Stop Apologizing for Your Ambition with Sara Anderson

What if the only thing standing between your current role and the C-suite isn't your resume, but your own internal "Good Girl" script? Imagine walking into a high-stakes meeting not hoping to be liked, but fully grounded in the power of your own perspective.

Summary

In this episode, acclaimed executive coach Sara Anderson joins Erica Rooney to bridge the gap between competence and confidence for high-performing women. They dive deep into dismantling the "Good Girl" conditioning and mastering the inner game required to transition into top-tier leadership roles.

Inside the Episode

• The Competence-Confidence Trap: Why hitting your goals often makes you feel like more of a "fake" rather than more secure.
• The "Want What You Want" Framework: How to reconnect with your own desires to break the cycle of people-pleasing and over-functioning.
• Dismantling the Good Girl Script: Why the behaviors that made you a great operator are exactly what’s holding you back from becoming a great executive.
• Option C Thinking: Moving beyond binary choices to find creative solutions for work-life integration.
• Exposure vs. Exposed: Navigating the biological fear of "getting kicked out of the tribe" when you start taking up space.
• The Nightmare Scenario Drill: A practical tool to deconstruct the fears that stop you from building your personal brand on platforms like LinkedIn.
• The Leadership Training Ground: How to view a toxic or "stuck" environment as a masterclass in boundary setting before you make your next move.

Resources

• Guest: Sara Anderson, Executive Coach & Leadership Consultant
• Host: Erica Rooney, HR Executive & Keynote Speaker
• Mentioned: The Her Collective Group Coaching

The AI GAP: Women, AI and the Next Great Leap Forward -https://amzn.to/3OAXAdL 

Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors - The Book: https://amzn.to/3YDS10f

Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericarooney/

Join our Facebook Group!: https://urlgeni.us/facebook/fromNOWtoNEXTtribe https://www.facebook.com/joinHERCollective.ER 

Find me on Instagram: https://urlgeni.us/instagram/EricaAndersonRooney

And YES — I’m on TikTok!: https://www.tiktok.com/@ericaandersonrooney

Transcript

​[00:00:00] 

Erica: Welcome to the Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floor podcast. The podcast where we get real about the challenges women face in work, life and leadership. I'm your host, Erica Rooney, HR executive, keynote speaker and executive coach, and I'm on a mission to get more women into positions of power and keep them there.

This is the space where we call it the paradoxes, being told to lean in, but not too far to speak up, but not too loudly. Be ambitious, but not too ambitious. Does that sound familiar? Yeah. We're over all that here. We break down the sticky floors that keep us stuck from imposter syndrome and perfectionism to burnout and fear, and give you real strategies to shatter those glass ceilings once and for all.

So if you're ready to rewrite the rules, own your power, and take your career and life to the next level, you're in the right place. Y'all. Today's guest, she's incredible. She's tackling the core problem that trips up so [00:01:00] many women who are ready for their next big promotion, and that is the gap between our competence and our confidence.

And she's here to show us how do we stop apologizing for our ambition and start embodying the leader that we are meant to be and the leader we want to be. Now she is all about mastering the inner game that unlocks the external results that we all want. Now her name is Sarah Anderson and she is an acclaimed executive coach and leadership consultant who is dedicated to accelerating the careers of high performing women.

So y'all know I'm here for that, but she specializes in guiding clients through critical leadership transitions, helping them master executive presence. Dismantle their self-doubt and align their purpose with their power. Her mission is to ensure brilliant women stop leaving opportunities on the table simply because they don't feel ready and she understands this one core truth, that your potential is [00:02:00] already limitless.

And y'all know, when I saw that, I was like, okay. That's in the outro to every podcast that we have. So Sarah Anderson, without further ado, welcome to the Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floor podcast. How are you today?

Sara: Thank you. Well, after that intro, I'm fired up.

Erica: Feeling good. All the vibes. Right. Oh my gosh. Well, tell me a little bit about what led you to coaching, because there's always a story.

Sara: Sure. Well, uh, once upon a time ago, let's say about 10, 12 years ago, I was working in tech and I live in the Silicon Valley area. I was living in San Francisco and I was just making my way up the tech ladder, which you can actually do kind of quickly compared to the like older corporate sphere. And as I did, I was noticing a few things.

