The Power of Yes for Your Career

About the Episode

Imposter syndrome is one of the biggest hurdles we face when advocating for ourselves and our own career growth. In fact, we find it easier to lift others up and advocate for their needs than we do for ourselves. HR deserves the same opportunities in their career that they create for others—and it starts with turning your “but firsts” into “while alsos” and turning down the volume on your internal doubt. Kelli Thompson leadership coach, best-selling author, and former HR pro, joins the Benefits Pulse to continue her conversation at Vision 2024 about how HR can unlock more opportunities by saying “Yes” to themselves.  

Want to hear Kelli’s Vision talk? Listen here for more confidence-building insights.  

Connect with Kelli on LinkedIn or her website. 

Transcript

Bridget Mortland: 
Welcome, Kelli. Thanks for joining us on the Benefits Pulse today.

I think so highly of not only you as an author, but also as an activist and advocate for us as women in the workplace. And when I think about the people that I have the fortune, and you likely interact with most as well, but especially in HR, our counterparts, our clients in HR and the conversations that they probably should be having, but likely are not having because they’re so busy caring for everyone else… 

How do they advocate or even have conversations about their own career? I think that gets in the way so often. 

Kelli Thompson:
Yeah. You know, I think a lot of us go into HR, and I’ll just speak for myself because I spent the good majority of my career in HR roles, whether it was overseeing HR, talent management, or training and development, because we like to help people. And so our attention is commonly turned towards helping people. What do other people need? What sort of development programs? What sort of offerings? What do I need to offer as benefits? We’re constantly thinking about other people.  

And so it becomes easy sometimes to advocate for other people. 

But what can be harder is for us to stop and think about, ‘Oh, well, how do I advocate for my own career? I’m so busy advocating for everyone else. Who’s advocating for me?’  

And I know sometimes how tricky it can be to sit—in fact, I distinctly remember I oversaw HR at a small tech company. And of course, it was not uncommon to sit with my boss, who was the CEO at the time, saying, OK, here’s what we’re doing for this person. Here’s what this person needs. Here’s the plan for this. Here’s what we’re doing for benefits.  

And just how awkward it can be to have to say that to that conversation, say that person go, ‘And is it appropriate now for me to talk about myself and what I need?’  

And so I think sometimes the reason why it’s so hard for us is because we are so tuned into everyone else. And when we do get time with our senior leaders, it can be a conversation of putting out fires or urgency.  

And so when it comes to advancing our own career needs or advocating for ourselves, it can definitely get put to the bottom of the list and it’s easy to push it off when we are measured by, you know, oftentimes how many programs we implement for everyone else. 

Bridget: 
Isn’t that amazing? I think about that too.  

I just had a conversation with actually an HR counterpart who’s in healthcare and I was sharing with her, I said, ‘What do you tell the nurses when they think about their own health and wellbeing? Because they’re so used to caring for everyone else, bedside, et cetera.’  

You would say to them, you have to take better care of yourself first so that you can take care of all of these patients.  

And I think this is also similar of walking the talk and actually doing the work and really putting that advice to use. I think it can be a real challenge and a really hard thing to do and often something we don’t really like to do either. 

Kelli: 
Yeah, it can feel awkward.  

And one of the things that I really learned not only from my time in HR, but now being off on my own is this: We cannot develop others to a higher level than we’ve developed ourselves.  

So going along with the adage of like nurses have to take care of themselves first in this high-demand job to be able to compassionately care for others. Well, as HR professionals, like we need to develop and invest in ourselves first, so that we can give the best of ourselves to the organization, to other leaders.  

And I think that advice really spans across leadership as well, is how are we investing in our own growth, our own emotional intelligence, breaking through our own barriers, challenging our own assumptions? 

Because we really can’t coach up our cultures or our organizations to a higher level of leadership or thinking or development that we have been willing to invest in ourselves. And so that is so important why HR folks really need to turn inward and think about themselves in this process too. 

Bridget: 
I love that, how you applied that not only in HR, because it is a huge culture, I don’t want to call it burden, but there really is this placement and a heavy weight on HR to carry not only the culture, but the aspect and the advocacy internally for employees.  

But that’s as much on leaders in the organization equally. So, if they’re not taking time to focus on, you know, did I really evaluate this the right way? Am I challenging myself to kind of take that next growth step? You can’t really ask someone else to do that either. I love that. That’s an interesting perspective. 

Kelli: 
Yeah, it’s true.  

And I think one of the things that could get HR folks really busied up with other people, at least I saw this in my own HR roles, I see it today as a coach, is when we take on too much of the leader’s role.  

