Value Articulation Clinic

Jamie Lee: (00:00)
Welcome to negotiate your career growth. I'm Jamie Lee and I teach you how to blend the best of negotiation strategies with feminist coaching. So you get promoted and better paid without burning bridges or burning out in the process. Let's get started. Hello? Hello, badass people. I hope you are. Well, I am loving this late summer, early fall vibes here in New York city. I've really been upping my exercise game lately and seeing great results in my energy. You know, I teach that self-advocacy is a muscle, so you gotta exercise it regularly, right? And I've been exercising some physical muscles and seeing amazing results in my life as well. Today, I have a treat for you. I am sharing the highlights and snippets from value articulation clinic, which I told you about in episode two at this clinic, I coached some folks live. I answered some questions live.

Jamie Lee: (01:04)
I taught new concepts and actionable strategies. So you're gonna learn how to articulate your value when you're not sure what the higher ups most care about. You're gonna learn how to articulate your value when it's hard work. And you don't wanna sound like you're complaining. You're going to learn how to think about your work when you are in a culture that is promoting overwork. You're also going to think about how you're gonna learn about how to cultivate self-confidence when you've taken time off for personal issues and you come back feeling like you're the weakest link. You're also gonna learn how to set yourself up for long term success when you just started a new role. So without further ado here is value articulation clinic. Enjoy the on the day that we are born to the day that we die, that worthiness is non-negotiable irrefutable. It gets clouded by socialization.

Jamie Lee: (02:10)
We, we forget to understand it. We forget to acknowledge ourselves and our humanity that happens all of the time because of what we've been taught to think about our value. Yeah, but it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Our value is SACC our work value. The value of our contributions is something that we create. But because of socialization, because of this, uh, this internalized bias, we don't get to see it clearly. And when we don't see it, clearly, we don't know how to articulate it. We don't know how to speak to it. And then when we go to advocate for the career growth that we want, when we go to negotiate, pay raises and job offers, now we feel like, oh, I don't know what to do. This is totally normal. This is totally common. Not because you are not valuable, not because the work that you do doesn't have value it's because of the society, because of the socialization that we've all been exposed to unintentionally, right.

Jamie Lee: (03:19)
And the first step to changing that is becoming aware of it. It's uncomfortable. Yeah. And you might get really upset and angry to realize, oh, all this time, I've not been able to see my own value because of what society, what my parents, what teachers, what other people, what mass media has taught me to, uh, think about me and my work. Yeah. It can be upsetting. But sometimes that is part of the process we have to like, okay, we see it. We see it is not us. It doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with us. It doesn't mean that we don't have value. We now we're able to see the barrier and we can overcome it. Yeah. Okay. So I took some notes here, cuz I wanna make sure that I addressed the key points before we dive into live Q and a and live coaching.

Jamie Lee: (04:13)
Uh, the reason why I am doing live coaching called live Q and a today is because, you know, uh, last year I did several interactive workshops, webinars where I gave a lot of specific action steps that you can take to better advocate and negotiate for your growth. And of course I will do them again for sure. But for me, somebody who loves knowledge, somebody who loves learning on workshops, I love to take copious notes and I'd be like, I'm gonna do that later. For sure. I'm gonna implement the tactic, that strategy that this person, this consultant or expert told me about. And then most often then not, if I don't implement it into action, if I don't have that support, if I'm not understanding how to make it make sense for my own unique situation, I don't take action. And so then I don't create the results.

Jamie Lee: (05:09)
I, it just had this fun exercise of learning of just like taking in information passively. And for that reason, I've decided to make this an interactive, fully interactive live coaching call clinic. So those of you who wanna get coached to be, uh, to be able to better articulate your value, uh, be prepared to raise your hand and come on as a panelist and get coached by me. Okay. Okay. So with that said, this is for women who are mid-career, you know, you have the chops, you know, that what you're doing does add value, but you know that you have blind spots, you're not able to see it. And when you think about the growth that you want getting promoted to maybe senior director, VP SVP, VP me to the C level suite, you know that you can do that. But then thinking about how do I advocate for myself?

