55 | Quietly Ambitious Leader Toolkit

On today's episode, I'm highlighting one of my resources that I have: the Quietly Ambitious Leader Toolkit. 

It's a set of five free resources designed for the person who wants to advance without waving your hands and yelling 'look at me, look at me!'

On the episode I'm sharing one exercises from each of the resources:

• Rekindling a relationship with someone you haven't talked to in a long time.
• Consider the journaling/reflection prompt "where will you show up as a leader this week?"
• A book for new managers: The New One Minute Manager.
• Feeling the beat as a way to defeat imposter syndrome thoughts.
• The post-it note antidote to negative self-talk.

Have a listen, give these exercises a try, and make sure to pick up the full toolkit here: themintambition.com/quiet

Resources mentioned in the show

• Give Yourself a Break: The Power of Self-Compassion https://hbr.org/2018/09/give-yourself-a-break-the-power-of-self-compassion
• 101 positive affirmations for kids
• Keala Settle "This Is Me"
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLFEvHWD_NE 

Well, Hey there, I'm Liz St. Jean, and this is the Rise in your Nine to Five podcast. Where I help quietly ambitious leaders who want to have meaningful and fulfilling careers, making an impact in the world. It's where strategy meets intuition to become a better leader with more joy, less stress and endless impact.

So let's break free from perfectionism, imposter thoughts. And that inner rule keeper that keeps you in a career comfort zone. It's time to become unapologetically you. And step into the life you were meant to live. We're going to talk presence, productivity, and having it all. Or as my four-year-old would say, we're going to take over the world. So let's get to it.

Well, hello there. Welcome back to the show. Today's episode is number 55. Number 55. And on today's episode, I'm going to be highlighting one of my resources that I have. It's a free resources, free resource, completely free resource called the quietly ambitious leader toolkit. And I wanted to highlight it to you in case you haven't heard me talk about it before. And what I'm going to do is I'm pulling out from, from the toolkit, a few of my favorite exercises and.

you'll see. As we go along some exercises and things from each of the parts of the toolkit. So a little bit of background on the tool kit is that lately I've been well longer than lately. Over the last few years, I've been thinking a lot about ethical marketing and just been doing work behind the scenes. I know I don't talk to you much at all about the behind the scenes of my business, but this is one of the behind the scenes is I've been thinking and working on ethical marketing and really.

Exploring what that means for me. And, and I'm listening to the conversations that people are having about it. And so I joined a program specifically about it. And I was working with the coach, the mean person in the program, tad. And we had a session together and we were talking about the kind of people I love to work with and the people who've done really well in my programs. And he was the one who actually came up with this term.

Quietly ambitious. And I know I've shared it with some, with some of you, those of you who are on my email list or you're in my Facebook group. You see me talking about this and maybe heard me talking about it on the podcast already. And it's this term that really seems to resonate with a lot of people.

And it resonates. I think for a few different reasons. What I hear most commonly from people is that they, they say that I, you know, I, I am ambitious. I do have ambitions, but for one just like. The word ambition alone. It sometimes feels uncomfortable, feels a little bit like, you know, that you're the kind of person waving their arms around saying, look at me, look at me. And so people tell me like that. They say that's not really me. Like, that's not who I am.

You know, you're not the kind of person who uses elbows. I like to see you're more likely to use emotional intelligence instead of elbows. And there's a kind of quietness around it. There's a calm, there's also a joy there as well, because this isn't about being flashy or being what I've called. Sometimes proclamation a leadership, you know, people who sail the right things, but this substance doesn't feel like it's always, always there.

You know, you're the kind of person who has a lot of integrity. You have a lot of values. Your you're wanting to move into leadership roles for all the right reasons. You know, whether, whether it's even inspired by really great leaders in the past, or, or you've had that experience with, with leaders or managers who made it really hard to get out of the car or open your laptop in the morning.

Either way you're inspired to do better, be better. You want to be a leader for the right reasons. You want to motivate people. You want to make positive impact in the world. And like, I said before you want to do it in a way that's not like, you know all about you, right? You don't want to be loud. You don't want to be flashy. You don't want to have to do jazz hands. You just, you just want to do leadership. You want to paint visions. You want to motivate people.

