I recently caught up with a young woman I’m mentoring: she was concerned that she was repeating her past. She had switched roles, and saw some of the same indications of what stalled her before.

Our conversation focused on that she’s very hard to read. She’s quiet, introverted, soft spoken naturally. But sometimes that gets in the way of people knowing you. And that gets in the way of people knowing what you’re capable of.

So I gave her a few suggestions:

1. If you don’t show emotion, make sure your words are clear. If you love something, say you LOVE it. If you think it was a great job, say it was a GREAT job. Use the BIG words to compensate that you’re hard to read.
2. Stop having the conversation inside your head. Talk to someone about what you’re thinking, what your concerns are. Just talking to yourself doesn’t move anything forward unless it’s positive…and most times, you’re just spinning yourself up with “what if” scenarios.
3. Be direct. No dancing around the subject. Stop worrying if you’re stepping out of bounds, being too aggressive. If you worry about it, you’re not doing it. When people annoy me by being too aggressive, they are completely unaware they are doing it. That’s not you.

At some point, you have to put your cards on the table: that’s how you know you win.