Women build relationships naturally by getting to know people, offering to help, listening to problems and giving advice, but do we optimize these relationships? When it comes to advancing our careers, we have to consider who can help us the most in achieving our personal vision. And we have to get strategic about who and how we ask for that help. It’s necessary to get really good at what we do, but careers are not built on talent, expertise or even hard work alone, they are the result of a mutual exchange of benefits and we must learn the art of leverage to get ahead.

Reconnect to your personal vision.

First, connect back to your personal vision and ask yourself what specifically you need to bring that vision to life? Typically this will involve developing a certain degree of expertise at something or having access to people, resources or experiences as a way of furthering your career. What exactly do you need and from whom? This is a mindset that you need to develop early and tend to often. As you advance in your career, what and who you need to be successful will naturally evolve. You have to stay on top of that and not fall into the ‘inevitability of success’ that I explore with so many of the women I coach. Women who are ambitious put their heads down and do the hard work to get ahead. And that will get you so far, but to really rise in an organization, you have to do more.

Know exactly what you are asking for and who to ask.

Once you can clearly articulate what it is you are asking for and you know why it matters to you (and don’t underestimate the difficulty of this first step!)  you can then start to map out who can help. There has to be a reason, however, for someone to help you and you will need to get very good at articulating what is in it for them as well.

Inside of the company where you work, this should be pretty easy.  Because your success is the company’s success. Still, when you ask for a new opportunity at work, a resource, a promotion or additional budget, you must be clear on how what you are asking for will impact the business. If you can’t clearly explain that, figure it out first.  Find people on the inside who will want to support you because it will reflect well on them.

Next, you need to begin to look outside of the organization and at your network generally. If you develop a particular set of skills that are marketable, useful, and help build businesses, who else might find your development of that skill set useful?  You will be successful in enlisting allies, supporters and promoters when they understand how your success connects to their bigger picture. 

Identify allies and potential allies.

When I coach people, I ask them to start by mapping their existing network of allies. By allies, I mean those who enable you to achieve your personal vision. I suggest categorizing them into two types: direct allies and indirect allies.

Direct allies are those who actively promote you and make your work visible. Inside of your organization, they use and rely on your skills, they already give you more work, and they are clear promoters of what you do well. Map out who your direct allies are and then ask yourself, how do you strengthen your relationship with those allies? Thank them for their support, and continue to ensure that they are also receiving some benefit from your successful performance. Tending to existing relationships is critical!

Indirect allies also play an important role in bringing your vision to life. They are connectors who know you and know about your work. They have access to additional opportunities that help you grow and develop. And often, without even being asked, they promote you. Once again, do not underestimate why they do this. Maybe they are just being kind; but it is likely that there are other reasons.

People connect people because they are generous (for which they should be thanked), because they see you as someone who has real talent and can make a contribution (for which they will want to be appreciated), because they really believe in your mission or who you are (for which they will expect you to have an impact and you should let them know when you do) or because you have something they need now or may need in the future (for which you should be willing to trade).

In order to find out what your indirect allies care about, ask. Learn about them first so that you can begin to explore possibilities for reciprocity. What is it that you know that could help them? Who is in your network that could possibly benefit them?

Never underestimate your connections, or the connections of your connections. When I was coaching MBA students at the University of Oxford, I would ask them what they were working on and who they were inspired by? In one case, I had a student who told me about someone who inspired him. I had never met that person, but he was a thought leader and the student had read one of his books. I reached out to one of my contacts who knew him and I made an introduction. This person became a mentor to the student I was coaching.

Stay focused on the purpose of the network.

In leveraged relationships, keep focused on the purpose of the network: the opportunity to enhance your reputation, visibility or learn a new skill. In establishing leverage, your purpose is front and center and clearly stated. Don’t waste your time or the valuable time of others unless you know explicitly what it is you want from the connection. Keep focused on what you need to promote yourself and what you can offer in return.  Be clear about why it is in their interest to build a relationship with you and what might that offer them going forward.

Leveraging relationships takes courage. But if we ground our requests in a larger purpose, and connect it to our values, then we’re asking not just for our benefit but for the benefit of all.

Sometimes the women I coach ask, “are you saying fake it till I make it?”  Absolutely not!  For one, I never coach people to lie.  That just creates anxiety.  And two, it doesn’t actually change the way we feel about ourselves.  In fact, it keeps us stuck in the false belief system that we can’t say we can do something until we’ve actually done it.  Instead, we must learn to look for and acknowledge every bit of confirming evidence that we have the skills necessary to do the jobs we are seeking.

