As author of the newly released book Your Power Unleashed: How Savvy Women Use Courage to Get Promoted, Get Paid, and Find Fulfillment, founder of Wynter Rich Enterprises, Kisha Wynter has much to teach both women and men about career advancement. She spent 20 years in corporate positions working for Fortune 20 companies including Citibank and General Electric.
With a background in human resources, Kisha decided to write Your Power Unleashed as a coaching resource to help women overcome their internal barriers: As coaches, we know that how we show up matters, and there’s the being that comes before the doing,” Kisha says. “And so, what are the internal barriers that got in the way of women being successful? Helping them to learn how to navigate organizational structures where they worked. And finally, to help leaders really create inclusive cultures where other talent could thrive.”
Learning From Experience
Kisha’s own journey in corporate America also inspired her to write her book. “I was the first person in my family to graduate from college,” she says. “And you were told growing up, just work hard and you’re going to get rewarded for working hard. And just after a few months, honestly, of working in corporate, I realized, well, it’s a lot more nuanced than that. It’s a lot more complex than that. And there are really unwritten rules to success.”
Working behind the scenes being part of the decision-making process, Kisha began to understand what those rules were. She noticed that there was a gap between what women (and sometimes men) thought that they needed to do to be successful and what the decision makers in organizations were saying. “One of the things that came up is, ‘This person has what it takes, like the technical skill set, the knowledge expertise, the domain expertise to be successful, but they don’t have this leadership presence. They don’t own the room. This is a thing that’s going to stop them from getting to that next level.’”
Yet the concept of what constitutes effective executive presence can be biased and unclear. As Kisha learned how to navigate these challenges herself, she came upon the idea of putting all of her learnings in one resource, and Your Power Unleashed was born. In an interview with Bright Arrow’s founder Tegan Trovato, Kisha shares how to bridge the gap between individuals and organizational decision makers when it comes to leveraging an executive presence that reaps results, from getting promoted and paid what you’re worth to finding fulfillment in your work.
‘How We Do One Thing Is How We Do Everything’
Kisha divided her book into two sections. The first part is on internal work owning your power, and the second part focuses on savvy workplace strategies. The author explains her reasoning for starting with inner work before tackling external strategies: “How we show up and how we do one thing is how we do everything. You know that you want to get to that next level professionally, but are you clear in terms of what your vision is for your life, for your career? Are you clear around your values?” Kisha explains that if you’re not working on gaining insight through self-reflection first, then you’re not going to consistently do the things that you need to do in order to be successful.
According to Kisha, a key reason why people may not find themselves fulfilled is because they’re living according to an ideal that isn’t authentic to them. “One of my fundamental beliefs is that you don’t have to change who you are to be successful,” she said. “You actually just have to learn how to embrace your authentic self and leverage those differences as differentiators.” This requires understanding what drives and motivates you, and tapping into your own values. Kisha believes that if you ground yourself and do that internal work on your values, vision, and mission for your own life as an initial step, it will fuel you to the next phase of action: leveraging the workplace strategies in the second half of the book.
Facing Self-Doubt and Fear
There are specific reasons why self-doubt and fear tend to show up in the workplace, and anyone can experience them. Kisha shared that she would experience fear in the workplace when she was doing something new. “When you don’t have competency in a specific area or a specific thing, then you’re going to feel uncomfortable,” she says. “It’s stepping outside of your comfort zone.” When this happens, she advises not overreacting to it, but instead normalizing and destigmatizing it. For example, you can shift the perspective and reframe it by reminding yourself that learning and growth is happening.
But for women in the workplace, fear and self-doubt can be particularly problematic due to the low presence of women in leadership. “If you have a different leadership style as a woman, you look up in the organization and you see the decision makers don’t look like you, don’t sound like you,” she says, noting that this can lead many women to feelings of imposter syndrome, or more accurately, “imposter treatment” from others.
She also explains that women may experience unconscious bias being directed at them from many interactions. “A lot of the style that’s preferred in leadership are what we call male-dominated characteristics,” Kisha says, explaining that if women leverage a style that might be equally as effective but looks different, it can lead to a feeling of fear, particularly if you’re the only woman in the room or in the minority. She emphasizes the importance of not only trying to be conscious of bias, but from an organizational perspective, creating a safe environment in which people can point out when they feel excluded by certain behavior or language. “It’s all about the recovery when we have unconscious bias and we run into our unconscious bias and someone illuminates it for us,” Kisha says. “We don’t need to be ashamed. We need to just be grateful and express the gratitude for it.”
The DIVA Method
Kisha created a framework she calls the “DIVA Method” to help women advance professionally. The method is based on the understanding that while working hard is a good start, it isn’t enough. “I developed a strategy to come up with a simple framework for you to understand a few of the critical things that you have to do professionally in order to put yourself in a good position to advance,” Kisha says.