Jamie Lee: (06:08)
How do I go to bat for what I want, how do I do stakeholder management so that I'm in front of the key stakeholders, so that I'm in front of the key decision makers and not spending all this time overworking feeling lost right. And, and overwhelmed. Right? If that is you, you are at the right place. Okay. So having said that, uh, one more thing that I want to teach you before we dive into the live Q and a coaching segment of this is that, you know, when I think about myself, when I think about the hundreds of women that I have coached, I think there is, uh, a common misunderstanding about what value is, if you, if you have a misunderstanding about what value is then like you have, you have difficulty articulating it and, and speaking to it and advocating for it in a clear and compelling way.

Jamie Lee: (07:10)
Right? And the reason for this again is not because there's anything wrong with you. It's because society has conditioned us to think in this misinformed way. So here are the four misconceptions, the biggest misconceptions about what value is. Number one, value is hard. It takes hard work to create value in my career. I gotta, I gotta, what do they say? Um, I gotta, uh, put my nose to the grindstone. I gotta work really hard and prove myself. Right. I gotta, I gotta do it just right. I gotta, I, I pushed this client, a woman of color VP who really struggled with this. She really believed that she had to be doing it perfect. Right. And perfect meant she had to be striving and working hard and late into the night. And so if she was tasked with coming up with a presentation, she often found herself working past past 6:00 PM, 7:00 PM, 8:00 PM.

Jamie Lee: (08:22)
Because in her mind, she had to prove herself and proving herself, been doing hard work and hard work meant that she had to work long hours. Right. So that's the second misconception that value is created by working long hours. So most of you work in a field where it's about creating, um, uh, what did they, what did they say? It's like, you're you're knowledge worker. Maybe you're a software engineer. Maybe you work in marketing. Maybe you work for life sciences company. Maybe you work in, um, sales and development. Maybe you have worked in academia. And right now, so many people still have this MIS uh, perception that value is created by working long hours. Where does that actually come from? That thought process actually comes from a factory mindset, right? When capitalism was just getting started. And it was about working hours at the factory line.

Jamie Lee: (09:28)
That's how you created greater output, greater productivity, right? But now in your career, more hours does not equal value. You could be making a shower and you, you might just come up with this idea that, that, um, can be a solution to, to a log gem in interdepartmental collaboration, right? You could have been not like working really hard in long hours, but you could come up with an idea that is tremendously valuable to your team and to your organization. So doesn't have to be hard. It doesn't have to mean long hours for you to be creating value. And number three value doesn't have to feel great. I've noticed that for me, I tend to overvalue what I, what I think makes me feel good. If I'm doing something I'm like, oh, I feel great doing this task. Like other people will see that this is valuable to, to them too.

Jamie Lee: (10:33)
That is a bias that, that, uh, my brain often, uh, creates for me. So for example, if you are somebody who is an empathetic leader, somebody who loves to communicate and help people feel like they belong, right. That kind of work feels great to you. I have a client who is an engineer and she has great technical chops, but she has a tendency to overvalue that team building skill, right in her mind, that's, you know, that's like really valuable and it's frustrating to her that her supervisors don't necessarily see it the way she does. But her value is bigger than just being able to bring teams together and make people feel good. She comes up with real, tangible solutions that save the company money time and helps them make greater profits. Right. So that's one of the blind spots. I often find myself calling her out on.

Jamie Lee: (11:36)
I'm like, yeah, you might think that's valuable, but there's more so number four, we think that everyone else should agree with us on what we think is valuable. So for those of you who are here, you are a mid-career person. So you know that like at the end of the day, you have to speak to what the decision makers, key stakeholders, most value. And it may not be what you agree with, but you have to be at least willing to speak to what they most value. So if you value innovation and new creative ideas in your effort to develop strategy for your brand, but you know that the SVP and the CMO, I I'm thinking of somebody who does like brand strategy and you know that the CMO most cares about driving top line growth. You have to be at least willing to speak to how your innovative creative ideas will drive revenue.

