5 Secrets to Break into the C-Suite with Katy McFee

We share the ups and the downs , the highs and the lows and all the lessons learned along the way . It doesn't matter what chapter you are on in your story Maybe you're just getting started or , heck , maybe you're halfway through . What I know is , where intention goes , energy flows .

It's my most sincere hope that you will hear something in one or maybe many of these episodes that resonates with you and reminds you that you are not in this alone . As we venture into year two , I hope that you find a sense of connection and community when you're here , because we all deserve a place where we belong .

My name is Sunny and I am so glad you're here . If you're new , there's a few things you want to know about me . I am a huge book nerd and a wee bit of a control enthusiast , with an obsession for motivational coffee cups . I believe that a rising tide raises all ships and I invite you along in this journey to evoke greatness .

Back to another episode of Evoke Greatness . My guest today is Katie McPhee . Katie is the founder of Insights to Action and her journey is a testament to perseverance and transformation . Of Insights to Action and her journey is a testament to perseverance and transformation .

After an 18-year corporate career that saw her rise from frustration to the heights of executive leadership , katie now dedicates herself to a powerful mission closing the gender gap in senior leadership . With firsthand experience as a director , vp and EVP , katie understands the unique challenges women face in climbing the corporate ladder . She's not just a success story .

She's becoming the mentor and community builder she wished she had during her own struggles . Today , katie helps aspiring executives break into senior roles and guides established women leaders to thrive without burning out . Her passion for creating supportive communities of like-minded women is changing the landscape of leadership .

So get ready for an inspiring conversation that will challenge your perspectives on career growth , the power of community and the impact of women in leadership .

And you know as things unfolded I mean I've spoken pretty openly about my struggles getting to senior leadership . I knew I wanted it from the very beginning of my career but I hit some plateaus . So first as a manager .

But I hit some plateaus , so first as a manager , then as a director , and I really struggled to figure out what I needed to do to get to that next level in my career and that ended up actually really shaping what I would later do . I didn't know it at the time .

If you had asked me if I would like to just trade that struggle for a rocket ship to the top , I would have said yes . But it ended up really teaching me to dive deep and get curious about what makes a great leader , what holds us back as women and men sometimes two and how I can help more women to make that transition to senior leadership .

So once I became a VP and an EVP . I saw a lot of the women around me struggling with the same things , and so I didn't want to give them the same answers I got , which was you're just not there yet , you're just not that strategic .

I wanted to do better as a leader , and so that's what sort of led me down this path of understanding how to make that transition to senior leadership .

And you know , then at the end of the day , as an EVP , I eventually decided hey , I think I want to work for myself , which , again , was never part of the plan , was very scary , but I realized that my journey was just all part of the you know sort of grander scheme of things , if you will .

If someone would have said , bypass all these mistakes , bypass all the steps , just launch right up , I would have grabbed a hold of it . But it is the most powerful growth and sense of evolvement and evolution comes in embracing those lessons that we learned along the way . So I'm curious for you was there a light bulb moment somewhere along the way ?

Sometimes I think that is really hard lessons that feel in the moment like they are painstaking , but on the other side of them growth up the mountain that you could have never even specifically asked for .

It was actually a number of incremental changes over time in terms of the way I was presenting myself , in terms of what I was prioritizing .

But the light bulb moments a lot of them came later when I looked back and because when I became a VP , I was actually really successful in that role , which surprised me , because I went to a bigger company that was growing quickly , with big expectations in terms of what I was going to deliver , and I felt very intimidated .

And so one of the big realizations moving into that position and in that role was that executives were actually just regular people . So for a long time I think I just had I put executives on a pedestal and what that did was it created some mindset block for me .

I felt intimidated , I wasn't always showing up as my best self with senior executives because I felt a level of intimidation . And then , when I finally moved into a VP role , I was like oh , I'm meeting with C-level executives , I'm meeting with VPs , and they're just regular people like me . They're just trying to figure it out like I am .

So that was an epiphany for me . But when I looked back honestly , with discernment , over the way I was showing up as a director , I was able to see more clearly the things that I wasn't doing , the things that At the time I felt like I was ready and I wasn't sure . I was like , why is this guy not promoting me ?

I'm doing all the things I'm running the function . And part of my aha moment was that oftentimes we can be working super hard doing everything we think we should be doing , and we can have blind spots in terms of how we're presenting ourselves and how we're showing up .

