Women's Leadership Success

Sabrina Braham MA MFT PPC
  • 4.9 (94)
  • Careers
  • Updated Biweekly

Since 1989, Women Business Leadership Skills and Career Development Advice. Interviews with Successful Women CEOs, Managers and Entrepreneurs to Help You Influence People, Improve Performance, Get Promoted, Increase Earnings and Enhance Your Job/Life Balance

  1. 2d ago

    Get Promoted Faster: Dolphin Strategy Guide 2026 | WLS 169

    Get Promoted Faster: How the Dolphin Strategy Took One Stuck Supervisor to VP — and What It Means for Women Leaders Last updated: September 26, 2026 Trusted by leaders at Stanford University, Ernst & Young, Autodesk, MGM Grand Resorts, and Farmers Insurance Executive Summary: Have you been told you "don't have the personality" for promotion? Sabrina Braham shares how her coaching client Martin, stuck five years as supervisor, reached VP using five moves: decode feedback, recruit dolphins, build your voice, make the Half-Point Ask, and volunteer for visibility. Use them to get promoted faster. Quick Takeaways: Vague feedback like "personality" isn't a verdict — translate it into observable behaviors. Recruit "dolphins": allies in the room who back your ideas when you speak. Employees with sponsors are twice as likely to be promoted (McKinsey & LeanIn.Org, 2025). Ask your manager for a 1–10 rating, then ask what earns one more half point. Martin: five stuck years, then manager in six months — then director and VP. Jump to: Martin's Story · Why You're Stuck · The 5 Moves · The Results · Action Plan · Mistakes to Avoid · FAQ · 2026 Trends As an executive leadership coach with over 30 years of experience (MA, MFT, PCC) and host of the Women's Leadership Success Podcast — on air since 2007 and ranked in the top 1.5% of podcasts worldwide — I hear one question more than any other: how do I get promoted faster when I'm already doing a great job? The question is urgent. By September 10, layoffs.fyi counted more than 128,000 tech layoffs in 2026 — already more than all of 2025. And McKinsey and LeanIn.Org's Women in the Workplace 2025 found only about half of companies still prioritize women's advancement. Good work alone won't help you get promoted faster. In Episode 169, the tables turned. My co-founder and executive producer, Tim Warren, interviewed me about Martin — a Fortune 500 supervisor told he "didn't have the personality" to be a manager. He believed it. Then, step by step, he proved it wrong. His story is the clearest map I know to get promoted faster, especially if you're the only one like you in the room. The Feedback That Kept Martin Stuck for Five Years At Martin's company, supervisors usually became managers within a year. Martin had been a supervisor for five. His numbers were strong, his people loved him, and his leaders said he was doing a great job. Then came the "but": he just didn't have the personality to be a manager. Martin grew up speaking English as a second language, was the first in his family to attend college, and graduated with honors. None of that protected him. When someone with authority labels you, you tend to believe it. I know that feeling. I was raised in a blue-collar family, and when someone with authority said I had a flaw, I assumed it was true. It took me years to unlearn. If you've absorbed a label like Martin's, take this from his story: the label can be wrong, and you can change the evidence behind it. His question to me was painful: could he change his personality to move up? Why Talented Leaders Don't Get Promoted Faster in 2026 Martin's situation isn't rare. A strong performer gets fuzzy feedback, loses confidence, goes quiet in the rooms where promotions are shaped — and stalls. Here's why that pattern makes it harder to get promoted faster right now. The "broken rung" is still broken For every 100 men promoted to first-level manager, only 93 women are promoted (McKinsey & LeanIn.Org, 2025). That first step — the one Martin was stuck on — shapes every level above it. The sponsorship gap is real At entry level, 31% of women have a sponsor versus 45% of men, and employees with sponsors are about twice as likely to be promoted. The finding that matters most: when women and men get equal career support, the gap in promotion ambition disappears. The problem isn't drive. It's backing. Being "the only" changes how you're heard Roughly one in five women are often the only woman in the room, more for senior and technical women (LeanIn.Org). Being "the only" tends to make people cautious about sharing ideas — less visibility when you need more. The cost of waiting In 2026's market, "I'll speak up once I feel confident" is a risky plan. To get promoted faster — or stand out after a layoff — treat visibility as a skill you practice. Ready to get promoted faster — before you feel fully ready? Leading Before You're Ready — a practical playbook for leaders stepping into bigger roles. Inside, you'll find: Language for speaking up with confidence before you feel fully ready Ways to build trust fast with the decision-makers who shape your next role A framework for positioning yourself as promotion-ready — actively, not passively GET THE COMPLIMENTARY PLAYBOOK The Dolphin Promotion Framework™: 5 Moves to Get Promoted Faster Here's exactly what Martin and I worked on. None of it required a new personality — just consistent, specific action. Each move helps you get promoted faster on its own; together they compound. Move 1: Decode the vague feedback "Personality" is nearly useless feedback. What does it even mean? So we started at ground zero: what would Martin need to do differently to be seen as a manager? The answer was concrete. In meetings with peers or senior leaders, Martin went quiet. That silence, and the confidence gap behind it, was what his leaders called "personality." Once we named the behavior, we could change it. Success metric: The feedback becomes two or three observable behaviors — your first step to get promoted faster. Move 2: Recruit your dolphins Picture a shipwreck survivor clinging to boards while a shark circles. When dolphins surround a person in the water, sharks tend to stay away — and dolphins have been reported guiding swimmers to shore. A dolphin at work is someone in the room who has your back, believes you're capable, and supports you when you speak up: A mentor shares knowledge and advice, often in private. A sponsor uses their power and influence to advocate for you — often when you're not in the room. A dolphin is in the meeting with you, backing your idea in real time. Far fewer leaders have dolphins than mentors. Lean In reports that high-potential women often have more mentors than men, yet mentorship didn't correlate with promotion. If you want to get promoted faster, real-time backing does what advice can't. How to find your dolphins: Look for a friend in your key meetings, or someone who often shares your viewpoint. If no one comes to mind, hold one-on-ones, share the idea you want to raise, and see who's aligned. Then make a simple ask. Try This Now (3 minutes): Pick the idea you most want to raise next meeting, then send one colleague: "Here's an idea I'd like to share Thursday. Would you be willing to support it when I bring it up?" That's the whole ask. Move 3: Build your speaking muscle — and rehearse your one main point The most cost-effective confidence builder I know is Toastmasters. Clubs are in nearly every U.S. city, dues are modest (often around $20 a month), and the program works. At a district meeting years ago, I was struck by the room: real confidence and presence, built through structured practice. Martin joined, and it helped him learn to speak up. The second half is rehearsal. You usually know the agenda and what would help your team. Pick your main point and practice it out loud. What surprises people: the CEOs I work with still rehearse their main points before meetings. Success metric: One prepared point, delivered weekly. Small reps like this are how you get promoted faster. Move 4: Make the Half-Point Ask With practice behind him, Martin went directly to the leaders who had formed the wrong impression. Most people skip this step, yet it's the move that helps you get promoted faster than any other. Here's the conversation: State the goal. "I'd like to be promoted to manager. What's helping, and what do I need to do differently?" Ask for a number. "On leading my team, from 1 to 10, what would you give me?" Ask for the half point. If it's a 7: "What would I need to do to be a 7.5?" Always just a half point. Schedule the follow-up. "Could I check back in a few weeks?" Why a half point? It's achievable, and it pulls your manager into problem-solving mode. Once they give a number, they become invested in your progress. There's a psychological bonus. It's why you notice red cars everywhere after buying one: the brain's attention filter, the reticular activating system, scans for what it's primed to find. After the Half-Point Ask, your manager watches for your improvement. Success metric: You have a baseline number from at least one decision-maker and a follow-up date on the calendar. Move 5: Volunteer for visibility Martin also began joining committees. On one sat five vice presidents — and Martin, a newly promoted manager. He practiced his idea for turning a project around. In the meeting, the VPs talked over him toward a decision. So Martin said, "I have an idea." The room stopped. The lead VP asked to hear it. Martin explained it in detail. When he finished, the room went silent. His heart sank. I blew it, he thought. Then the senior vice president said: "Good idea, Martin. Let's do that." That was the game changer. Rehearsal plus visibility had become executive presence — and the surest way to get promoted faster is to be seen doing the next job. What Happened Next: From Supervisor to VP After five stuck years, here's how Martin's trajectory changed: About 6 months: promoted to manager — roughly a 30% raise. About 4 months after that meeting: director. Two to three years later: promoted to vice president, with stock options, earning roughly double his supervisor pay. What moves me most is what didn't change: Martin kept his kindness and has mentored many others to promotion. His words: "I wish I would have contacted you sooner. It was a ga