One, my anxiety was off the charts and I was starting to suffer from some clinical signs of burnout, which made me really start to look at things. But two, all [00:03:00] of the things that I thought were going to come with the titles and the money and the perks I was feeling. Like, oh, this is it. And I think a lot of people feel that way.

And it used to be the midlife crisis and now we have like quarter life crisis, right? But that, that I would say was probably a big catalyst for me. I didn't leave right away. I really worked on myself for a couple of years until I was feeling really good. And then. It was clear that I wanted to chart my own path, um, and that this is what I'm really passionate about.

That all that other stuff, it's great, it's fun and, and it's important to make money. We need to make money in order to survive, but also that we don't conflate it with, uh, everything that we're hoping to feel on the inside.

Erica: Isn't it so funny because that's exactly. Like my story copy paste different font, right? Like I got to the top and I'm looking around and I'm like, the cash [00:04:00] money's good, but like, this is what I've worked my ass off for. Like this is some bullshit. And as you were talking, I was like, this is because of the system, right?

Like it was this exclusive old boys club that no one could ever get into. And they made us think that we were missing out on all this stuff. But guess what? The joke's on us, there's, there's nothing good up there that we want, right?

Sara: Yeah. Yeah,

Erica: Oh my goodness. Oh my gosh. Okay, so your work centers a lot around confidence and competence, and you work with a lot of women who are overqualified, but often lack the confidence that they need.

And why? So first of all, why do we have this problem? Why do so many of us live in this scarcity confidence loop? And what is that first habit that we need to really shut that down?

Sara: There are three things that pop to mind when you ask me that question. One is, we think. That like, just like I was saying, that we [00:05:00] think that confidence will come naturally when we hit a certain level or a certain goal, and then it becomes so much more disturbing when we do hit that level and we don't feel the confidence and then we feel like we're faking it even more.

Imposter syndrome, the whole thing also being socialized. Growing up as a girl and a woman, we're taught that it's better to be humble. Um, to be nice to take care of people and that can also impact our confidence. And the, the third thing, know what, I lost what it was originally, but it may be in line with the fake it till you make it.

That we, we, um, yeah, we just kind of throw ourselves in the ring and we, we put on this persona and then we still don't feel confident on the inside.

Erica: Oh my gosh. So all, a lot of what you just talked about. We just came off a group coaching for her collective, which you've been inside, so you know what it's like. And we were talking all about that over functioning and just taking on because we are trying to be so [00:06:00] agreeable, right? Because we are trying to be so nice.

So when you think of it through that lens, like we are taught these things, we grow up believing those things, like how do we switch that mindset so that we can kind of put down everybody else's responsibilities?

Sara: Oh, part of it is like learning to want what you want. So sometimes we have a hard time being able to get out of that people pleasing mode or taking care of others mode because. We haven't really tapped into our own desires. Like what do you actually want? What feels good? What feels like a yes in your body?

That mind body connection is huge. And then to answer your question about the first step. Two, I like to look at it from multiple angles, but one, what's happening in your body when you're feeling less than confident? How can we support your nervous system? And two, what are the stories. Oh, I have to take care of this person.

Oh, I hope they like [00:07:00] me. Like those things are gonna make a big difference as well.

Erica: Mm. All right. I'm gonna take us on a left turn because. Talking about wanting what you want really resonated with me because I was at a child's birthday party over the weekend, girl, and there was a face painter there, and all the little girls were getting cute little rainbow puppy dogs and mermaids and you know, unicorns.

That's what they do, right? There was this other little girl there, her name's Everly, and she wanted what was called a sugar skull, which was like a skull, but kind of like Day of the Dead style. Like very colorful, like, I mean amazing. Right? And she wasn't sure though because nobody else was getting that and like, should I get that?

You know, and she kind of debated and her mom really encouraged or like, get what you want to get. And so she did. And at the end she was so excited because everybody was like, oh my God, that's the coolest face, you know? And then of course after that, everybody got one, but she allowed herself at this little age of seven to want what [00:08:00] she wanted.

