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Build Your Brave Career is for women in tech who are done being overworked, overlooked, and underpaid...and are ready to change it.
If you’re experienced, capable, and tired of working harder without getting what you’ve earned, this podcast shows you how to make the strategic and tactical moves to stress less, work less, and earn more.
With each episode, you’ll learn how to build the skill of bravery so you can advocate for yourself, make smarter career decisions, and create real momentum, without losing yourself or burning out.
Nicole Trick Steinbach is your host. She is a former director who built a global tech career from the ground up, working in over 25 countries, leading large-scale transformational change projects. Nicole is now at home in both the US and Germany.
To learn more about how you can build your brave, connect here:
• Website: https://tricksteinbach.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicoletricksteinbach
Welcome to this five part short series I am calling the "What Now?" Series. These five short episodes are designed to address the most common situations women like you are facing in your careers so that you can solve them now and build your brave career, a career where you stress less and you enjoy more.
Where you work less and create more impact and yes, a career where you earn more. Let's go.
Welcome to the Build Your Brave Career Podcast, where we flip the script on the tired stereotype that women in and around the tech industry have to be stressed out, overworked and underpaid. I'm Nicole Trick Steinbeck, the International Bravery Coach and your host. Forget what you've been taught.
Bravery is not a personality trait available only to the brash bravery is a skill and you already have it, which is great because building the skill of bravery is the most powerful way to creating the career and life you really want as you build your brave. You will stress less, work less, and then earn more.
This podcast will help you do just that. Let's dive in.
Today we're talking about something that so many women experience, but very few process in a way that helps them move their career forward. We're talking today about getting passed over for the promotion, for the raise, for the opportunity for growth.
We're talking about that situation that you know you're ready for, or even better, you're already doing the work for, and you're sitting there thinking, well, 'what Now' I got passed over?
Do I work harder? Do I push harder? Do I leave? Wait, isn't them? Is it me? Is it we?
Let's start here. Getting passed over, it's not just a professional experience, it's also an emotional one because let's be brave here: it is rejection.
Let's be real. It's not just rejection in the moment of discovering you've been passed over, it lingers. It follows you into your next meeting, your next one-on-one, your next performance conversations. You start second guessing how you speak, how you show up, how you plan, how you act, how you are perceived.
You wonder, am I as good as I thought I was? Did I completely misread what I do, the feedback I get who I am. What makes it even harder, especially for women in tech, is you're often one of the few women in the room already when you're passed over. It doesn't just feel like a missed opportunity. It also feels like confirmation of every doubt you've ever had about whether or not you truly belong, whether or not your work really matters, whether or not your career goals are realistic or even brave.
You don't just feel disappointed in a moment. Of course not you're a human because you have to keep showing up. To the same place, to the same people, to the same meetings, to the same efforts, to the same products.
sometimes it's disrespect, respect. Often it's broken trust. Sometimes even betrayal, especially when you've either been implicitly or explicitly assigned the work in that bigger role with that bigger salary, with that opportunity for growth. That happens a lot.
And sometimes you're even doing the work for the person who did get the role. You are expected to stay professional, positive, engaged, gauged.
While we both know you're thinking. How am I still the one overperforming and not being recognized for it? It's that disconnect between what you bring, what you contribute, what you create, and how you're valued, and that leads to resentment. But you can't stay there in resentment. It's a human response to a situation that's unfair, but that's gonna drive you to overworking over stressing, and limit your options.
If you're like, most of the women I coach you are going through the spiral. Everything from, " are you fucking kidding me?" And "this has to be a joke, this cannot be real" to " I should have done more" or " maybe I really wasn't ready" and if it was a case where someone else got it, " why did they choose them?"
That all leads to a sneaky silent choice made by most women. You go into overdrive. Overworking, overproducing, over- communicating, over- managing. Over, over, over.
You're trying to prove yourself. You're trying to get visible and seen. You're trying to demonstrate you really can do it. You're trying to earn what you've already earned.
But here's the truth, and I really, really want you to hear this getting passed over. It's not a problem, it's not a conclusion. It's an important piece of information. Ignoring that information and not being clear about what you're gonna do next, that's the problem. That's when a situation becomes a conclusion.