  2. Sep 14

    Women Leaders Psychological Safety: Real Feedback Guide

    Women Leaders Psychological Safety: How Kerry Siggins Turned "You're Erratic" Into Her Best Leadership Lesson Last updated: September 3, 2026 Trusted by leaders at Stanford University, Ernst & Young, Autodesk, MGM Grand Resorts, and Farmers Insurance Executive Summary: The word that stung most in StoneAge CEO Kerry Siggins' toughest feedback moment was the word that was true. Here's her litmus test for real feedback, how she builds psychological safety without losing accountability, and how women leaders navigate the double bind. Quick Takeaways: If feedback "stings," there's probably truth in it worth examining Psychological safety and accountability aren't opposites — done right, they build each other The double bind is real: women who are direct risk being called aggressive Influence matters more than being right — and it changes how feedback lands U.S. employee engagement hit a decade-low of 31% in early 2026 Jump to:The Feedback Story · Spotting Valid Feedback ·Safety vs. Accountability · The Double Bind ·Action Plan · FAQ As an executive leadership coach with over 30 years of experience (MA, MFT, PCC) working with Fortune 50–1000 companies, I've watched brilliant women leaders freeze in two different ways: some can't tell which feedback to take seriously and which to release, and others have been burned so badly by being called "too direct" that they've gone quiet. Both patterns erode psychological safety — theirs, and their team's. This is Part Two of my conversation with Kerry Siggins, CEO of StoneAge and author of Talk With Trust: How to Own Feedback, Spark Growth, and Build Stronger Teams. In Part One, we walked through her SHARES framework for difficult conversations. Here, we go deeper into the moment that started it all — the day a trusted colleague told her she was "erratic" — and what she's learned since about telling real feedback from noise, building psychological safety without losing accountability, and the double bind that so many women leaders still navigate every day. The Feedback That Almost Cost Kerry Siggins Her COO — And Changed Her Leadership Kerry had spent a year having what she thought were deep, honest conversations with her COO. Then, in a discussion about his role and growth path, it came out all at once: "You think you're this inspiring CEO who disrupts the industry, but really what you are is erratic, and you're really hard to work for. You're the problem." Kerry's first instinct was to fire him. She paused instead — because, as she told me, "I don't want to react in the moment." That pause is the whole story. Kerry went home, sat with the feedback, and asked herself a simple question: what's true about this? She landed on one word — erratic — and traced it back to something real: her fast pace and love of new ideas could look, from the outside, like constant direction-changing. She decided, in that moment, to become a "cool, calm, and collected, unflappable leader." It changed how she led. It also cost her the relationship — the way the feedback was delivered damaged the trust between them beyond repair, and her COO eventually left the company. Both things were true at once: the feedback was a gift, and the delivery broke something. That tension is exactly why psychological safety matters — not as comfort, but as the structure that lets hard truths get said before they explode. How to Tell Valid Feedback From Noise Kerry's litmus test is disarmingly simple: if it stings, there's probably some truth to it. She described being called "disingenuous" by someone recently and letting it go completely — because it didn't sting. She knows who she is on that dimension. But "erratic" stung, because some part of her recognized it. That sting is data. The follow-up question matters just as much: is this feedback about who I am, or about someone else's perception and unmet need? "Just because something hits your identity," Kerry said, "doesn't mean that person is right or wrong — it just means they're seeing things differently." Her advice for women leaders receiving feedback that challenges their identity: get curious, ask for examples, and then decide. "Do you want to be right, or do you want to be accurate?" Accuracy requires asking questions. Being right just requires defending your position. She also named something every leader has lived: most of what reaches you has already been filtered. The brain can only process a tiny fraction of available information, and the person giving you feedback is filtering it further through their own fear of your reaction. The fix is direct: ask "what are you not saying right now?" and genuinely invite the rest. Psychological Safety vs. Accountability: Why They're Not Opposites Most leaders treat psychological safety and accountability as a tradeoff — soft versus firm, safe versus serious. Kerry rejects that framing entirely. "There can be accountability in how you're addressing any kind of challenge through dialogue," she said. Her practice: after a hard conversation, put recurring check-ins on the calendar — not as a punishment, but as a standing space to talk about progress, struggles, and wins. "My manager really cares about me" and "I'm being held accountable" become the same sentence, not opposite ones. Accountability only becomes destructive to psychological safety when it's used as a weapon instead of a rhythm. This is the same territory I mapped out recently in a LinkedIn post on the three pillars of trust — and two of them apply directly here. Trust isn't built in one big moment. It's built in the small moments people learn they can count on you. — Sabrina Braham, MA, MFT, PCC Authenticity breaks when a leader hides a mistake to protect their image instead of admitting when they're wrong — exactly what Kerry avoided by sitting with "erratic" instead of dismissing it. And reliability breaks when accountability only shows up when something goes wrong instead of on a consistent rhythm — which is precisely why Kerry's recurring check-ins work: the consistency itself is what makes accountability feel like care instead of a threat. The Double Bind: When Direct Reads as Aggressive I asked Kerry directly: women leaders often face a double bind — direct enough to be respected reads as aggressive; warm enough to be liked reads as weak. How do you navigate it? Her answer came from experience: a fellow board member once told her, in front of a long-time customer, that she was "aggressive" and an "overachiever" — framed as a flaw. "There's no way he would have ever said that to a man," she said. This isn't just anecdote. New 2026 research out of INSEAD confirms the bind is still fully intact: promotion-focused language — bold, action-oriented, opportunity-framed — tends to clash with gendered expectations for women leaders, while prevention-focused, risk-aware language can reinforce perceptions of low competence, a tension that gets sharper under crisis or high pressure. Separate research on women serving as corporate board directors found something even more troubling: the constant work of switching between "warmth" tactics and "competence" tactics to avoid backlash is itself a driver of the disproportionate burnout many women in leadership report — the double bind isn't just unfair, it's exhausting in a measurable way. Kerry's shift wasn't to soften herself — it was to change what she was optimizing for. "I changed my perspective: do I want to be right, or do I want to influence?" When someone in a meeting takes her idea and repeats it as their own, she no longer takes it personally. "That's a great idea, let's build on that" gets her further than proving the idea was hers first. Influence, not being right, became her north star — and it's a reframe available to any woman leader caught in the double bind. You don't have to shrink to be trusted. The FREE Leading Before You're Ready Playbook gives you language and a framework for navigating exactly this — leading with directness and building the trust that gets you promoted. GET THE FREE PLAYBOOK  Implement This Week: Building Psychological Safety Without Losing Accountability (10 minutes) Recall the last piece of feedback that stung. Write down exactly why it stung — what did it touch that you believe about yourself? (15 minutes) Separate what's accurate from what's someone else's unmet expectation. Ask: is this something I need to work on, or a relationship I need to manage? (5 minutes) Identify one relationship where you suspect you're only getting filtered information. Plan to ask directly: "What are you not telling me?" (20 minutes) Put one recurring check-in on the calendar with a direct report — framed around progress and support, not correction. (This week) Bring one piece of feedback to your own team: "I'm working on X, and I'd love one honest thing I could do better." Modeling receptivity is the fastest way to build a feedback culture. (Ongoing) The next time you're told you're "too direct," ask for a specific example before deciding whether to change anything. Success metric: you leave with clarity, not just a feeling. Common Mistakes Leaders Make With Feedback and Safety Treating every sting as truth. Not all feedback that hurts is accurate — some reflects the other person's ego or fear, not your reality. Examine it before you internalize it. Defending instead of asking. Over-explaining your intentions in the moment shuts down the other person's willingness to keep talking, even if it doesn't feel defensive to you. Using accountability as punishment. If check-ins only happen when something goes wrong, people stop seeing them as safe — and stop bringing you the truth early. Softening yourself to avoid the double bind. Shrinking your directness doesn't resolve the bind — it just trades one cost for another, and the research suggests the constant self-regulation itself carries a burnout cost. Shift toward i