So now that's what I try to do is help people to find those blind spots , because it took me a long time to do that and I think that we can often do it faster with a little bit of help . That and I think that we can do often do it faster with a little bit of help .

But you know , like I said , in that moment I found it really hard to identify those .

I didn't have a lot of people around me to help me identify them , and so I was kind of figuring it out on my own and so , you know , when I looked back over time , you know I was able to see , and so one of again , and one of the lessons in that was just the power of reflection and the power of , you know , reflecting back on how did I show up in

that meeting or how did I show up in that situation and did I really show up as the leader I want to be ? If I'm honest with myself , not judging right , we don't have to beat ourselves up but just honest discernment , we can learn a lot that way .

But how do you encourage those folks to actually share those vulnerabilities , be really open about it ?

For entrepreneurs there's a lot of options , but for mid-level managers in corporate and even at the VP level , you don't see a lot of that , and so I would encourage people to seek out community , seek out people who are kind of in the same boat as them , where you can share things in a safe space .

Because , it's true , you don't necessarily want to share these concerns with your boss because you're still trying to impress them .

You don't want to share this with your reports because that's not really appropriate or fair and oftentimes , just because of , I'm going to say , proximity and the relationships we form , there aren't a lot of women leaders , and so oftentimes we are the only one in our friend group who's in this role .

Right , I talk to women about this all the time , and I'm like you know , when I was going through this , I didn't have a lot of people in my life who understood because a lot of my friends were maybe they worked for the government or they were a teacher or a stay-at-home mom or whatever and they loved me and supported me , but they couldn't relate .

So I think being intentional about going out and finding your people and finding a community is so powerful because not only can you feel less alone , but you can also get their help right .

They can help you level up , you can share advice and best practices , and that was one of the things that I got the most benefit out of , and I didn't get an opportunity to join a group like that until I was an EVP and I remember thinking like man , this is so useful , I love it .

And it wasn't even women , it was mostly men , but I thought like I really could have used this five , six , seven years ago in my career , and so part of my goal in life is to create those groups in the world and create those communities for people who may not have access to them , because , again , it can be tough to find those people .

But if you don't want to like join like a formal thing , oftentimes you can use LinkedIn . You can , you know , find events in your community right . You can join associations , depending on the function that you're involved in , whether that's HR or sales or marketing or whatever .

So there are things you can do , either both organized and paid , or just free groups that you can sort of create yourself .

experience that they have had . You know , I think so often I think back to my career on the fact that I had people see things in me that I didn't see in myself , and they laid pavers out in front of me , pavers , you know , again , that I wouldn't know would lead to this amazing career . Couldn't have told you in the moment .

And so today , as I look back , and today as I've shifted from that corporate space into the entrepreneurial world , I often say it's not just the right thing to do , to make sure that we're mentoring others and sharing the wisdom and insights that we have garnered over our career , it's actually I have a sense of responsibility around it , yeah , and so when we

have that sense of responsibility to want to give back and to want to help people step over some of the potholes that we didn't even know were there and we stepped right in .

But if we can share openly , authentically , other people can vicariously step around some of those potholes that if they didn't know the information , if they didn't have access to that , they might step right in on their own .

But one thing I realized was that sometimes the advice of you know , six foot three alpha male was not applicable to me , Right Right , and because I would seek that advice out and sometimes the advice I got I was like I don't think that's not going to , I can't do that , Like that's not going to land coming for me and it's not authentic .

And at that time for me LinkedIn was not what it is now and so I was kind of looking like locally in the community , like is there somebody I can find who's a mentor ? And there wasn't really a good way for me to do that . And now there's just so much more available where you can reach out .

You can meet people , you can reach out to them , you can ask them , and oftentimes women will give back . And senior , you can ask them and oftentimes women will give back and senior leaders will give back , you know , if they've had a great career .

We do often feel that sense of you know responsibility to give back to the next generation , I guess , and especially if the person's still in corporate . Sometimes , if the person has moved into entrepreneurship , it's a harder ask to be like , hey , can you give me free advice if that's their business ?

But certainly , like when I was a VP and an EVP , I mentored people for free all the time because I just thought like this is part of what I should be doing for the community . So , yeah , I think there's a lot that you can find out there that maybe wasn't around when I was going through this and people should take advantage of that .