And so this term quietly ambitious just really seems to resonate. And what I think is so fun about it is that, you know, for some people who are really identifies introverts or internal processors as well, it really lands, right. The idea of being quietly ambitious, really lands for an introvert. But even for my extroverts out there, you know, there's a lot of people who I distill identify with that freezing quietly, ambitious, because even though you're extroverted, it feels it can feel icky or it can feel gross to kind.

of to promote yourself to be out there self-advocating and you'd rather do it quietly, right? You'd rather, you'd rather just do it then be loud about it. So, anyhow, I would actually love to hear from you. Does this line for you, does this phrasing feel like it really reflects who you are in terms of what you're trying to achieve, where you're going with your career and how you see leadership and your, your reasons for being a leader, please reach out and let me know.

You can find me on LinkedIn or look in the show notes. There's lots of ways of getting in touch with me, but I would love to hear from you. It'd be awesome. So for today. So I'm going to talk about this resource. I pulled together a toolkit. So I'm calling it the quietly ambitious leader toolkit. So, what I did is I pulled together different resources that I had. And, um, one of them actually used to even be part of my paid program. But when I was looking at it, I thought, no, I need to have this. As part of my toolkit is really miss to be there.

So it's a toolkit of five different resources. And if you want to pick it up, you can head over to the mint ambition.com/quiet. That's the mint ambition.com/quiet. You can pick it up there. You just send me, you'll give me your email address and I will send you the resources. It'll come to you in an email and there's five different resources.

So for the rest of the episode today, what I'm going to do is I'm going to describe them briefly. And then I'm going to pull out either an exercise or a different piece from each of them that I want to offer you right now. So whether or not because, you know, if you can't go and get it right now, you can't get the whole toolkit.

Kit. I want to highlight five of my favorite exercises or items within the toolkit. Okay, so let's start off with the one that is actually part of my bootcamp. So I've, it's always been only for my bootcamp. Um, participants. So I've pulled it out and put it into this toolkit and it's called the three month career advancement blueprint. Okay. So I'm giving you some step-by-step ways to work on advancing your career. So that's what this whole blueprint is. So it is a Google doc you'll get, and it is how many pages is pretty comprehensive, so, oh yeah, it goes up.

It's 11 pages. There's lots of good stuff in there, but it's pretty, it's pretty straightforward, pretty easy to follow. And what I've done is I've broken it down into. The start of it. I walk you through some reflection questions to make sure that you have a good handle on what it is that's going to advance your career. So you start off with that reflection, identify how you can advance your career, because that's something that only you can know, right. Everyone's different in how they're going to advance their career, depending on.

What you're trying to do, like what advancement means for you, how it works in your organization, whether you're looking at a whole different organization. Right? So only you can answer that. There's unfortunately there's no like paint by numbers for that piece of it. But once you have that, then you go into part B, which has action items.

And it's a daily, weekly and monthly system. That's all designed that by the end of the three months. And honestly, it'll probably be before then. But at least by the end of the three months, you're going to notice that senior leaders, your senior managers, they're going to be setting up and paying attention. You're going to be showing up in slightly different ways, doing different things. And they're going to want to know what you have to say.

They're going to be seeing you as a high potential employee. You're going to start getting tapped for special projects and all of the good stuff to really position you for promotion. If not even having starting those conversations. Like I said, like with. I think for a lot of people, it'll be within a three months, but that said the way it's designed is that.

Um, at the end of the three months, what you do is you create a new blueprint and you start from the, you start over. So you keep doing this every three months. Okay. So I won't go through the whole system, but I do want to point out the weekly action items, one of them. So on Wednesday, the Wednesday weekly action item that I gave you in this blueprint.

Is that I want. And I, so this is my task for you now that I'm sharing with you, that I want you to do is rekindle a relationship with someone you haven't I haven't been in contact with for some time. Okay. And I even, there's a part in the initial reflections, that's helping identify who those people should be.

And I'm very aware that, especially for the more quiet amongst us. So especially for my introverts out there, I know that can be, feel really daunting and hard, like, oh, how do I even start a conversation? So what I do, one of the things I've always loved to do I share with my clients is you as you're reading articles and as you're paying attention to things around leadership and around your industry, which just actually a little side thing, that's your Monday task is to pay attention to the industry and reading leadership articles.

