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You've felt it — the meeting where your ideas get built on without credit, the praise that somehow makes you smaller, the feedback that comes without names or specifics. That's power moving, and it rarely announces itself.

In this episode, Sarah breaks down the hidden power dynamics that shape your career before you even realize the game is being played. She introduces the "cardigan" — the polite power move that's cashmere on the outside, barbed wire underneath — and walks through the most common types: the moving target, the whispered warning, and claimed credit.

You'll learn a practical framework for reading any professional space (green, yellow, or red rooms), how to recognize when you've been cast in roles that serve the system instead of you — the fixer, the buffer, the daughter, the translator — and three strategic shifts you can make this week to stop shrinking and start reshaping the dynamic.

This episode is for anyone who's ever walked out of a room feeling smaller than when they walked in and wondered if they imagined it. You didn't.

Subscribe to The Career Strategist and leave a review if this episode gave you language for something you've been feeling but couldn't name.

Key takeaways:

• Power isn't just titles and corner offices — it's who gets to be comfortable, who gets forgiven, and who has to manage everyone else's reactions
• The "cardigan" is a polite power move that looks supportive on the surface but contains you underneath — learn to spot the moving target, whispered warnings, and claimed credit patterns
• Every professional space is a green, yellow, or red room — naming the color
• gives you back strategic choice about how much energy to invest
• If you've been cast as the fixer, the buffer, the daughter, or the translator, you're propping up someone else's comfort at the cost of your own growth
• Three shifts to try this week: stop auto-volunteering, name the real decision maker, and replace "happy to help" with "I deliver [specific outcome]"

Resources Mentioned

• The double bind research on women in leadership
• The Career Strategist Episode 1: Defining yourself before someone else does

Connect with Sarah

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You were never satisfying anyone by satisfying everyone. Stop satisfying everyone.

I'm Sarah Caminiti. This is The Career Strategist. If this episode helped you see something more clearly, send it to someone who needs to hear it. And if you haven't yet — subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next.