Jamie Lee: (12:46)
Okay? So those are the four things. Value is not necessarily created by hard work value is not necessarily created by a lot of time. That's really a factory or student mindset that is not gonna serve you. Cuz sometimes you spend zero time or next to no time on it. And then you come up with an idea that it's tremendously valuable. That happens, right. It doesn't have to feel good to you and it doesn't have to feel good for other people. Either. Sometimes value is like calling people out on their blind spot and helping them avoid a very costly mistake. Right? So in that way it doesn't feel good to them either, but it can still be of tremendous value. And number four, not everyone has to agree. So when we wanna get strategic in how we communicate our value, first thing that you may want to do is like, okay, let's observe, let's observe what the higher ups most oftenly talk about. They're most often, you know, concerned about or unhappy about. And then we get curious about it. Right? And the key question would be like, okay, let's just get curious if we could just withhold judgment about why they're doing that. Like what might they be thinking that has them concerned about getting things done quickly

Jamie Lee: (14:19)
Start communicating your value. Now I know annual review for some of you, it happens in December. Some of you, it happens in January, but you wanna start early, you wanna start and communicating, you wanna start communicating it early and often, right? Think about it this way. Every touchpoint, every time you engage in that communication, whether it's an informal conversation or just a really quick update, you know, for Carolyn's example, like if he sends her higher ups, here's our, uh, number of songs cleared for this month here is the number of songs clear for next month. Right. And she's able to show, uh, the movement, the progress on that, every touchpoint in that, in that strategy is like you set up a domino. Yeah. And by the time you go to have that performance review, you have set up all of the dominoes in a beautiful, neat row. And you just like with one push, they all fall over in this satisfying, you know, display. Right. So think about like setting yourself up for success in that way.

Jamie Lee: (15:27)
Excellent question. I love this question so much because you know, it's very tempting, especially if you put in a lot of effort and you're like, wow, that was hard. I deserve credit for this. It gets tempting to, to be like, this is what I did. This is what I did and I had to do this. Right. But this isn't as compelling to decision makers because it doesn't tell them why it's valuable. So whenever you wanna communicate your value, think about the why. Okay. Right. And also think about what it makes possible for the team and for, you know, uh, addressing the concerns of the decision maker. So, um, I talked about this in the, in the second episode of my podcast. I forgot to mention my podcast, but you wanna, the, the script that I gave in that podcast, it's episode number two, the, uh, five ways you can set yourself up for promotion ahead of the review. And I think this was like, I forget exactly where, but the, the framework I wanna give to you is like, this is what I achieved. Right? This is the result that was created because of my efforts. Right. And then say, here's what becomes possible for us now to make it really simple. Here's what I did. And here's what it makes possible. Now. Here's what becomes possible for us.

Jamie Lee: (17:00)
Exactly. We'll be able to sign more clients, we'll have more accolades, we'll have more credibility with the key players that we want to play with. Right. We, we will have a greater market share. This is what becomes possible. Now, now that that makes all of your heart effort worth it, not just to you, but to the decision makers,

Jamie Lee: (17:25)
Anonymous ass. I work in a non-profit context for financial reward. Doesn't really exist due to limited budgets. And the norm for advancement is accepted and openly communicated as taking on more than what you're paid for and working extra hours. How would you suggest I set myself apart from the crowd in an environment that encourages overworking and has few rewards or incentives without compromising my mental health and personal time. This is a great question. So sometimes this does happen right where you're in an environment and it's like, everyone's competing to work more than the, the next person it's as if hard work is its the, the culture, um, sort of celebrates hard work or, uh, it seems like hard work is its own reward, but you don't wanna do that while compromising your health, your mental health, your personal time. Totally understand. So one thing that I wanna call out is that you think that there is no context for financial reward.