That is often completely subconscious , right , and we know that the promotion gap , often referred to as the broken rung , happens the very first promotion to leadership , happens to the very first promotion to manager , where 87 women are promoted for every 100 men . This is from the McKinsey and Leanin Women in the Workplace report that they release every year .

And if we believe that men and women are equally capable as you move up in a company and this gap widens , you have to assume that there's something going on here , like right , like lots of probability . It should not be that we cannot surpass 30% of senior leadership if we truly are like equal in terms of capability .

And so something's going on here and I think it is largely rooted and we've seen lots of data that supports this um , it's rooted in in bias . It's rooted in the myth that meritocracy can exist in in companies when we know it really can't .

And so and of course it's it's very complex , right there's subconscious bias , there's the fact that women have to go on mat leaves and then we're often the primary caregiver and we work the second shift .

There's all of these things , but the thing that is consistent is that the more women we have in leadership , the less this has an impact on women coming up the ranks , because there are more women in those senior leadership positions who are maybe mothers and who have been through the same thing or who can empathize with the additional challenges that we face .

There's also data out there that shows when you have women in senior leadership and on your board , there's less biased language used towards women in companies , so it trickles down . So there is a lot of evidence out there demonstrating that when we get more women into senior leadership , it creates a better environment for everyone , not just for women .

So the interesting thing is , when we put women in senior leadership , that doesn't mean men lose . You don't see men getting axed and not getting promoted . It simply creates a more equal playing field for women who might be wanting to move into those more senior roles . So the tough thing is that it is both the solution and the problem , right .

It's like we need more women in senior leadership , and so the way to do that is to have more women in senior leadership , and so sometimes you know when I'm working with women and we're working through , maybe , perceptions and communication styles and dealing with bias , and people will ask me like but is that fair ? Isn't this not our problem ?

Like should we really have to think about how am I negotiating to combat the likability backlash ? Or how I'm , you know , communicating in this instance ? And I always say it shouldn't be our problem , right ? Like obviously the goal is to change the system , the goal is to create bigger change .

But this is where we are today and I want to help you make more money today . I don't want to wait a hundred years until systems have changed . I want to deal with where we are today and help more women get to that senior level so that change happens more quickly . So that's kind of my philosophy around it .

How do you advise women to balance that sense of ambition and yet being able to show up authentically in a male-dominated leadership environment ?

Because , at the end of the day , if you're showing up as a different person , you're not going to be happy in your life , and so I believe all of us men women doesn't matter , because I think men have their own struggles in terms of bringing their authentic selves to work and to the world , and it's just a different struggle , but equally important .

We need to ask ourselves am I being authentic and is this me ? And I think , as women , we need to recognize that we have a lot of superpowers and they're not always the same as our male counterparts . There's some things that we're better at . I'll give you a great example .

I was having a conversation on a coaching call yesterday where we were talking about when you know , when you come into a new company , maybe you inherit a big team and changes have to be made , and how to navigate that .

We were talking about the idea of starting with why and sharing with your team like the why behind these big changes or these process changes or whatever the thing is .

And through the conversation we kind of discovered that a lot of the men we know , a lot of the men I know who do this , are very intentional about doing it , meaning they say to themselves I am going to provide the why so that people will buy in . The women I know just naturally do it .

They just always provide the why and we were thinking about why that was . They just always provide the why

and we were thinking about why that was . And I thought my belief , my hypothesis , is that part of it is when we are growing up , we are conditioned to feel as though we can't just order people around . We can't just say , hey , do this , we always need a reason , hey , could you do this because it's going to help with this right .

So part of it , in a way , is our maybe negative conditioning but working towards us , because then when we become leaders , that's actually a great leadership trait and skill to start with why and to get buy-in from your team .

And so I'm going to bring it back to the question , because I think that we have so much to offer and we can get lost in trying to show up as someone else , trying to show up as the leaders we see represented , and so I'm a believer in just , you know , unapologetically owning our ambition and doing it authentically and being aware of the environment that we're

in , and sometimes acknowledging that even by saying hey , I know the way you guys , we typically do this around here , is this this is why I'm gonna to do it this way , right , and and and , really leaning into that , because your results are going to speak for themselves .