  3. Aug 27

    Women Leaders Difficult Conversations: The SHARES Framework Kerry Siggins Uses to Build Trust

    Last updated: August 27, 2026 Trusted by leaders at Stanford University, Ernst & Young, Autodesk, MGM Grand Resorts, and Farmers Insurance Executive Summary: Most women leaders avoid difficult conversations to protect relationships — and that avoidance is what actually destroys trust. StoneAge CEO Kerry Siggins built the six-step SHARES framework after a piece of brutal feedback changed her leadership. Here's exactly how it works. Quick Takeaways: Difficult conversations delayed almost always get harder, not easier, over time The SHARES framework has six steps you can prepare in under ten minutes Organizations with regular feedback see 14.9% lower turnover rates Wanting to "be right" is the single biggest killer of workplace trust Feedback without a credible next step leaves people hopeless, not motivated Jump to: Why It Happens · The SHARES Framework · Examples · Action Plan · FAQ As an executive leadership coach with over 30 years of experience (MA, MFT, PCC) working with Fortune 50–1000 companies, I hear the same confession from brilliant, accomplished women leaders almost every week: "I know I need to have this conversation. I just keep putting it off." If you've been carrying a difficult conversation you haven't had yet — with a direct report, a peer, a boss, even a spouse — you are in very good company, and it is costing you more than you think. On this episode of the Women's Leadership Success Podcast, I sat down with Kerry Siggins, CEO of StoneAge (an employee-owned manufacturer of high-pressure water jetting equipment) and author of the new book Talk With Trust: How to Own Feedback, Spark Growth, and Build Stronger Teams. Kerry built her career on hard conversations — including one that nearly ended her leadership before it began. What she learned from it became the SHARES framework, a six-step system for women leaders navigating difficult conversations without torching the relationship in the process. Take the 2-minute survey at WomensLeadershipSuccess.com/survey Why Women Leaders Avoid Difficult Conversations — And What It Actually Costs Nobody avoids a hard conversation because they're lazy. Women leaders avoid difficult conversations because they're afraid of the consequence: a damaged relationship, an angry reaction, a reputation for being "too much." As Kerry put it on the show, "We're all not having a conversation that we know we need to have because we're afraid of the consequences." The problem is that the consequence of silence is almost always worse than the consequence of speaking. The research backs this up. Recent workplace data shows organizations with regular employee feedback see 14.9% lower turnover, while highly engaged teams — the kind built through honest dialogue — report 21% greater profitability (Careertrainer.ai, 2026). On the trust side, the numbers are sobering: employer trust fell to 76% in the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer, and a 21-point gap now separates how much executives trust their organizations (91%) versus how much individual contributors do (70%). Every unspoken conversation widens that gap. Kerry's own turning point came from a conversation she didn't get to control. Her COO — her right-hand operational partner — had been quietly building resentment for a year. It came out in a blowup: "You think you're this inspiring CEO who disrupts the industry, but really what you are is erratic, and you're really hard to work for." Kerry's instinct was to fire him on the spot. Instead, she went home and sat with it. That single piece of painful, poorly-delivered feedback became the foundation for Talk With Trust — and for the SHARES framework she now teaches leaders everywhere. Your team is asking themselves this question constantly, whether they say it out loud or not: can I trust you? I broke this down recently on LinkedIn into three pillars — and it's the exact groundwork that makes a framework like SHARES actually work, instead of just sounding good on paper. Trust isn't built in one big moment. It's built in the small moments people learn they can count on you. — Sabrina Braham, MA, MFT, PCC Notice how closely this maps to what goes wrong in most difficult conversations. Performance trust breaks when someone overpromises or makes excuses instead of owning a miss. Authenticity trust breaks when someone says what people want to hear instead of what's true, or hides a mistake to protect their image — the exact trap Kerry's "articulate your experience" step is built to avoid. And reliability trust breaks when standards shift with someone's mood, or follow-through only happens when it's convenient — which is precisely why the SHARES framework's final step, endorsing a path forward, matters so much: a plan you don't follow through on costs you more trust than no plan at all. This is the same shift Kerry made the day she got called "erratic" — she stopped waiting to feel ready to lead differently and just did it. The SHARES Framework: Six Steps for Difficult Conversations That Build Trust SHARES is a simple, repeatable system women leaders can use to prepare for any hard conversation — a performance issue, a peer conflict, a hard truth with a boss, even a conversation with a spouse. Each letter is a step you move through, in order. S — Specify Your Ideal Outcome Before you say a word, get clear on what you actually want from this conversation. Not "to be right" — an actual outcome. "I want to keep this relationship strong. I want to see behavior change. I want this to build trust, not break it." Kerry's insight: most difficult conversations go sideways because neither person has named the outcome they're going for. Stating it out loud — even to yourself — changes everything that follows. H — Have Your Facts and Feelings Ready Facts alone feel cold and clinical. Feelings alone feel like an ambush. You need both: the observable behavior ("you were late to this meeting") and the impact it had ("we waited, and had to repeat ourselves for you, which was frustrating for the team"). Preparing both in advance also does something else important — it gives you time to calm down before you walk into the room. A — Articulate Your Experience This is the step Kerry calls her favorite, because it's the one most leaders get subtly wrong. "I feel like you don't respect me" still sounds like a judgment wearing an I-statement disguise. Articulating your experience instead sounds like: "I'd like to share my experience of this situation. The story I'm telling myself is that you don't respect me — and I want to check whether that's accurate. What was your experience?" Owning your perspective as a perspective, not a verdict, opens the door instead of slamming it. R — Reflect With Questions and Dialogue The goal of any difficult conversation isn't to be right — it's to be accurate. And the only way to get accurate is to ask questions and actually stay in dialogue. Kerry shared a story of giving tough feedback to an employee who wasn't a direct report. Rather than delivering a verdict, she asked what was going on. What she learned changed the entire conversation — from correction to genuine understanding, without letting go of accountability. E — Endorse a Path Forward Feedback without a credible next step doesn't motivate people — it leaves them hopeless. Kerry described a boss early in her career who told her she wasn't getting in front of decision-makers and to "come back with a plan." She didn't know how to fix it and didn't feel safe saying so. She eventually quit. Now she builds the path forward together with the other person: What are you trying? What's working? What isn't? That collaborative plan is what turns feedback into change — and what creates real accountability without punishment. S — Stay Emotionally Grounded People tend to mirror the emotional energy in the room. If you walk in braced and defensive, you'll get braced and defensive back. Kerry's practice: feel your feet on the floor, take a breath, and become "the mirror that calms people down" rather than the one that escalates them. Staying grounded doesn't mean suppressing emotion in the other person — it means giving them room to have their reaction without matching it. SHARES in Practice: Three Real Application Examples The promotion conversation. A director wants to raise her hand for a VP role but suspects her boss has reservations. Using SHARES, she opens with her outcome ("I want clarity on what would make me ready for this role"), shares the facts of her track record alongside how the uncertainty has felt, then asks reflective questions instead of defending her resume — walking out with an actual development plan instead of vague reassurance. The peer conflict. Two directors keep clashing in cross-functional meetings. Instead of escalating to their shared VP, one initiates a SHARES conversation: names the outcome (a working relationship that doesn't derail meetings), articulates her experience without accusation, and asks what's driving the friction from the other side. They leave with a path forward neither would have found by avoiding the topic. The marriage parallel. As I shared with Kerry on the show, this isn't only a workplace tool. Simply naming the outcome you want at the start of a hard conversation with a spouse — "I want us to leave this in a better place" — changes the entire trajectory before either person says another word. You don't have to figure this out alone. The FREE Leading Before You're Ready Playbook gives you the exact framework to walk into your next leadership conversation — or your next promotion case — with real confidence, even before you feel ready for it. GET THE FREE PLAYBOOK Implement This Week: Your SHARES Action Plan (15 minutes) Name the one difficult conversation you've been postponing. Write down the consequence you're avoiding by not having it — and the consequence of continuing to avoid i

