specialise in helping emerging leaders position themselves for seniority by through impact, presence and visibility. My second book, Strategies for Being Visible: 14 Profile-Raising Ideas for Emerging Female Leaders is now available as a paperback, an audiobook and for the Kindle reader.

If you’d like to be a better, stronger leader, and have a happier, more fulfilling career, Click Here To Email Me

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You can learn to be more visible, less vulnerable

I’ve written a lot about visibility – in fact my second book, Strategies for Being Visible: 14 Profile-Raising Ideas for Emerging Female Leaders, I provide a detailed plan for how to raise your profile in a way that doesn’t involve you standing on tables and shouting ‘looking at me’. In fact, if you’re an introvert, it’s a plan that you may well benefit from!

Visibility brings vulnerability with it, and I’ve found this to be one of the biggest barriers to people taking the plunge and working on being seen and heard more. Learning to manage those feelings of vulnerability can make all the difference between thinking about being more visible and actually doing something about it.

Those moths may appear from friends, family, colleagues or social media

In my book, one of the first things I talk about is understanding and nurturing your network. One of the reasons for building a great network – apart from having the right people around you to be visible with  – is that it can also help you to strengthen yourself in the face of vulnerability.

Here are 7 ideas for using your network to help you cope with the moths that might flock to your flame – don’t extinguish your flame but learn how to protect and feed it so it burns even more brightly!

1. Surround yourself with people who’ve been where you are and be inspired by their experience. Watch, listen and learn how they have coped when they’ve dealt with moths, and if you’re in a position to, ask them for their best advice or tips to help.

2. Ground yourself with those who have your best interests at heart and want to see you succeed.

3. Choose at least one person who you trust to be completely honest with you, who hold up that mirror to help you see the truth.

4. Prune those connections who leave you feeling diminished by their very presence – get rid of the committee, which I’ve written about here.

5. Talk to others when you have those wobbly moments.

6. Pay attention to the opinions of the right people – ‘it’s not the critic who counts’. I’d recommend reading rising Strong by Brene Brown.

7. Stay in your lane and focus on the road ahead.

DO THE SAME FOR OTHERS

Nurture those closest to you by being thoughtful and having their backs.

If you’d like help to raise your profile and position yourself for seniority, take a look at the Leadership day Retreat programme

I’m Susan Ritchie, an author, leadership and executive coach and trainer. My second book, Strategies for Being Visible: 14 Profile-Raising Ideas for Emerging Female Leaders is now available as a paperback, an audiobook and for the Kindle reader.

If you’d like to be a better, stronger leader, and have a happier, more fulfilling career, Click Here To Email Me   

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Self-leadership is a key skill for success

When things get a little rocky, which let’s face it, happens with a certain regularity for most of us, I’ve found it helpful to remind myself of these 4 Cs, and how important each of them is in our journey forwards. When we develop self-leadership, they’re vital components. They are ideas which have formed the foundations of my life for some years now, stretching right back to my move overseas in 2002.

Here are 4 ideas that you can apply to your own life, whatever your circumstances, both personally and professionally. Getting these right will help you to show up with more presence and impact.

Commitment

When I moved overseas as a single mum with my then 9-year old son, what had seemed like a great idea to begin with, soon became the biggest lesson in positive thinking I’d ever had . Getting off the plane in Brunei, on the island of Borneo in the South China Sea, into a culture that felt completely unfamiliar, thousands of miles away from friends and family, with just myself, my son and four suitcases, suddenly began to hit home.

For the first 6 weeks, I lived out of my suitcase on my bedroom floor, telling myself that if I needed to, I could have us back at the airport in a flash and head back to the UK.

It was the enormous commitment I’d made to our move which kept me going daily. At the end of every day, I’d consciously look for evidence that it was worth staying – and happily I found enough to keep me there. Reminding myself of that commitment was one of the things that helped me to stay afloat during those first choppy weeks.

If you don’t commit to the outcome, you’ll have a hard time committing to the process of whatever it is that you’re going through. Keep your end goal in sight.

I’ve written about commitment before, in this post Why Can’t it be You? The quote I share from Oprah’s book is an excellent example of how unseen forces come to our aid when we fully commit to a cause. And while we’re talking, read the article and digest it – why can’t you learn to change how you show up so that you demonstrate there’s more to you than meets the eye? Why can’t you learn, develop, grow, change?

Consistent

Even when you can’t see immediate results, showing up and keeping going, refusing to be discouraged (and find help and support if you do) and being resilient, are key tools and approaches in playing  the longer game. Most things take longer than you think. Going back into the ring, day after day, and recognising our achievements, changes us and how those around us see us.