I know for me , I got this advice all the time . You need to be harder on your team . You're too nice to your team , and that didn't feel authentic to me , right ? I was like , well , yeah , I'm nice , I love my team . Right , I've hired them , I want to support them .

And I think one thing we have to recognize is you can do the hard thing , you can share a hard truth with someone , or say the hard thing , or make the hard decision and still be kind , and that's something that I see the men that I know struggle with more than women . With women , we tend to sometimes err on too nice .

Men tend to err maybe on too direct , and the perfect balance is right in the middle . And so I think that you know you talk about the common misperceptions . I think we've sometimes created our perceptions around what leadership should look like based on who has traditionally sat in those seats ? So who has traditionally been the leaders that we've looked at ?

White men , older white men , right , that's generally what we've seen and men with personalities that are maybe very confident , maybe kind of aggressive , maybe , you know , split second decision making and less thoughtful or whatever right . And so we look at that and say , okay , that's what leadership looks like .

And that's one thing I want to challenge , because that's not always what the best leaders look like .

I think we need to be able to make hard decisions , we need to be able to do the right thing , we need to be able to sometimes share a hard truth , but we can do it in a way that's still authentic and doesn't look like , maybe , what we've seen as traditional leadership .

You know , leadership , we can do it in a way that actually is a bit more authentic to us .

We're like trying to function in someone else's persona or body or you know , and that's not going to , that's going to feel clunky and it's going to feel incongruent with what we're really feeling , like we are , what we believe in , and it's also about the and relationship , and I love that . You said that we can complete the objective right .

I can address these things with my team , check and do it in a way that's compassionate . I don't have to go in guns a-blazing and so so often we forget that it doesn't have to be a this or that it can be an and relationship Like . We can go in and complete the objective and do it in a way that is compassionate or kind or we can be vulnerable .

In those moments we can truly show up authentically , and so I love that you keep tying those things back together there .

How can you do this in a way that feels good to you ? And there's almost always a way . When we think about , I think when I left my EVP job , I felt terrible leaving that job . I had been there for only a year . I felt so valued on that leadership team .

I have to say I tell stories about my career and sometimes I talk about maybe not feeling super valued here or there , but I have to say , as an EVP on this team , our CEO was a great human . The senior leadership team was smart and effective and I really felt valued as a member on that team .

I really felt heard , and so when I decided to leave , it had nothing to do with the team , right . Oftentimes they were like you only leave bad managers . This was not the case for me . This was me deciding , you know , feeling burnt out and deciding to move in another direction .

And so I felt horrible because I'm like they could not have treated me better and I'm going to leave , and I know it's not the best thing for them . But I had to ask myself okay , but I know in my soul that this is what I am meant to do .

I know that I want to leave and do something else in a way that feels good to me , where I still feel like I'm leaving with integrity , that I'm not leaving them in a bad position , that I'm just doing it the best way possible , knowing it's not an ideal situation , and I think we can ask ourselves that in all kinds of scenarios right , how can I do this

thing in a way that feels good to me ? And often we can get creative and come up with a solution .

Yeah , yeah , I believe the community part is so important , as I mentioned , because I felt so alone in that stage of my life and it's really hard to find people that you can talk to , that really understand where you're at , and I totally feel you . I've gone to lots of networking events . Even to this day , I have to admit I hate networking .

I do it because I love the relationships I make . I was recently at an in-person networking . I mean it was a conference but we came to the networking sort of cocktail hour or whatever on the first night and I'm like , okay , deep breath , If you meet five people , you can leave . And I ended up meeting great people .

I ended up going for dinner with a group of amazing women and in the end it was such a great experience . But all of us , if you're out there being like I'm the only one that hates networking , you are not Okay . Almost everyone hates it and it can just feel artificial . Right , it can feel artificial . It's often small talk . So what do you do ?

What do you do ? The difference in the communities that I create is we kind of cut the small talk . I mean , at the beginning everyone introduces themselves , but we get right into the stuff right .

And I used to be the chair of a nonprofit called Women Powering Technology and one of the big things I did there because there was a lot of women coming to these events but they would stick with their friend and they wouldn't actually interact with the other women , and so we created more structured networking where we would provide a topic and say I want you

guys to talk about this for 10 minutes , Like , sit down in a group , six people per table , and talk about this for 10 minutes , and then we're going to switch . And what I noticed was that was the change that needed to happen in order for people to have real conversation .

