In this episode, Sarah dives into one of the most common and frustrating challenges women in leadership face: getting your voice heard in the leadership space.

From being talked over in meetings to having your ideas claimed by others, these situations can leave you feeling disempowered, demotivated, and even disengaged. But there are proven ways to navigate this dynamic while staying true to your values.

In the first of a two-part series, Sarah shares tactical strategies you can use right away to increase your influence, get buy-in for your ideas, and have your contributions recognised. Next week, we’ll focus on the mindset work that underpins these tactics for even greater impact.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• How to build trust and credibility so your voice carries weight
• The importance of mapping allies and creating a “bank of social credit”
• Why likeability matters – and how to navigate the double bind for women leaders
• Using commitment and consistency to get buy-in for your proposals
• Spotting and eliminating undermining communication habits

Show Notes

[00:00:00] – Welcome to Unstuck and Unstoppable

[00:01:00] – Why getting your voice heard is such a common challenge for women leaders

[00:02:30] – Real-life client examples of being silenced, overlooked, or undermined

[00:04:15] – Why this topic deserves two episodes: tactics today, mindset next week

[00:05:00] – Tactic 1: Build trust and credibility – reinforcing your authority through your track record and experience

[00:07:00] – Tactic 2: Map your allies – identifying influencers and decision-makers, building reciprocity

[00:09:20] – Why reciprocity works (and how to use it authentically)

[00:10:00] – Tactic 3: The likeability factor – navigating the “double bind” for women and people of colour in leadership

[00:13:00] – Tactic 4: Commitment and consistency – shaping perception to encourage follow-through

[00:15:00] – Tactic 5: Communication review – removing undermining language, being clear and concise

[00:17:00] – Recap of the five strategies and preview of next week’s mindset-focused episode

[00:18:00] – Resources, ways to connect, and closing encouragement

Useful Links

Robert Gialdini: Influence: The Science of Persuasion

Sign up for Weekly Career Inspiration

Learn about Leadership & Advancement Coaching Programmes

Book a Free 121 Clarity Call

Join The Love What You Do Facebook Group

Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn

Rate & Review the Podcast

If you found this episode of Unstuck & Unstoppable helpful, please do rate and review it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

And don't forget to subscribe so you don’t miss Part 2 on mindset strategies and share it with a friend or colleague who could benefit

If you're kind enough to leave a review, please do let Sarah know so she can say thank you. You can always reach her at: sarah@careertreecoaching.co.uk

Weak.

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Welcome to Unstuck and Unstoppable,

the podcast for ambitious female

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leaders who want to create more impact,

income, and influence in their careers.

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feel connected to their passion

and purpose, but without

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selling out or burning out.

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I'm Sarah Archer, a leadership coach

and career strategist, helping women

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like you thrive in leadership roles

while staying true to your values.

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I'm the founder of CareerTree

Coaching and have over 15 years of

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coaching experience and significant HR

leadership experience to share with you.

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I know as a female leader it can

be hard to find time to focus

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on your career aspirations.

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The day job can be all consuming.

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Plus, no matter how senior you are,

there are always going to be times

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when you feel stuck, when you have

self doubt, or feel like an imposter.

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And that's where unstuck

and unstoppable comes in.

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Each week I'll be sharing practical

strategies, insightful interviews and

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inspiring stories to help you boost

your confidence, lead with purpose

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and achieve sustainable success.

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If you're ready to stop playing

small and unlock the incredible

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potential you have within you and feel

unstoppable, you're in the right place.

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Let's get started.

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Welcome to episode 40 of the

Unstuck Unstoppable Podcast.

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I can't believe that we're already on 40.

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It's fantastic and thank you so

much for listening regularly.

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If you're one of my regular listeners,

it really makes a difference for me.

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, Today's topic, I know you

are really gonna enjoy it.

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It's something that crops up.

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Significantly with a lot of the

female leaders that I work with.

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And I know I've experienced a challenge

with this when I was an HR director.

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, So I know you're gonna

get so much from it.

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From clients that I work with this.

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Issue of not getting your voice

heard in the leadership space

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can come up and be problematic.

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Maybe you are experiencing just so

much noise, so many loud voices that

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you can't get yours heard, or maybe

you're finding your ideas are being.