Courage

I want you to hear this – you are capable of more than you think, much, much more. Courage gets you started on your journey. Courage keeps you going when you leave that comfort zone and courage helps you to achieve more than most people ever will. Trust me. I’ve helped enough clients to develop this quality in themselves on Leadership Day Retreat packages and the end result is a pretty impressive leader, with lifelong skills for building their own careers and the results of their organisations.

Confidence

I think there’s a cruel irony to life in that in order to gain confidence, we have to do the very things we fear. Confidence is a muscle that builds with use and learning to demonstrate it is a by-product of being committed, consistent and courageous.

I’m Susan Ritchie and I help aspiring C-suite executives to position themselves for seniority. I’ve worked with hundreds of leaders with feelings of self-doubt, frustration and a reluctance to shine, and I’ve helped them to access that leader within. The result? Self-assured, happy high status, visible executives ready to share their message with the world. They’re secure in who they are and what they have to offer – confident, articulate, calm and poised.

One way I do this is with a Leadership Day Retreat programme.

Part 1 is a full day spent with me here in Lincoln, where we unpack everything that’s helping you or hindering you, we explore it, and make a focused plan for moving forward with the tools, techniques and strategies to help.

Part 2 is the implementation phase. I support you for three months as you put everything into practice.

If this interests you, get in touch and let’s chat. You can email me at hello@susanritchie.co.uk

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You can learn to lead yourself

Here are five thoughts on how to banish the committee from your life (whatever your circumstances):

1. Allow yourself thinking time to consider important decisions or issues – and I mean really think them over, rather than panic. Weigh up the pros and cons. Write them out. Go for a walk and talk aloud to yourself. What aren’t you seeing? What are you focussing on too closely? What’s in your peripheral vision that you’re currently blind to?

2. Trust your gut. What does your own intuition say? Plenty of people may have opinions, but there’s a deep, innate knowledge and intelligence inside yourself. Listen to it.

3. Gather a circle of trusted confidants (and limit their number) who you can safely run ideas by if you need a sounding board. Ideally these will be people skilled in asking you questions that help you to reflect and think, rather than telling you what to do.

4. Share wisely. Not everyone has to know everything about you all the time. You get to control your narrative. Some subjects aren’t up for discussion.

5. Just because someone is close to you, doesn’t mean their opinion is any more valid or relevant or right, than a random strangers might be. You don’t HAVE to listen/accept because the other person is your mum, or partner! You can read about a useful model to help you understand this idea here, Managing Your People Pleasing 

If you’d like some help with this, then consider a Leadership Day Retreat with me.

In a nutshell – one whole day spent with me here in Lincolnshire (lovely hotel location, great lunch, my expertise all to yourself, copies of my books and a journal), then follow up support including coaching sessions via Zoom and email support. You can read more details about the days here Leadership Retreat Days.

I’m Susan Ritchie, an author, leadership and executive coach and trainer. My second book, Strategies for Being Visible: 14 Profile-Raising Ideas for Emerging Female Leaders is now available as a paperback, an audiobook and for the Kindle reader.

If you’d like to be a better, stronger leader, and a happier, more fulfilling career, Click Here To Email Me   

The post Leading Your Life Or Living It By Committee? appeared first on Susan Ritchie.

Asking questions helps you to lead with impact

Struggling to make an impact as a leader or an emerging leader? Sometimes, a well-placed question can make all the difference. One of my biggest mistakes as a leader was in thinking I needed to know everything – you can read about that in The Best Question I Never Asked.

Keen to avoid the same mistake, or create some impact in the right way?

Ask…

1. To be involved

2. To be given a chance

3. To be mentored

4. For help

5.  For advice

6. How you can help

7. What’s the reasoning for this…

8. What might happen if…

9. To mentor someone else

10. For feedback

11. To buy someone a coffee

12. Someone to to an event

13. What’s possible?

14. What do we really need to know?

15. What’s really going on?

16. Why does this matter?

17. What’s the next move?

18. Who would be good to know?

19. Who else can help?

20. What’s my contribution here?

What other questions would you add? What’s worked well for you?

And if you’d like to take your questioning a little – or a lot – further, then you may enjoy reading Disabling ‘Yes’ mode 

If you’re a mid-career emerging leader who wants to lift your performance and climb the ladder this year, then I can help. The Visible Leadership Programme is designed with you in mind.

I’m Susan Ritchie, an author, leadership and executive coach and trainer. My second book, Strategies for Being Visible: 14 Profile-Raising Ideas for Emerging Female Leaders is now available as a paperback, an audiobook and for the Kindle reader.

If you’d like to be a better, stronger leader, and a happier, more fulfilling career, Click Here To Email Me  

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