You actually said it just there, is they take on a responsibility for culture, but actually a lot of that is a leader’s responsibility. And so when we think about how can I free up my time for my own development, my own self -advocacy, let’s start by paying attention to what roles we are taking on for the organization that are not ours to own exclusively.  

Like culture, like coaching, like performance management. Like, how can we make sure that we’re staying in our own lane and not, I always say, you know, when we over function, we allow everyone else around us to under function. And as HR folks, it is so tempting to over function and step in and do the coaching, do the leading, taking over culture.  

So we really need to think about what is mine to own and really coach our leaders up to own their part so we have time to invest in and advocate for ourselves. 

Bridget: 
I love that, and you’re right, it’s easy to over function when you care and want to give back in that way, and sometimes it’s actually kind of hindering somebody else’s progress and performance and opportunity as well.  

I think that’s just as compelling, but I think when I hear that word, like advocate for yourself in doing that, how do you do that in such a way that doesn’t come across as like, ‘Okay, I did all these really great things. Like, look at me, I’m gonna brag myself up and hype myself up here.’  

How do you do that without the braggy kind of aspect of that? 

Kelli: 
Yeah, I think that’s what some folks really get all wound up about is that advocating for themselves means bragging for themselves.  

And so let’s just pause for a moment. And I want you to, if you’re driving or listening to this at work, just think about, think about somebody that you know, that you’re like, ‘Oh gosh, like this person just totally comes across as a total bragger.’ Like they’re always talking about themselves.  

And I think that’s who we picture in our minds when we think about advocating. So I want you to actually, make a list of the things that that person does that is really triggering to you.  

Well, maybe they only talk about themselves. Maybe they’re always talking about themselves. Maybe they’re inflating accomplishments that aren’t those. Okay, take those and put them in a bracket and just note on a piece of paper, you’re not gonna do those things.  

I think we just kind of like flip to the opposite end of the spectrum thinking, ‘Oh, if I say something about myself, I’m immediately gonna be like that person over there who can’t stop talking about themselves.’ 

Well, we’re not. Okay, so just make a list of those, write them down. Okay, we’re gonna avoid these. 

And then when we do advocate for ourselves, we’re going to link it to business goals.  

So here’s the thing. Businesses really care about three common things: Money, risk and change evolution.  

So when you sit down and I want you to actually do this, maybe quarterly, it’s a great confidence booster. At least do it annually in your performance review or at your annual, you know, hire date and ask yourself, ‘OK, money, what did I do that helped the company make money this year?’ 

And for an HR role, that might be challenging because it may not be directly revenue generating. But there can be ways you did to help the company make money in terms of attracting the right hires, building the right culture, having the right sales training that opened up all sorts of opportunities for the sales force.  

But maybe more importantly, ask yourself, how did I help the company save money this year? Did we reduce turnover? Do we have a longer tenure for employees? Did I help the company save money because our engagement scores went up, so we have less low productivity, we have less drag on the company.  

So how did I help the company make money? How did I help the company save money?  

The next category you can go to is risk. How did I help the company mitigate or reduce risk? Well, this could be by hiring the right people. This could be reducing time to fill. Maybe you offered a benefits program that reduced flight risk for employees or just simply reduced risk in some sort of employee category by offering and matching the right benefits.  

Maybe you implemented a new payroll system or a new HRIS system that greatly reduced some of the risks you maybe had inherent in the business of just managing millions and billions of dollars of payroll. That’s the worst thing that can happen in an organization is that payroll goes down and people don’t get paid or any sort of employee process. I want you to think about that.  

The last thing I want you to think about is, how did I help my company lead change? And I think for HR folks, this is really important because you are often at the front edge of evolution, whether it’s return to work, hybrid, going away from work, employee resource groups, offering in game-changing benefits that are moving forward with the future of work of what employees really want. That’s a way that you’re helping the organization thrive.  

So I really want you to, instead of think about how am I bragging for myself, no. How did the actions that I took help my company make money, save money, reduce risk, or lead change.  

And those are the conversations we can take into our leaders, whether it’s performance review time, or we need to go and talk about our salary and say, ‘Hey, here are some of the things that I did. Here are the impacts. And this is what I believe is fair in the market for the value that I bring.’ 

Bridget: 
I think it’s so interesting that when we almost remove ourself from the conversation and really think about it, to your point, really tying it back to the true results and oriented results that happen, it really helps us see it differently. And then we just have to place our name back in it, right?  

And I think that sometimes where it’s easy if we kind of remove ourselves and say, if this were somebody else who did all of these things, how would you build their business case and business value back to advocate on their behalf and then just plug yourself back in a little bit.  

