Sarah Perugia Be Authentic Not Perfect

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Sarah Perugia – Be Authentic Not Perfect

Sarah Perugia, a leadership performance and presence coach, is the guest on this episode of the Women in Leadership Podcast. A lot of the women that she coaches are quite perfectionist and it’s probably one of the things that’s made them so successful. That very precision can trip them up though, she believes and says its okay to be not perfect.  “When we overplay it, we can second guess ourselves too much. There is no such thing as a perfect presenter, or a perfect speaker. I make a living as a keynote speaker and I’ve never given a perfect keynote and I never will, because I’m human and that’s okay. We want speakers to be values driven and authentic and engaged and present and human. We don’t need them to be perfect.”

Sarah discusses the challenges women face in leadership, including imposter syndrome and micro-aggressions. She highlights the importance of leadership development, noting that 94% of people cite it as a factor in their job retention. Sarah emphasises the need for women to find their voice and overcome societal messaging. She also shares her background as a former actress and her passion for coaching women in leadership and executive presence. Sarah offers practical advice on building confidence, maintaining relationships, and the significance of values in leadership.

Harnessing The Power Of The Female VOICE

Sarah says women should get used to using their own voice and amplify other women’s voices when they are overlooked at meetings. “What happens quite often is that when women do speak up they’re not heard and that can be quite demoralising. There’s lots of data around how women’s voices are processed by the male brain, that they genuinely don’t hear that woman who gives the idea first. There’s also a lot of confirmation bias that happens.  It’s very often the white men who will give ideas first, and we tend to therefore believe in the ideas we hear first through confirmation bias. Without allies and advocates and supporters in the room saying, oh, you know that idea that Angie had I think that’s a really great one.”

Daily Micro Aggressions Is Exhausting

Sometimes women who have been successful in their careers come to a point where advancement becomes more difficult and there is no obvious explanation that they can find. This is common she believes and it is rarely the woman’s fault. “They are feeling impostor syndrome, they’re feeling self doubt, they’re feeling a lack of confidence. It’s nothing to do with them. It’s because they’re in a system made by men for men, and they’re still, quite often in the minority, and they’re still experiencing those daily micro-aggressions that constant bias, which in the end is exhausting, shuts us down.”

“Harry Potter syndrome’, they’re kind of stuck in a cupboard under the stairs, and they don’t stand a chance.”

Line Manager Lottery

Another phrase Sarah uses is ‘Line Manager Lottery’. We often hear that women leave a bad boss even in generally good organisations. If a woman or a man has to take leave temporarily for care or health reasons, coming back into the organisation can cause problems if there isn’t a supportive line manager. Sarah says this line manager lottery has to be faced up to in organisations. “What happens is that when women take breaks, they suffer from what I call line manager lottery. If you’ve got an amazing line manager who believes in you, who advocates for you, whether or not you’ve been on maternity leave and helps you with your visibility, finds you mentors, sends you off on lovely programmes, like the ones that I do, the female leaders programmes, or high potential leadership programmes, those are the women that are progressing. Those are the women that are coming through their parental leave and bouncing forward.” What Sarah often sees though is women suffering from the what one of her clients called ‘Harry Potter syndrome’, “they’re kind of stuck in a cupboard under the stairs, and they don’t stand a chance.” Sarah asks “how do we change the system so that women aren’t experiencing line manager lottery and falling foul of the broken rung, leaving organisations in droves, going part time, stepping back from their careers because they feel demoralised. How do we look at that system and how to support women?”

Values Based Leadership

The main reason we all work is for financial reward and because we care about what we are doing. The leadership of organisations often overlook the importance of values based leadership in attracting and retaining good people. It is so costly to replace people in a company or organisation so it will affect the bottom line. “We see in the positive psychology research that one of the most important things for us as human beings is a sense of purpose which centres around our core values. What I see is that when people lose touch with a sense of purpose, they get lost literally. They leave organisations, they leave teams. They stop performing. They don’t know how to be good leaders. I think the sense of knowing what’s our purpose, as individuals, as teams, as organisations, it needs to be a values driven.” Sarah believes that the P and L isn’t enough and that human beings have heart and soul, and they need to feel that they have a place in the world that matters and to know that they’re making a difference.

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

Sarah often speaks to groups of women and one of the talks she gives that resonates most with the audience is the Neuroscience of body language.  Years of socialisation as young women gets internalised in our posture and body movements. Using our bodies in a way that helps us feel and think more confidently, and helps us to manage our nerves and helps to increase cognitive function she believes can make a huge difference in our communications strategy.  “There’s a lot of really interesting research on the neuroscience of body language that shows that when we are expansive and balanced in our body language, our cognitive function improves. We can see more optimistically. We can think more strategically. We can see bigger picture. When we are constrained and constricted in our body language, we tend to get stuck in the detail. We ask fewer questions. We tend to have more self doubt. Now think about what is traditionally masculine body language and what is traditionally feminine body language and it’s not difficult to make the connection that sometimes when we are restricted by gender norms, it can mean that we have to work even harder to take our space in that room. So body language isn’t just about the story we tell externally, it’s very much about the story we tell to ourselves as well.”

Make Time For Friends

One of the things that crops up with podcast guests often is the trade off between friendships and success. In one of her Pearls Of Wisdom Sarah Perugia says one supports the other.  “One of the things that I see with the women I coach is that they sacrifice their relationships when they get busy, when they have so much on their plates. They’ve got so much going on. One of the things that gets jettisoned is that amazing networking event, or that glass of wine with a friend, or that walk with a friend. What we know from positive psychology and whole person leadership is that relationships are central to our happiness, our positive emotion, our well being, even organ health, amazingly. So I would say, take time for your relationships.”

Have a listen to the podcast with Sarah Perugia womeninleadership.ie and enjoy her sustainability story, it is the best one yet.

 

 

 

 

Angela Mezzetti
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