‘D’ stands for ‘deliver results,’ which she calls the foundation of the strategy. “That’s the working hard piece. If you’re not doing your job, if you don’t have a high ‘do’ ratio, if you’re not delivering results, I can’t save you. You’ve got to be doing the work.” But her method doesn’t stop with being a high performer. ‘I’ is for ‘image,’ which refers to your personal brand. “It’s another way of what do people say about you when you’re not in the room?” she says.
‘V’ is for ‘visibility.’ “You may be doing all this great work and you may be delivering all this results, but if no one knows about it or the right people don’t know about it, then you’re going to have a hard time advancing professionally,” Kisha explains. She recommends ensuring that you have visibility with decision makers, getting strategic introductions, working on cross -functional or enterprise-wide projects, going for different groups, even volunteering—figuring out how you can get visibility to the right person so that you’re not the best-kept secret at work. Finally, ‘A’ is for ‘advisory board’ and ensuring that you’re building one—particularly in terms of sponsorship. “Sponsorship is key,” Kisha says. “That’s the person that’s advocating for you, that’s opening doors for you, that’s making those introductions.”
Curious about the DIVA Method? Take The Get Promoted Savvy Quiz
Allies and Organizational Support
Kisha stresses not only the importance of sponsorship, but the role of allies and organizational support in general to help women advance their careers and improve their overall work experience. She explains that if women only make up 29% of C-suite positions per the latest data, that means more than 70% of the senior decision makers are men. “We want to ensure that there is a partnership that’s going on at the end of the day,” Kisha says. “Men tend to be one of the most underutilized resources in this effort.” She adds that women can “lean in” all they want, but if the people who actually make up the majority of the decision-making power aren’t partnering, it won’t be effective or long-lasting.
“Women are simply not in positions of power to do that on a consistent basis at this point in time,” Kisha says. “And I will say that it’s not just the right thing to do to build inclusive and diverse workplaces, but it just makes business sense.”
The Take-Aways
Kisha emphasizes several key messages to take away from her book: “You don’t have to change who you are to be successful,” she says. “Actually, success comes from embracing your authentic self, leveraging and understanding your unique strengths, as well as understanding how to really use those differences as your differentiator.” Kisha believes that doing that internal work to really own your power—to understand how to apply those savvy workplace strategies—can help you achieve success without compromising who you are.
Finally, she encourages leaders in organizations to create cultures where people from all backgrounds can thrive regardless of where they come from: “We have to do the work that we are creating places where it’s psychologically safe for people to show up as their authentic self and not try to make them fit into this mold and conform, because that’s when that imposter syndrome really gets exacerbated,” Kisha concludes.
People in This Episode
Kisha Wynter: LinkedIn
Transcript
Tegan Trovato
Kisha Wynter, welcome to the podcast.
Kisha Wynter
I’m so excited to be here with you, Tegan.
Tegan Trovato
This is a “pinch me” moment for me, and I’m going to tell our listeners why. So, first of all, regardless of the title of this episode, this podcast is for men and women leaders. We’re going to talk about Kisha’s book, which is newly released, “Your Power Unleashed: How Savvy Women Use Courage to Get Promoted, Get Paid, and Find Fulfillment.” The reason this is not just for women is because there are so many men in our lives and at work who aspire to greater allyship. They want to be better people, leaders and executives in supporting the women who also lead in their organization. So today, we’re going to unlock a lot of great insights for all of us. So Kisha, in addition to being the founder of Wynter Rich Enterprises, we have been lucky enough to be a partner of hers for the last four years. So, I’ve personally been in the room with Kisha. We have coached executive teams together. We have worked on executive coaching assignments together, and she’s also been our go-to partner for DEI consulting over the last several years. So Kisha, it is so cool to have been, like, in the room with you for so much and in partnership with you. And then I’m, like, having a “pinch me” moment that your book is launching finally. So excited.
Kisha Wynter
I am so excited. It is definitely a “pinch me” moment. I’m really happy that you have been on this journey for me, with me for the last four years. It’s, it is exciting.
Tegan Trovato
Yeah. Well, and here’s to the future. So, we’ll talk now about where we are today. And so first, tell our listeners–I have two questions. So one, where do you call home? And then also, where do you live? Because those two questions could be answered slightly differently perhaps.
Kisha Wynter
Yes. I do call home now Stanford, Connecticut, and I live in Stanford, Connecticut. It took me about 20 years to call Stanford, Connecticut, home because I lived most of–well, I lived most of my life now in Stanford, Connecticut. I was born in Jamaica, lived many years in California, so at heart, I am a warm-weather girl.