Jamie Lee: (18:42)
You say financial reward doesn't really exist. I would like to call that out. I don't believe that at all. Especially if you work in a nonprofit or even academic environment, you know what nonprofits run on donations, nonprofits run on money, even academia. It runs on money. Yeah. So it's not necessarily about, I wanna think about like, what would be the biggest impact at this nonprofit? Maybe you, you know, you do, or you don't do work that is directly involved with donations and fundraising. Uh, it could be a little easier if you do work in that capacity, but even still, if you work in like program development, if you work in program, you know, planning and execution, you could talk about the impact of that. For donors. You could talk about the impact of that for people who are willing to pay money, to keep your nonprofit running, operating, and serving its mission that is impact, you know, and that doesn't necessarily have to mean you work every weekend and you work late into the night.

Jamie Lee: (20:01)
You might have to think in a different way. You might have to, um, think more creatively. You might have to think in a way that you're not used to, and that can be uncomfortable, but that can be of tremendous value. Yeah. So, uh, one other thing that I wanna share with you anonymous is that at the end of the day, if you don't like the culture of your workplace, you always have a choice. You do not have to play into overworking and you know, burning up. You don't have to do that. People may not like it. They might have opinions about it, but at the end of the day, you don't live your life for those people, you live your life for you, right? So maybe you wanna ask yourself, who am I living my life for? Who am I overworking for? And it's not something that is truly fulfilling or something that you see as like, can be adding value, right? You, you might wanna question like, do I want to continue overworking? You get, you have a choice in that.

Jamie Lee: (21:14)
I wanna tell you that there is no such thing as bragging. The reason why I'm saying that is because sometimes women hesitate to showcase their wins. Sometimes women hesitate to articulate the value that they're bringing to work because they're thinking, oh, I don't wanna seem like I'm bragging. I don't wanna seem like I'm being greedy. But as women, as women of color, as women of marginalized identities, we have been taught to undervalue ourselves. We have been taught to stay quiet, but this doesn't serve us. Right. It just perpetuates the patriarchy. I just saw a post on Instagram the other day. And, and this woman of color saying there is no such thing as bragging too much for women, for women of color. And especially if you are sharing the facts of your accomplishment, right? For Carolyn, if she, you know, she's able to share the facts of like, we got to clear X number of songs, that's a fact that's gonna help her supervisors.

Jamie Lee: (22:25)
Her higher ups make better decisions. And for the person who works at a nonprofit, they're able to say, Hey, this campaign idea, this program idea, it's gonna help draw donors to us. It's gonna help continue the nonprofit's mission. That is something that you wanna share. It's not necessarily bragging. And even if it is bragging, even if it is bragging, there is no such thing as bragging too much, let people know. And uh, another example grace shared, right? If you are doing work and it took a lot of effort and now it's making new possibilities, new, new, uh, potential available to the, to the organization. That's something they want to know. It's something that's gonna help them. Self-advocacy is an act of service. Okay? So the key point that I wanna make, and, and I want all of you to take away is that the best time to get started on articulating your value is now I know it's gonna be really tempting.

Jamie Lee: (23:37)
Remember it's really tempting to take in all this information and be like, oh, that's good to know. I'll I'll implement it later. But the best time to get started is now the time to get started is now not the day before your performance review, not the day before you have to go negotiate your job, offer your promotion or your pay raise, right? When you get started, now you set yourself up for success, not just for the rest of this year, but for upleveling the trajectory of your career. And when you articulate your value, when you get clear on it and start speaking to it, it's gonna help you make better decisions. It's gonna help you prioritize your time better. It means you are gonna have a better quality of life. You don't have to sacrifice all your time with your loved ones with your family.