  4. Aug 6

    Workplace Betrayal Recovery: A Leadership Guide 2026

    Executive Summary: Workplace betrayal doesn't just cost you a relationship — it costs you trust in your own judgment. Dr. Debi Silber joins Sabrina Braham to unpack a stage-based path back to confidence, using real coaching stories instead of easy platitudes, so leaders can rebuild what betrayal breaks: themselves. Quick Takeaways: Betrayal breaks trust in yourself, not just in the person who betrayed you Losing your voice in meetings is often a betrayal symptom, not a confidence problem Recovery moves through stages — you can't skip to "just get over it" Your intuition can be rebuilt with a simple daily practice 78% of employees say they trust their employer most of any institution (Edelman, 2026) As an executive leadership coach with over 30 years of experience (MA, MFT, PCC), I've sat across from directors, VPs, and C-suite leaders who could run a board meeting flawlessly and still couldn't shake the feeling that they didn't trust their own read on people anymore. That's what workplace betrayal does. It doesn't announce itself as trauma — it shows up as hesitation, over-checking, and a leader who used to speak up in meetings suddenly going quiet. In this episode of the Women's Leadership Success Podcast, I sit down with Dr. Debi Silber, a holistic psychologist and founder of the PBT Institute, for a workplace betrayal recovery conversation about what betrayal actually does to a leader's confidence, judgment, and career trajectory — and what it takes to rebuild. Why Workplace Betrayal Hits Differently Than Other Career Setbacks Most leadership content treats betrayal like a subcategory of stress or conflict. Dr. Silber's central point in this conversation is that it isn't. A layoff, a missed promotion, even a bad performance review — these are painful, but they don't usually make you question your own perception. Betrayal does. When someone you trusted — a boss, a peer, a mentor — acts against you, the injury isn't just what they did. It's that your internal compass, the one that told you this person was safe, was wrong. That's a different kind of damage, and it requires a different kind of recovery. This distinction matters for women in leadership specifically. Executive presence is built on decisiveness and trust in your own judgment — the "gravitas" that research consistently identifies as the core pillar of how leaders are evaluated for advancement. When betrayal quietly erodes that self-trust, it doesn't just hurt personally. It shows up publicly, in hesitation during exactly the moments a leader is expected to be most sure of herself. A Client Story: When Betrayal Shows Up as "Losing Your Voice" I shared a story with Dr. Debi about a client I'll call Jenny. Jenny was sharp, capable, and well-respected — until a workplace betrayal knocked something loose. She stopped negotiating. She stopped advocating for herself in meetings where she used to be the first voice in the room. From the outside, it looked like a confidence problem. It wasn't. It was betrayal doing exactly what it does: convincing a capable leader that her own instincts couldn't be trusted anymore. The Real Cost: What Betrayal Quietly Takes From Leaders Left unaddressed, workplace betrayal tends to produce three patterns in otherwise strong leaders: Loss of personal power. Leaders stop negotiating for themselves — raises, promotions, credit for their work — because some part of them no longer trusts that speaking up is safe. Self-protective isolation. As Dr. Debi put it in our conversation, many people conclude it's "better to keep everyone at a distance than risk that chance that someone may get close to us again." It feels like self-protection. It functions like a ceiling on your influence. Eroded intuition. The instinct that once flagged red flags in coworkers or bosses goes quiet, because the last time it "worked," it still let you get hurt. Ready to rebuild the confidence workplace betrayal quietly took from you? Download our FREE Leading Before You're Ready playbook and get: ? A framework for rebuilding executive presence when your confidence has taken a hit ? Practical language for reclaiming your voice in meetings within days, not months ? The mindset shift that lets you lead before you feel "fully ready" again ? Tools used with clients who've gone on to earn promotions and six-figure roles Get the Leading Before You're Ready Playbook ? How to Notice You're Still Carrying It One of the most useful moments in this conversation is Dr. Debi's answer to a simple question: how does someone even realize betrayal is still affecting them? Her answer wasn't a checklist of symptoms — it was three places to look: your health, your work, and your relationships. If any of those three areas feels "off" in a way you can't quite explain, unresolved betrayal is worth considering as a root cause, not just stress or burnout. Workplace Betrayal Recovery: Why You Can't Skip to "Just Move On" A recurring frustration Dr. Debi and I discussed is how often people are told to "just get over it" — as though healing from betrayal were a decision instead of a process. In her framework, recovery moves through stages, not a single leap. You can't talk yourself into Stage Four while you're still standing in Stage One. Trying to skip ahead is exactly why so many leaders feel stuck: they've done the mental work of "deciding to move on" without doing the deeper work each stage requires. The practical implication for leaders: if you've told yourself to "get over" a workplace betrayal and it hasn't stuck, that's not a willpower failure. It's a sign you skipped a stage. Rebuilding Trust in Your Intuition Dr. Debi was direct about this: "we have to rebuild trust in our intuition, in our wise inner guide, whatever you want to call it." The practice she described is simple — the next time something feels off with a coworker or a boss, a small signal that something "feels shady," pause and name it instead of dismissing it. Every time you notice the signal and honor it, even in a small, low-stakes way, you rebuild the muscle betrayal weakened. Rebuilding Identity: Keep What You Love, Release the Rest The second piece of the framework is about identity, not just instinct. As Dr. Debi framed it: figure out "what are all the parts you love" about who you are — those come with you into the next chapter. The rest doesn't have to. This isn't about becoming a different person. It's about consciously choosing which parts of your pre-betrayal self are worth rebuilding and which parts were never serving you anyway. That reframe — "you're rewriting a new script" — is the shift from surviving betrayal to authoring what comes after it. A useful self-check Dr. Debi offered: picture the version of you on the other side of this, fully rebuilt. Would she do the things you're currently doing and saying? If not, that gap is exactly where to start. Implement This Week: A 4-Step Action Plan Step 1 (15 minutes): Run the three-area check. Write down one honest observation each about your health, your work, and your relationships right now. Look for the thread connecting them. Step 2 (10 minutes/day): Practice the intuition pause. Once a day, when something feels slightly off in an interaction, pause and name it silently instead of dismissing it. Track how often your read turns out to be accurate. Step 3 (30 minutes): Do the "parts you love" inventory. List the traits, habits, and strengths you want to carry forward. Separately, list what you're willing to release. Keep the first list somewhere visible. Step 4 (ongoing): Use the future-self test. Before a hard conversation or decision this week, ask: would my fully rebuilt self do this? Let the answer guide you, not the fear in the moment. Success metric: By the end of one week, aim to catch and honor your intuition at least five times — even in small moments. That's the rebuild in motion. Common Mistakes Leaders Make After a Workplace Betrayal Mistake 1: Treating it as a confidence problem instead of a trust problem. Confidence-building tactics (power poses, affirmations) don't address a broken intuition. They mask the symptom while the root cause stays untouched. Mistake 2: Trying to "just get over it" without moving through the stages. Deciding to move on isn't the same as doing the work each stage requires. This is why the same hurt tends to resurface in new relationships and new roles. Mistake 3: Isolating as a permanent strategy. Keeping everyone at a distance feels protective short-term. Long-term, it caps your influence, your network, and your visibility for the next promotion. Mistake 4: Trying to heal alone. You don't have to do this without support — a coach, a trusted peer, or a mentor can see the gap between where you are and your future self faster than you can see it yourself. People Also Ask What is workplace betrayal, exactly? Workplace betrayal happens when someone you trusted at work — a manager, peer, or mentor — acts against your interests in a way that violates that trust. It's distinct from ordinary workplace conflict because it damages your trust in your own judgment, not just your view of the other person. How is betrayal different from burnout? Burnout is typically caused by chronic overwork or lack of resources. Betrayal is caused by a specific breach of trust and often produces symptoms — hesitation, isolation, eroded intuition — that can look like burnout but require a different kind of recovery. Can you really rebuild trust in your own intuition? Yes. Dr. Debi Silber describes it as a practice, not an event: consistently noticing and honoring small intuitive signals rebuilds the confidence in your own perception that betrayal damaged. How do I know if I'm still carrying an old workplace betrayal? Look at three areas: your health, your work, and your relationships. Unexplained tension in any of them can be a sign that an old betrayal hasn't fully been