Tegan Trovato
Yes.
Kisha Wynter
But I do love my little area of the world in Stanford, Connecticut. I’m about 40 minutes north of New York City, and this is my wonderful home in the Tri-state area.
Tegan Trovato
Fantastic. So tell us about your corporate experience because you had quite a journey before you set up your own company. So tell us about your corporate experience, and then also what inspired you to write the book.
Kisha Wynter
Yeah, really good question. So, I spent 20 years in corporate working for Fortune 20 companies. I worked for Citibank for a few years. I worked for General Electric in human resources, leadership development, training, compensation, so many different aspects of HR. And really, one of the reasons I decided– a couple of reasons I decided to write this book is I wanted to provide a coaching resource to help women overcome their internal barriers. And as coaches, we know that how we show up, and there’s the being that comes before the doing. And so, what are the internal barriers that got in the way of women being successful? Helping them learn how to navigate organizational structures where they worked in, and finally, to help leaders really create inclusive cultures where all their talent could thrive. And it came up for me because of my own journey in Corporate America.
There are two main points that made this come up for me. My own journey in Corporate America, I was the first person in my family to graduate from college. And you were told growing up, just work hard, and you’re going to get rewarded for working hard. And just after a few months, honestly, of working in corporate, I realized, well, it’s a lot more nuanced than that. It’s a lot more–
Tegan Trovato
It’s a nice way to say it. We’ll call it nuance. Sure.
Kisha Wynter
Sure. It’s a lot more complex than that.
Tegan Trovato
Yes, indeed.
Kisha Wynter
And there are really unwritten rules to success, and as I worked behind the scenes, being part of the decision-making process, I would understand what those rules were, and when I would go back out of promotion meetings and talk to the men and women, frankly, in the organization–the book focuses on women, but a lot of this misconception happens regardless of gender–and there was a gap between what the women thought that they needed to do to be successful and what the decision makers in organizations were saying.
And one of the things that came up–we’ll dive into it over and over again in these meetings–is this person has what it takes, like the technical skill set, the knowledge expertise, the domain expertise, to be successful, but they don’t have this leadership presence. They don’t own the room. This is the thing that’s going to stop them from getting to that next level. And you know, this word can be so biased, frankly, and what standard are we basing it on? Are we thinking about effectiveness, or are we just thinking about form? And so really challenging, both the organization as well as the individuals that they were making decisions, how do we bridge that gap?
And so a lot of those things came up for me, and as I learned myself how to navigate that myself, and then I was coaching as an HR leader other people in the organization how to bridge the gap, I thought, so this is a great opportunity to put all my learnings in one resource, and that was the idea of writing the book Your Power Unleashed.
Tegan Trovato
Fantastic. I will just echo the sentiment around executive presence as a competency being a really gray bucket full of unconscious bias. Just last month, I was talking with a woman leader who is in line to lead the entire section of North America, region of North America, for a really large company, and the feedback from the board was, you are so fantastic. We love your ability to think strategically. You know our products. We think you need to work on your executive presence some. And she said, great. Tell me what that means. Now, how are 12 people going to tell one person what it means? Right? Like, we can, Kisha, you and I can as practitioners, because there are really healthily defined components of executive presence. But the average person, the lay person, does not know what those are and is not aware of their own bias around them. So I’m emphasizing this because I think it is a huge piece holding people back in general, not just women, but most certainly women. So thanks for bringing that up and illuminating that for us, and thanks for creating this resource.
So, let’s talk about the book. In particular, I noticed that it’s divided into two sections. The first section is Internal Work: Owning Your Power, which is, this is the part you said, the being that comes before the doing. I assume that’s related there. And then the second part is Savvy Workplace Strategies, and that focuses on the external success strategies. Why did you structure it that way and separate those two segments, those two pieces, out the way you did?
Kisha Wynter
Well, I alluded to this in the beginning, right? How we show up and how we do one thing is how we do everything. And I say, okay, you know that you want to get to that next level professionally, but are you clear in terms of what your vision is for your life? For your career? Are you clear around your values?
In the book, we talk a lot about–even the subtitle is entitled, How Savvy Women Use Courage, Get Promoted, Get Paid, and Find Fulfillment. And I find one of the reasons why people are not fulfilled is because they’re living according to an ideal that is not authentic to them. So, one of my fundamental beliefs is that you don’t have to change who you are to be successful. You actually just have to learn how to embrace your authentic self and leverage those differences as differentiators. And so in terms of understanding what are your drivers, what are your motivators, and tapping into values–and I know you know the power of doing values work and how important that is–really grounding yourself in those values, and using that as really the place to start for that authenticity for yourself.