But like when you put it that way, I really was like, wow. We condition ourselves in so many ways that we don't even recognize what we actually want. And so I would. Say for everyone here. Like really think about those moments when you, you know what you want, but maybe you put it aside for the comfort of the greater good.

Like if you really wanna go eat tacos and somebody else wants hamburgers, fight for your damn taco. Okay. Get that taco. So thank you, Sarah, for kind of phrasing it that way. That was really powerful for me. Um, which kind of leads me to my next question, which is all about dismantling the good girl script that we all have, right?

So I mean, we're, we're coached and, you know, trained and told and groomed as a child to be likable, like you said earlier. But how do you coach women to engage in like fierce, real, honest communication and conversation, you know, to help navigate some of those workplace politics without sacrificing [00:09:00] their moral compass?

Sara: Well, it's not just childhood either. That's the biggest thing that I see when I'm working with women. Typically, it's around like. Direct senior director level, like breaking up into the C-suite. Is this, this conditioning of everything that got you here won't get you there. So

Erica: Um.

Sara: a great operator. You do all the things, you're a yes woman, all of those things.

And then there comes a point where people are gonna look to you and. They want your strong opinion. They wanna feel you firm and grounded in what you believe in. Not aggressive, just like, yeah, this is what I think and I'm open to hearing things. but that gets conditioned out of us. So in order to shift it, one of the first things we would do is really helping the women to get in touch with Yeah.

Wanting what they want, dismantling the things that get in the way of that. Um, figuring out like. Actually, I love to [00:10:00] slow things down all the way. So we'll use case studies of what's actually happening for them, and then what are those uncomfortable situations? When did you start feeling uncomfortable?

Was it last night thinking about it? Was it in the room? What happened in your body? What happened to your body language? What did you. Sensor because of it. Like all of those things give us so much information and then when we slow it down, I always say, I'm like the queen of making the intangibles tangible.

It makes it so that we can just work on each one of those things and help them to, it's like it's, it's actually not as nebulous when you do it that way, then all of a sudden everything starts to shift.

Erica: And I imagine that kinda links in a bit with all of the things that we think we should, I put in quotes, be doing, right. So talk to me about managing the shoulds because. I still struggle with this. I wrote a whole book about this, right? But I still [00:11:00] struggle with it. So I'm always looking for more tips, more tactics.

How do we step away from the shoulds? And, and I'll clarify like in my world, the shoulds are all of the things that we think we should be doing. I should be working out rigorously every day for 30 minutes. I should be the mom that tucks my kids into bed every single night, but so they know how much I love them, right?

I should always cook homecooked meals because fast food is bad for you, right? All of those things, which then just becomes like a miserable lifestyle because I don't really want to be doing all those things. So how do we dismantle that?

Sara: Yeah, this is gonna be a slightly boring answer, but I think that part of it prioritization, like at each of them and really questioning should I. Should I? Why? Where did that come from? Is that, do I actually believe that it may be that I decide, yeah, actually it is important for me to eat healthily also, dismantling. Does that mean that I have to cook? Is there another way [00:12:00] that we can do this? Is there a different road that we can take rather than me just feeling all shameful and bad and like staying up all night and prepping meals? Um, and then the things that we can let go of. I will be so honest with you when I say that I am, and I'm in one of those neighborhoods where everyone's in each other's business. My bins are out sometimes, like they stay out, sometimes I forget to pull them back in, and I don't feel any kind of way about it. But I know that there are other people on my street that

Erica: Ooh, they're judging you, girl.

Sara: they would die

Erica: They are judging you. You are like the n the neighborhood heathen girl leaving your trash bins out all week.

Sara: on, bring it on. I have no problems with that.

Erica: Oh my gosh. But you know what I, what actually blew my mind and what you just said, even though you said this is gonna be a really boring answer, was that like, Hey, how about we explore an option C? And I think that's so important that like we think in such a binary way of like. I [00:13:00] have to be the one to tuck my kids in every night, or they're not gonna think that I love them versus like, what is something else that I could do while pulling in my partner to help put these kids to bed?

Right? And like, I mean, let's be real y'all. There's a million other options and scenarios. Like they can lay in bed with me and read a story and tuck me in and then my husband can go put them in their bed. Like there's other options. So how like get creative, think outside the box. And I think it also comes back to what you were saying earlier, like let yourself want what you want.

