Owning Your Seat at the Table with Dr. Christiane Schroeter

What does it really mean to own your seat at the table—especially when part of you is still wondering whether you belong there?

In EP116, Jess and Claude sit down with Dr. Christiane Schroeter, leadership strategist, TEDx speaker, author, and creator of Petite Practice®, to talk about confidence, imposter syndrome, and why waiting until you feel completely ready can keep you stuck.

Christiane shares her STEP approach to building confidence through small, repeatable actions: simplify the goal, tell someone what you want, examine the next step you can take, and praise your progress along the way.

The conversation gets personal when Claude shares how comments about her accent early in her career stayed with her for years and affected the way she felt about presenting—even long after she knew she was capable.

Together, they explore how to stop letting old narratives determine how you show up, speak up, and take up space at work.

You’ll also hear:
• Why confidence often comes after you start—not before
• Why high achievers still experience imposter syndrome
• How to speak up when you’re questioning whether you belong
• How to share your accomplishments without feeling like you’re bragging
• Why your “ta-da” list may matter as much as your to-do list
• How Work Besties can help each other see the wins they may be missing
• How leaders can build confidence rather than unintentionally crush it
• One simple practice that can boost your confidence in less than a minute

Owning your seat at the table doesn’t mean you never feel nervous, uncertain, or uncomfortable.

It means you stop letting those feelings decide whether you show up.

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Work Besties! Theme Song Written by Ralph Lentini @therallyband

Transcript

Confidence Starts After You Begin

Claude F 0:00

What are you waiting to feel before you start? More confident? More prepared? More certain? But what if confidence comes after the first step? Not before it.

Jess K 0:11

Today, Dr. Christiane Schroeder shows us how small, steady actions can close that gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it. Stick around to the end to learn how to increase your confidence in one minute or less. Hi, I'm Claude.

Claude F 0:27

And I'm Jess. We are corporate employees by day, entrepreneurs by night, and work besties for life.

Jess K 0:34

Join us as we explore how work besties lift each other up, laugh through the chaos, and thrive together in every industry. Work besties!

Claude F 0:46

See you on the podcast.

Meet Dr. Christiane Schroeder

Claude F 0:49

We would love to hear a bit about you.

Dr Christiane 0:51

Well, thanks so much for having me, Jess and Claude. My name is Christiane Scheuter. I live in beautiful sunny California. You can hear from my accent though, and Claude immediately picked up on this that deep down I am actually German and born in Germany, moved to the United States though, oh, 27 years ago. So I lived here more than half of my life and earned my graduate degree here, my PhD, and now raise my two amazing daughters in California, where I live with my husband. Work as a leadership strategist. I'm a TEDx speaker and author, and a full-time professor teaching marketing, innovation, entrepreneurship. Do you sleep? How do you get that all done? It's the California sun. It just keeps you growing and flowing. It's like maybe we should move Jess.

Jess K 1:47

Yes, I think so. So you've got quite an interesting background, and obviously you've lived multiple places, you've earned a PhD, very impressive. Um, you know many languages, um, and you built your career in your second language. So, knowing all of this, I'm curious from your point of view, how do you help people stop overthinking and create change through those small repeatable actions you talked about?

Say The Goal Out Loud

Dr Christiane 2:22

Oh, that's a beautiful question, Jess. So I think most of the time, what we first of all struggle with is even saying out loud what our goal really is. We already lack confidence and even sharing like things from our bucket list. And it's actually kind of like a funny question. It's like, what are you afraid of that people are going to laugh at you? And I mean, if if they do laugh at you, then just laugh with them or just say, Yeah, that's on my bucket list and just own the moment. I call it stepping into your voice. So you need to learn to verbalize your goals. And that may be starting with simplifying your goal. So, for instance, I want to travel the world. Well, exactly, where do you want to go? I mean, you can't just like take a globe and take it for a spin, right? Where do you want to go? Simplify your goal, pick one country, and then verbalize it. Say it out loud, right? So I always say the simplification and the telling of the goal is really the first two steps that start building your confidence and actually getting started with small steps. Because what I just did with you was I shared two steps that get you kicked off, but at the same time, I haven't even actually done anything yet. I basically just simplified my goal, I shared it with you, and now I need to I need to choose the very first step, the first petite practice to actually get started, right? That's the most important thing.

Jess K 3:54

I'm just so curious, how did you get on this journey to I don't know, shape how how people think about confidence or how you frame these things? Like you saying that is so impressive. I would never think of it that way. How did you start this?