But you listen to this podcast, we're in community with each other. That's not gonna be you, not this time. Let's talk about what to do instead.
First it's time to reflect, collect all of the information and answer the question; what now?
And what now is definitely going to include building the skill of bravery. ' cause we know bravery is not a personality trait, it's a skill.
It's the skill that allows you to respond to moments and information like this in a way that actually strengthens your career and what you believe about yourself.
This is just a decision point and how you respond is either going to keep you stuck or move you into your next phase.
The first step is clarity. And the question is, what actually happened here?
Not your assumptions or your fears. Not your internal story. You're going to have all of those, but we need facts.
What direct feedback did you receive? Did you receive any?
What a gap exists between what you're doing now and what you miss out on.
Remember, the gap can be on your side. There might really be a skill or an experience or a presence that you need.,
It might be on their side. You might already be doing the work for free without the title or the recognition or the access. The gap can go on both actions.
Here's what I see all the time: women who miss a promotion craft these enormous stories that are natural and feel very true, but they don't move you forward. Instead, brave women, women who stress less, they go past their story and they get the information. They are willing to be vulnerable and have the uncomfortable conversation.
For example, one of my clients found out that she had missed a promotion. She finally reached out to me. She's like, I've been thinking about working for you for a long time. I really need to do this now. Can you help me?
I was like, yep, absolutely. In our first session, got clear and she started her conversation with her manager and then her manager's manager to say, "I'd love to understand what led to this decision. How was it made?"
And then she listened, listened, listened, listened, listened.
In her case, there really was a gap. There was a skill. There was a presencing that she had to build. They had been telling her that and she just couldn't get past her story.
That's what we did together. We worked together for about four months and we worked on her presence.
While you're having this conversation, you may get a very specific piece of information. Maybe you had already gotten it like my client, or maybe it was brand new.
Maybe, and this happens, your manager is pushing for you to get this promotion or get this career growth and then discovers, oh, there's a strategic shift coming.
You just need more information, so you need the uncomfortable conversation.
But listen, if you do have this conversation and the response you have is anything like the three statements that I'm about to share with you: you got clarity.
You got clarity, especially if you're already doing the work in the promotion or in the growth opportunity, you're done.
Okay?
If you hear any of the following:
Number one, "maybe in six months, fingers crossed", or anything in that energy.
Number two, "you're doing great. Keep going. We believe in you and it's gonna happen." Anything along those lines.
Number three, and quite frankly, in my opinion, this is honestly the worst and it's happening to a lot of people right now. I call it the, "well, actually." So it's something like, " we reviewed your current job description and we'll, actually, when you look at it this way, all the work that you're doing that you think is out of scope is actually in scope."
Absolutely not. If you hear any of these statements, you've got the clarity, you've got all the clarity you'll ever need: you're leaving.
You're leaving or you're deciding that promotion is not gonna happen and you're fine with that. You're gonna do your job and do your job well, that's totally fine. I have an entire episode, actually two episodes, about it called "Bravery in the Meantime."
But if you want to grow, it's not happening here.
It's time to dust off your resume, fire up your network, prepare your transition.
Unless you're okay with being over committed, overworked, and underpaid.
I hope that you're not. It is truly painful for me: almost all of my clients at one time or another had heard one of those three statements, believed them, and chose to work harder and longer building unnecessary or skills they didn't even want, and that promotion never came.
Going That path is the common path, but it leads to missed growth and income and experience.
That's why you listen to this podcast. So you take the brave, brave path.
You've had this uncomfortable conversation, now you have your story and you have facts. This is where a lot of career advice and career habits take you to the common path.
Okay. Momentum. The second part of the build your Brave framework is momentum. And momentum is not just action, it's also feeling.
It's feeling and doing. It's balancing both.
So many clients that I work with come to me, having taken so much action, so much action. They've been flailing around seeing unwanted or inconsistent results and switching between doing too much and not doing enough, and then doing too much.
But they're not feeling, and they need to feel. You need to feel. We change that in our coaching
Momentum means you spend just as much time processing your feelings, your emotions, as you do processing your actions.