For many men, confidence gives them the edge to put themselves out there and seek promotions far earlier than women.  In their book The Confidence Code, Katty Kay & Claire Shipman talk about a Hewlett Packard study which showed that women apply for promotions only after they believe they meet 100% of the job qualifications, whereas men apply when they only meet 60%.  Tell the truth, have you ever applied for a job for which you are only 60% qualified? 

Talk about your abilities.  

Advancing in our careers requires speaking confidently about our abilities because, as Ohio State University professor Richard Petty has said, “Confidence is the stuff that turns thought into action.”  We may hesitate to suggest a course of action that we are not positive will succeed, and we certainly may hesitate to ask to be promoted to a job that requires skills we’ve not yet honed.  Putting ourselves out there before we’re sure we’re ready takes courage.  But once we do, we have the opportunity to grow, develop and improve.  Yes, failure is a possibility; but as one of my colleagues says, FAIL stands for first attempt in learning.  

The first goal in coaching for promotion is to understand that we women must build our confidence in order to get ahead.  And we do that by acting with the belief that we can learn to do things and further develop our talents. Carol Dwek, author of the book Mindset and a Stanford psychologist, explains that the most successful and fulfilled people in life believe most in their ability to learn and improve.  And, indeed, it is true.  The major factor in whether people achieve expertise is purposeful engagement not innate talent. 

Sure, we can try to figure out where this all began and why.  There are lots of well researched reasons why women doubt their abilities, suffer from imposter syndrome, fall into the perfection trap and struggle to stop ruminating over what went wrong.  There is research that shows boys and girls are still reprimanded and rewarded differently as they grow, therefore reinforcing certain behaviors that do not serve women.  

And we can go to therapy.  Incidentally, one of the ways I describe the difference between coaching and therapy (and believe me, I’ve had my share of both!) is that coaching is about looking forward and therapy is about looking back.  My therapists and I have looked at all kinds of choices I made during my childhood and adolescence (okay, who am I kidding, and well into my twenties and thirties) that may have served me once upon a time, but no longer do.  Understanding why they seemed like, and maybe were, intelligent choices at the time is kind of useful.  But more useful is really knowing that what got me here won’t be get me there.  And in coaching, I help my clients develop confidence.  Because that is what we need to get ahead.

Build your self-efficacy.

Self-efficacy is our belief in our ability to execute the behaviors necessary to achieve success in a given situation.  I like to talk about self-efficacy because it doesn’t mean a belief that what we do will be perfect.  It’s about a belief in our ability to execute. 

To build self-efficacy, I help my coaching clients retrain their brains.  Our brains are not hard-wired like computers, but are more like playdough. It’s what we call neuroplasticity.  This means the ingrained or automatic thinking “I can’t do that” can be retrained.  So that when faced with an opportunity, our automatic response is, “I haven’t done that yet, but I certainly have the skills to do it!” 

Here’s a simple coaching exercise I do:

Go through all of the positive feedback that you’ve received. Notice that while you may not be an expert in the exact thing you are asking to be promoted to do, the feedback makes clear that you have some serious strengths. Look for data about your raw skills and talents: a core intelligence, an analytical mind, a clear communicator, a tactical problem solver, an ability to read the room, to name a few.  If you don’t have good written feedback, then ask those you trust “when am I at my best?” 

Using this data, craft four or five really strong sentences that you believe are true about you and that emphasize your strengths. Make them clear and concise. When you’re done, put them on a clean sheet of paper and commit them to memory. Repeat them. Seven times a day for seven weeks.

I did this with my coach when I first started facilitating retreats.  I used to plan for days in advance. I would read, write, outline, interview and once I had a plan I would call my mentors for advice. The retreat would come and not much would proceed to plan because when people do deep work, you never know what might happen. While the pre-work that I did served me in learning (I read more, listened more, and connected more), even I had to admit that there came a point where all of this preparation was of diminishing returns. I realized I was trying to be perfect and expertly predict everything that might happen.  But that was impossible.  I was at the sixteenth decimal point when I shouldn’t even have been doing math.

My own coach helped me construct six simple statements that, while hard for me to believe at first (I found them embarrassing, self-promoting and it actually even made me cry to say them aloud), I knew they were true.  They were based on feedback from others.  And I also knew that my believing them would make me a more confident facilitator, which in turn would serve the people l was working with.   When you say something seven times a day for seven weeks, you retrain your brain.

Move courageously towards confidence.

This exercise changed my life and it has changed the nature of what people say about me as a facilitator. My self-efficacy led to greater confidence.  My confidence led to action.  My action led to stronger skills development.  And this all continues to lead to much more work.