Then they didn't want to switch tables , they wanted to keep talking to these people and you see them exchanging numbers or LinkedIn or whatever , and so I took that with me when I was creating my community , where it's really a combination .

There is some structured curriculum because , as I mentioned , I really want to help people find their blind spots , and so that's a big part of it . But with respect to the networking piece of the group discussion . It is structured .

It's like , okay , here's the topic , we're going to break you into groups of three or four and I want you to go around and talk about this . How has this impacted you ? Right ? What happened in this kind of situation for you ?

And so , very quickly they get into real stuff and I think that is one of the key components to creating better relationships and getting more out of the networking conversations .

and it is . The difference is actually , I think so often the networking piece is the fear . There's a fear around it , right ? Am I going to be rejected ? Am I like ?

It's just again like cringe comes to mind , and but that is about , like , how we're going to be perceived , right , when we go at it with an attitude or intention around , like being in service of others , right ? And how can I lift others up ? Because a rising tide lifts all boats up . That's where it changes and you're actually more invested in .

How can I develop relationships that aren't just going to be here for this five minutes , but how can we support each other ? I think that really changes the perspective on it altogether .

Or maybe at the end of the week every week , reflect back on what went well for me , what didn't go the way I wanted it to , why right ? So if you pitch an idea at a meeting and everyone's like , oh yeah , that's amazing , okay , well , what language did you use ? Like how did you do it ? Like what was different this time around ?

And so start to gain some of that self-awareness . The second thing is to find people who can help you .

I'm always like we always think we have to do this alone and again , like in my case , I was looking for the people I actually worked with an executive coach around that time in my career as well but to find people who are maybe a few steps ahead of you . So you want , when you think about it , with your network of people .

I always say you want people like a couple of years ahead at your level and a couple of years behind and they're all . Three of those are important . So you want the people ahead because they're your mentors , they can teach you . Like , in my experience , this worked . Or have you tried this ?

The people at your level are your peers , so maybe they're going through stuff right now . Maybe they're going like , oh , I tried this strategy last week . It really worked . Or this is changing in our industry , or whatever , right ? Or hey , that sucks , let's just commiserate .

And then the people behind you , you can teach , and there is so much knowledge to be gained by teaching others . Right , you really start to understand how good you are at something when you try to teach it to somebody else . So all of those are going to help you level up . And so I would say look to your network . Do I have those people ?

Sometimes , if you don't have the people ahead of you , you can solve that through a program or something like that . And sometimes it's good to actually have all of the options , right , like I think about myself . Right , I have people that I talk to all of the time , that we help each other out .

I'm also I also have like a mastermind that I'm part of , where I have a coach . Like I really kind of stack the odds in my favor , and I tried to do this , you know , when I was a leader as well , like I would when I came into my VP position . When I came into my EVP position , one of the first things I did was make a list .

Who are all the people I could reach out to that could help me in a given situation , or who I can bounce things off ? And sometimes it wasn't that they were telling me what to do . It was more me saying , hey , this is our scenario , this is what I'm planning to do , am I missing something ?

And and oftentimes it was them saying , nope , that's exactly what I would do , you're on the right track . And then me just feeling more confident about that decision right Before I presented it to my CEO or whatever the thing was .

So you know , one of the biggest things , one obviously self-awareness , self-reflection , but finding people around you who can help you , and it's just always a good idea . Don't feel like you have to do it on your own .

And you have a program around this where you deal directly with this and talk through it and you actually have an upcoming call . You want to share a little bit about that .

And it's largely based on my own experience and all of the women I saw around me and all of the women that I coached when I started my business right . So what I do through that program is I really help you get what I call VP ready , right . So I say I help you gain the confidence , composure , credibility you need to get to that next level .

So we deal with all kinds of things you know to do with mindset . We talk about exec skills and what's expected . We talk about habits and boundaries . We talk about all of these important things that I'm like once you master all of this stuff , you can go own your seat at any table , right . So that's the goal of the program .

The goal as well is to create that community . So that's why it's in , very intentionally , a group that has breakouts and you know where you gain this larger community . So I do it live and I launch it a couple of times a year .