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Kind of badge, just somebody else's

ideas or you're just not being

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listened to in terms of the initiatives

that you are putting forward.

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Or maybe actually in a meeting

you are experiencing being

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talked over by a colleague or cut

across all those kind of things.

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it can be really frustrating.

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You can.

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Angry about it.

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You can feel disempowered.

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You can feel demotivated.

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You can find yourself disengaging

from the organization.

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You can feel incredibly frustrating

by it, quite rightly so as well.

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And like I said, it comes up quite often.

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In fact, I was talking with a few

clients over the last couple of weeks

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where this has appeared for them.

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I've got one client who she is in a

advisory role to the chief exec and

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found that the chief exec was taking the

ideas that she had talked to him about

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and presented them to the board as his,

which was incredibly frustrating for her.

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I had another client where she

was in a small meeting with.

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Some leadership colleagues and the

chief exec and a new board member, and

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she was the only female in the room and

she was asked to take the notes, which

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she found incredibly disempowering.

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And another client where she has to matrix

manage, she's a, in a senior director

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role and found that people only take

action when the chief exec prioritized

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that particular area of work, not when she

was asking people to take action, which

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again was incredibly frustrating for her.

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So if you are experiencing these

things yourself, please, take

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heart that you're not alone.

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It is unfortunately quite common.

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And when I was preparing for the

session today, I was thinking, actually,

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I need to do two sessions on this.

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I am going to split the session into

one today, and then one next week.

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Because what I realized is that there's

some tactical things you can do.

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Which we're gonna talk about

today to get your voice heard, my

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voice is going for some reason.

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And then there's also the mindset

work, the inner work that's important

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also in order to get your voice heard.

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Today I'm gonna focus on

some of the tactical things.

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And then next week I'm gonna

focus on the mindset issues.

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What I'm gonna do today is I'm

gonna share a few tacticals.

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There's a lot we can do and I've

used a lot of these with client,

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different clients, but I'm gonna

share a few because of the time today.

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But you can start to think about whether

they feel right for you and whether

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you want to experiment with them.

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And if you want support with this, if

you want coaching on a one-to-one basis

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to help you with this, 'cause some of

this stuff is tricky, then do message

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me and we can have a chat about that.

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The first thing I'm borrowing from a

few of these ideas from a guy called

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Robert Gini who wrote a book about

persuasion and he wrote it from a sales

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and marketing point of view, but a

lot of the, areas that he highlighted

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you can adapt to the world of work.

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'cause they're based on some

psychological research and principles.

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The first one is building trust

and credibility, which sounds

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very obvious, doesn't it?

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Because if we trust somebody,

we're more likely to take action.

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If they ask us to do that, we're

more likely to listen to them.

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We're more likely to pay attention.

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You can start to think about, okay, have

I built up enough trust and credibility?

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In the organization.

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That's , partly thinking about your brand.

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Am I someone who does what

they say they're going to do?

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Do I give credit to other people?

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Do I share my knowledge?

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Just thinking about what's,

your brand is saying about you

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in terms of the organization.

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Are you seen as a doer?

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Are you seen as reliable?

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Are you've seen as somebody who's,

bringing that strategic and operational.

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Vision to the leadership team.

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And then you can also think

about being tactical with this.

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Sometimes we need to remind people

of our authority, and we can do

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this by doing some scene setting.

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It might be very simple as saying

something like, from my 10 years

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experience as a senior HR professional,

I've learned that in order, for

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us to implement this initiative

successfully, we need to do A, B, C.

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You're just reminding them that

you've got 10 solid years experience

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as a senior HR person or whatever

profession you might be in.

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Or it could be reminding people that

you know as senior project manager, I've

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managed this project really successfully

recently, and I understand that for us

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to get the same kind of success, we need

to do X, y, Z to enable that to happen.

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Again, you're linking what

you're proposing to your

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authority and credibility.

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And I used this really

successfully with a client.

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She was six to eight months into a new-ish

role and she was a senior project manager.

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She was having to Matrix manage

people and she just wasn't getting

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any headway in terms of getting people

to take action to listen to her.

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And so we started to get her to really

highlight her significant project

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management experience and the types of

projects she's worked on when she was.