Or, or podcasts in this case, as you guys, you're listening to a podcast, what you can do is you can take that article or you can take something in the industry, in the news, even reading and share it with someone. So and sharing it with someone you haven't talked to for awhile, that's a great icebreaker for lots of different reasons, but I love it because you can, you can say things like, Hey, I saw this and I thought, and it reminded me of you.

I was just thinking what you thought you might enjoy this. It might, um, it reminded me of the project we work on, or it reminded me of some of the conversations we've had. That part of it again is going to depend on, on you and how you like to communicate, but also your relationship with the person and how formal or informal it is.

Pain. So that's number one in that's one task inside the three-month group, advancement blueprint, rekindle that relationship with someone you haven't connected to for. with, or you haven't connected with them in some time. Okay. Number two in the toolkit is the leadership mindset. Journal prompts.

Hey, and what I've done here is that, um, So, this is sort of pulled from my bootcamp. So when you joined bootcamp or if you joined bootcamp, you get the option of doing what I call it. A leadership discovery survey. It's a pretty comprehensive guide. It's several pages of reflection and exercises for you to really understand your own views of leadership.

I give you different prompts. I give you different articles, really to understand what you think about leadership. And so what I did with this one for the leadership mindset journal prompts is I pulled out some of those questions. So it's not all of them. So it's a lot. So it's a little bit shorter, a little bit easier to get through, but there you get six reflection questions, and they also give you a bit of a bonus section where I share with you some of my favorite articles, mostly HBR Harvard business review, because I'm in love with Harvard business review.

Um, I share some other resources as well, and some reflections on the resources. But your six reflection questions. It's a starting point. It's kind of like a, an appetizer or an amuse-bouche for your thoughts about leadership. Okay. So right now I want to share with you one question. I really want you to reflect on this. If you're in a place where you can even pause this after, after I share the question posit and just have a think about it, if you can jot down some notes, if you like or think it through, talk about it with someone, maybe talk it out.

If you're. An External processor like I am. So you can tell us your podcast host. Hey. But find a way to reflect on it, really think about what it means for you. Okay. And that question is, here's the question I want you to consider. Where will you show up as a leader this week?

And how will you know, you were successful?

Where will you show up as a leader this week? And then it's a tag on question is how will you know you were successful? And that's a really great, great question for a lot of different reasons, but one of the most powerful reasons, or one of the reasons it's powerful. Is because it gets you out of reactive mode, you know, so often we're just either, either we're reacting kind of like playing tennis and getting all the tennis balls being.

thrown, tossed our way and we're just trying to knock them back as quickly as possible. But oftentimes we go into kind of like a little bit of, uh, you know, turtle mode where we kind of like turtle in our shell. Um, sometimes we call it victim mode, but where we feel like we are at the effect of everything. So that would be like,

out on the tennis court, all the tennis balls being thrown out, you are knocked out you threw that machine and you don't even, you feel like you don't have a tennis racket. You're just trying to, you got your hands over your head and you're, you know, if you imagine hunching your shoulders and you're just kind of like trying to protect yourself.

Okay. And there are times where we need to protect ourselves. Right? I do not want, ever want to take away from that, that idea that there are those times where you, you do want to be in protection mode. But that said it's hard to show up as a leader when your shelf, when you're just sheltering heart, you know, arms over your neck and face and trying to cower.

From From all the tennis balls, everything had your way. Instead here, you're saying, where will you show up as a leader? You were being proactive, right? You were, you are taking control and saying this week, I'm showing up in this way. It's a very different energy and it's a much more compelling energy for others. When we show up that way, people are more or more drawn to it to be listening to us and to, to follow our guidance.

And so I would love for you to try that on this week, try on, And where will you show up as a leader this week? And then the bonus, how will you know, you were successful? And the reason I add that second bonus question is because sometimes. We want to, we also want to think about what the, what does it look like? How do we, what do we, what does that mean to be a leader? So how would we know we're being successful? Right. So, um, you compare those two questions together and it's a much more powerful way of showing up.

Okay. So that's the leadership mindset journal prompts. Then the resource number three and the Toolcat a tool kit. is the ultimate guide to leadership books. So for those who don't know, I love leadership books. I've got a huge collection. This is. This is what really got me into all of this leadership stuff, leadership books. I love, I find them so fascinating. And what I started doing over time was curating a list of what I was reading, because there's just so much out there. And, um, people would just always ask, you know, what should I read that?

