**Melody Wilding:** Okay, everybody. Hello. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you’re just coming on, give us a, a thumbs up or a hand wave in the chat. It was so good to have you here with us for this brand new training today, our first time doing this training, Rise Into Your Next Big Role at a breakthrough the mid-career ceiling, land a promotion and build organizational wide influence fast.

We are so excited to have you all here with us. See those numbers ticking up. So say give us a hand wave as you are coming on. many of you are here because you are already familiar with my work, but hello to all of our newcomers, those who are joining us for the first time. I am Melody Wilding. I’m a two-time bestselling author.

My newest book here, managing Up actually just celebrated its, first hub anniversary a few days ago on March 4th, which is very exciting. I am also the the author of a book called Trust Yourself, which came out in 2021. I’m a therapist by training. That’s what my background is. I’m a human behavior professor.

I am a weightlifter, a cat mom to two little mischievous little cats you may see come in ’cause they already think it’s dinner time here. And I’m honored and thrilled that you are taking time out of your schedule to be with us wherever you are in the world. I know we have people here from Asia and Europe and Australia and all over North America.

just thank you for taking time to be with us today. We have a lot of good things in store for you. And I want to assure you that you are in good hands today. I have done a lot of things in my career and I’m very proud to have been named by HBR as one of the world’s leading management practitioners.

a couple of years ago I was awarded one of the world’s most innovative coaches by Business Insider. I have over a million students on LinkedIn Learning. Actually just had a brand new LinkedIn learning course come out yesterday, uh, which has also been very exciting to see the response to that. And a keynote speaker for some of the biggest companies in the world actually just came back from a, a trip to, uh, Google headquarters, which was a lot of fun.

My journey to get here though was anything but that straight up and to the left. We often think about when it comes to success. I was a bit of a weird kid, maybe, as you can tell from my face in some, some of these photos. but I was sensitive. I was always in my own head. I was incredibly observant of other people, always picking up on the subtext in conversations and people’s behavior.

I didn’t have a name for it then, but I was studying how people communicate, how power and relationships work and trust builds or trust is broken. Long before I made that my career. And on top of that, I come from a family where neither of my parents had corporate jobs. Neither of them graduated college.

I’m an only child, so I don’t have any brothers or sisters who came before me. I didn’t have, unfortunately, a lot of great mentors who took me by the hand and said, this is how the workplace works. Let me show you the ropes of how things are actually done and how you actually get ahead and navigate your career.

I didn’t have any of that, and I’m telling you all of this because maybe you see yourself in some parts of my story. Maybe you are also someone who notices everything more than the average person. Maybe you also feel like you were just kind of plopped into your career without direction or a handbook.

The disconcerting part of this is you can be well into your career. You can be 15, 20, 25 years in, yet still feel like. Your peers seem to know things that you don’t, you know, it’s like you miss this class in school yet you’re 45, 50, 50 years old.

And I’m talking about things like, how do you get on the right executives radar? How do you position yourself for the best projects? How do you influence people to actually do what you need them to do? How do you say, no, my team isn’t doing that without upsetting someone. And as I said, it can feel like everyone took this secret class that you were somehow absent from that day. That’s certainly how I felt at times in my career. And almost like you’re perpetually one step behind, just one step behind the politics and the dynamics.

Even if your title suggests you should be one step ahead. So if you are relating to that, I saw a lot of hearts coming in when I was sharing my story, but if you relate to what I just said about feeling one step behind. Even though your title suggests you should be one step ahead. Yeah, gimme a heart or a thumbs up, whatever. Whatever you can reach for. And this was the story I told myself as a result, maybe I’m just too sensitive to handle the pressure at higher levels. For a long time, that was my conclusion that I just was not cut out for more responsibility. That I just wouldn’t be able to hack it because of how I was wired and who who I am. And I’m guessing just showing by the reactions there that some of you have that same tension inside of you now. There’s this nagging voice that whispers, can I really do this right? Are, are you really sure you want to be director, vp, lead head of that function?

Are you really sure you can actually do that? And that you’ll be good once you get there? That voice is on one shoulder and then it’s like on the other shoulder there’s another voice and. I hope that is the stronger one, and that’s why you are here today. That’s the one that brought you to this class, and that’s the one that says, I am allowed to want more.

Many of us feel selfish for saying that, especially with the times that we’re in, where we see people, we see jobs getting cut, we, everything is diff more difficult now, and so it can feel greedy and selfish to say, I want more. And for you more might look like a number of different things. It might mean coming out of that next big change, that next reorg with an opportunity that you’re happy about instead of just keeping your head above water.

’cause you’ve now been asked to do the job of two other people that were let go for you, it might mean finally getting the scope that you have been ready for and preparing yourself for, for months. Leading a larger team, owning more strategic work or bigger clients, whatever it may be. Maybe for some of you, it does mean moving to a completely different organization so that you are doing work you are more excited about or you can reset at a different level.

So I wanna say, and I, I speak for Wendy as well. I think when we say we’re proud of you for being here and listening to that other voice today, because we’re gonna go through a lot of material and when you apply and truly take on board what we are going to share, these are the types of things that become available to you.

So you can see here, double promotion into leadership. I’m seen as a thought leader in my organization. I was offered the job that I was interviewing for, I accepted it. I’ll start soon. We doubled our capacity. We had our most successful year in business. Yet I’ve built a team I trust of culture and respect.

We want these similar results for you. We want you to be able to say these things. So that’s exactly why today this is what we’re going to talk about. This is what we’re going to cover. We’re going to really break down how do you e escape? That dreaded what we call the next level loop, and it’s this vicious cycle where working harder, ironically makes you more invisible.

We’re gonna break that down and talk about how do you get out of that. And I’ll take you through the four part rise formula. This is the one our clients use to build respect, to build that org wide influence. From day one in a new role with spending hours doing coffee chats, sucking up to executives.

This is what takes you from promotion purgatory to having that reaction of wow, that person, they’re doing great once you actually land that bigger role. We know that for all of you, the number one thing you are short on is time. So we are going to talk about what you need to do and be thinking about to free up, up to 20 hours per week because you need to get out of the weeds.

You need to get out of the minutiae and focus on higher profile work that actually advances your career and we’ll tackle what is the number one personal branding secret. This is a, you know, we work with people from Google, Amazon, nato, biggest companies and organizations in the world, and this is what they, this is how they are approaching it to make that move from being seen as a tactician to being seen as a strategist.

Someone said to me the other day, I’m seen as a strong, functional executor, but I’m not seen as an enterprise leader. And so this is going to be one of those important unlocks for how do you start to become the person the C-Suite is asking for by name. Now, if you were here earlier then you may have seen this slide, which was a bit of a spoiler, but we have some exciting news today, which is that at the end of this training, for the first time ever to the public, we are opening up applications for my program Lead from Within.

And so if you are interested in this, there is a QR code on the screen here. You can also just go to melodywilding.com/lfw, so it’s just melodywilding.com/LFW, this is my premier advisory program. It is for mid to senior level leaders like you who want to land the roles they’re ready for and want to be, have the skills to be successful once they get there.

Up until now, like. Literally today this program has been invite only for past clients, people that have worked with me in some capacity before, but we are opening a limited number of spots to new members and based on my level of involvement, how high touch this program is from me based on how fast our other programs full.

We do not anticipate that those spots will last long because they are extremely LI Limited. So we are offering also a limited time incentive. You have to apply by this Friday, March 13th, 1150 9:00 PM to save $500 on your enrollment. Okay. We’ll talk much more about the program as we go along.

But I, I do wanna address, go back to that idea I was mentioning before about this feeling many of us have. Is anyone getting ahead or doing well In this economy? All it seems is we hear about is doom and gloom, right? And especially when we talk about at some of those higher levels where there are just naturally fewer opportunities available. I am someone who will always give it to you straight.

I like to say in Lead from Within, we deal with the world as it is, not necessarily how we wish it would be. And so yes, our workplaces are very competitive. The bar is higher, the scrutiny is harsher, and that’s exactly why winging it is not going to work anymore because opportunities are happening, promotions are still being created, new roles are still forming.