Jamie Lee: (24:33)
Okay? And you know, when you, when you do this, you pave the way, not just for yourself, but for other women, other people of color, uh, and other marginalized identities to rise and drive to new Heights. You just get to go first. I know so many of you, maybe one of the few, or maybe the only woman at the leadership table, you get to go first, you are ready. You didn't come this far in your career to play small or to stall. Yeah. You came to exceed the, the constraints of socialization. You, you came this far to exceed other people's opinions. You came here to exceed your own limiting story of what you think you can and cannot do. And this is the reason why I have developed my one-on-one coaching program to support you so that I can call out all of the blind spots that you don't see.

Jamie Lee: (25:42)
So you don't sell yourself short and under earn in your career so that, you know, you are supported all the way from strategy to implementation so that you are supported. And you're guided through all of the changes through all of the upheavals in your career and in your life. Sometimes things happen, right? Structural changes at your organization, restructuring sometimes, um, I help my clients navigate their career through grief through, through, uh, a big change in their life, through a big move. I've helped my clients get prepared ahead of maternity leave and get promoted while they're on maternity leave. This is something that one of my clients has done. And I wanna give you an opportunity to get started today. And for that reason, I'm inviting you. Those of you who are not yet my one-on-one clients, I'm inviting you to book a free strategy session with me today.

Jamie Lee: (26:44)
So the strategy session is a 60 minute conversation where you and I, we meet one on one, totally confidential, right? In an intimate setting. And we go deep into where you are now to where you want to go. And then I'm gonna help you create a custom strategy step by step plan to exactly where you want to be. Okay. So I'm gonna, I see someone has a question I'm gonna get to it. And if anyone else wants to begin, coach, we have plenty of time for that. I just wanna show you really quickly how to set up your free strategy session, gonna show you my screen. So the link is this ly.com/jamie Lee slash consult. And in fact, if you registered ahead of time, you should have this link in an email from me in your inbox right now, if you don't just let me know, I'll send it to you.

Jamie Lee: (27:48)
And this is what you're gonna see. It's a ly app. And you just pick a time that works for you. I have set my working hours for Eastern standard time. And if you are not in Eastern standard time and you want to speak with me at a time, that is not during standard hours for me, just email me, just email me, Jamie, Jamie Lee, coach.com. And we will make it work. And this is what's gonna happen in this hour. I'm gonna guide you through an intake. You know, like when you go to the doctor's appointment, they walk you through an intake, that's exactly what's gonna happen. And then I'm gonna help you understand the results you have now and why you have them. And then I'm gonna help you create a vision for the career that you want to have. You don't even have to know exactly what is that growth you want.

Jamie Lee: (28:37)
If you're unsure, it's okay, I'm gonna support you in creating a vision anyways. And then I'm gonna walk you step by step through the tools that I offer and the process I walk my clients through. So you know exactly how you can achieve your vision. And then if there is a fit for both sides, then we talk about working together and what that can look like. Okay. So having said that, I invite you to book your free one-on-one strategy session with me today. All right. So anonymous ass. I don't know if this is the same anonymous or different anonymous. I'm just gonna take a sip of water.

Jamie Lee: (29:19)
Earlier this year, I went through some major personal issues. And because of that, I lost confidence in my abilities at work. I shared my personal issues with my manager because I needed to take a few days off. She supported me in the beginning, but now I find myself having to prove myself, especially with some internal growth opportunities. For my end of year performance. I need to be able to verbalize that I've always delivered despite my personal issues. Do you have suggestions how to articulate my value to my manager? So why do you need to prove yourself? That is my question to you anonymous. So you, you went through some major personal issues, but I don't know why you think that you have to prove yourself, right? And, and the thing that's coming to my mind right now is when we articulate our values, sometimes the person who has to most believe in our own value is us.

Jamie Lee: (30:36)
Like what I'm hearing. I mean, what I'm reading from this is that you came back to work. You took a few days off. You didn't say I stopped doing work. You didn't say I stopped showing up. You didn't say I stopped delivering value. You dealt with it. You took the time you needed, you came back, you delivering, okay. So if you have the thought, I am the weakest link on the team, of course you don't feel confident, right? But this is independent of neutral circumstances in your career. This is a thought that says nothing about the actual output of your work. This says nothing about the actual impact of your work. This is nothing about what you're capable of doing, right? When we think I'm the weakest link on the team, what happens is that we end up becoming blind. It's like we, we create tunnel focus in our brain and we don't see, we can't see it, our potential, our ability, our experience, our value.