You gotta feel the disappointment, the frustration, the anger, the grief. Which could be career grief or goal grief or dream grief. It could also be relationship grief. A boss you trusted, a mentor you believed in.
You gotta feel all those feelings and you cannot stop there because staying in emotion without action keeps you stuck.
You gotta take action. You gotta do it in a way that brings you forward. It could look like updating your internal narrative from " I wasn't chosen" to, " their decision was made, and I can influence my next decision and response."
Another step of momentum can be identifying one or two specific gaps that they want you to close, but you're willing to close.
Anything from, for example, my client presencing, how she shows up, what she felt about herself, what the space she took up in meetings with time and physicality.
Or it could be a functional skill like coding in a certain language or preparing information in a certain way, presenting in a specific way.
Or another possibility for your momentum is exploring external opportunities without the panic and without the purpose.
Next week's episode is gonna be all about this, right?
Particularly if you have heard, "well, maybe in six months, fingers crossed," or "you're doing great, we believe in you," or a "well, actually" statement.
You need to get going. Either you're getting going to doing just your job or you're getting going to find another phase of your career.
At this point I want to share a really specific, very clear cut story. You may feel yourself inside of this, or you may feel a piece of it, but I really want you to experience this whole story.
So a client I had worked with, she had been at the same company and the same manager for a little over a decade. I had known her for even longer. We had actually taken German classes together .
She came to me and she was explaining the situation. In this decade, she'd had one promotion in almost 10 years: one.
She was exhausted. She was overkilled, and most importantly, her self-confidence was like a merry-go-round. It was up, it was down. It was up. It was down. It was up. It was down, and it was constantly going in a circle.
Based on our conversation, I offered, Hey, I would love to help you with this. Would you be willing to work together? Here's what that would look like. It was a short package, and she said yes.
The first month, we first worked on her, like her beliefs about herself, that self-confidence, and we designed very intentionally designed conversations with her manager and her manager's manager.
She asked very uncomfortable questions. I mean, she'd been working for a decade and had gotten one promotion., Then she listened very, very carefully.
In her situation, she let them know, Hey, I'm working with a coach because of my stress level, and they actually paid for it. She asked, can I record this, remove all of our internal sensitive information, and then go over the transcripts with my coach.
To their credit, her manager and her manager's manager, they both agreed to that.
She had the conversations and then she sent me the cleaned up transcripts. She and I then reviewed the conversations together.
It was extremely clear from both conversations that her management had no plans to promote her. Zero.
She had become, and this is a quote, " irreplaceable for the team, a rock star who upskills and elevates everyone." The other quote was, and this, this kills me. The other quote was, " you are so successful here. This team, this job is your sugar spot. You are the spine of our shared success."
If you can't feel it, those are both nos. That manager, those managers, they are not going to grow her. They had zero willingness to do so, and even more sadly, they weren't even like, let's say that they were correct that that role was her sugar spot, right? It wasn't showing up in her title or her salary, or the investment into her.
Coaching with me for a very small period of time was the most investment she had ever gotten.
So even if it was true, they were not going to share the success with her.
In result, she hadn't missed a promotion. She had missed an entire career phase of growth: for a decade. It was heartbreaking.
Especially when she compared her career status with two other people she'd started with, who had also stayed with this large company. Both were two levels above her, out earning her by at least 20%, and quite frankly, I think it was higher.
Even worse for her self-confidence but it was an important piece of transparency is that when she talked to those two other people, they both encouraged her and reminded her that they had encouraged her for years to get out from underneath those managers that take, take, take, but don't bring that shared success back to everyone.
So my client got stuck because she was doing all the right things to make others comfortable and pushing away her own feelings, her feelings of discomfort, disappointment, betrayal.
She refused to see her management line as they really are: lovely human beings, fun to be around, but professionally, self-centered and short-term focused, happy to take and take and take and take.
Do not let this be you. If you have been passed over, figure out what your story is. Figure out what your facts are. Get really clear. Take action and then choose who are you going to be.
