3 Ways Women in Leadership Are Self-Sabotaging Their Success

There are a lot of frustrated women around the world who feel they can’t get ahead in their organizations. They blame their bosses, senior leaders, coworkers, peers, and employees - any and everyone but themselves. While I understand there is a multitude of challenges that women face in the workplace, many of them are unknowingly self-inflicted.

This may be considered an unpopular statement, but someone has to say it. Despite the increased number of empowerment events and billions of dollars spent talking about it, if the gender wage gap, diversity, inclusiveness, and equality haven’t changed in organizations for the past +20 years, it’s time for women to take responsibility and change the statistics themselves instead of waiting for someone else to do it.

Talking to hundreds of women in leadership, I’ve found that most women are solving the wrong problem. They are investing their time and money in degrees and a host of other accomplishments to hang on their walls, but don’t address the most important element of high achievement – self-image. Although women are earning more degrees, men still make the most money.

Self-image is the root of the challenges that most women in leadership have, but it is the least talked about. Women empowerment events and leadership development programs don’t address how women really see themselves, the negative conversations they have with themselves or how they feel about their “success."

Self-image is the key to unlocking a woman’s potential.

If you’re frustrated and want to quit your job to seek better opportunities, consider these three factors to capture your value in your organization and industry and get the raise, promotion, and bonus that you desire and deserve.

People See You How You See You (Self-Image)

I spoke to a woman recently who was frustrated in her job and felt like they weren’t paying her what she deserved. She wanted to quit and start her own business but didn’t know where to start. After asking a few questions, I discovered the real problem was that she felt beat down, so when she asked for a raise, it was denied because her ask was from a place of lack and not strength.

If you can’t clearly articulate the value that you bring your organization, why would they pay you for it? Do you have a litany of negative experiences from bad bosses, bad relationships, family drama, being harassed, suppressed and oppressed?

If you feel like you’ve been devalued by life’s experiences, then you will feel devalued at work and wonder why you are being undervalued by your employers. They are simply reciprocating the energy you are putting out.

Being Overqualified and Underpaid Follows You

Working in a male-dominated work environment (strike 1), as a woman (strike 2) and a woman of color (strike 3), creates significant challenges in seeing yourself accurately. It’s easy to feel like you have to adjust who you are to fit into a place that’s not designed for you to succeed. It’s hard to feel valuable in an organization when you are devalued based on your diverse makeup.

Playing small, code-switching and playing the game to survive is like being a gallon size of energy that has to be shoved into a shot glass every day to fit in. Been there, done that.

If you do that too long, when you decide to get another job, you’ll seek jobs that match the devalued sense of self and not who you really are. You forget that you’re a gallon size of energy and end up applying for shot glass sized jobs.

Then you create the same cycle where you will be better than your bosses, wonder why they feel intimidated by your performance and then feel squeezed. To break this cycle, make sure you get an accurate sense of your value before you leave your current job.

Change Your Self-Image and Your Results Will Follow

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s, Law of Compensation states that you will always be compensated for your efforts and for your contribution, whatever it is, however much or however little.

If you have given immense value to your organization, by Law, that value is waiting to be captured, but you have to increase your sense of self (self-image) to get it. In other words, when you BELIEVE that you should earn more money, opportunities will present themselves to match what you believe. If you continue to feel undervalued and devalued, you will get that too.

Within three weeks of working with a client, she was sent eight job opportunities to consider. These higher paid jobs, with increased responsibility, flooded her inbox in a very short period of time because she changed her self-image and the Law of Compensation was activated.

She did not seek these opportunities, they came to her. We took a few weeks to sift through the offers, negotiate, and ensure a good fit and she recently received two offer letters.

Her challenge? Her parents were immigrants in the U.S. and felt devalued. Although her family struggled, she was smart academically and worked hard to get scholarships to fund her undergraduate studies at Cornell. After working hard to fund her graduate studies at Yale, when she got her first job, she asked, “Why would they hire me?”

She struggled for nearly 15 years in her career despite her credentials. Why? Because she never owned her greatness since she felt devalued growing up. She didn’t have a lot of emotional baggage, so adjusting her self-image was easy and the results followed with two solid offers within ten weeks.

I’d like the share a few actions I recommended that contributed to her rapid shift. Try them for yourself and see what happens.

(1) Affirmations – Look in the mirror and tell yourself how great you are. You need to hear your voice say positive things instead of succumbing to the negative voice in your head.

(2) Personal development – Women surrender personal development for professional development and the gap is where the pay differential shows up the most. Close the gap between the woman on the resume and the woman in the mirror with self-help books and programs.

(3) Wear a crown (a real one) for 15 minutes daily and stand in front of the awards, degrees, and credentials on your wall. Look at them while in the Wonder Woman pose and bridge the gap between the physical you and the written name on the credentials on your wall. Say your affirmations and own your greatness!

(4) Let go of the baggage from your past and take inventory of what you’ve accomplished despite your challenges. This is the greatest lesson of all.

It’s hard to out earn the limited self-image you have of yourself. Work on yourself, own your value, demand your value and your life will never be the same for the best.

Christy Rutherford is a Harvard Business School Alumna, certified Executive Leadership Coach from Georgetown, keynote speaker, and best-selling author of 7 books.