And so I find that as leaders and as people that work in corporate, we tend to be so busy in the doing that we don’t create that space for that reflective time to understand what’s really important to us, and we’re going to get into confidence and all of that. But I believe if you ground yourself and do that internal work, it’s going to give you that fuel to get into the action. When you get into the action mode now, that’s the external place that we talk about.
Now, once you’ve worked on the values, the vision, the mission for your own life and use that to inform how you show up confidently, then we talk about, all right, what are the strategies that you need to have in order to be successful in the workplace? What are those unwritten rules of success? It’s not just about hard work. What about working on your brand? What about getting visibility to the right decision-makers? We’re going to get more and more into that, but that’s really why I structured the book that way. It’s working on the internal piece first before I get into the actual tactics and strategies because if you’re not working on the inside, you’re not going to consistently do the things that you need to do in order to be successful.
Tegan Trovato
Fantastic. Makes a ton of sense. Growth is an inside job, but then there’s an outside component to that, and good luck teasing them apart all the way, right? Like, what catalyzes us in what order? It’s not clear, but certainly to your point, I appreciate your point that if we aren’t clear about what we want first, then how can we really go get it? And I’ve certainly, I don’t know about you, but I’ve kind of arrived at points in my own life where I’m like, did I really want this thing I went after, or was that like a thing that was impressed upon me as I should do this or want this? And then we get the thing, and we’re like, I don’t know. I got it. Good job, but is this what I really wanted? I think women in leadership roles are usually within a 30-year window in their lives, like somewhere in their, like, late 20s, certainly 30s, 40s, 50s, and that’s such a powerful time, in my opinion, for leaders in general to understand their worth, their influence, and really be able to channel it for their own intentions if, to your point, we’re clear, so love you’ve organized it this way.
Kisha Wynter
Clarity is everything
Tegan Trovato
Yeah, beautiful. So, you talk quite a bit about self-doubt and fear. Anyone listening knows all about the presence of those two things in their lives. That’s part of being a leader, but share some of the reasons that self-doubt and fear tend to show up for women in particular, in the workplace.
Kisha Wynter
Okay, so I’m going to start in general why it shows up for everyone because women. And then I’m going to get into what in particular the nuance is for, right? In my own life, I’ll say that’s one of the things I–you know, you’re right about what you struggled with in the past, or you coach, right? As a coach, right?
So for me, in my life, I recognized that I would experience a lot of fear because I was doing something new, and when you don’t have competency in a specific area or a specific thing, then you’re going to feel uncomfortable. It’s stepping outside of your comfort zone. So it’s that fight or flight response really being activated in your brain because of fear, and you feel the sweaty palms, the racing, the racing heart, all of that because you’ve never done some things before. So I say, let’s not overreact to it. Let’s normalize and destigmatize the fear that can show up when we’re stepping outside of our comfort zone and when we’re trying to play big and really recognize I shift the perspective and I reframe it, and I say, learning and growth is happening, right? This is why you’re feeling the way that you’re doing, and it’s actually something to celebrate because you’re not resting on your laurels. You’re pushing yourself outside of that comfort zone.
So that’s why fear shows up. It’s a response to something that’s uncomfortable, something that is new. The one comparison I put it to is when you’re learning to drive a car, right? I don’t know if you remember that phase when you were a teenager. You get in the car and you’re learning to drive, and you’re like, oh my gosh, what if I put a dent in the car? Am I gonna get in an accident? But then after 20 years, you develop the competency, and you don’t even think about all the things you have to do. You go from point A to point B, and boom, you’re there.
Tegan Trovato
What a good parallel. I love it.
Kisha Wynter
Yeah. And so from a leadership standpoint, like the first time you speak in front of a board of directors or a senior leadership team, it’s going to be intimidating because it’s not something that you do on a normal basis. But by the 10th, 12th, 15th time that you’ve done it, now it becomes second nature because you know what to expect, you know how to prepare, and you develop a competency. So I tell people, it is a phase that you’re going through, and if you keep going through it and actually getting the coaching to get better, then at some point, you’re not going to feel that way anymore. You just have to do those reps.
Tegan Trovato
Right, right? Yes, you do.
Kisha Wynter
But then the second piece why women experience self-doubt or fear in the workplace is because you look at the top of an organization, I think McKinsey just published their Women in the Workplace report about a week ago now, the 10th year anniversary and the numbers are still low in terms of the presence of women in leadership. It’s 29% at this point. And in some industries, the numbers are still low, right? Are even lower than that actually, right? 29% is low, so anything lower than that is invisible. Extremely low, right? And so if you have a different leadership style to, you know, as a woman, you look up in the organization, and you see the decision makers don’t look like you, don’t sound like you, right? That may have feelings of imposter syndrome, but there is also, we talked about this unconscious bias in many of our interactions.