  5. Jul 13

    AI Strategic Thinking Women Executives: 2026 Guide | WLS 165

    Executive Summary AI strategic thinking for women executives is no longer optional — it's the dividing line between leaders who get exposed and those who get elevated. Executive coach Sabrina Braham and author Barry O'Reilly reveal how to build your judgment system, accelerate decisions, and think strategically at the highest level. Quick Takeaways Barry O'Reilly's defining insight: "AI is not going to replace leaders — it's going to expose them." Most executives have never documented their judgment system — and AI makes this gap impossible to hide. Decision velocity + decision advantage are the two metrics separating leaders who accelerate from those who stall. Misty Schaefer, VP at American Airlines, uses AI voice notes and scenario planning for orders-of-magnitude better decisions. The biggest missed opportunity in AI leadership is not learning together — yet the fastest learners do exactly that. There's a line on the back of Barry O'Reilly's new book that every woman executive needs to sit with: "AI is not going to replace leaders. It's going to expose them." AI strategic thinking for women executives is no longer a competitive edge — it's fast becoming the baseline expectation at the director, VP, and C-suite level. I'm Sabrina Braham, executive leadership coach (MA, MFT, PCC) with 30+ years of experience, and host of the Women's Leadership Success Podcast — top 1.5% globally with almost 900,000 downloads. My clients include leaders at Stanford University, Ernst & Young, and Autodesk. And what I see in my coaching practice right now is a clear divide emerging: women executives who are building AI-enhanced judgment, and those who are still relying on invisible, inarticulate intuition they've never made explicit. AI is about to make that gap impossible to hide. This is Part 2 of my conversation with Barry O'Reilly — author of Artificial Organizations: Build Better Judgment, Speed, and Results with Machine and Human Intelligence, keynote speaker at Gartner's CFO Conference, and one of the most sought-after AI leadership advisors in the world. In Part 1, we covered how women leaders can use AI to build personal career confidence and grow into bigger roles. Here, we go deeper — into the strategic leadership capabilities that will define who rises at the executive level in 2026 and beyond. New research from Chief and The Harris Poll (2026) confirms that 85% of senior women leaders are now active players in their organization's AI strategy — and 68% are focused on using AI to amplify human talent, not replace it. The leaders pulling ahead are those who've moved beyond productivity tools into something more fundamental: AI-enhanced judgment systems. The Uncomfortable Truth: AI Will Expose Leaders Without a Judgment System When Barry walks into executive rooms around the world, he asks a deceptively simple question: "Show me your system for making this decision." The silence that follows is telling. "Often, a lot of the time, they just don't have a system," he explains. "They've never systematically written down all the steps they're going to go through to make an actual decision." For most leaders, the judgment system — the internal algorithm for weighing options, prioritizing inputs, and reaching decisions — has never been made explicit. It works. But it has four critical limitations: It's not visible — others can't observe or learn from it. It's not repeatable — it can't be consistently applied by or handed off to others. It's not challengeable — if it's in your head, no one can push back on its blind spots. It's not improvable — you can't deliberately tune what you can't see. In my 30+ years of executive coaching, this is one of the most consistent patterns I see in women leaders who are passed over for promotion despite exceptional performance: their judgment is excellent — but it's invisible. They can't teach it, transfer it, or demonstrate it in the way boards and senior leaders need to see. AI strategic thinking for women executives forces this reckoning, and the leaders who embrace it rather than resist it will define the next decade of leadership. Here's what my Leading Before You're Ready playbook addresses directly: building the judgment, presence, and strategic clarity that precedes you into every room — before you hold the formal title. AI doesn't change that mission. It accelerates it. What Is a Judgment System — and Do You Have One? A judgment system is the explicit process and criteria you use to make leadership decisions: the information you seek first, the variables you weigh, the sequence you follow, and the principles that guide your final choice. For most leaders, this system exists — but it lives entirely in their heads, accumulated through years of experience and pattern recognition. It works. But it has critical limitations that AI strategic thinking for women executives can directly address. The Judgment System Exercise Barry Uses With Executive Teams Here's the exercise Barry runs at the opening of his executive engagements — and one I now recommend for every leader I coach: Name a key decision coming up for your team. Be specific: a resource allocation decision, a product investment, a market expansion choice. Draw out your judgment system for making that decision. What information do you look for first? What criteria matter most? What's your sequence of evaluation? What would make you say yes — or no? Share your judgment system with your peers. This is where the transformation happens. A VP of Marketing and a VP of Finance, both making the same type of decision, suddenly realize they weight customer behavior and market size differently — and neither has ever made that explicit in shared decision-making. Identify the gaps. Where is your information current and reliable? Where is it outdated, incomplete, or missing entirely? What would better information change? "Suddenly you have groups of people sitting around going, 'I've never done this before,'" Barry explains. "And they're right. Most executive teams have never made their collective judgment infrastructure explicit." From a coaching perspective, I want to highlight what this exercise does beyond improving decision quality: when you can articulate how you make decisions — not just what decisions you make — you demonstrate the executive presence that earns trust and bigger responsibilities. This is exactly what I teach in the Leading Before You're Ready playbook. Judgment Infrastructure: The Data Ecosystem That Feeds Your Decisions Once leaders map their judgment systems, Barry introduces a second connected concept: judgment infrastructure — the data ecosystem that feeds your decision-making algorithm. Barry asks leaders: "Across your company, how are you getting the information you need to run your judgment system?" The answers reveal how fragile most leadership data environments actually are. "I have a spreadsheet I get once a month." "Our customer records are three months out of date." "I usually get that information from a conversation with someone else, so it depends on who I ask." The principle is clear: the output of any system is determined by the quality of its inputs. Poor-quality, delayed, or incomplete information fed into even an excellent judgment system produces poor decisions. For women executives in tech leading AI-adjacent organizations, understanding how to design and govern your information ecosystem — not just receive reports — is a defining capability for 2026. Decision Velocity + Decision Advantage: The Two Metrics That Define Executive Performance Barry's work with high-performing organizations has surfaced two metrics that consistently predict which leaders — and companies — pull ahead: Decision velocity: How fast can you move from problem identification to a well-reasoned decision? Not impulsive speed — calibrated speed supported by quality process. Decision advantage: How current, accurate, and comprehensive is the information available to you when you need to decide? Real-time — or three months stale? "That is how companies, startups, businesses power ahead," Barry explains. "They learn faster, they make decisions at a high velocity, and the information to support those decisions is to hand in real time."   AI dramatically accelerates both metrics. A meeting co-pilot that captures and synthesizes every conversation means you're never walking into a decision without full context. Barry describes his own routine: "I run a process either the day before, the morning of, or even five minutes before I meet someone. It runs all the last conversations we've had against my judgment system for the meeting I'm about to have." He shows up to every conversation with full context, clear priorities, and the calm that comes from genuine preparation. That calm is not incidental. As I always tell the executives I coach: your cognitive and emotional state in high-stakes situations is a performance variable. Anything that reduces cognitive load — like AI capturing your meeting context — directly improves your effectiveness in those moments. AI strategic thinking for women executives isn't just a professional tool. It's a confidence tool. Case Study: How Misty Schaefer Uses AI to Lead American Airlines Strategically The most vivid example Barry shared of AI strategic thinking in action involves Misty Schaefer Sern, VP of Consumer Technology at American Airlines — responsible for AA.com, the mobile app, and every digital touch point the world's largest airline uses to serve customers. Misty's natural trait: she has her best ideas on the move — walking the terminal, talking to ground staff, observing what's happening at the gate. The traditional problem: those ideas used to evaporate between the inspiration and the desk. ...