Get Unstuck With Real Movement

Dr Christiane 4:10

Well, because I struggled with it myself. So what happened was that I knew deep down, growing up in Germany, really wasn't where I ultimately would end up. And we sometimes, you ask me early about feelings, we do feel that our inner selves, our inner goals don't always align with what we actually do outside in this world. So you sometimes feel like there's more to it, but I need to travel and actually kind of find myself. I need to explore what else is out there so that every time when you travel to a different country, or you travel to different cities, or you meet new people. Think of it as like you're trying on shoes and you're like, hmm, I like this pair. Oh, maybe I like this pair. Like a little um Cinderella, she's the one with the shoes, right? Yes, yeah, yeah.

Jess K 5:08

I think it might be a beer. You could say me, I have a lot of shoes. Like a jest. Like a gist. It's like all my shoes right now.

Dr Christiane 5:21

So you need to find the goldilocks of goals, right? Like you you have this goal. I want to find a place where my inside and my outside line up, but all along you're just trying them on, you know, and and you're like, oh, do I like this? What do I like about it? Do I like that? And that is so important because think about the word stuck. It's not just like in your mind, it's also being stuck maybe in a location. And sometimes getting unstuck starts with getting up physically from your desk and start moving somewhere different because the movement creates the motion, and the motion creates, you know, the digestion of the thoughts. It's like, oh no, here we go. I'm actually trying on shoes. I am in motion. And I think that's so important that sometimes we just feel like staring at the screen is like magically going to create solutions. For me, my best ideas, my trademark petite practice, my books. Nothing ever happens staring at the computer screen and just waiting for like the magic fairy dust to come. It just doesn't happen that way, right? I think it happened when I'm under the shower, when I'm on a walk, when I'm um brushing my teeth. All of a sudden, like, oh my gosh, I'm out of the idea. Where's the notepad? Right? This is how it happens. And that's how you need to think about your life. That your thoughts, they're just kind of like twirling around in there, and you need to give them some space and some freedom to actually find the landing spots, like airplanes in landing position. All of a sudden, they're like, oh, this is my port. This is where I go, this is how it all puts together.

Claude F 7:01

Yep. Well, I love that. One of the my question is confidence. Confidence is not the lack of confidence just one moment, right? Sometimes it's your state of mind that is lack of confidence. So you can't all the time be moving around because so, in that case, how do you make your lack of confidence in general like lesser a little bit?

The STEP Method For Confidence

Dr Christiane 7:30

Beautiful, beautiful question. So I use what I call the step approach. So I share with you the simplification, the tell that you have to say it out loud, and alone the tell clot is already what helps solidify your confidence because you're saying it out loud, and so your mind actually hears your voice, and your voice starts anchoring the belief that this is one of my goals, and I want to do this. But then, of course, ideally, you're also telling somebody else. Ideally, maybe somebody who holds you accountable for actually getting this done. So S, simplification, T for telling, and now we have E for examining. So now you get started on your goal, big goal, you're breaking it down into a simplification, you're telling somebody what your big goal is, and now you need to kind of look at all right, what are the first steps I can do today? This is so important. So your confidence really gets built by taking action today, so that when tomorrow you come in, you're right, I already did something with that. And so you feel confident. You're like, I'm a doer, I'm an action taker. And then based on that, comes your last one, which is the P. So you can praise your progress. You're like, I simplified, I told somebody, I examined, I started, and now I am on a roll. High five to myself for actually doing something and not just feeling stuck. And so the confidence comes by keeping repeating the STEP and chipping along on your path to whatever your big goal would be, right? And I think that is so important that you don't need to spend a lot of money or a lot of time or even creating something that you feel comfortable with. It's all in you, but you just need to start with that very first small

Why High Achievers Doubt Themselves

Dr Christiane 9:20

step, the petite practice.

Claude F 9:25

A lot of time, why do high achieving professionals sometimes, and I think a lot of women as well, especially women, have this lack of confidence or actually having this complex, the imposter complex. Why is that?

