Podcast 2nd
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the Style and Strategy Podcast, where personal brand meets leadership and style. I'm Sonya, a personal brand and style coach who's been exactly where you are juggling career and business success. Personal growth and finding a style that truly fits. After decades in corporate leadership, I've learned that showing up isn't just about what you do, it's about how you align who you are and how the world sees you.
This season, I'm bringing you practical strategies, bold insights, and honest conversations to help you amplify your presence, unlock your next level, and lead with clarity and confidence. Let's dive in. ~uh, uh, ~Welcome back to another episode of The Style and Strategy Podcast. Thanks for being here and, uh, tuning. In and listening along. So today I'm picking up a, ~uh, ~part of the conversation that [00:01:00] I already started last week and this week it's really about,~ um, spending a little bit of time taking you through a bit of a case study that I have.~
~So, so this week's really around taking, about, taking you through an experience one of my clients had. So if you've ever felt like you are being heard, but not fully yet, or like your ideas are really great, but your presence doesn't quite land. Then uh, so let me tell you about~ one of the shifts that changed everything for one of my clients.
So this particular client was,~ uh,~ leading a really large team and delivering some great results. So she had the senior title, she was trusted by her team. She was running around and really,~ um,~ was a backbone to, to this particular business. And when she came and chatted with me about helping her,~ she,~ she actually said, look, I know how to dress for that boardroom meeting, but what I feel like is I know that, but then when I'm with my team outside of that, when I'm meeting suppliers, nothing seems to land.
And so he. It was really about the fact that her presence wasn't matching her impact. And so she was really tired of wanting to [00:02:00] wait for that to catch up. So she wanted to get those results and sort herself out. and she knew this wasn't about her. ~Um. ~Expertise or her skillset because she'd had already ticked the boxes in that space, but she knew something was missing. And so there is a reason for that. You know, I love my research and Columbia Business School actually found that 60% of some of the first impressions in leadership spaces are actually shaped by nonverbal cues.
So think about color structure. Styling. So my client wasn't doing anything wrong. It's just that those components in her leadership ~toolkit weren't being used. Strateg~ weren't being used strategically in her presence. So here's what we did it.
She had her standard, this is what I'm wearing to the boardroom, and that was very safe, very standard. But [00:03:00] didn't really represent who she was now ~and, ~and the image that she really wanted to project for her team and how she then took it to the weekends as well. And then when she was meeting with suppliers for her coffee catch ups and so forth.
So we firstly started with working out what her leadership style anchor was. What was going to honor her strength, how she was going to use color to command quietly, and how she was gonna replace that generic sort of professional look with something that still showed what she wanted was ~clarity and power~
~and how we were gonna replace that generic professionalism with something that really represented her~ clarity and intention, the impact that she wanted to create. And so we then moved on to looking at her leadership language as a reframe. ~So. ~She was really putting herself out there as a supporter, which is all fine and well.
But what we wanted [00:04:00] to do was actually rewrite that leadership story. So she sounded like the decision maker. She already was. She actually held all the strings to a large amount of the budget, but again, it wasn't owning it, ~so it was a small, so it was.~
So it was a small shift in the way that she,~ um,~ represented her story, but a massive shift in perception. And then finally it was about presence anchoring. So going through how to actually own her space when she was in the right, when she was in clothes that felt like her.
Knowing the words that were coming out. Then how to then craft that stillness, the eye contact, the breath, everything around internal clarity, not the performance part, because she'd already had that nailed six to eight weeks later, she felt the shift internally for her. She felt noticed, she felt referenced, she felt respected.
She [00:05:00] wasn't trying harder, she wasn't doing more. She was just showing up as her herself clearly, and that clarity made her presence effortless. ~And she wasn't in a cookie cutter standard approach. She was in a pro.~ She wasn't in something that felt cookie cutter. It felt like her, and that is what I am all about.
It's about your personalized presence. ~If you're nodding,~ if you are nodding along to this and you feel like your presence isn't quite matching who you are, there's a deeper conversation waiting for you. It's called Own the Room, my private podcast series for women who are ready to be experienced differently.
I. If you'd love to hear it, DM me, own it on Instagram or LinkedIn, and I'll have details in the show notes below, and I'll send you the link. You don't need ~perform presence, you just need to express the version of you ~to perform presence, you just need to express the version of you you've already become, and that [00:06:00] will change everything. I hope you've enjoyed this episode.
Let me know, DM, drop me a comment or share it with a friend who really needs to hear this. Until next time.~ Uh,~