The difference is they’re going to the people who know how to position themselves, not the people who are just grinding in silence. Keep your head down. Hope you are noticed. Right. So this is not the moment in time to think that I’ll just figure this out through trial and error. The margin forever is too thin.

So we want you to be like our clients here, the ones who are commanding six figure salaries, who are getting these roles that they’ve wanted forever, going up to levels. We want you to be like them. And I know that I’ve spent 15 years doing this work, working with people just like you. So if you are anything like the thousands of people we’ve worked with in the past, then you may relate to a few of these things.

Just gimme a thumbs up, a plus one, uh, in the emojis. If you relate to any of these things, you are someone who gets exceeds expectations every review cycle. And you may even be someone who has been called high potential leadership may be saying, oh, we have your, we have our eye on you. We’re watching you.

Right? You may have already been trusted with the bigger project, the difficult client, the initiative no one else wanted or could wrangle. You are someone that when things are tough, people are turning to and perhaps you have noticed some evolution in your role. You are starting to be included in decisions being invited into meetings that used to feel off limits to you.

And maybe over time your remit, what you oversee has also expanded. So many of the people we work with have gone from being an individual contributor an IC to a line manager, to now finding themselves in a role where they are a leader of leaders, they are managing managers. And yet, if you are really honest with yourself, I’m gonna guess the reason why you’re here is that something’s not quite working out the way you would hope.

You may get those accolades and you know, pat on the back atta boys, but you feel like you’re being st strung along. You hear things like, yeah, you are in the running and that’s been happening for months and months and months. Nothing seems to materialize, but you convince yourself, I just gotta be patient.

It always feels like, well, it’s right around the corner, this review cycle, or once this new leader comes in, or once this happens. Yep, maybe you finally have that level of trust or authority that you’ve always wanted, but you have that, oh crap realization of, oh, I got this job now I have to do this job.

Oh no, I don’t know if I totally know how to do this job and operate at this new level. We often hear people feel like they’re in over their head. They’re worried they’re going to be revealed as an imposter as, especially in those early days when you’re just getting your bearings under you and you’re concerned you’re going to let everyone down.

If you don’t get it together fast. Like, like I said, you may be in meetings with those executives, the SLT meetings, and part of you wonders if they still see you as junior. Maybe you’re not being listened to or called upon in the way you would hope. And this is a big one. You are finding yourself buried in the day to day.

It all of your time gets sucked up by urgent requests, last minute asks problems only you can solve. While all of the high visibility career building, frankly, more enjoyable work, it just perpetually gets pushed to next week and the week after that and the week after that. If you were thinking, how are you in my head?

You know, are you watching me? I want to reassure you that if you feel like you are stalling out or you are floundering in your career in a way you haven’t felt like before, it is not your fault. The most dangerous thing you can do though right now is buy into those stories in your mind that your head is trying to convince you, you don’t have what it takes. Like I was saying before about maybe I’m just not, maybe I’m just too sensitive. Maybe I don’t have the capacity for the stress and what’s needed to succeed at that level, and it’s very important that right now you do not buy into that story. The truth is, once you reach the midpoint of your career, what it takes to get ahead and be successful there, that equation completely changes.

But no one tells you that. You are just expected to magically know that and figure it out, or worse, you spend years kind of just sorting through the mud, figuring that out on your own until you come to this conclusion of, oh, this is why. This is why I feel like I’m banging my head against a wall. That wall is the dreaded mid-career ceiling.

This is that invisible cap you may feel you’re hitting where everything that got you here is no longer helping you break through to where you want to go. So you are bumping up against that wall that you can’t see, wondering why the old tactics aren’t netting you the same results that they used to. And identifying this, putting a label on this, it really matters because when you are living this, it feels very personal.

It feels like you are the only one going through this and that it is proof evidence that you actually are not cut out for this. But when you understand that this is something that is predictable, it’s a phenomenon that happens to so many people, you can be back in control. There’s something even more interesting and even less spoken about happening here that keeps you trapped under that mid-career ceiling.

And this is what we call the next level loop. So it works. There’s three stages to this. The first stage is you try to prove yourself. You believe that if you just demonstrate your value, deliver results, hit your numbers, solve the hard problems, people will recognize you’re ready for more and they will value you.

So if you are someone who is going for for a promotion, you think once they see what I’m capable of, they’ll have to move me up. So you focus on being excellent at what you do. You focus on being the reliable workhorse, which I’m sure many of you can relate to. And if you have just stepped into a bigger role, the pressure to prove yourself can feel even more intense.

Because you can feel as if you have to justify now why they picked you, why you belong here. So you try to have all the answers. You jump in to solve all of the problems, to like earn your paycheck when in fact those are things other people should be handling. You say yes to everything because you’re terrified of looking like you can’t keep up.

Either way, you are operating from the same belief. If I just show I’m good enough, the rest will follow. But what you see happen is in stage two, the payoff doesn’t seem to arrive. So instead of getting progress from trying to prove yourself, you start feeling more resistance. You’re told things like I was mentioning a moment ago, well, you’re on our radar, but then months pass, no update.

Someone less experienced gets tapped for an opportunity that you wanted. There’s no explanation why. you ask what you need to do to get to the next level, and you get vague feedback like, we just need you to be more visible or keep doing what you’re doing right. And again, if you have stepped into a bigger role, you’re, you may be noticing that your leadership seems less impressed by you, not more as you’re trying to prove yourself.

People are polite about it, but you’re not being pulled as quickly into conversations you would like to be. So when this starts happening, you double down even more. You give even more effort. You think that doing more is the only way you can control the situation. And this is a comfort zone for so many of us, because trying harder is something we can control.

Working longer is something we can measure. And now you are in stage three. You are stuck in the weeds, you are buried. And the irony of it is that all of the effort to prove yourself actually makes things worse. You’ve become so reliable that people can’t imagine you anywhere else in the organization.

You are the one who always has the answer, who always saves the day, who always picks up the slack. So why would they move you? You have made yourself indispensable in the role, and that makes you unpromotable. And all of that strategic work, building relationships with senior leaders, visibility, positioning yourself for what’s next.

Again, that keep, that keeps getting pushed aside. If you have just stepped into this bigger role, the trap looks a little different, but it feels very much the same. you have become the bottleneck You are in every meeting. You are CC’d on every email. Your team comes to a screeching halt at the exact time.

You probably need to be moving quickly because they can’t move without any of your input, and you didn’t take the time to build structures that let them operate independently. So you are working at a pace that is already unsustainable, but slowing down feels impossible and like it would be a threat.

And what happens here is that you get caught in the same buying. Leadership sees you as tactical. They see you as someone who is a doer, someone who executes well, but doesn’t see the bigger picture. The worst part is they’re not entirely wrong, right? Not because. It’s not that you aren’t capable of strategic thinking, but you are so underwater, you are so stuck in the weeds that you can’t even lift your head up for air to demonstrate it.

And eventually what we see happen here is that many people say, you know what? I’m gonna leave you decide it’s time for a fresh start. New company. I want new people, a new chance to show what I’m made of. And that works for a while. But you bring yourself with you wherever you go. So unless you make a change, the same habits and instincts, they will follow you.

You will repeat them in the next role and the cycle goes around and around again. Usually within weeks or months, you’re back at stage one of this process. The same loop. But now often the stakes are higher, right? ’cause you’ve gone to a different organization, you are older.

the window for building your career has now become smaller. Yeah. Seems like this is resonating with a lot of you.

Here is what is happening. You have been trying the wrong formula. You are smart, but no one has taught you this. It’s the reason you feel like you’re doing everything right, but you’re just not moving forward.

Why You feel, like I mentioned before, you’re always one step behind the politics instead of shaping things. And the equation you’ve been fo following is this effort, plus time, plus expertise. That is what equals success. Work hard, put in the hours, become the smartest person in the room. Eventually the right people will notice you and you will be anointed.