So the next one's coming up in September and I'm doing an info call on Wednesday July I believe it's the 24th Wednesday , july 24th at noon Eastern , where anyone can come and they can just learn a little bit about it and be like does this feel like the right fit for me ? And the great thing about it . So I created this and I've iterated it .

I created it and I've made it better and better every time and I feel so good about what I offer now to women .

A lot of the women I've worked with have been able to progress to those next levels in their career and I was thinking this .

Yesterday I was messaging a woman who works with me and I said like , if you notice , in the last last two weeks , three women in the community have announced that they've either stepped into new VP or C roles and then two more are interviewing for C-level roles . I'm like this is amazing . So that's the goal with the program .

Like I said , it's for women , anywhere from manager all the way up to senior director , and I'll share the Zoom link with you and if people want to attend , I definitely recommend just come check it out and learn a little bit more and see , is this for me , is it not ? If you want more information , you can always reach out to me directly too .

I'm always happy to share , yeah .

I mean , those are like foundational principles of making it from one level to the next , and I love that you're sharing so much about your own experience but also the experience of those you coach , because that gives us a really vast amount of experiences , information , wisdom and insights to be able to share to help people navigate that next rung on the ladder ,

if you will Totally , and I want to say the reason that I focus on .

executor , getting stuff done , working really hard , and as you continue to execute the same playbook , suddenly it's not working anymore . Execute the same playbook suddenly it's like not working anymore .

So the goal of the program is , you know , to help you figure out okay , what do I need to start doing differently in order to really transition to that next level and thrive there ? Right , we don't want to just get you there , we want to help you really thrive in that role .

So I think that that's you know why , to me , that specific transition is so important .

And then , once I hit it , once I became a VP , I was like now , what Well , so maybe I'll just do the next thing , right ? And I was recruited by a recruiter client who talked to me about my EVP role and I was like , okay , well , this is higher and I get more money , so that's what I should do next .

And I wasn't really tapping into my intuition of what do I think I'm meant to do in this world . So that has been a journey for me to really start to just trust my gut and , you know , not be so concerned with what external perceptions might be of my career choices .

I got to tell you , when you say you want to leave an EVP role to go be a coach , not everyone understands . I had a few friends who were like you're going to what ? Have you lost your mind ? And so I didn't really get a lot of support from certain people , which can really kind of mirror your own self-doubts , right ?

So yeah , so that's something that I've been on a journey to really embrace , and I think my future self would be like you're on the path , girl , just keep doing it .

Whatever you want it to be , because what it's around is the statement is definitely around more women in leadership is better for everyone , right ? And so I'm trying to think of like my life's work , so maybe it's like you know , closing the gender gap in senior leadership . That's what I would love my life's work to be .

I could even and closing it might be ambitious , but if I could narrow , if I could have any impact on narrowing the gap we see in senior leadership , I will feel very good about what I've done .

They're the things that come with the sometimes hard knocks and the lessons , but I think strong , powerful women such as yourself who are sharing and who are coaching and who are guiding people , you are contributing to it . So I think that message on that billboard would resonate wonderfully . Thank you so much . That means a ton .

I want to make sure everyone knows where to find you . Where can they connect with you ? You're on LinkedIn . Where else should they follow you ?

So if you want a little more of my content , that's a great resource that I would highly recommend .

Yeah , so those would be the main ways and , like I said , if you're thinking , if the program I mentioned sounds interesting to you , I would say either reach out to me directly I'm always a-okay with that or come to that call and see what you think and we can kind of go from there and see if I can help you get to that next step .

Sometimes it can be a head scratcher , but it was because you followed your intuition and you were courageous enough to do so in service of others , and so I definitely want to acknowledge that and thank you for all you continue to do and for making the time to be able to come on .

episode . It would mean the world for me if you would rate and review the podcast or share it with someone you know . Many need to hear this message . I love to hear from you all and want you to know that you can leave me a voicemail directly .

If you go to my website , evokegreatnesscom , and go to the Contact Me tab , you'll just hit the big old orange button and record your message . I love the feedback and comments that I've been getting , so please keep them coming . I'll leave you with the wise words of author Robin Sharma .

I'll leave you with the wise words of author Robin Sharma Greatness comes by doing a few small and smart things each and every day . It comes from taking little steps consistently .

It comes from making a few small chips against everything in your professional and personal life that is ordinary , so that a day eventually arrives when all that's left is the extraordinary .