That's the question I hear all the time. What books should I read? So I've put in putting together over time. It grows as an evergreen document. I grow it over time. And it's curated out Into different sections. And one of the sections is about leading people. And there's a sub section called new managers. Start here.

Where I've got several books that, that I would recommend. Uh, Uh, new brand new manager. You're, you've just got a new management job. These are five really great questions. And I'm going to share with you one book that I think is a really fantastic book to start off with as a new manager, and it's actually called the new one minute manager book.

Okay. The new one minute manager and it's called the new part is not about being a new manager. It's about. is the, fact that the book there was an original book called the one minute manager and then the updated it to become the new one minute manager. And with reason I love it is that it's very easy. It's very quick to read it.

it's by Ken Blanchard. So if you know the name of the Blanchard company for management training, that's the linkage there. And it is, it's very accessible. Like you said, because it's short. What the added and the new version is they added more to do around coaching, how to take a coach approach to your management.

But essentially they give you some really fantastic tools on how to approach people, how to work with them. And when you are their manager, Now, like I said, the, the, um, that resource, the ultimate guide has lots of other books as well, because there are so many books you can, all you can read, you could.

I mean, I don't know No that anyone has time to read all the books there are, but that to me is a great starter because it's quick, it's easy. It's going to get you into effective action right away. Um, and then if you want to get, pick up the tool kit and check out the ultimate guide, if you want to see even more books that are helpful. I think, I think the list on this in my guide has something like 200 bucks and we might have even more by, at this at the time of.

Um, by the time you hear this by the time recording, I think is about 200 books. I have a whole section in the beginning of out leadership books written by women, because there are a lot of books that are written by men. And I want to, my plan, my goal is to keep increasing the diversity of authors because there is a very, um,

Uh, it's a very common theme with most authors of leadership books. And so I want to keep looking for a diversity in authorship. So as an aside, if you know of books that are, especially if they're not as well known, you know, you don't, people aren't, you don't have Adam Grant talking about on his podcast, but, but they re represents diversity of.

thought diversity of experience, diversity of ethnicity, of gender, every, anything diversity of anything. Please let me know, because I would love to include that in my list. So please reach out if you have some suggestions, if they're not already in my, in my list. Okay. Okay, so resource number four. So that was resource three resource for the toolkit is it has a very cheeky title. And cause I called it the perfect system to overcome imposter thoughts.

So the reason it's cheeky for those of you who don't or can't, or don't already get it, it's because a lot of times imposter thoughts or it's also, sometimes we refer to as imposter syndrome has to do with perfectionism. So that's why calling it, the perfect system was a bit of a cheeky play on it.

And I call it the perfect system because there's seven letters in perfect. And E there's seven parts to the systems or seven different, um, W tangible, I would say the things you can do right away. That are going to help you with that mindset are gonna help you with overcoming some of the negative self-talk and the imposter thinking that can come on, that you can start doing right away.

So one of them that this is one of my favorites is I call it. Feel the beat. Dance to your own personal songs. So that's the F in. Perfect. So feeling the beat has two pieces to it. One is the, the fact that you want to focus on your unique strengths. You know, what is it that makes you special? And the reason you want to do this is that operating from a place of strength is always going to be more powerful than trying to be something you're not. Okay. So you want to dance to your own beat, Well, you want to show up as unapologetically. You.

Hey. That's really, really key. But then the second part with field of beat. It is. The other part about dancing to your own song is metaphorical. But I also want you to think of what physically feeling the beat. Because you can really use your body to feel confident as a way to inspire confident thoughts. Okay. Now that said We also don't want to, you know, we don't want to slip into I have something that's called toxic positivity, which is that everything's fine. It's, you know, to quote the Lego movie that, which my kids been obsessively watching lately. It's not that everything is awesome. Like everything just to, to, to quote the Lego movie to, you know, everything, can't be awesome all the time.

It's okay. It's okay. If things are Even though we're having negative feelings or even that we're having, you know, you. know, Quote, negative thoughts. That said w this can be a real kind of Kickstarter to kick us out of that feeling when we're ready. And we want to be, we want to get to that place of feeling more confident, starting with music is so wonderful or starting with your body is so wonderful, and you can do it through music, and you can also do it through striking a wonder woman pose.