By some magical fairy godmother that comes down and says, yes, you have arrived. You are finally successful. This formula is not wrong. It certainly worked for you for a period of time. It’s the reason you are successful today. So why wouldn’t you keep running it? This formula has an expiration date. There is a level, and you have reached it if you are here today where this starts actively working against you.

So that’s why today I want to share with you the four part rise formula, because this is the way out of that mid-career ceiling, and it looks different than, let me just go back for a second. It looks different than this effort, time, expertise formula. Instead, the rise formula is these components reclaim, influence, scale, embody.

These are the four things we’re going to go through. How to think about each of these in a strategy, but this is at these higher levels, what gets you out of that mid-career ceiling and is truly what starts to equal your success. So let’s dig into these, starting with reclaim. This is all about reclaiming control of your trajectory.

I’m gonna take a guess that for many of you here, what your day probably looks like right now is back-to-back meetings. Slack or Teams pinging constantly. You have a to-do list that just seems like a hydra. You know, it’s just regenerating faster than you can cross things off of it. You are in reactive mode from the moment you open your laptop to the second you finally go to bed at night.

And it is so common to feel like, I’m sure many of you here can relate. we’re recording this, beginning ish of March, and it’s almost like you blinked and now we’re towards the end of Q1 of this year already. Right. And if we’re not careful, we’ll blink again and it’ll be July. And sure, I’m sure many of you have some wins to show for yourself, but if you are really honest with yourself, how many of those wins and things you are making progress on and checking off of your list, how many of those things are things you actually care about?

How much of your time was intentionally spent advancing your path and your career versus responding to whatever happened to land on your plate? Most people who stay trapped under that mid-career ceiling who get stuck in that next level loop that keeps them there. They are not designing their careers.

They are just. Kind of falling into the next thing. Does anybody relate to that? Just gimme an emoji. They fall into the next role, the next project, the next opportunity. It’s like their career is happening to them rather than because of them. It’s something they just stumble into or resign themselves to rather than something they are engineering themselves.

Yeah, it seems like that’s resonating with a lot of you.

And here’s the thing, you probably do plan your day. You, I’m gonna guess a lot of you here have time blocks, right? You have color coding on your calendar. All of that is good. And also maybe once a year you do some thinking about your longer term career, maybe you did some New Year’s planning. You worked on a career vision.

You had your performance review. So you were thinking about your objectives, your KPIs, your OKRs for the year. The problem is this big white space in between. There’s this big gaping hole, nothing that is connecting today’s tasks to the future There. There’s nothing in between there. No bridge between.

Here is what’s on my plate this week and here’s where I am trying to go. So you end up in one of two modes. Either you are stuck in the weeds, reacting to whatever is urgent, or you’re Dr. Over here dreaming about some distant future that just seems so far off that you can’t even figure out how to act on it.

The thing that bridges these two is what we call intentional sprints. This is the way you reclaim control of your trajectory. And for those of you here who work in maybe a tech atmosphere, who work in product, you may, you may, identify this concept. this is often a mentality that’s used in those fields where instead of planning, you know, a massive multi-year roadmap that we’re trying to execute on all at once, or we’re trying to just hope this whole thing works out.

The best teams work in short focused cycles that are tracking against the larger goal. So they commit to a defined set of tasks and outcomes for a limited window. They execute against that. They pause, they assess, they recalibrate before the next cycle. And this works because it forces you to prioritize when you only have, and we’re gonna talk about that 90 day window.

That 90 day window is pretty magical for this. That’s the specific window we use inside of Lead from Within. When you use that, it’s not, someday it’s not this year. You have to choose specifically what am I doing? By the end of these three months, you have to choose. And for someone at this level, this type of planning is critical.

You are all surrounded by a gravitational pull. Other people’s priorities, emergencies, demands on your time. Without you defining a target for your next 90 days, you will get sucked into their orbit every single time. And that’s what happens when you wake up and six months, a year has gone by and you’re like, and you think, I haven’t made progress on anything I care about.

I’ve just been falling into the next thing. So sprints give you something to protect. A reason to say, not right now to the things that feel urgent but aren’t actually value add. It’s a filter or becomes a filter rather for deciding what gets your energy versus what just gets the leftover scraps of that.

And so this is what it looks like, the difference between being reactive versus reclaiming. When you are in reactive mode, you set goals in December and maybe you haven’t looked at them since. You agree to do everything because you don’t have a north star that you are working towards and measuring against.

You spend the vast majority of time and energy on other people’s goals. You may not even know what yours are. I ask a lot of people, well, what? What are your goals? And they say, I don’t know. It’s been so long since I thought about that. You may have found that your career is just a series of, well, this came up, so I took it, and that happened.

So I did that. It’s again, the falling into, and this is a big one, you have low grade anxiety because you feel like you should be doing more, but you don’t know what that is. It’s just this sort of vague, looming cloud of self recrimination that you have. Versus when you are focusing on reclaiming, you stop saying, I hope, and you are more focused on here’s how I am going to make this happen.

Right? It’s much more directive. You say no faster. Since you know what you are saying yes to, there’s less room for second guessing. You block time, you protect time for your priorities, not everybody else’s. You are able to walk into one-on-ones to have sponsorship conversations and have a clear ask, and that grounded confidence shows up in every interaction because you don’t feel like you’re just this object out at sea floating along you, you have direction.

Okay, I want to drive each of these home with a little bit of a case study. So this one is about a client, we’ll call Adam. he was an engineering leader. He had spent his entire career at one company. And what was interesting is he had worked his way up from an associate to now he was managing multimillion dollar projects.

He had a team that was spread across the entire country. And by every measure he was ready for the next level. But for years, and I’m not kidding you, years, every time he asked about a promotion advancement, he got the same response. Just keep doing what you’re doing. We’ve got our eye on you, right?

Anybody else hear that? And so he came to a point where he was like, enough is enough. I either have to figure out if I’m going to advance here or move on somewhere else. I like my job. I want to make it work here, but I don’t know how to do that. So when Adam joined Lead from Within, we executed a strategy to turn that sort of you’re on our radar into literally hearing from his boss.

Your promotion packet has been submitted. And I coached him through conversations with his boss to have them formally nominate him for a promotion We identified and he secured a well-respected executive level sponsor. We crafted and refined the strongest possible case for his materials. And he went from being, from years of being strung along to instead putting this into intentional sprints instead of being quietly resigned to maybe I just have to live with this level here, or maybe I have to move somewhere else to officially being in the running for the first time in a very, very long time.

And. After all this feeling stuck waiting, he now was only waiting on the word that his promotion was getting approved. And so this is what happens when you have that level of focus and that magic of that sort of intentional sprint to fill that gap of midterm planning. All right, moving on to the second part of our equation, which is influence.

So we talked about reclaim. Now we’re going onto our, I influence, specifically influence up and above you. For a lot of you here, you may have a team, direct reports that love you. the people you manage think you’re a great boss. You are known for being fair, reliable, you’ve built trust with them. The issue is you may be beloved in a bubble.

Anyone relate to that? Just gimme a plus one. You are beloved in a bubble outside of your immediate team, executives, C-suite peers, and other functions, people who decide your future. You may be more of an unknown quantity or at least not trusted to the level you need to be trusted or worse, you are known for being good at one thing, which is being good at your job.

If you have just stepped into a bigger role, this gets even more complicated because the credibility you built before in your last role does not automatically transfer. It doesn’t automatically come with you. And the executives at this level, they don’t know you yet. They know that the person who hired you vouched for you, which is great.

Your peers are also feeling you out. They may not know if you’re an ally or a threat just yet. The people who used to be your equals now report to you, which means those relationships have to completely reset. It starts to get very messy. And meanwhile, as we were talking about before with that, next level loop, you are so focused on proving yourself that you can do the work.

You are not building relationships that will determine whether you succeed or fail here. So either way, you are trying to break through, you are trying to establish yourself. And what we see a lot of people do is they tell themselves, I’m going to opt out of the politics. They think that is the most principle path forward.