If you're me and you wanna go to bed at eight o'clock and your kids wanna rage till eight 30, let your husband take them to bed. It's okay. Okay.

Sara: it's,

Erica: Oh my gosh. What do you feel? So sticky floors are the limiting beliefs and toxic behaviors that keep us all stuck. I'm curious for you, with your clients and your work, what are some of the most common sticky floors that you see?

Sara: The first thing that comes to mind is I'm always [00:14:00] saying like, everyone wants exposure, but nobody wants to feel exposed.

Erica: Ooh. Yeah,

Sara: The feeling of being exposed. It's very similar to choosing the sugar skull, face tattoo face paint, right? It's, it's that biological like, am I gonna get kicked

Erica: I.

Sara: the tribe for this? And all we see is that risk. We just see the like, oh no, I better stay in line. Uh, I don't wanna look too confident. But what we don't see is the actual real risk, which is. Being completely under the radar. Nobody noticing you, you not going anywhere. Right? So the sticky floors are a lot of these beliefs that we hold, that keep us in line, that keep our ego safe, that keep us where we are.

Erica: Mm. Yes. To me, I really, it connects with one that I often will struggle with well, which is worrying about what other people think, you know? And they all tie together, right? They tie in with the shoulds [00:15:00] and wanting what she wants. But you're right. Like I think that's a great exercise. And so, okay, if you're working with a woman and she's like, I want the exposure, but I don't wanna be exposed.

How do you walk her through being more vulnerable and open and exposing herself in a way that's authentic to her?

Sara: I think of this example, I had this a client who she wanted to start posting on LinkedIn. She's like, I wanna build my brand and future proof my career and all these things. And she just kept not doing it. And she was like, I'm scared. I'm like, okay. What are you scared of? And again, like a lot of what I'm doing is untangling balls of yarn and just making things super granular. We get, we just face our fears of what we're truly afraid of. In her case, I just made her walk me through the nightmare scenario. I'm like, okay, tell me what happens. You post and then, uh, people at work see. Great. Okay. [00:16:00] And, uh, maybe they have an opinion about it. Okay. And, and so, uh, the nightmare scenario ended up that they come to her and say, how, who do you think you are? And then nothing. And

Erica: Yeah,

Sara: She was like, we'd probably laugh. They'd probably forget about it. They go to lunch, and then,

Erica: we move on.

Sara: would we move on? Right. So sometimes it's also just like. What, well, what are we, let's like shine the flashlight in the dark corners and see what's really

Erica: Yeah, and I think what's powerful about that too is like eventually if you peel away all of the layers of onions, right? Like we always talk about, oh, you have to peel the onion, but when you peel it all the way down till there's no more onion to peel, then you realize that whatever that thing is is no big deal, or it wasn't even an issue to begin with.

It was just all of your compounding fears and emotions piled on top.

Sara: Mm-hmm.

Erica: Oh my goodness. I love that. Okay, I'm gonna take a little bit of a left turn into transitions. 'cause I know you work with a lot of women who are in transition, right? And [00:17:00] so when you are a leader, you're often the person who's in charge of transitions.

Whether you are helping someone transition into a new role or into a more advanced role, something like that. But what would you say, Sarah, is the single most dangerous mistake that women could make? In a transition, if they're, if they're in a major career transition, that sets them up for failure, maybe in their new role.

And then I'm gonna ask you, how do we not do that? But like, let's start with the single most dangerous mistake.

Sara: I mean, expecting that some external change is gonna fix all of the issues and the reason that you wanna leave in the first place.

Erica: Yes. I'm like, yep, the, I mean, all the things, the grass ain't always greener, but what it, it goes back to again, what is the real root of the problem?

Sara: Mm-hmm. Just like how I didn't [00:18:00] leave right away when it was time for me to leave, and I've had clients where it doesn't make sense for them to leave yet and we use it as a leadership training ground in the meantime when they leave. But we get really

Erica: I.

Sara: on like, let's, let's not conflate causation correlation, right?

It's like what is actually happening? Yes, the environment may be toxic and you do want to leave, but there also may be some opportunities and gems for you to mind too.