I don’t know. I think it’s interesting. 

Kelli: 
Exactly. Your colleagues are doing it. And I love the way that you say we unplug and then plug back in.  

This is a great exercise too, because I remember being in HR and working with folks who would say, how do you even quantify the value of HR? Now, not everybody’s like that, but sometimes I’m just saying if you’ve been around HR long enough, people can be like, well, yeah, you pay me, but everything else is fluffy. 

And I love being able to quantify it in these terms because this isn’t just about advocating for yourself. When you think about yourself as a strategic HR leader, this is good business acumen language that can be helpful to you in quantifying how HR impacts and grows the business.  

So, it’s another way where you can kind of take yourself out of it, but make sure you plug yourself in at the end, as you said, when it comes to advocating for your personal advancement. 

Bridget: 
Yeah, and I think about that, right?  

When you mentioned all the ways that HR has been challenged specifically, it’s, you’re also a marketer, right?  

You’re having to draw people into your organization, do things differently, and then you’re having to communicate to get them to stay. And that’s not just about programs, but that’s how are you making sure that they’re aware of everything happening and the things that are going on in the business. And again, I’ll tie that back to what you said earlier. That’s not just an HR kind of weight. But I think it often gets placed there as an emphasis due to the aspect of engagement that happens in organizations. And again, tying that back to real value, it doesn’t always have to be hard dollars either. I mean, there are hard dollars there for sure, but I think even just the ways that you draw in programs and create projects and those types of advocates, it’s not fluff. I guess is what I’m trying to say. 

Kelli: 
Thank you. 

Bridget: 
There’s so much that can be done there. There’s a science there that exists. 

Kelli: 
I love how you said that being a great HR leader is also being a great marketer.  

Fun fact, one of the very first public articles I ever wrote on LinkedIn, like eight or nine years ago when I was awkward and just putting myself out there was what marketing can teach HR and training departments. Because I had spent some time in HR, but I’d also gone to marketing and I was like, all this is is psychology. This is just psychology of getting people to buy in, of people getting to buy our product.  

Well, in HR, your product is your programs, your benefits enrollment, your culture, the way you do things. And so I’m so glad that you brought that up because I think that that is a key skill that good strategic HR folks can learn. It’s just some basic marketing tools about the psychology of what moves people, what makes people choose, how do people buy?  

Because I know, especially when I ran training programs, I felt like I was in marketing all the time because we would develop programs, but we needed people to take the programs and then apply what they learned in the programs. It’s all marketing.  

So I’m so glad that you said that because I think that that is a very underrated skill. But you do see really great HR leaders know how to market well because they understand that they’re in the business of changing people’s hearts and minds. And that’s what marketers do.  

Bridget: 
They really are, yeah.  

And I, again, to that point, I think it’s easy to consider that fluff because it does tie out to emotion.  

But at the end of the day, you know, when you can see that your employees are engaging in these emails far more than they were engaging in XYZ program, or maybe now they’re engaging in text messages and responding to that because of something you’ve implemented. You know, there’s a real value to getting people to take action on what you’re communicating and buying in.  

And I think about that at Businessolver and the ways that our Solver engage differently in some of the programs that we’ve put forward of the neighborhoods or even your training programs of making sure people even know to attend. We created a specific calendar so that Solver Nation knew exactly where to go. And our chief strategy officer demoed that live for Solver Nation on a Monday morning because it was that important.  

And I think it’s those things where really driving other people to take action and want to be a part of something is something that HR tends to forget that they’re at the forefront of and in the center of and getting credit for that both responsibility, but the consequence and great reward that can come from that. So, so many things and I know we’re going to be short on time here. 

Kelli: 
Thank you. 

Yeah, so well said. I love that. 

Bridget: 
Kelli, I could talk to you all day, you know this. That’s just how these sessions go for us. But when I think about all of this, of it’s easy to talk about someone else and bring someone else forward, and often we forget ourselves or to not become braggy.  

At the root of all of it, really what gets in the way of just being your own advocate? What is it? What’s at the core of that? 

Kelli: 
Yeah, you know, you talked about emotion and so I’m going to answer it with emotion.  

One of the things that I can speak personally is just in my own growth and development in corporate. And I’ll be honest, even now that I’ve written a book about confidence, I talk about confidence, it doesn’t mean that I’ve cured it.  

In fact, I always think there’s this old adage that says your mess is your message. And I think that’s why I love talking about it is because I know what it feels like to not feel confident to advocate for yourself or to deal with uncomfortable emotions.  