That, uh, how many people have done that? Just give us a emoji in the chat. You don’t wanna be political. So you say, you know what? I’m gonna opt out of the, the politics. I just wanna be good at my job and build trust and relationships. But then you find yourself behind the eight ball because you don’t have social capital, right?

When you don’t have social capital, you don’t advance, you don’t get promoted, you don’t get advocated for, your work doesn’t get protected. You are also not given the benefit of the doubt when things go wrong because you don’t have people that know you, that are willing to vouch for you. So that trap of, I wanna opt out, I don’t do politics, can be really dangerous, but I wanna give you a way to rethink this because I am sure you have had mentors tell you you need to be build influence, you need to have relationships.

What with the right people? You need to build your visibility. And every time you hear that, you might think, okay, I know that’s good. I know that’s something I need to do, but what does that actually mean? It’s a lot of jargon. How do I do that? With who? And when you’re already drowning in the work, where is that time supposed to come from?

Plus, at your level, like we have on this, this graphic here, there’s an entire ecosystem of players that you have to manage. You have your boss, your skip level, uh, leader, your boss’s boss. Your peers, your direct reports, maybe a matrixed team leader too. You have stakeholders and other functions. You have, uh, executives you have never spoken to.

You have clients, the board vendors, the list goes on and on. If whether you have been in a role a long time or you have just stepped into a new role and you are trying to figure this out, we want to give you a tool to help you do that.

This is where this tool of power mapping comes in. This is a simple but really, really powerful tool we use inside of Lead from Within, so you can prioritize your time and build that social capital. There are two dimensions to this. So you can see on one access we have the person’s level of influence.

That means how much sway decision making power do they have. And then on the other access we have their level of interest. How personally invested or involved are they in your work, this particular project, whatever it may be. We don’t have time today to unpack this tool in full detail, but the takeaway is this.

The quadrant that matters the most is number one up here. The people who are high influence and high interest. Those are your managed closely relationships. They need more from you. Higher frequency of touch bases, looping them in before decisions are made, not afterwards asking for their input even when you don’t technically need it.

Making sure they are never surprised by something that you are doing right. And most of us don’t take the time to look at the players this way. So we miss people that should be in this category who we fail to manage closely. So that is how you start to break out of the beloved bubble. When you are there, you are always on your back foot.

You are finding out about decisions after they are made. You pitch ideas you hear, yeah, that’s interesting, and it just goes nowhere. You find out about reorgs big changes through the grapevine, not directly. You may have strong opinions on how things should be done, but nobody’s asking for them and you, your boss becomes your single point of failure, right?

You are dependent on them to fight for what you need as sort of your go between. But when you have systematically built upward influence and across, you are part of weighing in on things, shaping the direction from the beginning. By the time you have shared something, most people have already said yes or have agreed you have buy-in, or at the very least you have surfaced what objections they do have.

You are pulled aside when those big changes happen. You are given a heads up, you’re tapped on the shoulder by executives who say, what do you think? I want your take on this before we go ahead with it. When you need something, you’re not dependent on your boss. You have those other allies to call on. Okay?

I want to hear from you. Just give us an emoji. If you are in an organization that has had a ton of reorgs in the last, let’s say, 18 months, right? There seems to be, maybe it is a formal reorg, maybe it’s a new leader, maybe it’s right. This is happening so much more than it ever has before. It is so tempting to let reorg fatigue get the better of you.

Especially if you feel like it’s just wave after wave. You get up, another one knocks you over. So I wanna tell you about the story of Brittany. She’s one of our Lead from Within clients. She worked at one of the world’s biggest software companies, so really large organization, and they went through a reorg that stripped her of her direct reports.

It put her under a manager who she could not stand, did not like. And so on paper, this really looked like a loss. But she just did, she didn’t sit back. She didn’t wait for things to settle, which for most, most of us is our, is our impetus during a reorg. Let me just keep my head in the sand, not rock the boat.

She knew things were in flux, which meant that there were still room to move as things were settling. And for her, what we identified through our work together is that her, one of her managed closely relationships was with her skip level vp. So fast forward a few months that VP grew to trust Britney so much that they named her a co-head of a new center of excellence in the organization.

She got budget to rehire her own team. She was taken out from under that awful boss. And so I want you to think about for yourself when that next shuffle comes, because it will, it will inevitably come. What if instead a fear or resignation being your initial reaction? It could be possibility. It could be, oh, I wonder what this opens up.

Because everything is changing. Reorgs can be some of the best opportunities to reshape your role. ’cause everything is being redrawn, everything is negotiable at those times. Scope, title, reporting lines. There’s actually much more flexibility than we think. Okay. Speaking of hiring your own team, it brings us to the S and the rise formula, which is scale yourself.

And the main issue here is you are leading at a new level with old habits. Your scope has grown, but your approach has probably stayed almost exactly the same. And when this happens, you start to notice a few things. You may start to get really frustrated with your team. They’re not detailed enough, they’re not proactive, they don’t think like owners.

And you start to wonder are, do I just have lazy people? Did I just get a bad bunch here? Do I have the wrong team? So you spend hours redoing the work, you get resentful, they feel resentful, or maybe you decide to try to hire your way out of it. you think if I only had one more person, right? If I only had a more senior member who could take this on.

So you pour energy into getting headcount fighting for that, only to hit resistance because the company may not wanna give that to you right off the bat, or you get the hire and they’re not working out like you quite hoped. So you accept, okay, I, I just have to be in firefighter mode. You stop trying to get ahead of things.

Every day is reactive. And as I said, you convince yourself well, this is just what leadership is, right? It is just operating at this level of crazy unsustainable ness that I just have to accept that this is the reality. Nothing here is a solution. These are symptoms. These are symptoms that you have not externalized what is inside your head right now.

Your standards, your preferences, your judgment, your way of thinking. It all lives inside of you, which means every decision deliverable, every is this good enough question. All of that has to run through you. You have become the bottleneck, and it’s not necessarily because your team is totally incompetent, but what we see so often is that you have not given them a way to operate without you.

So scaling yourself means turning what’s in your head into assets that live outside of you. And this could be anything from a decisions matrix, so your team knows what they can make decisions on without waiting for you. It might be a checklist that defines when something is ready for your review. It might be a personal operating manual that tells people how you work best, so they stop guessing and they start delivering against that.

It could be documented escalation criteria. So you’re only pulled in on the things that truly need you, especially if you’re traveling or you’re away. The form matters less than the principle here, because if it is stuck in your head, it’s stuck with you. That’s what I want you to take away from here.

If it is stuck in your head, it is stuck with you.

And it feels like a catch 22 here, because I know for so many of you, you are trying to be the leader you never had, but somehow things seem to get worse and you start to question yourself.

You are pulled out of deep work into the weeds because people constantly need you and you start snapping at them because you’re stretched thin. You feel strapped, like you can’t step away for a couple of days. You don’t know what you would come back to and you don’t wanna step away ’cause you don’t want to come back to whatever would be there.

Things come back to you after you delegate them needing more work, which is like, why am I even doing this? Then you’re the first one on, you’re the last one to leave. But when you look back at your week, you think, what did I even actually tangibly get done here? And then what really feels like a punch in the gut is you get feedback about, well, you need to empower your team more.

But yet when a deadline slips or something isn’t up to snuff, you are still the one on the hook. But when you stop being the system, when you start building systems and externalize for scale. The pings and dings decrease ’cause your team is able to do things independently. You can take a week off and find that your team handled a fire without you.

You regain 10 to 20 hours per week, ’cause you have fewer meetings. You’re not having to do things over and over. You protect time for deep focus. Your boss starts ask, asking, how is the team running so well, can you teach our other managers how to do that? So this is not externalizing for scale, it is not an overnight process.

If you truly care about your people though, if you want to be the type of leader who lifts people up, this is the only way to give them the opportunities they deserve. And that is something, a client in Lead from Within. We’ll call Dina realized. She, received some harsh anonymous feedback in a 360 that totally to her came out of the blue.