There's a great Ted talk on this by Amy Cuddy about the power of our body. So if you think of what the wonder woman pose you've got your hands on your hips you've got your shoulders back you've got your chin held higher heads held high You're feeling that in your body okay Like i said though you can also use music now my favorite song i think he anyone who's on my email list you would have seen me email about this a couple of weeks ago Is, this a song Uh, sung by callous uh, settle called this is me and it's from a movie But i love her version especially on if you go to youtube i haven't found anywhere else just on youtube there's a it's almost like a behind the scenes because what they had done is they recorded For this movie they recorded a lot of the songs during the green-lighting of the movie and her version is so powerful because it uh before she starts singing there's a bit of an uh, back and forth interview with her and one of the show runners or songwriters I think it was. And she talks about how scared she was so she is living this experience of like this. this a A woman with the most amazing voice seriously when you hear this song Uh, You cannot stop playing it I, or at least i can, i can't stop playing it But she has the most incredible loyce expressiveness she's beautiful And yet she's feeling all this fear around this song and she talks about how scared she felt she didn't want to come from from behind the music stand but she does and you see it you actually see it in this song how she overcomes that fear and it's just amazing it's incredible so definitely check that out i will put the link in the show notes would love for you to watch that Hey. So music wonder woman and the number three is to breathe Deep breath get the blood moving get oxygen into your body you know it's probably not the first time you've heard that before so hopefully i'm just reinforcing something you've already heard before but really get that oxygen like i said get the get the air into your body into your body Okay All right we're bringing it home we've got one more so final resource is the quick start guide to self-compassion Okay Self compassion This is the name of the game when it comes to my quietly ambitious leaders because if you are if you're like anything Or if you're anything like the people i work with and the people i see in people In my communities you care so much you have so much integrity your values are so strong That you have so much expectation for how to show up You need to also have that self-compassion Both for when things don't go well because they're not always going to go well Right as you go into leadership as i tell my clients especially the further up you go The more uncertain things are going to be and so we having that compassion for yourself giving yourself grace And then especially if you're the kind of person who really cares a lot about your impact on others You get into you can go almost get into the place where you you want you're going to need to have compassion for yourself Four. You holding yourself to high expectations okay so you want to strengthen that muscle self-compassion having grace for yourself Okay And what i'm going to suggest for you well okay two things on this one so because there's a few different pieces i have in the quickstart guide One is i'm going to share it i'll put it in the show notes there's an article from harvard business review called give yourself a break the power of self-compassion So i'm going to put a link in there because that's a great article And i'm going to read a quote Uh one of the most powerful quotes from that article that i found so it says People with high levels of self-compassion demonstrate three behaviors first They are kind rather than judgemental about their own failures and mistakes Second They recognize that failures are a shared human experience And third they take a balanced approach to negative emotions when they stumble or fall short They allow themselves to feel bad But they don't let negative emotions take over Okay So that's the article give yourself a break the power of self-compassion and i'll pop it into the show notes That bonus from the quickstart guide is that when i share it, one of the simplest things that i find helps people and it may even sound a little bit silly but just just try it just give it a try And that's Keep a post-it note somewhere somewhere that you see on a regular basis so in the kitchen could be above your laptop could be in your bathroom when you're brushing your teeth And i want you to write on that post post-it note some kind of affirmation that reminds you to have self-compassion in those moments of stress Hey so in the toolkit and i'll do this in the show notes too there's a link to a great list of 101 positive affirmations and it's fun too because if you're a parent it's actually a link to um Permissions for So it's a resource to kind of serve. And i know it sounds a little bit but i promise you because you've got affirmation just seeing trigger you to be. And Give her positive Right. We spent we spent a lot of self-talk right We need to know ourselves How's it itself and this can be very helpful but like a lot of it is going. To be you. So you want i can't choose But it offers something but at the end of the one who will know which Yeah, This is going to be most helpful for you So. If you want a toolkit to shin.com, quiet the whole tool And in the mud for you to pick one different extras from maybe. Oh, How about go note? Reach out on linkedin DME Or any other way if you want my email on any of my at the mall and i do. To all have coming in so with wonderful week i hope your full day what is right now i will next

Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Now, before you go, make sure you click to follow the show this way you don't have to go looking for the latest episode. I'll come to you. Just click the plus button or the follow, and you'll get the latest episode fresh off the press. Thanks again. And remember that you are amazing. Now, get out there and RISE.