Erica: Hmm. I love that you called it a leadership training ground, because that's, to me, it's much more like, yeah, this is, you might call it a minefield, I don't know. Right? Like you're learning to navigate all these things in a. Crazy hard situation, but all of those things will set you up for, set you up to be a better leader once you make that transition.

But I, I thought that answer that you gave about, you know, not expecting everything to fix itself was super powerful. So, all right, if we expect it to all fix itself and I'm gonna get a new job [00:19:00] and everything's gonna be great, and I get there and it sucks, what do I do now?

Sara: That's another opportunity for you to, to get curious about why, right? But also when you are starting somewhere new. It. It is also an opportunity to train the people that you're going to be interfacing with, and it's a great opportunity for you to look at your patterns and see how you're showing up and see like what are some of the ways that, how do you want people to see you?

How do you want people to interface with you, and are you a match for what you want?

Erica: Yeah. Okay. Another left turn that I just popped into my head, if I know the transition from just one, let's just say one level to the next. It doesn't have to be in individual contributor to leader, but it could be like leader to director or VP to C-level leader. Like those are really hard transitions that.

I think a lot of [00:20:00] people just glorify and celebrate because it's a promotion. You're doing great. You wouldn't have gotten it if you didn't deserve it. But that is a transition that we often don't know, like how to almost become that next version of ourself, right? Like if you're stepping, and I'm thinking personally of like my individual journey from when I was a manager into a C-level role, like to me, that felt like a big identity change as well.

Sara: Mm-hmm.

Erica: I'm wondering, how do you set up women who are taking that transitional jump, even if it's a good one, like how do we set them up for success in this new era of becoming the next level them?

Sara: Naming, just like you said, normalizing and naming, because I think it's much more. Difficult. If we feel that way and we think we shouldn't feel that way,

Erica: Hmm.

Sara: this is just supposed to be good and fun, and why do I have all these crumbly, uh, crumbling [00:21:00] uncomfortable feelings? And then we can do some of the other work that I talked about around the nervous system and things like that.

But something else that popped into my head, that's an exercise I really like. You can apply it in so many different areas of your life. it's almost like you're writing out your manifestation list or your vision, your ideal, what you want. Let's say at this new role, I want it to feel like this. I wanna come in the morning like this.

I want my conversations to feel like that. Like maybe writing out a day in the life and then actually reading what you wrote. Maybe take a beat and then write from the perspective, who do I need to be in order to have that. qualities do I need to bring forward? Or do I need to go to bed earlier? Like what do I need to do to be her? How can I be a match for that?

Erica: Mm. Actually, I think that's really powerful because you also should be thinking about like, what boundaries do you need to uphold? And I think the reason that pops into my head is like coming off of that, her collective coaching call, a lot of what we talked about is like we want to show up as [00:22:00] good mothers.

Like a lot of the women in the community are moms who are also leaders and they feel very stretched thin and they feel like nobody's winning, right? They're half-assing it at work and they're snapping at their family at home, and they're not being. Either the great leader or the great mother, partner wife that they want to be.

And so I would, I guess I just wanna ask like what would be your advice in that instance?

Sara: From the boundaries perspective.

Erica: Yeah, from the boundaries perspective. Um.

Sara: One of the things that I don't think that it's easy to understand or, or really believe in the moment, is that boundaries are actually something that gain respect for us. Like when we set boundaries, when we do great work and we show up as a great leader, and we are clear about like. Here's how I work best. Here's what I need, here's how I can show up here. I'm being super [00:23:00] proactive. And then also that gives us a little bit more leeway because people trust us to be able to say, and, and I also need this time in the afternoon to go do drop off or pickup or whatever. Like those things, that can make such a big difference for people.

Erica: Hmm. Yeah, I'm a big fan. I, I used to always have this like how to communicate with me worksheet, which was very powerful when I had a ton of different people and we would all fill it out because some people are slack people, some people are text people, some people are call people, some people are voice note people, like there's a million things, you know, and you have to know how to best as a leader, you have to know how to best communicate with your team.

But I almost like adding a section to that that's like, I don't know the nuances you need to know. And then, then it's like, by the way, I also have two kids, and so I don't take my lunch from 12 to one. I take my lunch from two to three because it's carpool. But laying it out there, and I [00:24:00] think it's just because, again, it goes back to a bit of our conditioning.