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Presenting or asking people to do

things, and it made a huge difference

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to her impact and her influence.

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That could be a very small

thing that you can tweak to

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remind people of your authority.

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The second thing is to think

about mapping your allies.

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Who do you naturally feel aligned to

that you have quite a good rapport

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with or that you want to be aligned to?

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Who are the decision makers?

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Who are the influencers?

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And thinking about building up.

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What I like to call is a bank of

social credit because the concept

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of reciprocity is very powerful.

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We all know if someone does something

for you, you want to do something for

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them, you want to return the favor.

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Even if it's a simple thing like

sending a birthday card, you want

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to send that person a birthday card

'cause they remembered your birthday.

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It's very powerful and what you can think

about doing in a tactical way is building

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up a bank of social credit with the

people that you want to be allies with.

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That could be thinking about, maybe

you're lending them a team member

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for something, maybe you are.

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Giving them some useful information

for something that they're working on.

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Maybe you are buying them a coffee

because they're so busy they haven't

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got time to pop out and get one.

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Whatever it might be, you are building

up a bank of social credit with them.

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So then when you need them to support

you or to open a door for you or to

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yeah, give you some, supporting a

meeting, whatever it might be, they're

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more likely to do that because you've

built up this bank of social credit.

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So now with some of these strategies,

you might feel like, oh, maybe

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this is a bit manipulative.

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But we're always thinking about

doing it from a genuine place.

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Okay.

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But you are being strategic and

tactical in order to have the

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impact that you want to have.

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And with all of these ideas and

suggestions, I would say it's about

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experimentation and it's about doing

whatever you feel comfortable with.

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But having used them with my clients

who go through my impact and influence

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Female leaders program, I know

that these work when they're done.

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Authentically and genuinely.

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So it's thinking about

who are your allies?

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Who do you want to build

up that reciprocity with?

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And remember you're gonna be

doing things for them as well.

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It's not that you are, expecting them

just to support your open doors without

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actually having done anything for them.

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And this leads me into the, into sort

of an aligned area with the , allies

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piece because we want to talk about

likability because we're more likely to

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be influenced by people that we like.

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It's just one of those psychological

things, and we're more likely to

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like people who are similar to us.

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And this is where it gets uncomfortable

because then women particularly

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and people of color experience

what's called a double bind.

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Some research done by, gluck, Fisk

and Cudi, who are psychologists showed

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when we interact with somebody, we meet

somebody, we're immediately assessing

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are they likable and are they credible?

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Are they competent to do what they do?

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This goes back to evolutionary times

because we were assessing people

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if they were competent and likable,

we are more likely to be safe.

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And this evolutionary trait has come

through into the world of work now.

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And so we still have that immediate

response to people of, are they

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likable, are they competent?

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Now where the double bind comes in is

that if you are in an organization where

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the high social group, high status social

group in the leadership team is white

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male, which often is then the people,

members of that status group don't have to

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prove that they're likable and competent.

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It's just automatically assumed because

they're part of the high status group,

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and therefore those people who are

in the lower status social group

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as it's determined psychologically.

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So that tends to be women,

people of color often.

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Therefore, they have to prove

they're both competent and likable.

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So this is what's called the double bind.

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What that means is that we have to, going

back to our credibility piece, building

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trust, we have to show a competence.

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It's reminding people of what

we've done previously and what

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we're bringing to the role, but

it's also having to intentionally,

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deliberately dial up the warmth.

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It means thinking about how we

cooperate with other people, how

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we may be genuinely compliment

them, how we identify similarities,

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how we then build relationships.

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Some of this we will do automatically,

but it's about maybe having to dial it up.

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And I really hate that we have

to do this, that we are not just

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automatically seen as both competent

and likable, but unfortunately.

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While the majority of leadership teams are

white and male, we have to work harder to

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show that both were competent and likable.

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And and it's tricky.

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It's definitely tricky and you might

hate it too, but we have to position

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it for ourselves as being strategic

and being tactical and utilizing.

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The fact that

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women are often relational beings,

so we're better at building

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those relationships naturally.

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It's just thinking about how you dial up.