People thought she was playing favorites and really stung, but to her credit, she didn’t get defensive. She saw it as a crucible moment. She said, you know, I’m gonna be judged by how I handle this. So she saw it as a moment to reset her team’s values, to codify those, to put in place, more defined decision-making structures, everything that had been living inside of her head, how she, uh, approached and analyze situations, what she expected, who owned what.

We externalized it, we made it visible. She made it shared. Over the last six months, Dina has been traveling to Asia for weeks at a time. And in the past, that would’ve meant that she had to be on calls. In the middle of her night, she’d have constant check-ins from the team. Nothing would get done without her.

But now everything’s moving. She comes back and she has said to us, I don’t know how so much got done. It’s amazing. And in fact, a couple of weeks ago, she took two whole weeks off for a self-care retreat. She was just like, bye everyone. I’m taking this self-care retreat fully offline with full confidence that her team had everything handled.

All of this for her, solidified for her CEO, who’s grooming her as, his successor. That she is someone who can be a trusted partner, who can be his right hand, who is a person who is capable of leading the organization next. All right? You can take every step we have covered today, reclaim your trajectory with those intentional sprints.

Build your influence beyond your team. Create systems so you are not the bottleneck. None of it matters. If decision make’s perception of you hasn’t caught up to where you are, and you are not actively shaping it, because they will make assumptions based on the limited information they have of you. They will fill in the blanks and they may not do that generously.

So what we find here is another gap people run into is that. You may have focused on internal presence, but you also have no external presence. You have no leadership, you have no recognition outside of your current role or your organization. You’ve never published anything. You’ve never spoken anywhere.

And so if you were to make, want to make a move to tomorrow, what resources do you have to help you with that? and this is important, whether it’s your internal brand or your external brand, we don’t wanna leave it to chance. We don’t wanna leave it, especially internal to this patchwork of random interactions you happen to have rather than a deliberate narrative.

So whenever we are thinking about advancement or establishing yourself, most people start with a question, what do I want to be known for? And how do I get noticed? That’s the wrong question. Instead of asking, what do I want to be known for? How do I want to get noticed? You should be asking, what do I want to become the answer for?

I’m gonna repeat that again.

What do I want to become the answer for?

Decision makers aren’t sitting around thinking about your career. They are sitting around thinking about their problems, their priorities, and when an opportunity opens up a project, a roll a seat at a table, they reach for whoever comes to mind first.

And your job is to be that person. So what the best people do is they look at this in between how do I get noticed and what does the business need from me? So the leaders who get the furthest, they don’t just pick a lane only on what gets them excited. They also think about, picking a lane that the business truly cares about and translating their expertise into language that maps to outcomes executives are most interested in. Things like revenue efficiency, risk growth. When you have an accidental brand or your not managing your percept perception, executives know your title, but they couldn’t explain what you do or why it matters. You’re introduced in meetings on behalf of your boss, not by your own reputation.

Your role may go to someone else who has a clearer story. You may feel that pang of jealousy. Every time you see, you know, one of your colleagues get ahead on LinkedIn. You may feel totally disconnected from your work and uninspired, but when you have an embodied brand, you have that intersection between what you enjoy doing and what the business values.

Leaders brag about your impact unprompted. Often when you’re not in the room, people will say, I’ve heard great things about you. And you’re like, oh, really? Oh, you’re tapped on the shoulder. Before an opportunity goes public, you are the one quoted in publications or being asked to come on industry podcast or to speak on a panel.

The thing you believe in is the thing you become known for, and you can feel traction because there’s that intersection of purpose and value to the business. So one of our, uh, Lead from Within alumni n Raleigh, she’s a perfect example of this. She is now the head of program and change management at a major pharmaceutical company.

They have nearly 50,000 employees, and when she came into the program, she had been advocating for over two years to build this enterprise wide change management function. Two years of feeling like she was pushing a boulder up a hill. What we uncovered was that Nali was talking about change management in her language, the frameworks, the methodology, the long-term organizational benefits, but her executives, she wasn’t making that leap to what the business cared about, which was cost quality time.

So after two years of stalling, starting to make that intersection more, she got approval to build that capability, and her CFO told her directly, you’re not just a great executor. I do see you as someone who thinks and creates things. Her organization is now positioned as an example of what good looks like for others in the organization.

She’s gotten the, okay, she has hired multiple senior level people to build out the function. She has been invited to speak on panels and be parts of all sorts of industry committees and events, and yes, she did get a pay bump on top of all of this. So there you have it. Our rise formula. Reclaim your trajectory, influence up and across.

Scale yourself with systems and embody your brand. So right now you may be feeling one of two things. This was a lot of information. You might be feeling fired up, like let’s go. You finally have language for that next level loop that you have been stuck under in a roadmap for what is next. But I know some of you might be thinking, okay, how do I actually do this for myself in my situation with the politics in my organization, my leadership with everything on my plate?

And listen, you can figure out all of this alone. People do. It takes longer, it generally costs more. The mistakes can have bigger consequences. So we do wanna give you a faster way because we don’t want you stuck in that expensive, painful place where you feel like you’re fumbling through it and. Frankly takes more to recover from.

And I totally understand. You may want to figure it out alone because you are someone who has been a lifelong, I pull myself up by my bootstraps type person. That’s how you got here. And figuring things out on your own is part of your identity or your mentality. For some people asking for help feels like admitting you’re not capable, and it’s very easy to rationalize.

Like it’s not that bad, right? It’s not that bad. I’m getting by. And you may already feel stretched thin, like adding one more thing to your plate seems impossible. It’s common at this stage to think, okay, great. I have the information, I’m all set. But the truth is, sheer force of will can get you in trouble.

The changes that you need to go through are nuanced. It is not about knowing. It is about application, and that’s not something you can always do on your own. The changes that need to happen, they come from practice synthesizing, strategizing, accountability, modeling that is very difficult to do in isolation.

You don’t know what you don’t know. As I said before, you’re busy. There’s this gravitational pull. People without accountability and structure, they fall back into their bad habits. So stepping into this next level, whatever that is for you, is difficult. You need a place to practice that is not your professional scenario because as you get higher and higher, there’s sometimes fewer people that you can confide in or look to for guidance.

And so that is exactly why I created Lead from Within. That’s exactly what Lead from Within has been designed to do, to Fast Track and to meet all of those different needs you have, as I mentioned before, this is the first time we are ever opening doors to the public. and so if you are interested, actually, lemme go back to that slide.

If you are interested in applying, you must apply by this Friday, 11:59 PM Eastern New York City. Time to qualify for that $500. Saving on your, on your enrollment application takes five minutes. It tells me a little bit about you and what you’re hoping to work on. It is no obligation and you will have the opportunity to either secure your spot if your application is approved, uh, or you’ll have the op opportunity to book a one-on-one decision call with me to talk about your situation and your questions.

So Lead from Within is for you. If you are ready to advance and you are done just hoping it happens. It is really tough to go from someone who has the technical expertise and being the self-sacrificing doer because people are not going to promote someone who just gets lost in the daily tasks, who is not driving the big picture forward.

It’s really hard to place trust in a leader who can’t hold their own with their team, who can’t hold their own with more powerful people, board members, enterprise clients, regulators. It’s hard to justify exp expanding someone’s authority when they have no credibility outside of their own function. So Lead from Within is world class coaching, trusted by professionals at the world’s biggest organizations.

So whether you are someone who is. Secure. Trying to secure a career changing opportunity that you actually feel excited about. You wanna walk in confident from day one. You are finding your footing. After being assigned a larger scope. You need to quickly navigate the people and the politics around you, or you’re positioning yourself for a brighter future, either within your company or out outside of it, even if it’s been years since you have applied your resumes, old and dusty.

If you have questions about the program, please put them in the q and a. We are, we are here to answer those. Okay, so there are three types of people that Lead from Within is ideal for First is if you are stepping into a new title or authority and you want to become top of mind for executives because of how you think, not because of how much you do.