Jamie Lee: (32:00)
Yeah. So I don't think the issue, the key, the, the core issue here for you anonymous is not that you don't know how to articulate your value. The core issue is that you have, um, a belief about you that is eroding your self confidence. Right? And I don't know, I don't think the weakest link on the team bounces back from a personal issue comes back to work after just a few days. That's not what a weakest link does. Somebody who comes back from whatever personal issues you had to take, take time off for that's that shows resilience. That shows somebody who is strong, right. Not somebody who is weak.

Jamie Lee: (32:57)
Okay. anonymous says, I agree. It's almost self sabotage. Thank you. You're you're most welcome. I really want you to question these thoughts, just bubble up in your brain that erode your self confidence, because you know what I read from anonymous, there was no reason to think that you are the weakest link it's just coming up. Right. And sometimes it helps just see it on a screen. See that sentence. I am the weakest, like, see it on a screen, see it on paper. And just be like, this is curious, where is coming from? Is it even true? Yeah. T question.

Jamie Lee: (33:45)
So some things that my clients do that I support them in is that they set up one on one conversations with, um, like I had a friend who do, who did this. Uh, she started as a product manager at this company that I was working at. And then she took every single person. It was a 20 person startup. So it wasn't that hard for her to do, but she took every person out to lunch. And this way she got to meet each person, one on one, got to get a feel for their personality. Right. And understand just, just as a person, to person at a person to person level, like what they're like, what their communication style is like. And she became a known entity and this person is not like an extrovert. She's not person to like, um, throw parties and be the, you know, the center of attention at a group meeting.

Jamie Lee: (34:45)
But this one on one, uh, lunch date strategy, like it helped her like become known at this company. And I, I'm not saying that that's what you should do. And in fact it might be impossible because, you know, post COVID like some of us work remotely. Some of, some of us don't go into the office. Some of us are like on the other opposite ends of the earth with our coworkers. Another client of mine implemented a similar strategy where she set up like 15 minute quick chats with each of the key stakeholder. She, um, she works with the, the sea level executives and she made sure that she had at least one on one conversation with as many of the executives as possible.

Jamie Lee: (35:35)
My intention is to, you know, teach as many women as possible to share as much value as possible. I really do genuinely want you to implement everything. I teach you and see results in your own career. I love it. When clients come to my free sessions and then tell me, I implemented, what's what you taught me. And I improved my income by 20% I negotiated. I asked for a raise. I asked for a promotion and I got it. It's like the best feeling ever. And I want that for you, right? Because we need women to rise. I know we've been through a lot in the past two years, but again, like whatever has happened is in the past, we wanna think about from here into the future. And I genuinely believe that when more women become promoted and better paid and we're running teams, departments, companies, and boards, we're gonna impact not just the bottom line, but we're going to improve the world for the rest of us.

Jamie Lee: (36:40)
We're gonna see more representation, more diversity, more equity, more inclusion. It's gonna make it better, not just for us, but for men, for other people of marginalized identities. And, um, again, if you found this relevant and you wanna take this further, I invite you to book your free strategy session. I'm gonna help you come up with your custom plan. And then only if there is a fit for your needs, only if we decide there is a fit, then we talk about working together and what that would look like. Cause I wanna ensure it is a slam dunk fit for you. There, you have it. I hope you enjoyed this episode of value articulation clinic. And if you found this content valuable, useful in any way, please share, please share with other women in your network. Um, anyone that you know, who is struggling to articulate her value and also please subscribe and leave a five star review so that other women can find this podcast. Thank you so much. And I'll talk to you soon. Bye.