  6. Jun 30

    Women Leaders AI Career Growth: Traits, Tools, Confidence | WLS 164 Sabrina Braham & Barry O’Reilly

    Executive Summary: Most women leaders know AI could accelerate their careers—but don't know where to start. Executive coach Sabrina Braham and author Barry O'Reilly reveal the Traits, Tasks, and Tools framework that eliminates AI paralysis, builds confidence in unfamiliar leadership roles, and helps women leaders AI career growth into bigger opportunities—starting this week. Quick Takeaways: 69% of women say AI has opened new career pathways—but only for those who start using it now (ANSR Women in Tech Report, 2026). The Traits, Tasks, Tools framework reveals how to match AI to the way you personally do your best work. Use AI to pressure-test your thinking—never to hand over your judgment. That distinction changes everything. Asking AI "What questions should I be asking as a VP?" instantly elevates your perspective without years of experience. The worst thing you can do in a time of AI uncertainty is nothing. You must be in it to learn it. You know you should be using AI. You've heard the urgency, seen the headlines, maybe even opened ChatGPT, stared at that blinking cursor—and quietly closed the tab. Here's what I want you to know: that moment of hesitation doesn't mean you're behind. It means you haven't yet found your entry point. I'm Sabrina Braham, executive leadership coach (MA, MFT, PCC) with 30+ years of experience, and host of the Women's Leadership Success Podcast—top 1.5% globally with over 950,000 downloads. I coach senior women leaders at Stanford, Ernst & Young, Autodesk, and across the tech industry. And one of the most common things I hear from directors, VPs, and C-suite executives right now is: "I don't know where to start with AI." New research backs this up: Chief and The Harris Poll surveyed 1,000+ senior women leaders in 2026 and found that while 85% are active players in their organization's AI strategy, the approach matters enormously. The leaders who get ahead aren't the ones who automate the most—they're the ones who build human capability alongside AI. And according to the ANSR Women in Tech Report 2026, 69% of women who do engage with AI report it opens entirely new career pathways in product strategy, transformation leadership, and AI governance. In this episode of the Women's Leadership Success Podcast, I welcome back Barry O'Reilly—author of Artificial Organizations: Build Better Judgment, Speed, and Results with Machine and Human Intelligence, keynote speaker at Gartner's CFO Conference, and one of the most sought-after AI leadership advisors in the world. Since our last conversation, Barry has been traveling globally—observing how leaders at every level are (and aren't) adapting to AI. His findings are equal parts sobering and energizing. This is Part 1 of a two-part series. Here, we focus on women leaders using AI for personal growth, confidence, and career advancement. In Part 2, we go deeper into how AI can transform your strategic thinking and decision-making as an executive leader. Why Women Leaders Are Paralyzed at the AI Starting Line After keynoting Gartner's CFO Conference and spending months in leadership rooms across North America, Barry reports seeing the same pattern everywhere: hesitation. "People don't really know where to start," he says. "They constantly hear about new tools arriving in the market. They hear that everything they were meant to do last week is no longer the right thing to do this week. And it all leads to hesitation—which, counterintuitively, is the worst possible response." I know this directly from my coaching practice. I've spoken with women leaders who are brilliant, accomplished, and deeply capable—who are also avoiding AI entirely because they don't know what to do first. And I understand it, because I was there too. When I first started exploring AI, I treated it as if it were smarter than me—as if whatever it said must be right. That mindset kept me small. What changed? Doing the exercises in Barry's book. Going through them shifted me from intimidated observer to active director. Now, AI is my servant—I correct it, challenge it, redirect it. My creative and analytical output has genuinely expanded as a result. "Counterintuitively, the worst thing you can do when there's uncertainty is do nothing. Because you don't learn anything." — Barry O'Reilly This matters especially for women in tech, where the stakes are already high. The ANSR 2026 report found that despite women producing 43% of the world's female STEM graduates, only 14% hold C-suite seats. The gap isn't pipeline—it's systems. AI fluency is rapidly becoming one of those systemic differentiators. The women who build it now will have compounding advantage; those who wait will face a steeper climb. My Leading Before You're Ready playbook is built on exactly this truth: you don't wait to feel fully prepared. You use every available tool—coaching, community, AI—to think and show up at the level you're stepping into. The Traits, Tasks, and Tools Framework: The Smarter Way to Start with AI Most people approach AI for women leaders career growth backwards. They hear about a tool, jump into it, hunt for something useful to do, get mediocre results, and conclude AI isn't for them. Barry's Traits, Tasks, and Tools framework—one of the most referenced frameworks in Artificial Organizations—completely resequences this. The problem: "Most people with this technology just jump straight into the tool. They try to figure out a task to use it for. And only if ever do they ask themselves how they actually do their best work." That backwards approach locks you into the tool's opinions about how work should be done—which may have nothing to do with how you create your best thinking. Trait-First: Start With How YOU Do Your Best Work Before you open any AI tool, answer honestly: When do I do my best thinking? Are you a talker? Your best ideas emerge in conversation and dialogue. Are you a writer? You process and synthesize by putting things on paper. Are you a visual thinker? You need diagrams, maps, and frameworks to see clearly. Do you need solitude and quiet to generate insight, or energy and people? Barry's personal discovery here is instructive. Dyslexic and self-described as a D-student in English literature, he'd spent years trying to write like he imagined writers wrote—sitting quietly, composing prose. "I drank a lot of wine and sat by a lot of fires, but I didn't create much content." Once he recognized that his natural trait was talking, everything changed. He hired a journalist to interview him conversationally, used transcription to capture the output, and went from blank pages to 10,000 words of book content in roughly three hours. That's not a productivity hack. That's a trait-matched workflow—and it's what women leaders using AI for career growth need to build for themselves. Task-Next: Where Does Your Leadership Create the Most Value? Once you know your traits, identify the tasks where you create outsized value. Not the email and calendar management—the strategic work that shapes your team, your organization, and your career trajectory. This might be: Synthesizing complex information into clear executive recommendations Preparing for high-stakes meetings and presentations Developing your team's thinking and capability Building strategic scenarios and options for decision-making Crafting your executive narrative for visibility and advancement Tool-Last: Find What Matches Both Your Traits and Your Tasks Only now do you select tools. Barry matched his "talker" trait and "content creation" task to meeting co-pilots and transcription tools. For women leaders with different trait profiles: If you're a talker preparing for board presentations: Use voice-to-text capture combined with a generative AI to structure and refine your speaking points. Tools like Otter.ai for capture and Claude or ChatGPT for synthesis are a natural combination. If you're a writer preparing strategic memos: Use AI as a sophisticated thinking partner—share your draft, ask it to steelman the opposing view, and challenge every assumption. If you're a visual thinker: Use AI to generate frameworks and then render them in tools like Miro or Canva. Ask AI to "map this decision as a 2x2 matrix" and then build on what it generates. How AI Builds Leadership Confidence in Unfamiliar Territory This is the angle I brought to this conversation that Barry told me he'd never considered—and it's at the heart of what I see women leaders needing most right now. A director gets promoted to VP. A leader's company downsizes and she inherits three departments overnight. A high-potential executive gets tapped for a stretch role she doesn't feel prepared for. These are the moments when imposter syndrome spikes, when visibility feels risky, when the gap between who you are today and who the role requires feels widest. I asked Barry: "How can women leaders use AI to build their confidence in these transitions?" Here's how he frames the three levels of AI impact: Level 1 – Productivity: You bolt AI onto your existing workflow. Emails are faster, documents generate quicker. Real but modest—5 to 10% improvement. Level 2 – Performance: You use AI to pressure-test your thinking and challenge your mindset before high-stakes situations. Your judgment improves, and better decisions follow. Level 3 – Executive Presence: AI offloads cognitive load by capturing conversations, tracking decisions, and surfacing context. You arrive at every meeting calm, prepared, and fully present. This is where careers accelerate—and where women leaders using AI for career growth unlock the biggest competitive advantage. My own experience makes this concrete. I started using AI to help reorganize a storage shed—asking it to help me think through what goes where, what organization system would work best. After three days of working on it together, AI said to me: "You're getting better

  7. Jun 18

    Women Leaders Career Advancement: The 4-Relationship Guide | Women’s Leadership Success 163