We've been conditioned to always be available and on and ready. To solve the world's problems and fix everything, and that just rips us apart. I don't know. What are your thoughts?

Sara: Yeah. I, I, I like that because one, it helps us to own our power and to not feel bad about it, because if we feel like, oh, okay, like I feel like I'm sneaking around because I take my lunch here and then I should be available. Versus just owning it. How you feel about what you say really makes an impact on how other people feel about what you say.

So if you're grounded in like your ownership of your leadership, what you're able to deliver, and you're like, Hey, here's what my life looks like here, that that can be really helpful for people and making more communication equals more trust. So yes, I love that.

Erica: More communication, more trust. That's very powerful. That's very true too. I love that. Okay, let's take a left turn. Another left turn. I love this. We gotta take at least four because then it gets [00:25:00] us back to the beginning. But I wanna talk a bit about visibility. And I know because we touched on, everyone wants to be exposed, but no one wants to actually do the exposing.

But give me the truth about how does visibility work at the highest level, and then like what's one thing we can do to really champion that for ourselves?

Sara: It is all relationships.

Erica: Hmm.

Sara: is relationships and. like, I'm always looking for high ROI activities for myself and for my clients that are going to put me

Erica: I.

Sara: radar. And a lot of that is just finding the people that you connect with not going to like networking events. And I hate, I hate, I hate when I go to like an open networking event is when everyone's just like looking at the name tag, can you help me?

It's kind of like a, are you my mommy? Are you my mommy? Like, everyone's going around, not that, not transactional, right. making sure that you are making those relationships, that you're [00:26:00] helpful to other people too, like what introductions can you make for them that they're going to appreciate? Not because you're collecting points, but just because you know that this is what can help us all to grow.

Erica: Yes. Yes. And I think too, it's much easier to ask for that help if you've been giving that help. At least that's how it is for me. So be of service, always be helping. Okay. I love that. I think that is such great advice. Sarah, if you could go back in time to the girl in tech who's like burnt out and miserable, but she doesn't know what's next, what's the one piece of advice you would give her today now that you have the gift of hindsight?

Sara: at the time. I at the time. What's funny is I didn't realize how much I was struggling at the

Erica: Hmm.

Sara: I would've been like, I'm fine. I don't know

Erica: We never do girl.

Sara: No, but, um, what I see in hindsight is that I actually felt like I [00:27:00] needed to convince everyone else to think like me and to want what I want before I let myself want what I want.

I needed it to make sense to people and to let go. I don't know if like you can just tell like a early, mid twenties person to just like do this, but like the seed I would plant is that. You don't need everyone else to get it, that ultimately you, there's going to be a gap where people don't understand and that's okay.

That's what leadership is. Leaders go first, and when you trust yourself to go first, and when you follow your intuition, you follow what feels good for you. Other people, the right people will come around.

Erica: Yeah. I like that you said like, I don't know if you can just tell this to a 26-year-old, but I do think that words have power and I think just hearing that like you don't need anyone to get what, what you want, right? Like to get what you wanna do, to get how you wanna live, to get who you wanna be. Like you don't need anyone else to understand that before you do the thing.

And I would even say like quite honestly. [00:28:00] Probably all of the greatest things in this world, and maybe even some of the great things that aren't great, but it's incredible. It's like it took people doing things that others did not understand, right? Nobody knew the internet, okay? Nobody knew about cars or airplanes at one point in time.

That was a ridiculous idea that something could fly in the air with people in it and not come crashing down. But like, we need those ridiculous ideas. And so embrace the fact that, you know, you don't need everyone to get what you wanna do. So I thought that was great, Sarah. Thank you. Oh my gosh, y'all, if today's, ugh.

If today's conversation lit a fire under you, here's your next move. Don't keep it to yourself. Share this episode with a friend, drop a review and let's keep the conversation going. I need you to remember, and so does Sarah, that your potential is limitless and the only thing standing in your way are those sticky floors.

But guess what? You have the power to break through them. So go out there, take up some [00:29:00] space, and let's shatter some damn ceilings together. Beep.