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The warmth with some of your

interactions, not with everybody

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in the organization, that would be

exhausting, but with your allies,

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thinking about the key people that you

want to build those relationships with.

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Then going back to our fourth area, which

is about commitment and consistency.

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This is about us as individuals.

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We don't like to be inconsistent to the

image that we have created for ourselves

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or that we think other peoples see us as.

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We like to commit to that image

and we like to be consistent.

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So you can think about utilizing

this as a tactical approach when

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maybe you wanting your boss to.

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To approve something or you

want to get their buy into

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something, whatever it might be.

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You might be thinking to position

something like this, and I've

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got an imaginary boss called Mike

that I'm positioning this to.

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Okay.

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So it might be, Mike, I know that you

are a really balanced decision maker,

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so I know that you are going to give

my proposal a really thorough review.

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What you're doing is you're setting

the scene for Mike to think.

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Yeah, I'm a balanced decision maker.

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I am gonna take this proposal and

give it a really thorough review.

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'cause Mike's not gonna want

to act inconsistently to the

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image and the identity that you

have just positioned to him.

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So again, you can think about it

in terms of just using it as a.

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A strategy, experiment with

it and just see how it works.

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With all of these, like I said, it's

about thinking what might I want to

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play around with and experiment with?

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When I work with a client individually,

I'm coaching them on a specific

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area that they are wanting to.

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Cut through on.

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So we practice and we develop a

way to, to make that approach.

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Some of the, these things I'm talking

about now are top line for you to have

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a think about maybe doing a relationship

audit, maybe experimenting with

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reciprocity, maybe experimenting with

the commitment and consistency maybe

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thinking about the whole likability piece.

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And the final one I just wanted to share

with you, and I've got loads of these,

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but I just wanted to share a few with you.

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Which is often harder to spot.

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So you might need to get somebody

to give you some feedback on this.

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But it's doing a communication

review because often we can

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undermine how we communicate.

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First it would be thinking

about, am I being clear?

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Am I being concise?

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Because when you are wanting to

get buy in, people don't want

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to hear lots of information.

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They want to cut through to

the most important stuff.

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Am I showing how I solve the problem?

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And then am I undermining myself in

terms of the language that I might use?

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And that's looking for words or phrases

that you have used that can undermine you.

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And we often, particularly as women,

use these phrases, these words,

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to help other people feel more

comfortable with what we are proposing.

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It might be something like

using just, I just wanted to

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check in with you about this.

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And I know I'm really guilty

of using just, I try not

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to, but I do tend to use it.

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Or it might be saying when you've talked

about something, does that make sense?

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Now, of course it makes sense.

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You wouldn't have said it if it

didn't make sense, but you want

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other people to feel more comfortable

with something you're proposing.

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It's just thinking about,

see, I just said it.

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Then thinking about how

you are communicating.

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Doing a bit of a

communication review and then.

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Again, experimenting with not using some

of that undermining language or improving

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your clarity and conciseness when you

are trying to get your voice heard.

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Like I said, I've got more, but

I don't want to overload you.

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So we've looked at today thinking

about building trust and credibility.

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Really reminding people of what

you're bringing and your expertise,

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mapping your allies and thinking about

building a social bank of reciprocity.

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And thinking about the likability factor

we've looked at being, consistent,

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giving somebody an identity that you

are wanting them to inhabit and then

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wanting to be consistent with that.

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And we've thought about

your communication.

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Next week, like I said, I'm going to be

talking about the mindset piece which.

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You might feel more comfortable

experimenting some of these when

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we've looked at the mindset piece but

do get in touch if you want to have

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some direct support with this area.

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It's not something we can really fix

in 15 minutes, but hopefully I've

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given you a few ideas to think about.

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Thank you so much for listening

to this episode of the Unstuck

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and Unstoppable podcast.

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I have lots of free resources you

can access on my website, ww.career

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tree coaching.co

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uk, and I'll also put

links in the show notes.

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If you found this episode

helpful, then please subscribe

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so you don't miss the next one.

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And please do share it with a

friend and leave me a review

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and I will personally thank you.

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Remember, you're capable of more

than you know, shine brightly.

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Lead boldly and unlock the

extraordinary potential within you.

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Be unstoppable.