We talk about the fact that a lot of the style that’s preferred in leadership are what we call male-dominated characteristics, and so if you show up in a style that might be equally as effective, but it may look differently, then again, that imposter syndrome shows up, or that imposter–I call it imposter treatment. I think one of the things that we’ll talk about is the difference between feeling like an imposter, which means you don’t feel good enough, and then actually being treated as if you don’t belong. You shouldn’t be at the table. And the reason the fear shows up is because you don’t have the luxury of being one of the some other men in the room, right?
You may be the only female, and so if you fail, the significance of that is even greater because it’s not just Tegan failing or Kisha failing. Oh, we didn’t really think a woman could really handle this position, and see, she made this little mistake, and we confirmed that belief. Whereas, if you’re one of many, you have the privilege of being seen as an individual and, you know, say, okay, all right, John failed. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s an all-gender thing, and so the pressure of being the only one in the room or being in the minority in the room puts that additional feeling of fear.
Tegan Trovato
Yes, I really, I’m going to, can I use imposter treatment?
Kisha Wynter
Yes.
Tegan Trovato
From now on? I love it.
Kisha Wynter
I didn’t make that term up.
Tegan Trovato
Oh, well, you should have claimed it today. I wouldn’t have known better. Look, I love that because I know we talk about with folks experiencing the imposter syndrome who don’t look like the other folks in the room–I’m using air quotes when I say, look– look, sound, present as the same majority of the people in the room, that there is usually a good reason we feel like an imposter. And I think that when we generically talk about imposter syndrome within the general population, everyone’s assuming that’s a confidence thing, that it is the inside job. And we don’t talk enough about the fact that it makes sense, oftentimes, that we feel like an imposter because, if we are the only one in the room, we’re not interested in talking about the same things. We don’t have the same lived experience. We may not even manage things the same way, and it should be okay, but when everyone is in their group think of, like, talking about the things they all like to talk about because they all are the same or have all the things in common, they’re not even thinking about what it must feel like for the one person who doesn’t look or sound like them, right?
Kisha Wynter
They don’t even have the consciousness that they are talking about something that is not in the scope of somebody else’s lived experiences. I used to work for a leader, for example, we used a sports analogy. That’s the easy one. We worked in a very global organization, and we had people that were from, you know, 30 to 40 different countries. And he would use these baseball analogies and football analogies. I’m like, the people from Asia have no idea what you’re talking about.
Like, now you’ve you, and it’s interesting, because, you know, obviously, as a woman, as a woman of color, as a Black woman, I’ll say, all right, like, I don’t necessarily look like the people in the room, but I am still from an English-speaking, Christian background, and I’ll never forget a conversation. So even my own unconscious biases, right? I’m explaining to this woman that’s a friend of mine. Her family is from Asia. She does have a Christian background. She’s just like, Well, do you know how many Christian analogies you guys use in Corporate America? Like, and I’m like, real. She’s like, Yeah. Like, I didn’t even know. I remember having to look up this whole, Who’s Goliath? You know, like, you know, books, there’s like, yeah, like, being the giant in the room, being the Goliath in the room. I never even thought of that because that was such an everyday vernacular in my culture, in my background. When she pointed that out, like, I felt excluded by those analogies because I don’t come from a Christian background.
And so it becomes so second nature to us, and all of us can be capable of it, and so I think that’s why it’s really important that you know, obviously, we try to be conscious, but we create the safe environment that people can actually point out to us and say, like, well, I didn’t understand what this meant. And you don’t feel stupid for asking the question, or you don’t feel ostracized or out of place because you already feel like an outsider when you don’t get the inside language that everybody is using.
Tegan Trovato
Kisha, thank you for modeling for all of us, what it looks like to be able to evangelize the things that you are and still own that as a human, you do the same things. We all have unconscious bias. I have it, too. I appreciate that you just modeled what it looks like to say, oops, yeah, thanks for pointing that out so I could learn from it. That’s all there is. It’s all about the recovery when we have unconscious bias and we run into our unconscious bias, and someone illuminates it for us, we don’t need to be ashamed. We need to just be grateful and express the gratitude for like, Thanks for pointing that out, so I don’t do that again. Gosh, that’s such a good point, right? And I have been there too, and frankly, it’s painful for those of us who really are already conscious of the fact that we have the bias. We don’t want to find out we have more, but we do, and it can hurt our own little ego that we misstepped. And I think everyone feels that, but it’s all about just recovering, right?
Kisha Wynter
Can you imagine somebody who, like, says, Oh, I’m, I’m an inclusion strategist?
Tegan Trovato
Right? Even then, right?