And I’ll just actually tell you a story.  

So I’ve interviewed both Arianna Huffington, who founded the HuffPost, and Ingo Nui, who is the former CEO of Pepsi. And both of them have said that as they accelerated in their career, it’s not that they felt less doubt. It’s that as a successful leader, they learned how to feel doubt and lead anyway.  

They learned how to lead while also feeling doubt.  

So what keeps us from advocating sometimes is I think it’s the deep emotional discomfort and feeling of doubt.  

You know, I know we talk a lot about the word imposter syndrome, which is, you the feeling like you’re going to be found out or that you’re a fraud or you don’t belong. 

And I think that that’s important. And I also think that imposter syndrome is systemic. It comes from us also not typically seeing ourselves in the rooms or decisions are made. And when I say we, I mean women and traditionally people of color. But I also sometimes think that we tend to relabel our everyday doubt as imposter syndrome. So what gets in the way, I think we’re just feeling doubt and nerves and overwhelm and insecurity.  

And those emotions can just stop us. 

They can keep us procrastinating. They can keep us playing small. They can keep us from applying for that advanced job on the posting board. They can keep us from advocating for ourselves and our careers.  

And so what I tell my clients and what I work on with my clients is I’m never going to tell you that you’re going to walk off this podcast or walk out of this training and never feel doubt again, because then that would make you not human. Because there are people who don’t feel doubt in this world. They’re called sociopaths. And I watch them on Dateline every Friday night. Like they could have benefited from some more doubt.  

But I want you instead to actually welcome and allow doubt. And instead of saying like, oh, well, but first I need to make sure that I’m more qualified or I feel confident.  

Like let’s just trade the ‘but first’ for ‘while also.’ I can advocate for myself while also feeling nervous. I can go in and talk to my boss about a raise or a title adjustment while also feeling incredibly doubtful. I can apply for this job while also wondering if I’m a little unqualified. 

 And so what I think often gets in the way of the advocacy is we just allow those very normal, healthy human emotions that arise when we’re stretching our comfort zones to stop us when in fact, it’s the actions of confidence that come first. It’s the doing the thing. The feelings of confidence always come second, right? We learned how to ride a bike while feeling like a baby deer and feeling all nervous, right? It’s the confidence of learning to ride a bike that came second.  

And so I always remind folks that confidence is a side effect of taking action. 

And so if you want to know what’s getting in your way, I would stop by like naming and normalizing the emotions you’re feeling and just allowing them to be there while you also email your boss today talking about setting up a meeting about your own career. 

Bridget: 
I love that embracing the doubt, kind of embracing that feeling of fear and maybe the unknown while stepping in and while also taking action to kind of step into it at the same time. I love that. I love that so much.  

Anything else that’s just top of mind for you, Kelli, that you want to leave our audience with today?  

I know we’ve talked a lot at Vision recently and I’m looking forward to our next internal Solver conversation, but anything that you want our audience to hear from you today? 

Kelli: 
Yeah, so I think a big theme from the Vision conference is self-care and taking care of yourself.  

And a couple of things that I want to leave folks with, I think a lot of times people think that like, and I said this at the vision session that self-care is like, I’m gonna go get a massage and take a bubble bath.  

But honestly, I define self-care as saying no to anything that isn’t in alignment with your values.  

So for us to be well taken care of as HR leaders who constantly get pulled into every single fire in the organization, I first want you to think about what does great self-care look like for myself and for my team?  

And how am I saying yes to things in alignment with my team’s goals, my team’s strategy, and the values of the team, the type of team that we want to become?  

So I would say that that is definitely number one, because number two, that’s just gonna free you up, not only energetically to work on things that you’re super passionate about, things that help the company make money, save money, reduce risk and lead change.  

But my hunch is it’s also gonna give you a lot more confidence to advocate for yourself because you’re working on things that like deeply matter to you.  

So I would just leave you with this: really pay attention to your yeses and nos and how are you saying yes in alignment with your values? Not only is it great self-care, but it’ll make it easier for you to advocate for everything that you’ve accomplished as well. 

Bridget: 
Amazing, amazing advice. And I’m not even going to try and recap it because you said it so perfectly.  

So thank you, Kelli, for the time. Thank you for being an incredible advocate for our Solvers and a great coach to us all. You inspire each of us every day. I know if I even poll Solver Nation right now, they would say, you’re on with Kelli Thompson without me. What? Like, that’s not normal. We all get her all at the same time.  

But thank you for sharing with us. Thank you again for participating at Vision. I look forward to more in 24 with you. 

Kelli: 
Yeah, likewise. Thank you.