Anna Cosic

Once I got into leadership, I was told how critical executive presence was to get to the next level.

I wasn’t sure what it meant.

But when I looked at the people upstairs, I assumed it had to do with talking over people. Being the loudest in the room. Faking it till you make it.

And I thought: Hard pass! If that’s what it takes, I’m not even interested.

But then I looked at the leaders I admired - the ones I wanted to be like - and I saw what they did:
They spoke with conviction.
They owned their point of view.
They gave direction.

And that’s when it clicked. That was executive presence!

Not the loud, look-at-me stuff.

But the behaviors the leaders I wanted to become more like were demonstrating every day.

And when I thought of it that way, it didn’t just make me believe executive presence was something I could actually develop.

It made me WANT to.

Because that’s the kind of strategic leader I want to be. 🚀

Save this if you needed to hear it, and send it to a woman who’s been talking herself out of the room. 💜

It’s August. ☀️

Which means you still have the one thing February-you would give anything for. Time.

Here’s the difference I see again and again:

The workhorse puts her head down, works incredibly hard, and hopes it gets noticed at review time.

The strategic leader does the opposite. She starts from the outcome she wants, that promotion in February, and works backwards. She asks, if that’s where I want to be, what do I need to be showing them now?

Because a promotion at this level was never a reward for hard work. Your boss is waiting to see you operate at the next level before they hand it to you.

So the strategic leader gets proactive.
She shows her thinking, not just her output.
She connects her work to what the business actually cares about.
She becomes the one who brings direction, months before the decision gets made.
She doesn’t wait to be chosen.
She makes herself the obvious choice.

And right now, in August, you have every bit of runway to do exactly that.

If you want to know what that looks like, step by step, that’s what I break down in my free live webinar, How to go from workhorse to strategic leader. Link in bio! 🚀

For years, I was on the hamster wheel.

Always busy, always behind, always sure that the answer was to work harder and move faster.

So when someone told me that work actually gets calmer as you move up, I thought they were dreaming.

But then I started really watching the women above me. And their days looked nothing like mine. They had space. They had time to think. They weren’t frantic.

And it hit me: it wasn’t that they were doing less. It’s that what they were valued for had changed. Lower down, we get paid for the tasks we crank through. Higher up, we’re valued for our thinking, our leadership, and the outcomes we drive.

That was the moment everything shifted for me. Because it meant the way out wasn’t running faster. It was learning to work differently.

That realization is a big part of why I do what I do now. I want more women to know that getting ahead doesn’t have to mean burning out to get there. There’s another way up, and it’s calmer than the one you’re on.

If you’re on that hamster wheel right now, save this. And send it to a woman who needs to hear there’s a way off. 💜

I had a call with a Director whose boss, in her mid-year review, told her she needs to delegate more.

She knows it. She wants to show up as a strategic leader. But she’s so busy that it’s just faster to do it herself, and she knows it’ll get done right. So she keeps doing it all.

I know exactly what that’s like, because I did the same thing.
As a Director, I was too busy to slow down and help my team do the work well. And honestly? I didn’t want to burden them with the lower-level stuff. It kind of made me feel like a good leader.

But here’s what I had backwards. I saw the leadership part, the training, the feedback, the following up, as a distraction from my real work.

It isn’t a distraction from the work. It IS the work. When you’re given a team to lead, that part is the job now. And when we skip it and just do everything ourselves, the thing we think makes us a good leader is the very thing keeping us a workhorse.

The instinct to get it all done yourself got you here. But at this level, it’s the same instinct that keeps you stuck. Because up here, it’s not about how much you can get done anymore. It’s about your ability to drive results with and through others.

Save this if you needed the reframe, and send it to a Director who’s still doing it all. 💛

✨For the hard working woman who just stepped into a new role:

That feeling of drinking from a fire hose? Completely normal. Nobody absorbs this much this fast and feels calm doing it.

You have not done anything wrong by not having it all figured out yet. You were hired to grow into this, not to walk in already knowing.

The days that feel unproductive are not wasted. Learning the landscape is the work right now, even when it doesn’t look like output.

You have nothing to prove. Proving assumes someone doubts you. But they chose you, out of everyone they could have picked. That’s not doubt. That’s someone betting on you.

Your boss is not sitting there regretting it. They expect a ramp. The story in your head is louder than anything they’re actually thinking.

Wondering some days if you should have stayed where you were? That’s not a sign you made the wrong call. It’s just what the messy middle of something new feels like.

And if you feel like you’re dropping the ball at home while you find your feet at work? Please don’t pile guilt on top of everything else.

You are allowed to be in a season where work takes more for a while.

Some days, getting through it is the win. That counts too!

Save this if you needed to hear this today, and feel free to send it to a friend or peer starting something new. 💜