Dr Christiane 9:48

I think it kind of like goes in both in in like a and nearly like an axis, right? On one axis being the fact the fact that you have doubt in your own ability, and on the other axis is maybe that you have doubt because you're really truly not 100% sure. So it's like a combination of lack of knowledge and lack of confidence. And what you can really think about is you gain more confidence by sharing what you do with others. It's nearly like a mini-elevator pitch. But you can also educate yourself. So I always say reading is like a completely understated way of building your skills. Because think about this. These people put their life into creating a book that teaches you skills that you right now don't have. So if you feel like I actually don't know very much about this, well then read about it. And if you feel, you know what, I actually knew that, well then yes, high five to you, right? Then great. Then you can actually start sharing it. But the doubt is just sometimes more like a fact that you actually need to figure this out yourself. I did know that. I just doubted my own ability to do that. And I think what we frequently do is because we start questioning ourselves, we hold back our voice, where in reality we leave a meeting and we think, well, what everybody said in the room is something I could have totally shared with as well. So you kind of beat yourself up or you regret that you didn't share anything about it. So what helps me sometimes is already prepare like little sentences that you could share is like ahead of time. And then when you join the meeting, you feel prepared. So that's your little petite practice ahead of the meeting. So you see who's going to be in the room, what are we going to talk about? And that's the education and the knowledge piece. And by preparing the little pieces, you gain the confidence in stepping in and not feeling like an impostor. It actually comes from a point of knowledge and from confidence.

Accents, Credibility, And Letting Go

Claude F 12:02

That makes sense. So, one question also, actually, that we we were talking with Jess earlier, and I think it hits me too, and I think also a bit you is what would you tell someone who feels that their accents or their background or differences makes them less credible? Because I'm going to give you a little why I know one of why my self-confidence presenting is because earlier in my career, I had to reverse in front of a VP and every five minutes saying, no, they won't understand that. How many languages are you saying? And and that really dreaded in my mind that I am not good, even though it's been 20 years. Well, yeah, 20 years, but it stayed in my mind, I am not good in presenting because people will not understand me. So, how can you stop this narrative? Because I know it's it's not real, but that really like hurt me.

Dr Christiane 13:18

Claude, what you're bringing up is so true. And it's not just for the multiple language speakers among us, it's true for I would say nearly every individual alive, to where at one point in their life was this person that really crushed their goals and dreams. And it was a really hard moment. It kind of really completely threw them off track and scratched their confidence. Like, for instance, my husband is a beautiful artist, but at one point in his life, there was an art teacher who took one of the art pieces he created and just kind of crumbled it up and threw it into the trash can and said, start over. My goodness. I mean, think about that. It's like, why would you ever do this? You know, but then they thought they're going to make a point. And in your case, somebody made a point in pointing out that it's maybe not the first language and thought that maybe that's like something that needs to be pointed out, right? I think that in general, what we need to do in our mind is we just need to first let that go. Elsa in Frozen, you need to let it go. That's just something that I shouldn't let their limitations strike my confidence and limit me from sitting at the table and speaking up. You have to just say, you know, I'm sorry that you're sometimes struggling understanding me. I can slow down, or what would really help you here. And I mean, quite honestly, like sometimes it's just asking what helps you in making this an easier journey for you. And you know, and if you really feel hurt, you could just say, oh, that hurt, you know. I mean, wow. You know, just express your emotion to them because people don't even know sometimes how hurtful it is. Claude, thank you for sharing.

Jess K 15:09

I know you present and you do an amazing.

Claude F 15:11

I still hate it. I still hate it and I prepare it.

Jess K 15:15

I think that's a misnomer. Imposter syndrome doesn't mean that you now, like overcoming imposter syndrome doesn't mean you now love to present to people or to do the thing. Yeah. Just means you figured out ways to overcome that hurdle because of whatever was holding you back. Yeah.

Dr Christiane 15:33

Claude, next time when you present, just say, All right, so sure I have an accent. Did you want me to just continue in French? Or how should we do this today, right? Because I'm just taught in French. Yeah. Yeah. No accent in that language. I mean, you know multiple languages, don't you? Oh, you don't. Oh, you only speak English. Oh.

Jess K 15:53

Let me bring this down to all of you poor people who only know English. Let's lower this whole level down.

Claude F 16:00

Literally. But I think also by that is that what help us also is to understand that when we want to manage someone also, to be very careful and being kind and not to crush, you know, someone's spirit.

Dr Christiane 16:19

And I always say, and I love that you say the word kind. I always say there's a difference between nice and kind, right? So you don't want to be just nice and say, oh yeah, Claude, love your talk. It's like, okay, thanks. No, you want to be kind. You want to say, I really enjoyed when you started talking about the fact that imposter syndrome impacted you personally. That was really interesting. Right? So that's kind because you're pointing out something that you took away from that you enjoyed. And so don't just like hand out niceties because you think that people enjoy it. It actually makes them sometimes question. It's like, did they actually really love it or did they say that?

Jess K 16:59

Yeah, say from that perspective, if there is like, so Claudia, you're hitting on like a really important topic that I think we get a lot of questions on from the work bestie community, which is if you do have imposter syndrome, what are some other things they could be thinking to do?