Kisha Wynter
Even then. I think when you let go, this is why I believe so much in the coaching mindset when you let go of that learning and that curiosity bend, is when we fall into those, you know, challenges and so, oh, okay, I had no idea. I felt bad. But, you know, we can’t lead with shame. This is one of the things around the conversation that we have around, you know, biases and really making workplaces inclusive. We want to bring awareness, but I do believe that most people’s intentions are good, and so we can’t–it’s not constructive to lead with shame. And so she didn’t say to me, Well, I can’t believe you wouldn’t know that. Like, I didn’t. It just, why would I? You know, in that case, you know, my religion is in the majority, right? Hers isn’t, or, you know, not being of any religious background. And so I said, Okay. All right, curious. Let’s learn from it.
Tegan Trovato
That’s it, right? Thank you, Kisha. I want to talk about the DIVA Method now. So when I remember meeting you many years ago, this was already out in the world, you had created the DIVA method, and you’ve ushered, I don’t even know, countless women through the framework now to help women advance professionally. Tell our listeners about that framework. Give us a little peek behind the scenes on that.
Kisha Wynter
Absolutely. As I said before, if you’re from, I mean, all the backgrounds, like immigrant, middle class, like any family that you come from that, you know, you just have to, you know, work your way to the top. That’s like one of the ideals, like, that hard work? You think, at least when I was raised, just work hard, you’re going to be rewarded for your hard work. And that’s good, right?
But it’s not enough, and that’s why I say I developed this strategy to come up with a simple framework for you to understand a few of the critical things that you have to do professionally in order to put yourself in a good position to advance. And we’ll drop this in the show notes, because I have an assessment, a quiz that you can take to assess where are the gaps that I have in my strategy that may prevent me from getting ahead. And so the DIVA, right? I still have the D there, which is deliver results. That’s the working hard piece. That’s the getting results piece. That’s important, and that’s actually the foundation. And I say this to my clients all the time, because if you’re not doing your job, if you don’t have a high say-do ratio, if you’re not delivering results, like, I can’t save you. Like you’ve got to be doing the work, right? That’s the foundation, assuming that you are a high performer. That is the foundation. But it doesn’t stop there.
So the I is for image, which is another word, really, for your, you know, your image is your brand. It’s another way of what do people say about you when you’re not in the room? What do they say about Kisha when she’s not there? One of the things I tell my clients to do in order to really get some awareness of this is really to go and ask five to 10 people, so it’s like an informal 360, to give you five words to describe what your strengths are, and one sentence, if I work on this one thing, is it going to make me that much more effective as a leader? And the powerful thing about doing this exercise is that you’ll see themes and threat trends in terms of what those areas of strengths are, and, you know, the area of development. So when I did it, and once you, by the way, once you do it, then you say, okay, is this feeling what I want to be known for? If so, let me double down. If not, what are the steps and the actions that I have to take to bridge the gap between how I’m being perceived now to where I want to be? So when I did it, there were three things that were said about me. I actually don’t remember all three things, but things that I do remember was that, you know, Kisha is a really, really good coach, and she also really makes me feel comfortable, right? So I said, Okay, great, I would love the word comfortable, but I want to uplevel that to be inclusive. I want people to think that I’m a leader, that I’m creating an inclusive culture. I was working in a very global organization where everybody feels that they could have a shot at being successful. And I also want to be known for being an effective coach. And I’ll never forget, when I left the organization that I worked in, my leader said to me, you know, one of the reasons I enjoyed, a couple of reasons I enjoyed working with you, is because you really allowed me to become much more inclusive. I had a lot of blind spots in terms of how I was leading, and you really brought, you know, some really good awareness to me around those blind spots that I had, and just made me much more inclusive. And then the second thing was that you allowed me to just be a much more, because your advocacy for coaching and all the lunch and learns that you did really helped shift my mindset, and I was happy to hear that. But it wasn’t accidental because I was very intentional. I remember, I think it was like seven, eight years before that, where I said, every quarter, what are the actions that I was taking around furthering coaching as a competency in the organization? What are the things that I was doing to do training around diversity and inclusion? And that became such a strong part of my brand, and even to this day, people that I worked with in that organization or other organizations, say, Hey, like you did this with our company. Can you come to this new company and do it here? So that branding was so important.
The other tool that I’ll say real quick, the V is for visibility, and that is really to, you know, I say you may be doing all this great work, and you may be delivering all these results, but if no one knows about you about it, or the right people don’t know about it, then you’re going to have a hard time advancing professionally. So you want to ensure that you have the visibility to the decision makers, maybe getting those strategic introductions, working on cross-functional projects or enterprise-wide projects, you know, going for different groups, even doing volunteer you know, but figuring out how you can get visibility to the right person so that they you’re not the best kept secret at work.
