Jamie Lee is an executive coach for smart women who hate office politics. She helps them get promoted and better paid without throwing anyone under the bus.
Let’s be honest—coaching isn’t magic. But sometimes, the space to stop go-go-going and start listening to the wisdom of your deeper mind can unlock some seriously unexpected momentum.
That’s what happened with my client SJ.
You don’t need to play a zero-sum game in your career journey.
You don’t need to hustle for external validation or tie your self-worth to a job title.
But you can choose to grow — to negotiate for better pay, to rise into leadership — not because you’re trying to prove your worth…
Women are gaslit in the boardroom the same way we're gaslit in the doctor's office. In both medicine and management, male norms — including male bodies, male behaviors, and male baselines — form the default standard. So what can you do?
You grow your career one conversation at a time — not by being some superhuman “Business Barbie” who never messes up and wears a tight plastic grin that doesn’t scare the bros.
A client recently transitioned into a custom-made-for-her leadership role—with executive sponsorship and the team support of her dreams. And now? 🥶 She's frozen. In her words -- "overwhelmed by everything [she] could be doing."
The day I found out I was underpaid from reading an industry newsletter with salary benchmarks, it dawned on me like a gut punch:
I DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO ADVOCATE FOR MYSELF.
If, as you go to engage the room, anxiety and doubt rise in your chest... It’s easy to mistake your uniqueness as something to be fixed or tucked away—like a stained shirt sleeve you’re embarrassed to be wearing.
When your mind floods with doubt, and you wonder if you’re too much—or not enough—here’s the truth you’ve temporarily lost sight of:
You’re allowed to feel both proud and petrified. Brave and unsure.
You don’t have to resolve that tension. You get to be real inside it. That’s one of the most honest, human things you can do.
She was feeling shaky about asking to be paid what she had earned before.
Why? Because she had a story in her head: “I was probably overpaid in my last job.”
So she considered playing it safe, asking for a lower number—just to get her foot in the door.
But it didn’t feel good—or right.
Blatant injustice shakes our confidence and sense of well-being.
Nor is it a lack of strength, power, or will that leads 75% of executive women to second-guess themselves (according to KPMG study)
And it’s no personal failing that 50% of women of color planned to leave their jobs, citing marginalization (according to Working Mother Media survey)
My mom — a South Korean immigrant with ironclad grit who wishes nothing less than abundance and success for her children — would probably get mad at me for saying this: I delight in making less money, by design.
It’s not a failure of strategy or a lack of hard work. Choosing to leave money on the proverbial table is a deliberate, values-based choice.
Feeling like a "fraud" is super normal, even for me. The more I coach subject matter experts and executive women, the more I see that imposter syndrome is never an indicator of actual competency but a hypnotic spell induced by a society steeped in bias against women and minorities. We can break the spell of this terribly boring hypnosis by co-opting its language. So there, I'm a "fraud."
She reached out for coaching because, in her words, she didn't want to make the mistake of being "too blunt, too forward, too much" in her negotiation-- a critique she's heard more often than she'd care to count over her decades-long career. So here are four things we worked on in coaching.
Too often, the approach women are taught is based on outdated models—confrontation, brinksmanship, and posturing.
Because the win isn’t just about getting a “yes.” It’s about learning to advocate for yourself in a way that feels grounded, genuine, and generative—even if the answer is “no.”
A client of mine, let's call her Jia -- a thought leader in her field -- is preparing for a showdown.
Doing what's in Jia's best long-term interest financially, professionally, and personally means communicating a decision that will anger her biggest client (for now).
Here are the three steps we took in coaching.
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My client, Kasvi, came into our session feeling frustrated, angry, and rejected.
Her boss had shut down a well-intentioned suggestion for improving team output—something Kasvi offered in good faith to support the team’s performance.
But instead of openness, she hit a wall: “That’s my problem to fix,” said the boss tersely. (Translation: “Stay off my turf.”)
“Do you do this with every client?” My client asked me yesterday.
She had already secured a promotion to Director during our coaching engagement and was gearing up to apply for another one.
I teach a concept called Itty Bitty Sh*tty Committee (not a new idea 💡 — I first heard it from Kara Snyder when she coached me about a decade ago, and I’ve run with it ever since).
Itty Bitty Sh*tty Committee, or IBSC, for short, is the voice of our inner critic.
Ask a bright, ambitious manager how they’d know they have executive presence — and you might hear something that sounds more like a hostage situation than leadership.