If you need to go from on the cusp to actually breaking through, packaging your experience, making the business case for your promotion or a job change, and to get there, you need to free up time to influence strategy upstream. You are not going to get ahead if you are constantly in the weeds. You need to be able to build some of those systems we were talking about.

So stepping into a new role as well as if you have just stepped into a new role, you need to succeed there and scale yourself. So we work with you on establishing credibility from the get go. So you are a trusted and sought out FO voice, so you can build a team that enjoys working for you, and you have allies who are willing to go to bat for your ideas.

Decision making, like I said, so many of the situations you face now are nuanced. They don’t have an easy 1, 2, 3. It’s clearly A or clearly b. Those loaded situations, they can really throw you into imposter syndrome, overthinking, second guessing yourself. And so we work with you hand in hand in real time to navigate through that so you can be confident in your own decision making.

And then last is a great fit for those of you who are strategizing what is next in your career? Deciding whether do I stay, do I go in my current organization and navigating every step of that way, building an external brand, making sure you have your resume, your cover letter, your LinkedIn, your interview presence down so you can get a top of market compensation package.

All right? I see some questions about, you know, how does this work? What’s included inside of the program? So let me take some time to go through that. Uh, and if you have other questions, please put ’em in the q and A here. okay. I see questions about the time needed. We’ll, an answer that. Alright. Okay.

So within lead, from within, you get weekly group advisory calls. This is real time coaching and workshopping on your situation. There are so many layers of support in this program because we know you are all busy professionals and your bandwidth is going to ebb and flow. So we have different forms of live, asynchronous, written, all sorts of different forms of support that I want to go through.

So these live weekly advisory calls are 90 minutes. They are currently on Tuesdays at 5:00 PM Eastern time. They’re recorded if you ever can’t make it. and we provide an AI summary as well as a transcript. And these. Calls are coaching based. So these are for workshopping your specific challenges and real-time scenarios every week.

we also have a big focus on accountability. So every week you are focusing or you are reporting on what was my commitment from last week? What am I celebrating towards that commitment, and then what’s my commitment heading into next week? So is this, there is this tight follow through on what you are doing.

We also like to say Lead from Within is part advisory. It’s part mastermind, and by mastermind we mean you are surrounded by a small, intimate group of peers who are at a similar level to you navigating similar situations. So not only do you get the benefit of blocks of coaching focus specifically on you, but you get to not only hear from others who can provide other perspective on your situation, but also hear others get coached.

If someone is asking, how do I deal with an underperforming employee? Or my boss is asking me to be their successor, do I wanna take this role or not? And what factors into that? You get the benefit of all of that coaching as well. And a lot of our clients say that for that reason, they actually find it even more valuable than one-on-one because they’re getting, you know, three, five times the amount of coaching.

Okay.

Listen, in the worlds that all of you operate, things happen fast, things pop up. Problems, opportunities. That’s why in Lead from Within, we’re like in the sidecar. I am in the sidecar with you of your career. You can raise your hand in our private community space. You can get coaching within, one business day.

Written, asynchronous coaching spots in the program are intentionally limited because of my level of personal involvement. so that you can ensure that you are getting personalized guidance and we get to know your situation. And this is yet another one of those multiple levels of support. So you are never stuck.

You can get that coaching on demand. You can have answers when you need them. This is one of those other touchpoints and we’re not talking coaching in the, you know, great job or you should just be more confident about this and talk to that person, right? you can see the level, the depth of coaching we provide over here.

And just as importantly, this is a place where you can let your guard down, right? All of you here are operating at higher levels. Director, senior manager, VP, leads heads of functions. No one in this program is trying to posture or prove they know everything. And this is a place where you can let your guard down to ask the questions.

You may have been afraid to ask anybody else, or you can’t frankly trust people in your organization to to ask about as well, to work through those moments when you think, did I mess up here? Or What should I do? I don’t know how to move forward here. You finally have a space, a safe place to do that. Okay, I saw some questions about the 90/30 plan, so let’s talk about that.

In Lead from Within the backbone of it, of it is our 90/30 planning process. So with this, you are mapping your vision every 90 days and every 30 days, breaking that down into a concrete 30 day action sprint that is reviewed by me and the team. We also have live monthly coworking sessions where you can come, you can show up, debrief what worked, course correct what didn’t, and lock in your focus for the month ahead.

You, those are optional. You can attend if you would like to. They’re get it done sessions so the time is on the calendar. But of course you can also do that on your own. And we review these. And so you are getting our feedback and direction on it seems like the sequencing is off here that you should be focusing on doing X before you do Y or even giving you guidance on, okay, you’re planning to talk to your manager about this.

These are some things we want you to keep in mind. Raise your hand for coaching around this, and we can help you with that. We keep your 90 and your 30 day plans on file for coaching you more closely and in a more personalized way. So we want to put behind you those days where 30, 60, 90 days goes past and you have not worked towards anything of value to you.

And I think someone was asking, do you have,does Lead from Within include a customized plan for the 90 day sprint? So we have a 90 day, plan template that you will fill out and of course you can. Go off of that template if you would like. but you do get that 90 day plan template as your guide, and then we review it to refine it with you and keep it on file.

Okay. If you have other questions, put them in the q and a. One of my favorite parts of the program is our document review process. Every week inside of the program, you have the opportunity to submit a piece of work to us for review. We will give you in-depth, conceptual edits of overall the framing.

The messaging on this is good in these ways. It could be stronger in these ways, but also many times line by line edits, as well as, often a video walkthrough so you can understand our thinking, our mentality, why we’re asking you to change certain things. And so our document, submission process is open to.

Any piece of work that is within scope of the program. So yes, things like your 90/30 plans, but also presentations, proposals, difficult emails you need to send job search materials one-on-one, important one-on-one agendas, performance reviews. And as I said, we give you surgical feedback on how you are presenting yourself, coming across your language, your positioning, and you get to submit one of those every single week inside of the program.

One of our newest features is our brand new AI communication assistant. We currently call her MelodyGPT. And so this is yet another way, if you can’t make it live to a call, if you’re in a pinch in the middle of the night and you need some help tightening an email or whatever it may be, MelodyGPT is trained on my frameworks, my voice, and is also there to help you and really sharpen up how you are presenting yourself.

Okay. One of the huge benefits of being in Lead from Within is that you get my entire Offer Suite. So that includes my other program, which is called Speak Like a Senior Leader. So this program, it is tactical, it is curriculum based, so it’s really like follow step one, step two, step three, whereas Lead from Within, it’s an advisory program.

It is coaching based. It is very responsive to your situation and the questions you have in the situations you bring up, but speak like a senior leader is our curriculum based bestselling program that walks you through how to be a crisp, concise, executive level communicator. Whereas Lead from Within is much broader.

We’re talking about advancement, strategy management, team leadership, influence positioning yourself and applying for new roles. We’re able to go much broader inside of Lead from Within. And so in speak, like a senior leader, you get access to the entire curriculum, our skill drills, all of those live workshops included in that program as well.

Okay. What other questions do you have?

Okay. Um, someone’s asking, this is perfect segue. is this ideal for someone currently interviewing for a larger role or should they wait? We have tons of people in the program who are actively searching for their next role, applying for their next role and in final stages of getting an offer for their next role.

So yes, I would say do not wait. One reason why I created Lead from Within was to help those of you who are in that transitional phase and need guidance on some of the bigger questions that come along with it, as long as well as the tactical pieces. So in terms of the tactical pieces, in addition to all of that coaching, you get where we can hash things out in real time, create your job search strategy, your interviewing, your networking strategy, do live prep, all of that.

You also get, the ultimate Job Search Suite, which is a course I have put together for all of the assets you need in the job search. So the first of those courses is resume revamp. This takes you through in a lot of detail how to totally overhaul your resume to make it ready for your next role.

How to get it noticed, particularly now when we’re talking about AI generating tons of people’s resumes. How do you make sure yours goes to the top of the pile and actually gets you a call? We also have compelling cover letters. I am a believer that a cover letter. I don’t wanna say necessary, but if you have the opportunity to do it, do it.