Share Wins Without The Bragging Trap

Dr Christiane 17:16

The most important thing is you have to share what you actually do. So it's great in a conversation to lead the conversation forward. But if you never share your accomplishments, and that's why I said the P, the praise your progress, is so important for yourself, because it keeps you propelling on that second or third day when things start to get really hard, but it's also important for others. So let's say you are in this meeting, you shared your one or two sound bites, and you still feel a little bit like an impostor. Well, you feel like an impostor because none of these people in the room, you can't even blame them, knows how amazing you are. So you have to share your accomplishments. I keep a running list of things that I do, right? On Sundays, I go in and I kind of create a little bit like a little praise for it, right? It's here, Serenity Sunday. So what did I accomplish this week? And that means, you know, my I simplified, I told people, but then I have to examine looking back, what did I accomplish this week? Oh, here I was in a podcast recording. And oh, there, I published an article in Business Insider. Oh, there. And so what you need to do is your little, you can call it whatever you want to, broadboard, Serenity Sunday, blah, blah, blah. I mean, I really like Serenity Sunday. I'm gonna borrow that one. Let's do Serenity Sunday. All right, so Serenity Sunday. So now you got, let's just say you got one thing, right? We don't need to go like crazy. We got one thing. We we appeared on this most amazing podcast right here. And now you're like, oh, I actually never told anybody about this. What a loss to others. Because they could have learned from these amazing ladies on this podcast. They would have had fun, they would have laughed, and so you stole the information from them. Why? Don't hold back. And at the same time, how do you want to be seen as an expert or an authority if you don't share your accomplishments with others? So you feel like an imposter, and again, you cannot even blame others because they don't know anything. So, what you could even say is, all right, so I'm working on this task right here, and where I'm at right now is I'm step three, right? And good news is last week I was on this podcast and I talked about this. So I feel the angle that I'm going to go to step four is this. What do you think about that? Right? And they're like, oh, I didn't even know you were on this podcast right there. It's like I was, right? And so you kind of like weave in a little bit of like not making you look like by the way, I was on a podcast, and everybody was like the non-bragging brag, yeah.

Claude F 20:00

So you're like I was going to ask that actually, like how can what is the the part where between bragging and making a statement of your accomplishments? Yeah. So and I I feel like sorry, I feel like I like also, you know, the Serenity Sunday just for ourselves. So realizing ourselves, this is what I did. So I belong there because last week I did this, this, this, and this. And not thinking, oh, oh my god, I missed that, I didn't do this, I should have done that. Yeah. Totally.

Jess K 20:44

Literally getting into the psyche of how Claude operates on a Sunday and how Jess operates on a Sunday because I'm like bragging myself up. Like, let me make sure people know all the stuff I did, and you're like, I have this. And I'm like, okay, I'm sorry, I didn't do this, I should have done that way.

Claude F 21:01

Yeah.

Dr Christiane 21:03

Yin and yin. Let's talk, maybe, and I can also create um, I have some visuals over here. Oh, this is like meaning everybody has to watch now. Okay. So I'm going to create like a little thing for Claude. Yellow sticky notes. This is to-dos, right? You write your to-do's on there. Pink sticky notes, this is your tadas. These are the things you accomplish. So there are your goals or your to-dos on the yellows. All the pink ones, whenever you accomplish something, you're going to write them on there. You're not even going to mix and mingle, you're going to keep them separate. And then you can even get like totally fancy. Um, we have blue. And then you could be like, all right, and this is what I want to share on social media to whoever doesn't even know me yet is not in the same room yet. But maybe it's kind of like, you know, I might appear like in a search term or anything, or people are looking for like some new connection. And all of a sudden I pop up because my blue was like totally on their screen. And that's like for the rest of the world. Your amazingness all of a sudden it's just oozing out of you. And you're like, I am roll. And so good news is because your to-do list is like totally separate, you're not like, oh my gosh, I didn't give you all these things done. Don't worry, because you have pink. Actually, realizing there's a thing called a pink slip, but let's not even go down that road.

Claude F 22:32

All right. Maybe we just send the blood. The new, the new pink slip. The new pink slip.

How To Support A Work Bestie

Jess K 22:46

The prevention of pink slips. I'm gonna ask the question let's say you are not the one with the imposter syndrome um opportunities, but your work bestie is. Being the work bestie who doesn't have it, what are some things we can do to help that individual?

Dr Christiane 23:05

Okay. So your your friend has imposter syndrome. And you know it. And I know it. Okay. So you're gonna know it.

Jess K 23:15

Asking for a friend.

