Secrets of the Career Game

Being right at work doesn't mean you're winning the room. Here's how to build influence without damaging trust. You can have the strongest argument in the room and still walk away having damaged your professional relationships. Executive communication coach and Powerfully Likable author Dr. Kate Mason explains why effective workplace communication takes more than confidence or being right. Kendall Berg lived this — earlier in her career, she was told she was excellent at her job, but difficult to work with. Together they break down how to be assertive without being aggressive, how to disagree professionally, handle difficult conversations, respond to resistance without getting emotional, and build executive presence with senior leaders. You'll also hear why trying to appear confident backfires, what "kill your confidence" really means — focus on value, not performance — and how accountability and owning mistakes protects your reputation and helps you recover faster. Because winning every argument won't help your career if nobody wants you in the room. Learn more about Dr. Kate Mason and her book Powerfully Likable: https://katemason.co What's one "corporate game" rule you've learned the hard way? About Your Host: That Career Coach, Kendall Berg Kendall Berg is a career coach and creator, helping ambitious professionals master the unspoken rules of corporate life. Through Secrets of the Career Game, she shares honest conversations and practical tools to help you communicate clearly, lead confidently, and navigate work with strategy — not stress. ☕️ Want personalized career advice? Book a free 15-minute Coffee Chat with me — let's talk strategy, leadership, or your next move. Book your Coffee Chat → https://calendly.com/thatcareercoach/15-min-follow-up Want to know more about Kendal Berg, that career coach? Follow her on Instagram: @thatcareercoach_ Check out her courses on the website: https://thatcareercoach.net/ Watch on YouTube:@thatcareercoach_

Stop listing tasks in your performance review — turn them into evidence for a raise. Description: Strong performance can still disappear inside a weak self-evaluation. In this end-of-year performance review guide, Kendall Berg shows how to turn accomplishments into evidence with impact, metrics, and stakeholders, plus stretch assignments, leadership growth, and professional development. You'll learn how to write a forward-looking review, how to mention promotion at work without sounding entitled, how to address negative feedback without writing a case against yourself, and how to get 360-degree feedback your manager can use to defend a stronger rating. Includes performance review examples for documenting fire drills, soft skills like executive presence and delegation, and the Compliment Oreo for giving constructive feedback. For high performers who did the work but need to articulate their value clearly so their boss — and their boss's boss — can advocate for them. Drop a comment: What's the one win you need to document better this year? What's one "corporate game" rule you've learned the hard way? About Your Host: That Career Coach, Kendall Berg Kendall Berg is a career coach and creator, helping ambitious professionals master the unspoken rules of corporate life. Through Secrets of the Career Game, she shares honest conversations and practical tools to help you communicate clearly, lead confidently, and navigate work with strategy — not stress. ☕️ Want personalized career advice? Book a free 15-minute Coffee Chat with me — let's talk strategy, leadership, or your next move. Book your Coffee Chat → https://calendly.com/thatcareercoach/15-min-follow-up Want to know more about Kendal Berg, that career coach? Follow her on Instagram: @thatcareercoach_ Check out her courses on the website: https://thatcareercoach.net/ Watch on YouTube:@thatcareercoach_

Hard work alone won't earn your next promotion—executive presence, visibility, and strategic thinking will. Hard work can make you indispensable at your current level while keeping you out of senior leadership. Moving from high performer to executive requires different signals: strategic thinking, executive presence, and workplace visibility. Drawing on 17 rejections on her path to two VP roles and experience at Microsoft and Google, executive coach Maya Grossman explains how changing what she prioritized transformed her career. She and Kendall Berg reveal how to build a promotion business case around future value, create executive advocates before review season, and eliminate low-value work that drains leadership capacity. If you're stalled at senior manager or director, you'll leave with a practical 90-day plan for proving your executive potential without working yourself into the ground. What's one "corporate game" rule you've learned the hard way? About Your Host: That Career Coach, Kendall Berg Kendall Berg is a career coach and creator, helping ambitious professionals master the unspoken rules of corporate life. Through Secrets of the Career Game, she shares honest conversations and practical tools to help you communicate clearly, lead confidently, and navigate work with strategy — not stress. ☕️ Want personalized career advice? Book a free 15-minute Coffee Chat with me — let's talk strategy, leadership, or your next move. Book your Coffee Chat → https://calendly.com/thatcareercoach/15-min-follow-up Want to know more about Kendal Berg, that career coach? Follow her on Instagram: @thatcareercoach_ Check out her courses on the website: https://thatcareercoach.net/ Watch on YouTube:@thatcareercoach_ Connect With Maya Grossman Website: https://www.mayagrossman.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maya.grosmn/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mayagrossman/ Free masterclass: Visit Maya's LinkedIn profile to identify the biggest gap preventing your promotion and access tools to address it.

