Podcast 1
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[00:00:00] if you've ever felt like you've quietly outgrown the way people see you. Like you are ready for more, but you're still not being recognized the way you want. Then this episode is absolutely for you.
Welcome to the Style and Strategy Podcast, where personal brand meets leadership and style. I'm Sonya, a personal brand and style coach who's been exactly where you are juggling career and business success. Personal growth and finding a style that truly fits. After decades in corporate leadership, I've learned that showing up isn't just about what you do, it's about how you align who you are and how the world sees you.
This season, I'm bringing you practical strategies, bold insights, and honest conversations to help you amplify your presence, unlock your next level, and lead with clarity and confidence. Let's [00:01:00] dive in.
You can have all the credentials in the world, the experience, and even the confidence, and still walk into a room and feel completely unseen.
I know because that used to be me when I figured out what I was missing. It wasn't until then that everything really changed because this isn't about being louder, it's not about being more polished, whatever that means, it's about something much quieter and far more powerful.
~So I really want to take you back in this episode. I spent years. Uh, ~so I really wanna take you back in this episode. ~Uh, ~many of you know, ~uh,~ my background was in financial services and tech, and I spent years in the fin services world working my way up. At the time, the, the corporate ladder and every promotion [00:02:00] came with really higher expectations.
So greater presence, more influence. You know, bigger decisions, not only around, ~uh,~ the things that I was responsible for, but most importantly my people as well. But even when I delivered the results, there was something missing. And what I kept seeing was that. There were people around me who were potentially less experienced, and I kept wondering, am I actually missing something here? And this is not an, oh woe is me story at all, right? ~It~ it's actually around that. I knew there was something I was doing that wasn't getting me the visibility that I thought I wanted at that time. ' cause I thought, I'm doing all this work. I [00:03:00] know my stuff. But something, there's a gap. And the answer was yes, there was, but it wasn't skill.
It wasn't effort, it was visibility. Really. I was waiting, I was sitting there waiting to be discovered. ~Um, you know, ~I was waiting to be going. Here we go. Uh, this is this great opportunity for you. Okay, this is going back a number of years, but the penny kind of dropped for me. That visibility isn't really given.
It's created. I remember one morning vividly standing in front of my wardrobe outfit. After outfit, nothing felt right. You know when you, you keep putting those outfits on and then they drop on the floor and you're like, oh my God. I don't know. Nothing feels right. And it wasn't [00:04:00] because they were bad outfits, but because everything I put on didn't feel like me.
And that for me was the moment that everything sort of clicked. I had grown, I had evolved, you could say, and yet the way I was showing up hadn't really evolved with me, and here's what validated everything that I was feeling back then. The IMD Business School found that leaders who use self-awareness frameworks Like human design or strength-based leadership are actually 32% more effective in influencing others. So it was never about being more confident. It was about being more aligned. And for me personally, that started with understanding about how I actually wanted to be experienced in [00:05:00] the room,
not how I was taught to perform, not how I thought everybody else wanted me to be, but actually figuring out what I wanted. And how I wanted to be experienced in, in that room. I know that you probably would've heard me, ~um,~ in a few episodes ago, talk about my framework called the Visibility Equation, and you'll know that from that presence, positioning and perception are the key to really influence an authority.
But the tool that really activates all of that is you have to know where you stand today and you really have to take stock around that. And that's where in my programs and when I work with clients, I do something that I call leadership identity mapping. And really this is the process of [00:06:00] making visible what's already true about you, but potentially.
You, you haven't been able to clearly express it. And going through this process with my clients, we define how you naturally lead. We work out how people already feel about you or experience you, and then we really identify what's the disconnect between how you want to be experienced and how you are currently being read.
And so then you can really focus on closing that gap, because if you don't know, how are you gonna close it, how are things gonna change? And when you can, that's when your presence actually lands. ~So if, ~so, if my story resonates with you and something feels off, but you can't name it, ~I want you to start here.~
~And ask yourself those questions.~
I really want you to start here and ask yourself a couple of questions. ~Does~ one, [00:07:00] does how I show up in all aspects really of my life from work to weekend, really reflect the woman I've already become or headed to? Not who you were five years ago, not what the industry expects, not what feels safe, who you are now, because that reflection is where leadership presence starts.
It's not with volume, it's not what with everybody else says. It's actually sitting down to, to tap into that. It's with alignment. So if this really resonated. Stay tuned because in the next episode I'm gonna walk you through a three part shift that helped one of my clients ~go from being~ go from feeling overlooked to quietly unforgettable, and not by doing things that made her feel really uncomfortable, [00:08:00] but really by showing up with crystal clear alignment.
You don't need to prove yourself. You are already an expert in your field. ~You just need to show up.~
You just need to show up. Like the woman in the world hasn't really fully met yet and she's there. I know she's there and she's knocking at that door to come out. So stay tuned for that episode next week.
I hope you've enjoyed. This bite-size episode this week, let me know. ~Uh,~ drop me a dm, send me a comment. But most of all, if you're really enjoying, , the podcast, please hit follow and subscribe. ~And, uh,~ so that way you can keep up to date with every episode that drops.