Dr Christiane 23:19

Yeah, so you could be the accountability partner, right? You could just do the the the the the teaser text. Like have like a text message that goes out with like a little um give me a little teaser about your day or your week or whenever you want to do this. The weekly wins, right? Oh, you know, an act audience, I can share this with you too. I created like a little app that's called weekly wins. I can share that with you. I love that. Yeah, and because we're broader too, huh? Okay, and and where I'm going with this is in my weekly wins, it's like business, personal, but then the third question is really important. Where do I feel I won, even though nobody saw it? And because your besties, you might have seen it, but your besties beating him or herself up about that because they didn't even notice that it was so amazing. And so you can do like the gentle little steering committee that's like, well, do you remember that moment when I wasn't feeling well? And you kind of really built me up. I really want to thank you for that because that was pretty amazing right there. And I really appreciate that in those stressful moments. You are like the calm confidence that I need to keep pushing through. I love that. And and sometimes people don't do that enough that somebody says thank you, or that was really amazing. And especially if if you're like in business meetings and everybody needs to hustle on, right? I think that sometimes in business meetings, it's nearly nice to start with say something positive to the person next to you, or say thank you for something they did amazing this week or this month or whatever. Just to get used to that muscle that needs to show gratitude to somebody else and needs to make them feel better. Because nobody would ever be sad if they get a thank you note via text message, the little teaser text that we talked about. The thanks text.

Claude F 25:20

So I wonder also, as a manager, maybe this is something, I don't know, it might be a bit too corny. Um but you know, when your your your team meeting, for example, like weekly team meeting. I have a weekly team meeting with my team, and maybe saying, like at the beginning, everybody kind of say something positive that they did, or something that a win that they had and they share. And that helps also for the team to have that muscle.

Dr Christiane 25:55

Do that um all the time with teams that I work in. We basically start with um what was your favorite moment? And to take off the pressure of some people that don't want to share, or maybe some teams are really big and you can't go around the room and listen to everybody because it's like, oh my gosh, it's supposed to take forever. Are we actually ever going to start our meeting? Um so you could create other ways of doing that,

One Minute Confidence Mirror Habit

Dr Christiane 26:19

right?

Jess K 26:19

Before we kicked off, you mentioned you have some exciting news. Do you want to share?

Dr Christiane 26:24

So, exciting news kicking off my new book, Petite Practice, in the theme of this amazing podcast episode today. And of course, um, it will show you and help you how you can take steady, small steps to building a life, full of momentum and real action. And of course, I want to share also the real action that you can do to build your confidence in one minute or less. It's really not always even creating words. Sometimes what helps me before I go into a meeting is I go to the bathroom and I just kind of look at myself in the mirror. And instead of focusing on things that are like, oh my gosh, I didn't do my mascara evenly. Look at the left side. It's like, oh my gosh, what's going on in the left side? I don't do that. I basically want to smile at myself. And sometimes it's hard because I don't feel like smiling at all. And I'm like, my gosh, I have to go to this meeting. But it actually kind of loosens your face muscles a little bit, and my mind eventually picks up on it. Maybe not immediately, but I just kind of, you know, start smiling, and then eventually I'm like, all right, I think I'm ready now, and then I go, right? And that's the same thing when I drive to a meeting when I'm standing in front of a mirror. I try to have a happy fight face in the car. Because you know how many people really stressed out. Where would we find this book? The book is going to be available on Amazon on August 16th. It's exactly one year after my TEDx talk that is labeled Petite Practice or How Small Steps Build Your Confidence. So, this book is basically what I took away from all the feedback I got from the TEDx talk and made it into this beautiful version of reading, of learning, and building your confidence.

Jess K 28:11

Amazing. Congratulations on both successes, the TED Talk and the book. This is so cool. You need more than a pink slip to be able to put all your achievement. She has got a bunch of don't worry, she'll cover.

Claude F 28:25

Exactly.

Final Takeaways And Subscribe

Jess K 28:26

Awesome. Well, so for our work bestie community, um, we'd love for you all to think of one thing that you might have been delaying because you didn't feel ready and taking that small action. And then obviously taking that next step back of looking back at the end of the week and seeing how you've accomplished it with that one step. So if you liked this episode, please like and subscribe. And with that, keep supporting each other. Remember, whether you're swapping snacks in the break room, rescuing each other from endless meetings, or just sending that perfectly timed meme. Having a work bestie is like having your own personal hype squad.

Claude F 29:08

So keep lifting each other up, laughing through the chaos, and of course, thriving. Until next time, stay positive, stay productive, and don't forget to keep supporting each other.

Jess K 29:21

Work bestie!