It only gives you a leg up. things like how do you write a cover letter hook and not be the person who says, I’m expressing my interest in this role. How do you quickly show your fit so that they do go onto your resume and you do go onto the yes pile. And let me also say all of these job search, courses apply if you are applying internally or externally.

We’ve had, people use them for both internal roles and external roles. So our expert interviewing co course walks you through my entire interview prep process from how do you ace the HR screening to the hiring manager interview? How do you follow up scripts for that? How do you answer the whole range of questions that you could be asked and do so in a confident, concise way.

And last level up your LinkedIn is a crucial part of the job search process today, especially if you’re trying to attract new roles for you or if you’re someone like Nali who is building more of a public thought leadership presence. this walks you through how do you make sure your profile becomes a magnet for those types of opportunities?

Okay, so I saw a lot of questions about the investment. If you added up everything that is included in this program, it would be worth over $17,000. There are people out there that charge well over 25, $30,000 for this level of support and this caliber of support right now. And I can’t promise it will always be this way or if it will be this way after this, open period is is done.

But right now you have the opportunity to join Lead from Within for $7,000. Or $1,200 per month. Now, keep in mind, if you apply by Friday, you will have the opportunity for $500 off so your enrollment would be $6,500. All right? And as I said, I, I’ve been on this webinar, so I don’t know how many applications have come in, but because I am so personally involved in the ins and outs, in the coaching, in the document reviews, of this program space is extremely limited.

And there were several hundred of you here, there were several thousand of you signed up for this webinar. So if you are interested at all, I would highly, highly recommend you submit your application. Like I said, it takes five minutes. It’s no obligation. It gets you into our process. If you are approved and accepted, you’ll have the opportunity to get on a one-on-one decision call with me, and I get it.

I, I know it can be so hard. To invest in yourself when there are so many different choices of what you can invest in nowadays, especially where you are at in your level, in the level of your career. You don’t need more content. You don’t need more tools and tips that you use someday. You don’t need the generic advice around be authentic and just lean into your vulnerability.

You don’t need that. You don’t need some cheesy two day workshop that talks to you about executive presence and you know, inspiring team management. What you need is just in time coaching where someone, as I said earlier, is in the sidecar with you. You have that advisor. You have someone who is walking hand in hand with you for all of the situation, the fires, the opportunities, the complex moments that you are facing day in and day out.

You need peers who are outside of your organization, who understand the weight of what you are carrying, can offer their dues, their don’ts, their wisdom, and, uh, building on that, you need space to pressure test things with a objective group of people on an ongoing basis before you go do it inside of your organization.

Okay, let’s see. Other questions that are coming in. Let me see. I’m just, I’m scrolling to take a look. how many hours a week for a usual participant? Let me see if I can bring that up. so how do I answer this? As I said before, we have so many of those different aspects of support in the program.

We have our 90 minute. Live call on Tuesdays, that is 5:00 PM to 6:30 PM Eastern. We have the asynchronous coaching in the community, the document review, our 90/30 process, I would say the average person dedicates about one to two hours per week in their participation of the program. Some weeks that is coming to the live calls, some weeks that is just posting in the community.

Some weeks that’s submitting for document review and, and, implementing the feedback we’ve been given some weeks. It’s all of the above. So that’s why we have built this with so many different options for you to get support and coaching because it’s going to ebb and flow to what you need week to week.

Okay. what other questions do you have? Victoria was asking when does the program begin? Your, your start date will begin based on when we have our call and your enrollment conversation. But do keep in mind that to get that $500 savings, you must apply by this Friday.

By this Friday, March 13th. And then doors will close for this enrollment on Friday, March 20th. So after that, the doors are closing to the public. I don’t know when they will open again. it could be later this year. It’s highly likely it will not be until 2027. So I truthfully cannot say when doors will open to the public again.

But to answer your question, your specific start date will, your exact start date will then depend on, um, when we have our call and, and all of that. Okay. What other questions can we answer for you?

So someone asked, does the $500 savings also apply on the six month payment plan option? It does. It will be deducted from your first payment. Okay. So it’s not spread out over the payments, it’s deducted from the first monthly payment plan. It’s a good question.

Alright. So you can see some of the, amazing wins that we’ve had. We just had a call last week and a client was telling us about how in May or June of 2025, her scope was like three X’ed and now flash forward, she just had her performance review, she received the highest comp package she ever has had before and they are saying, you’re doing such a great job.

We’re actually. Giving you more headcount. Um, and so you can see here what people have been able to do landing roles with, uh, 250 K salaries plus because they have that resume, that cover letter going from an interview to a top of market offer that we help them negotiate and go through the interview pro process receiving 140% bonus.

all of that applies here. Okay. I see a question. Will this help those in government positions? Yeah. We have had, um, folks in, we have folks in local government. We have folks in federal government, in nonprofits in the program. So if you have a specific question about how it would help you, um, that, that would be helpful,

okay. Are the weekly 90 minute calls on Tuesdays and. The call, the 60 minute calls on Thursdays each month with Melody. So, right now the 90 minute calls on Tuesdays are with me and the 60 minute, 90/30 debrief calls each month. Wendy, who is here supporting me today, leads those.

She facilitates those. I do most of the document reviews. Wendy does support on the document reviews for the 90/30 plans. However, I review everything, so I make sure, that I know exactly what you are doing and I have my eyes on those. On our backend, we have a client database where we are managing each person.

We can see what your commitments, we can see your 90/30 plans. We can see your commitments and your check-ins week to week. We can see what questions you have asked. um, we have a through line as we are coaching you and can always refer to that. Okay? So here’s a peek inside of the process.

If you were to join us, you would start with your 90 day plan, creating that 90 day vision, and creating your first 30 day sprint. And then there’s three phases here. Vision, execute, evolve. Then you have that arsenal of different support at your disposal. The live coaching, the doc reviews, the input from the community and then the cycle repeats.

Every 90 days we do a fresh vision. Every month you are doing a 30 day action sprint, and at the, towards the end of your six months, we have you complete what we call a impact report. So you can see your ROI in terms of has my salary go gone up, did I get a promotion, did my title change, my scope change, my level of influence change.

So you can actually see and measure some of those changes. Okay. What other questions can we answer for you? Remember, you have to apply by this Friday to be eligible for that $500 savings. Here is the process. apply. It takes, as I said, five minutes telling me more about you, your goals, your situation, uh, so I can see if you are a right fit for the program.

I review those personally. You’ll hear back from us with a decision within two business days. and then you will have the option if you are approved, you will have the option to, get started and enroll or to book a one-on-one decision call with me to finalize your choice.

Okay? And as I said earlier, the full cost of the program is, if you apply by Friday, you will lock in that $500 savings, which brings it down to 6,500 or $1,200 per month. Your $500 discount will be applied to that first monthly payment.

All right. What if I can’t make the live calls? That is no problem. This program is designed for all of you who are incredibly busy and very demanding roles. We have designed it specifically for that. So we offer all of the things, all of the aspects of the program so that you have options, not because we expect you to check every single box.

So with the calls in particular, they are all recorded, as I was mentioning before. We use an AI note taker so you can scan the summary, you can jump to specific parts of the call. If there was a script or a specific part that you wanted to go back to, you can type that in the search and go right to that.

Alright. if you are thinking about asking your company to support, we do have materials for that. So we do have a PDF for employers, as well as a letter of request. so if you are interested in that, you can email us hello@melodywilding.com and we’ll send that over to you.

I think I answered this question before, but if you are in between roles, this is a perfect program for you if you are actively looking to be in a new role, because this is the only place where I offer resume, cover letter, interviewing support, networking support. This is the only program where I do that.

so this is perfect for you if you are in between roles, looking for the next thing. please don’t convince yourself that, oh, I need to wait till I have it figured out. Nope, this program is perfect. If you are on the cusp, you have just stepped into something new or you want help transitioning into that new thing and being successful there.