    Women Leaders Career Advancement: The 4-Relationship Framework and Personal Success Plan (2026)Executive Summary: Women leaders career advancement stalls most often at the relationship level, not the skill level. Women hold only 29% of C-suite roles despite representing nearly half the workforce. Former IBM VP Shelmina Babai Abji reveals the four strategic relationships that accelerate promotion and the Personal Success Plan that keeps you on track week after week.Quick Takeaways:Women leaders career advancement remains stalled at every pipeline level for the 11th consecutive year (McKinsey, 2025).The four relationships that accelerate promotion are: boss, peers, mentors, and sponsors — and all four must be intentionally built.Only 31% of entry-level women have a sponsor, vs. 45% of men — closing this gap is one of the highest-ROI actions you can take.Responding to bias with proof, not reaction, protects your power and changes minds more effectively than confrontation.A Personal Success Plan reviewed weekly keeps your business results, relationships, competencies, and leadership brand advancing together.Key 2025–2026 statistics on women leaders career advancement: the C-suite gap, the broken rung, and the sponsorship deficit.Women leaders career advancement has a number that should stop you: for every 100 men promoted to their first manager role, only 81 women make the same leap.That gap — what McKinsey researchers call the "broken rung" — has barely moved in years. And it is not primarily a skills gap. It is a visibility gap, a relationship gap, and a strategy gap.I'm Sabrina Braham, MA, MFT, PCC — executive leadership coach with over 30 years of experience and host of the Women's Leadership Success Podcast, ranked in the top 1.5% globally with over 950,000 downloads. In Part II of my interview with Shelmina Babai Abji — TEDx speaker, former IBM Vice President, and author of Show Your Worth — we go deep on the practical mechanics that drive women leaders career advancement forward.If you caught Part I, you already have Shelmina's Power Quotient framework for silencing self-doubt. This episode is what comes next: the external strategy. How do you intentionally build the four relationships that move careers forward? How do you handle a boss who doesn't see your value? How do you navigate workplace bias without giving your power away? And what is the weekly planning practice that keeps even the most overwhelmed leader — including single mothers carrying impossible loads — on a clear path to the C-suite?This is one of the most actionable episodes I have recorded in 19 years of podcasting. Let's get into it.Why Women Leaders Career Advancement Stalls: The Strategy GapThe McKinsey Women in the Workplace 2025 report — which surveyed approximately 10,000 employees across 124 organizations — found that women hold only 29% of C-suite roles, unchanged from 2024, and that women remain underrepresented at every level of the corporate pipeline for the eleventh consecutive year. Women of color face a steeper drop-off at every rung.The same research surfaces a critical sponsorship gap that most women don't know exists: only 31% of entry-level women have a sponsor, compared to 45% of men at the same level. Sponsorship — not mentorship — is the relationship that most reliably unlocks promotions, stretch assignments, and visibility with senior leaders. And women are starting from a 14-point deficit.Shelmina's response to this data is direct: "The reason the numbers are as bad as they are is we cannot wait for organizations to change, or for people to change. We have to be the change we want to see."That is not resignation to an unfair system. It is a strategic recognition that women leaders career advancement is not waiting for institutions to fix the pipeline — it is built deliberately, relationship by relationship, decision by decision, week by week.The Four Relationships That Accelerate Women Leaders Career AdvancementShelmina's book Show Your Worth dedicates an entire chapter to what she calls "intentional relationships" — the four categories of professional connection that, when built strategically, become the scaffolding of a senior career. She credits them with her own advancement from immigrant engineer to IBM Vice President.Relationship 1: Your BossThis is the most high-leverage relationship in your career, and the one most women invest in least strategically. "At the end of the day, you work for your boss, not an organization," Shelmina says. "It is up to you to build that relationship."The mechanism is not flattery or politics. It is a deliberate daily practice of contributing value that advances your boss's success — specifically, unique value that makes you essential. Shelmina describes this as "leaning into your authenticity and your uniqueness until you become essential to your boss's success."When you are essential to your boss's success, you are in a position of power to negotiate what you want — flexible boundaries, stretch assignments, sponsorship, promotion recommendations. Power in a workplace relationship is not seized; it is earned through indispensability.Practically, this means:Understanding your boss's most critical success metrics and aligning your work visibly to themEnsuring your boss has a "front-row seat" to your contributions — proactively, not passivelyAsking for help on stretch assignments (which demonstrates self-awareness, not weakness)Preparing thoroughly for performance reviews with documented, outcome-quantified contributionsRelationship 2: PeersPeer relationships are the often-overlooked engine of influence. In 2026's increasingly matrixed organizations, influence flows horizontally as much as it flows vertically. Peers who trust you, advocate for you in rooms you're not in, and co-create solutions with you are a form of organizational capital that compounds over time.Shelmina notes that the same principle applies here as with the boss relationship: the foundation is contribution, not connection for its own sake. Peers who see you as someone who makes their work better — not someone who competes with them for credit — become your most organic advocates.Relationship 3: Mentors — The Right Ones, Not Just AnyHere Shelmina offers a counterintuitive observation that stopped me when I heard it. She regularly asks women at conferences: "How many of you have mentors?" Almost every hand goes up. Then she asks: "How many of those mentors have pushed you, accelerated your success, made you significantly better personally or professionally?" Most hands go down."We need to be intentional and strategic even when we look for mentors," she says. "We must know: why is this person the right mentor for me, at this point in time?"A mentor who is a perfect match for where you are today may be misaligned with where you need to go next. Great mentors:Have navigated the specific transition you are facingWill push you, not just validate youAre willing to give you honest, sometimes uncomfortable feedbackHave relationships and visibility at levels above your current roleShelmina's own pivotal mentor was Susan Whitney — an IBM General Manager who, in the two minutes it took to walk from a roundtable back to an office, changed the entire direction of Shelmina's career by asking one question: "Where do you want to be in five years?"That question planted a seed. Shelmina did not have the answer — but she pursued Susan as a mentor, did whatever it took to get noticed and earn time with her, and eventually built the relationship that shifted her from "doing a great job in my current role" to "thinking strategically about what I want to do next, and next, and next."Relationship 4: Sponsors — Your Most Powerful AccelerantA mentor gives advice. A sponsor gives opportunity. This distinction is critical and widely misunderstood.Sponsors use their own political capital to advocate for you — in the rooms where promotions are decided, on the committees where assignments are distributed, in the conversations where names are put forward. A sponsor says your name when you are not in the room. A mentor helps you prepare for the room. Both matter. But only one moves the needle on the broken rung.Given that women enter careers with a 14-point sponsorship deficit compared to men, closing this gap is one of the highest-ROI investments you can make in your own career advancement. You earn a sponsor the same way you earn every other relationship: by making yourself visible, demonstrating your capability in high-stakes situations, and becoming someone whose success the sponsor wants to be associated with.Shelmina's guidance: identify one person at two levels above you who has both visibility with senior leadership and the willingness to advocate. Do the work to get in their orbit. When you are there, make their decision to sponsor you easy — by showing up with the kind of work that reflects well on anyone who recommends you.The four relationships that drive women leaders career advancement: boss, peers, mentors, and sponsorsHow to Navigate Workplace Bias Without Losing Your PowerAs a woman of color scaling the corporate ladder, Shelmina encountered both internal barriers — the self-doubt and fear of belonging described in Part I — and external barriers: leaders who did not automatically see her as a candidate for leadership roles, colleagues who underestimated her capabilities, and structural biases that filtered opportunity away from people who didn't fit the existing template.Her framework for navigating bias is one of the most strategically intelligent approaches I have encountered in 30 years of coaching. It has three operating principles:Principle 1: Don't React — Prove"When you react, you give your power away to them. You reinforce the negative biases and stereotypes that exist," Shelmina says. "Instead, prove your worth and change their opinion slowly, but surely."This

  8. May 30

    Women Leaders Overcome Self-Doubt: The Power Quotient Framework That Changes Everything (2026) WLS 162