Because as hard as it was for my client to actually see reality and have those uncomfortable conversations, as soon as she had that clarity, as soon as she took a few tiny little steps of action, she knew exactly who she was gonna become.
This is the part that she uniquely flew right through. As soon as she addressed the foundational accountability question, whew. She was gone.
Hers was, "okay, now I know what the situation really is. I know the promotions aren't coming. Okay, who have I been and who do I want to become?"
Her questions were:
" Do I wanna work harder and hope I'm noticed while others get the titles in pay? " No.
" Do I want to not rock the boat and be ignored, placated, and giving more than I get?" No.
" Do I wanna be someone who waits? Who consistently acquiescence?" No.
Okay, "so who do you wanna be?"
And these are the statements and she gave me permission to share them specifically:
I get clear on what I want and I share it with others.
I build confidence.
I build career direction.
I am purposeful and I am driven.
I take consistent self-confidence, building actions, period.
I make decisions that serve my long-term career visions.
My discomfort is a signal.
Y'all, after nearly a decade of getting passed over, she decided to consciously choose who she was becoming. She did the work.
It was those clear statements, those clean feelings, a strong and ever-growing self-concept.
And three, count them. 1, 2, 3. Three conversations, and she was offered a role, two levels above that current level, leading a team on a brand new project with a trusted and more importantly, trustworthy mentor at the same company.
The entire transition, after a decade, the entire transition from, "oh my God, I got passed over again" to this incredible role, less than four months. Less than four months.
We can never recoup the money, the experiences that she missed out on, but she sure changed it for the future.
Cause getting passed over is gonna happen. It happens to all of the successful people. Think of any successful person you know, they missed a role or an opportunity or didn't get a sales signature, whatever the case it is, it's going to happen.
Getting passed over will happen, but staying passed over, that's a choice. That is a choice that is firmly in your hands.
That's a choice that will become a pattern if you let it. That pattern will eventually become who you believe you are.
Which is bullshit.
You want to make a different choice. You do not want to get into or stay in that crappy, crappy pattern.
You want to know who you are, and you want to choose who you are becoming
because, and get ready to groan. Okay? Get ready to groan this moment, this getting passed over. It's not a rejection, I swear. It's not. It's a redirection.
It's not away from your success. It's towards a more intentional version, a braver version. A braver phase of your career if you choose to make it.
You have to decide and you have to choose, and then you have to become. If this is your experience or anything like it, I now have an offer available for you now.
You do not have to go through this alone. You can experience a focused coaching, one from someone who's been there and has helped people who've been in there. Someone will help you get crystal clear, build your brave and real time, and create immediate change in your career.
The change that leads to a career that you desire: one that is way less stressful, way more enjoyable, and yeah, will lead to more income as well.
Listen, if you are in this moment right now, this episode is really speaking to you. You've been passed over and you're asking what now? This is exactly where I can support you. I want to be very clear about something. Working with me is not generic career advice. It's not about. Work harder, work smarter, be more confident.
Mm-hmm. You and I, we'll be working together in one-on-one sessions and also synchronistically. We're gonna get surgical about your career, your gaps, your opportunities, your strategy, your next moves.
I have a special offer and inside of this focused coaching experience. We are going to get crystal clear on what actually happened, identify exactly what needs to change, and importantly what doesn't. We're gonna build your bravery in real time conversations and actions and create immediate momentum, so you're no longer stuck. You're not accepting, getting passed over, and you're not stepping into the resentment that holds your career back.
This coaching offer is for you if you're done guessing. You're done overworking and hoping to get noticed. You're done getting feedback that points to a promotion and leads to getting post over. Mm-hmm.
You are ready to make the next move internally and externally with clarity, confidence, and yes, bravery.
We will work together for three months. The link is in the show notes. Click on that. Reserve your spot. Let's get started. This is deep, high touch, brave work.
A moment of getting passed over becomes the moment of your new brave career.
If you're ready, I'm ready. Let's do this,
if the Build Your Brave Career Podcast is helping you flip the script in your own career, if it's helping you reduce your stress, work smarter or create more income, please share this with a friend. Until next time, you are already brave. Now go build your brave.