And then the A is building your advisory board. And I say, have that built with when we talk about advancing women, is an expression I think it might have come from some work that McKinsey did, but it says women and people of color are over-mentored and under-sponsored. And so mentorship is important. Mentorship is really about somebody who has a similar background and experience to you, sharing with you the secret to success, whether you’re a mom or another mom working in corporate, how did you navigate being a mom in the workplace? You know, so whatever it is, they have to have that a similar background in the area that you’re developing, and that’s important. But that sponsorship is key. That’s the person that’s advocating for you, that’s opening doors for you, that’s making those introductions, like, you know what? She’s the best person for the role. Let’s hire her.
Tegan Trovato
When you’re not in the room, is part of the key, right?
Kisha Wynter
It’s key. It’s absolutely key. And sometimes you don’t necessarily, go to somebody and say, can I? Can you sponsor me? No, you have to be sponsor-worthy, which means you’re doing all the things. You’re delivering results. You have a high say, do ratio, you have a good image, you have a consistent brand out there. Then people say, You know what? Like, I want a co-brand. Because sponsorship is really a co-brand because if somebody says, Kisha is great, and Kisha doesn’t show up in the way she’s been, the next time that person makes a recommendation to that individual, they’re gonna think twice. Like, oh, actually, the last time you said this person was great, they actually turned out not to be good.
And so you want to ensure that you’re sponsor-worthy, which means the DI, the D, and the I that we just talked about, and the V and so sponsors, mentors, and then coaches, right? So we’re coaches. Understanding the coach is really good because they help you understand, again, what’s getting in the way of you being successful, helping you remove those internal limits. But also understanding, building a strategy on how to use the rest of your your board of directors effectively. How do I ensure that I’m using my mentors effectively? How do I get a mentor? How do I ensure that I’m best positioning myself so it’s really that coach can partner with you to develop your strategy so that you have a thorough one in order to advance and just be effective professionally. So that’s my DIVA Method.
Tegan Trovato
Love it, and we can read more, even more about it in the book.
Kisha Wynter
Yes, yes, I go into a lot more detail in the book about it.
Tegan Trovato
Since we talked about sponsorship, let me ask about the role of allies and organizational support and helping women not just advance their careers but also improve their overall work experience. Those are sometimes two. No, they could be. They are. They’re two different things, right? So what roles can allies and organizational support play and support there?
Kisha Wynter
Yeah, we talked about it a little bit, right? If, if men, if women, only make up 29% of C-suite positions in particular, that means more than 70% of the senior decision-makers are not women. You know, they’re men. So we want to ensure that there is a partnership that’s going on at the end of the day. Men tend to be one of the most underlying underutilized resources in this effort. And you know, Sheryl Sandberg talks about Lean In. Women can lean in all they want, but if the folks who actually make up the majority of the decision-making power are not partnering, it won’t be effective. It won’t be long-lasting. Women are simply not in positions of power to do that on a consistent basis at this point in time. And I will say that it’s not just the right thing to do to build inclusive and diverse workplaces, but it absolutely makes the right business sense. It just makes business sense.
There’s so much research out there that most people have heard about how diverse organizations perform higher from a financial standpoint, how people are much more have a higher level of engagement and morale through inclusive and diverse, which makes them much more productive, which leads to the higher performance, engagement is higher. So there even it creates an organization that’s much more innovative. New ideas are brought to the table. So if you’re not doing it, right, it just doesn’t make good business sense.
And one of the things that–there’s a book, besides, I mentioned it in Your Power Unleashed. But also, there’s a–I’m an avid reader, so I’m always thinking through–there’s a book called, I think it was called Glass Half-Broken by Harvard Business School, and they talked about in the book that when women advocate for gender equality, even if she’s in a senior position, she ends up receiving a lot of time some backlash, or she’s penalized because of this, Oh, you’re paying the gender card here, right? And it’s challenging because even though women in senior leadership positions want to advocate more, a lot of them would be much more hesitant because they don’t want to be ostracized, and some of them are barely surviving themselves, so they’ve got to put on their own mask, right?
Tegan Trovato
Oxygen mask?
Kisha Wynter
Yeah, yeah. Their own oxygen mask, rather than trying to save someone else. And the truth is when a male leader is advocating, the research, according to this book, states that the penalization and the backlash is much less, and the more senior that man is, the less the backlash is going to be in the organization, right? And so that’s part of the reason why it’s important.
I’ll never forget an organization that I worked in. It was hilarious. He came in, actually, before he came in, every year, we would go through these discussions around recruiting more women in the organization and even people of color in the organization. And there was this discussion that we could, yeah, we don’t have enough people. We don’t have enough women in the pipeline. Like, we can’t find, we can’t find women to be qualified to do this role. And, you know, it was a finance organization, and I live in the New York Tri-state Area, literally financial–
Tegan Trovato
You’re like, let me throw a stone off my porch, and I’ll find you some women that can do this job, right?