I believe I answered this before, but I’ll, I’ll get into it again, which is this question of, okay, I’ve heard about your other program Speak Like a Senior Leader. So what is the difference between that and this program Speak Like a Senior Leader is specifically focused on executive communication.

It is a eight week program that’s built around what I call the speak framework, which involves shifting your communication style for different personalities, presenting with poise, expressing your impact, articulating powerfully in writing and keeping your composure under pressure. Speak is curriculum driven.

It has on demand lessons, skill drills. We have live practice workshops. The scope is very focused and narrow is how you communicate. Lead from Within is significantly broader and more high touch. Yes, you get all of speak inside of Lead from Within, so you’re not missing out on any of that.

But Lead from Within goes far beyond that to address really the full picture of what it takes to advance and be a leader at these higher levels. So we have, we’re talking about navigating organizational politics, building relationships with stakeholders. How do you make your case for promotion? Advocate for that. Manage up effectively. Scale yourself and your team. manage your team, make those high stakes decisions. Figure out whether to stay or go. Negotiate your compensation land a new role. All of that we cover inside of Lead from Within.

The other big difference is the format. So Speak is primarily a learning and practice

experience. Lead from Within is an advisory and coaching experience. It is responsive to what you bring to it. So you are getting coached on your actual situations in real time with me in the sidecar of your career with you for six months. So if your primary challenge, if your only concern right now is I wanna be a stronger communicator, then speak like a senior leader could be a great fit.

But you, if you are navigating something bigger and broader, a career inflection point, a new role, complex dynamics, and you want ongoing, personalized support across all of that, Lead from Within is where you wanna be. And again, you get Speak Like a Senior Leader inside of Lead from Within. So you don’t have to choose between them.

You get both, plus everything else.

**Wendy Cary:** Melody there have been a lot of questions through that. I’ve gone ahead and answered, and I’m not sure if you’ve answered some of these live yet. So if you could just mark them, if you have enter answered them live. Just go ahead and say answer live on them.

**Melody Wilding:** Okay. Got it.

**Wendy Cary:** Great.

**Melody Wilding:** Okay. Someone asked about, Possibly wanting to get started in April or May. Is it worth applying? Yes, please, please go ahead and apply. and we can talk about your specific situation. Just include that in your, in your application for me so I’m aware and we can take that into account and talk about it further.

Okay. this is a common situation or come in question rather. I don’t wanna get lost in a group. Right. Will I actually get personalized attention? If you are, if you are still here and you are concerned about this, gimme a, gimme an emoji in the chat. This is one of the most common concerns we hear. It’s a valid one.

I am in a long-term group coaching program and I remember the first time when I met with the coach who I’ve worked with for over, gosh, almost two years now, and I said to her, I want one-on-one coaching. I don’t want to be in a group environment. And, listening to her and joining her mastermind has been the best decision I have made in a very long time.

So hear me when I say this. I had this exact same concern, and I get it. You don’t just wanna be another face in the crowd. Lead from Within is designed to be the opposite of that. So first, because of its high touch nature and because of how personally involved I am, we do intentionally cap enrollment so that I get to know, the team gets to know your situation, your goals, your challenges, the cast of characters that you’re dealing with, the dynamics at play.

This is not a course with hundreds of people where you are watching from the sideline. It is intimate. So for context, Speak Like a Senior Leader currently has over a hundred people in it. Lead from Within has currently about 80% less than that. So to give you, a scope of that. Second, in Lead from Within.

There are so many ways to get individualized support in a group environment. You can get coached live on our weekly calls, submit a question, raise your hand. We will coach you. You can post in the community and get written feedback tailored to your situation within one business day. You can submit your actual work for document review decks, emails, proposals, whatever it is, get line by line edits.

Okay? So this is hands-on personalized guidance with the added benefit of the Mastermind wrapped around that. And as I said, I keep an eye on your 90 day plans and your monthly sprints, even if I am not the one giving you feedback on them. So I know what you’re working towards. I’m tracking your progress.

even if you’re not actively showing up on calls, I have context on where you are and what you need. I mentioned before, we have coaching operations in place to make sure things are not falling through the cracks. So every client in the program has a private client record where we have your goals, your wins, what you’re working on, what you’re asking for coaching on.

So when you show up to a call, as I said, I am running 99% of our, weekly advisory calls right now. You’re not starting from scratch. I have context. I remember you are not repeating yourself every time and like, remind me what you are doing. It’s not like that at all. okay.

If you are a Speak Like a Senior Leader alumni and you are interested in Lead from Within, that was one of the questions, uh, we have here. I would really encourage you to apply. So we have a lot of people from Speak transition into Lead from Within at one point or another because it’s the natural next step.

Once you have the communication skills, then you start to have bigger questions of, okay, I’m, so for example, in speak, just recently, we had someone ask about, I’m applying for an internal transfer. How do I build allies around that? How do I navigate the interview process? And because we keep the scope of Speak narrow, we said that’s something perfect for us to focus on together in Lead from Within.

Because in speak, we’re really laser focused on the aspects of the S-P-E-A-K system. Lead from Within allows us to go far beyond that, yes, to continue applying the lessons from Speak, but go much broader and much more in depth on your situation. So in Speak, there’s only a limited amount of personalized coaching we can give you just by nature of the curriculum and the structure of the calls and the number of people in the program.

but in Lead from Within, I am really side by side, hand in hand getting into the nitty gritty of your situations with you week in, week out and giving you specific coaching on that. Yeah. Wendy, anything you would add about the difference between the two?

**Wendy Cary:** the planning again, ’cause I lead that part, that’s the part that I, which comes to mind for me. It, you are able to. Set a vision for the next 90 days and be able to track your progress and make sure that, you have accountability toward that as well as, someone to help you think it through in a little bit more detail and, come up with a plan that, that you are more likely to be able to execute on.

**Melody Wilding:** Yeah, exactly. Lead from Within. There is a much tighter focus on accountability and follow through on your career pathing. Whereas again, that is just, that’s out of scope for what we can work with you on and Speak, which is more tactical around just the communication skills. What do you say and how you say it?

Where in Lead from Within, we’re doing those 90/30 plans where we are talking about, we had someone who, she came in with a 90 day goal of wanting to build her influence. Way too vague. We had to refine that down. Talk about with who in what ways, create those 30 day sprints around, alright, if you’re going to focus on influence in these certain meetings, what are specific things that we need to see from you in that time and be hearing from you in our weekly calls, and you’d be updating us in the community.

So there’s much more of this feedback loop that we can have with you.

**Wendy Cary:** Yeah, it’s really about professional development. I mean, even if you’re in a job search right now, it’s developing you professionally for job searching as well. So, it’s not about getting how to get a project done, it’s how to advance you professionally within your career.

**Melody Wilding:** Okay. final questions. And I do wanna issue a reminder this Friday, March 13th, your application must be received by that time to qualify for the $500 savings to put towards your enrollment in the program. If you choose to go with the monthly plan, it will be, applied to that first monthly, payment.

And, oh, the program is six months long. Nobody, actually, nobody asked that, so I guess I was clear about that part of it. But it is six months long, which is another big difference between Speak, which is only eight weeks long at this moment in time.

**Wendy Cary:** And remember, it’s the application that you need to have in by Friday.

Yes. It’s not the payment, the approval from your employer, all of that stuff. It’s the application. So make sure you submit the application by Friday and we can have all those other details worked out before you join.

**Melody Wilding:** Correct. Yeah. Alright, I think we will leave things there. Thank you so much everyone for joining us today.

It was a pleasure to be with you. we will be sending out this replay in a day or so, so keep an eye out for that. If you have any other questions about the program, we just wanna encourage you to apply. There is no harm. We’re not scary. We don’t, I don’t bite. even if you’re on the fence, you’re not sure, just send it in and we can have a conversation about your situation.

Uh, really just gets you into our process. You’re not obligated to anything from there. But, uh, we just don’t want you to miss out on that window of, Friday. So thanks everyone for being here today. We will talk to you soon. Take care of yourselves. Bye everyone.