Hiring managers take 4 seconds to decide if they'll interview you. Here's how to make your impact clear before they move on. 👉 Improve your self-advocacy: https://stan.store/thatcareercoach/p/get-my-promotion-guide-now Is your resume full of experience but getting zero interviews? You're not alone. Hiring managers give your resume 4 seconds before they decide. Career coach Kendall Berg has reviewed hundreds of resumes, and she breaks down exactly where qualified candidates lose attention and 4 changes to fix it. In this Secrets of the Career Game episode, you'll learn how to target no more than two job titles, keep your layout simple and easy to scan, write a top section that earns a closer look, and replace routine duties with measurable impact. Plus: why you should stop using AI to write your resume and how to use it to check your draft instead. What's one "corporate game" rule you've learned the hard way? About Your Host: That Career Coach, Kendall Berg Kendall Berg is a career coach and creator, helping ambitious professionals master the unspoken rules of corporate life. Through Secrets of the Career Game, she shares honest conversations and practical tools to help you communicate clearly, lead confidently, and navigate work with strategy — not stress. ☕️ Want personalized career advice? Book a free 15-minute Coffee Chat with me — let's talk strategy, leadership, or your next move. Book your Coffee Chat → https://calendly.com/thatcareercoach/15-min-follow-up Want to know more about Kendal Berg, that career coach? Follow her on Instagram: @thatcareercoach_ Check out her courses on the website: https://thatcareercoach.net/ Watch on YouTube:@thatcareercoach_

Job search strategy for 2026: more applications are not creating better odds. AI made generic applying effortless, recruiters are drowning in identical resumes, and qualified people are getting ignored. Here's what actually earns interviews. 👉 Improve your self-advocacy: https://stan.store/thatcareercoach/p/get-my-promotion-guide-now Kendall Berg sits down with Andrew Seaman, LinkedIn's Editor at Large for Jobs and Career Development, to break down why the numbers game most job seekers are playing has stopped working, and what to do instead. Andrew leads LinkedIn's Get Hired franchise, translating labor market shifts into practical guidance for job seekers. In this episode, he explains why the 2026 job market is better than the headlines suggest, why broad positioning hurts your job search, whether LinkedIn Easy Apply actually works, and whether AI belongs anywhere near your applications. You'll also learn how to turn transferable skills into a competitive advantage, and how many jobs you should actually be applying to each week. Kendall shares the interview return rate her clients get from 2–5 quality applications a week versus mass applying. If you've been applying for months and hearing nothing back, this is the episode that shows you it isn't you. It's the strategy. What's one "corporate game" rule you've learned the hard way? About Your Host: That Career Coach, Kendall Berg Kendall Berg is a career coach and creator, helping ambitious professionals master the unspoken rules of corporate life. Through Secrets of the Career Game, she shares honest conversations and practical tools to help you communicate clearly, lead confidently, and navigate work with strategy — not stress. ☕️ Want personalized career advice? Book a free 15-minute Coffee Chat with me — let's talk strategy, leadership, or your next move. Book your Coffee Chat → https://calendly.com/thatcareercoach/15-min-follow-up Want to know more about Kendal Berg, that career coach? Follow her on Instagram: @thatcareercoach_ Check out her courses on the website: https://thatcareercoach.net/ Watch on YouTube:@thatcareercoach_ About Andrew Seaman Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmseaman/ As LinkedIn's Editor at Large for Jobs and Career Development, I lead the Get Hired franchise, which is a multi-channel ecosystem that shepherds people through the complex intersection of AI literacy, career resilience and skills-based hiring. My work focuses on translating macro-economic shifts, such as unemployment data and sudden industry pivots, into actionable strategies for job seekers at every level. Additionally, I serve as an informal ombudsman between the world's professionals and employers.