Kisha Wynter
I’m like, I’ll bring my family members.
Tegan Trovato
Yes, exactly.
Kisha Wynter
Literally. And it just blew my mind that it was so complicated that we couldn’t find enough women to fill these positions. And so he just came in as the new CEO. The new leader of the organization is just like, look, we’re going to be 50% women. He just said it.
Tegan Trovato
How refreshing.
Kisha Wynter
We, like, there is no if, ands about it. We will be 50% women, and we will figure it out. And this is part of your job now. And lo and behold, they’ll never forget. Like, 18 months later, it didn’t even take a long time. It was like, close to, like, I want to say we’re between 40 and 45 and 48%, we were pretty close to 50% in the organization in 18 months, and all because the leader said it’s gonna happen.
Tegan Trovato
Right. Right. What a great story to literally demonstrate what the data is suggesting. So yeah, thank you for that. Just monitoring our time, there are a couple more questions I want to ask you. One is if you could talk about the importance of record, recognizing intersectionality, and addressing, like, the nuanced need of women from diverse backgrounds. We’ve been speaking pretty holistically about women as a large group, but there’s so much that comes into play at the intersection, so tell us a bit. What could we take away from your knowledge today about that, Kisha?
Kisha Wynter
Yeah, so first of all, for those people who don’t know what intersectionality is, it’s a term that was coined by a scholar. Her name is Kimberlé Crenshaw, and it recognizes that the experiences of women are not only shaped by their gender but it’s shaped by other factors such as their race, their religion, their culture, their language, their so on. And there’s a lot of nuance when it comes to inclusive workplaces, and historically, when we talk holistically about women, we’re not a lot of times taking into consideration these nuances, right?
So, for example, if you have, and men and women are not about gender, somebody that’s Muslim in your organization, and there is a meeting that’s being held during the time of Ramadan, it actually happened in an organization. And at the time, I didn’t even know a lot about Ramadan, but I remember, even myself, we had this off-site, and we had a couple of employees that weren’t eating or drinking during lunch. And I said, Oh, why aren’t you eating or drinking? It’s like, it’s like, it’s Ramadan. And I was like, oh, you know, at the time, I didn’t know. I was like, What’s Ramadan? And they explained, and, you know, and the organization was a lot very accommodating to them because, at the time, they knew a lot of it, and they had been working for the organization for a while, but those accommodations were being made for those individuals.
And the reality is, if you’re not an inclusive place, you could be doing the things like I was doing, like, Well, why don’t you do you want, you know, all the things that you’re not making the accommodations for. And so, for me, it’s really about that curiosity and understanding how you could be supportive to those individuals and providing support that’s needed. You’re not going to know everything. Like I didn’t know everything, and I continue not to know everything, but that curiosity is there, and just being willing to make the accommodations as necessary so that individual can respect whatever it is they’re taking into consideration, and this consideration was religion, but it could be something else. That intersectionality is important because we talked about it for the things that we take for granted in terms of how we operate are not the norm for someone else, and so being willing to make those accommodations so that people can feel the freedom to be themselves.
Tegan Trovato
Yes, thank you.
Kisha Wynter
You’re welcome.
Tegan Trovato
As we close, if you had to give us, you know, the key messages you want us to take away from the book–not to, don’t give it all away, Kisha–people need to read it. It’s such a good book. I love, love, loved it. What are you what are the key things you really want to make sure leaders leave clear about after they read this?
Kisha Wynter
Yeah, you know, first of all, one of the key things that I want people to take away when you read the book, regardless of who you are, even when I just gave this example of the person that was Muslim and being in a meeting, you may feel as if you need to change who you are in order to be successful, and I believe the opposite is true. You don’t have to change who you are to be successful. Actually, success comes from embracing your authentic self, leveraging and understanding your unique strengths, as well as understanding how to really use those differences as your differentiator.
But by doing that internal work to really own your power, to understand how to apply those Savvy Workplace Strategies, you can achieve success without compromising your identity and compromising who you are. The last point I’ll make is that leaders in an organization, as I said in the beginning, have to do the work that we are creating places where it’s psychologically safe for people to show up as their authentic selves and not try to make them fit into this mold and conform because that’s when that imposter syndrome really gets exacerbated. So, create cultures where people from all backgrounds can thrive regardless of where they come from.
Tegan Trovato
Kisha, thank you. Thank you again for all your partnership over the years. Thank you for the beautiful and important work you’re putting out in the world, and thank you for sharing that with our listeners today.
Kisha Wynter
You’re so welcome. Thank you.