    Women Leaders Overcome Self-Doubt: The Power Quotient Framework That Changes Everything (2026)Executive Summary: 68% of women in tech experience imposter syndrome, yet most have never been taught to fight it strategically. Former IBM VP Shelmina Babai Abji shares her Power Quotient (PQ) framework — a proven system for silencing the inner critic, amplifying your voice of courage, and advancing your leadership career.Quick Takeaways:68% of women in tech report imposter syndrome — tech is the most affected industry (Hays, 2025).Your "Power Quotient" (PQ) is the ability to intentionally choose an empowering response over a disempowering one.The voice of fear is doing its job — your job is to feed your voice of courage louder reasons to act.For every 100 men promoted to first manager, only 81 women make the same leap (McKinsey, 2025) — PQ is a competitive differentiator.Showing your worth is a continuous journey of competence, confidence, relationships, and personal branding — not a one-time event. Sixty-eight percent of women in tech experience imposter syndrome. Let that number land.That means more than two out of every three talented, qualified women sitting in engineering meetings, VP offices, and C-suite strategy sessions are secretly wondering if they belong there. And according to a KPMG survey of 750 female executives, 75% of senior women leaders have experienced imposter syndrome at some point in their careers — with 85% saying they believe it's widespread in corporate America.Yet almost no one teaches women what to do about it — strategically, systematically, and permanently.I'm Sabrina Braham, MA, MFT, PCC — executive leadership coach with over 30 years of experience, and host of the Women's Leadership Success Podcast, now with over 950,000 downloads and ranked in the top 1.5% of podcasts globally. In Episode 162, I sit down with Shelmina Babai Abji — TEDx speaker, former IBM Vice President, angel investor, and author of Show Your Worth — for one of the most powerful and practical conversations I've ever had on this podcast.Shelmina grew up in poverty in Tanzania, put herself through school across three countries, walked into a room of 2,000 engineers where no one looked like her, and still became one of the highest-ranking women of color in IBM's history — overseeing teams that generated over $1 billion in annual revenue. Her secret? A framework she calls the Power Quotient.If you're a woman leader in tech or any competitive industry who is battling negative mental chatter, fear of speaking up, or the relentless whisper that says you're not qualified enough — this episode is for you.Why Self-Doubt Is Hitting Women Leaders Harder Than Ever in 2026The data tells a story that is urgent and personal. A 2025 Hays survey of more than 8,000 professionals found that 68% of women in tech experience imposter syndrome — and that approximately one-third say these feelings grow more intense as their careers advance, not less. Tech is now the single most-affected industry in the entire workforce.This is not a personal failing. It is a structural reality. As Shelmina describes it, when you look around a room and see no one who looks like you, no one who sounds like you, no one who grew up like you — your brain does exactly what it is designed to do: it searches for evidence that you belong, finds little, and generates doubt."I walked into a room of 2,000 engineers," Shelmina recalls, "and I realized there was not one person that looked like me. Not one person that spoke like me. And I started undermining my own capabilities, underestimating my own worth."The compounding problem is this: according to the McKinsey Women in the Workplace 2025 report, women represent 49% of entry-level employees — yet by the time you reach the C-suite, fewer than 29% of those seats belong to women. For every 100 men promoted to their first manager role, only 81 women make the same leap. The "broken rung" is real, and self-doubt is one of the forces that keeps it broken.The cost of unchecked self-doubt is not just personal — it is organizational. Women who silence themselves in meetings, decline stretch assignments, or step back from promotions because they do not feel "ready" are costing their companies their most strategic asset: authentic, experienced, high-EQ leadership.The good news? Shelmina's own career is proof that the cycle can be broken — and the tool she used is available to every woman listening right now.Introducing the Power Quotient (PQ): Your Most Underused Leadership AssetMost leaders are familiar with IQ (intellectual intelligence) and EQ (emotional intelligence). Shelmina introduces a third: PQ — Power Quotient."We own the power to intentionally pick an empowering response to a disempowering stimulus, whether that stimulus is internal or external. That's your PQ. And the internal stimulus must be taken care of first, before we can fight the external."This is not a motivational concept. It is a cognitive framework with three operating principles:PQ Principle 1: Recognize the Voice of Fear — Without Obeying ItThe voice of fear is not your enemy. It is doing exactly what it evolved to do: keep you in your comfort zone. The moment you recognize that the whisper saying "they'll find out you don't belong" is just a voice — not a fact — you reclaim agency over it.Shelmina's turning point came during her first year at a major tech employer. She was sitting in a meeting, holding back an idea. Then she watched someone else state her exact idea — and receive praise for it. "That was the first time I recognized that my ideas do matter," she says. "And once I had that inner victory, everything changed."Try This Now: The next time you catch yourself editing an idea before you say it, ask: "Is this my voice of fear or my voice of courage speaking?" Name it. That naming alone is the beginning of PQ.PQ Principle 2: Feed Your Voice of Courage With ReasonsCourage is not the absence of fear. It is acting despite fear — and it grows when you actively give it ammunition. Shelmina calls this "feeding your voice of courage," and it is a deliberate, intentional practice.In her case, the reason was visceral: "If I didn't speak up, they would not extend my visa. My dream of lifting my family out of poverty would be over." That reason was more powerful than her fear. Your reason does not need to be that dramatic — but it does need to be real to you.Effective reasons to feed your voice of courage include:The impact your idea could have on your team or clientsThe career advancement that depends on your visibilityThe women who will follow in your footsteps if you blaze this trailThe competencies you will build only by speaking up and stretchingPQ Principle 3: Make Your Voice of Courage Louder Than Your Voice of FearThis is the practice. Not silencing fear — but systematically amplifying courage until it drowns fear out. "I made my voice of courage louder than my voice of fear," Shelmina says, "by feeding it reasons why I should do something, as opposed to reasons why I shouldn't."This maps directly to what 2026 executive presence research identifies as the core of leadership gravitas: decisiveness under pressure and emotional self-regulation. Leaders who can redirect internal narratives in high-stakes moments are the ones who get promoted, trusted, and retained.How to Show Your Worth Without Waiting to Be NoticedOne of the most actionable insights from Shelmina's work is this: showing your worth is not self-promotion. It is a strategic practice of continuously positioning yourself to contribute higher and higher value — and then ensuring the right people have a front-row seat to that contribution."Show your worth, in the context of my book, is the value you contribute towards the success of your organization," Shelmina explains. "The recognition that I have something to contribute is the beginning of understanding your worth. And then the journey is: how do I continuously position myself to contribute more?"This has four dimensions that mirror 2026's most sought-after leadership competencies:Competencies — continuously building the skills that drive organizational outcomesConfidence — the deep-seated self-trust that comes from doing hard things and surviving themRelationships — intentionally building the four key relationships (boss, peers, mentors, sponsors — covered in Part II)Personal branding — ensuring your value is visible, not just feltWorth is not static. It is not something you either have or you don't. "The more competent you become," Shelmina says, "the higher the value you create." It is a compounding cycle — and it begins the moment you decide your ideas matter.Overcoming Negative Mental Chatter: A Framework for Women in TechNegative mental chatter — the constant inner voice of "I'm not smart enough, I'll sound stupid, they'll find out" — is the presenting symptom of an unchecked voice of fear. Shelmina identifies it as the single biggest barrier she sees in her work with women leaders, and she is specific about how to address it.Step 1: Externalize ItTreat negative mental chatter the way you would treat a notification on your phone: notice it, acknowledge it, then decide whether to engage. The chatter loses power the moment you observe it rather than inhabit it.Step 2: Name the Fear UnderneathIs it fear of failure? Fear of judgment? Fear of stepping outside your comfort zone? Fear of being seen as someone who doesn't belong? Naming the specific fear collapses it from a fog into a manageable object. You can work with a named fear. You cannot work with a fog.Step 3: Reframe the Outcome"There is no such thing as failure," Shelmina says. "There are only various degrees of success." Every stretch assignment, every meeting where you spoke up and it didn't land perfectly, every project that didn't go as planned — these are data. They teach you something you did not know

See All (168)

4.9
out of 5
94 Ratings

About

Since 1989, Women Business Leadership Skills and Career Development Advice. Interviews with Successful Women CEOs, Managers and Entrepreneurs to Help You Influence People, Improve Performance, Get Promoted, Increase Earnings and Enhance Your Job/Life Balance

Information

  • Creator
    Sabrina Braham MA MFT PPC
  • Years Active
    2007 - 2026
  • Episodes
    168
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    Sabrina Braham MA MFT PCC 2020 ©
  • Show Website
    Women's Leadership Success

You Might Also Like