Earned Wisdom! For Accomplished Leaders

I think it’s pretty ridiculous that society suggests showing emotion is a sign of weakness. I believe it’s actually courageous because it tells others you are comfortable and confident in who you are. I mean we’re humans, afterall, not robots. But let’s be clear: I’m not talking about temper tantrums or uncontrolled outbursts. That’s something entirely different. I’m talking about being emotive because you are connected to your feelings.

Knowing your emotions taps into your intuition and can help with decision-making when you feel stuck or confused. It also helps with relatability, openness and confidence. So how do you use your authentic emotions to maximize your success as a leader? That’s what we cover in this episode. We’ll look at what drives you to mask your emotions—is it fear of appearing weak, people not liking you, losing control? Connecting with your emotions is empowering, and it can actually grow your confidence as a leader.

When you hear the word “ease,” do you think of a lazy person who is not on their toes? Or do you think it’s a pot of gold at the end of a hard-working, problem-solving rainbow? What if I told you ease is a mindset? It’s not about what’s happening externally; it’s about presence and feeling worthy of having it.

Working like crazy and trying to solve problems before they even show up will have you running around with your hair on fire. Instead of lifting 1,000 lbs daily, try lifting just enough to keep growing your value moving toward ease. In this episode we’ll look at the challenges you think you need to face, and where you can let go, because your worth is not determined by your ability to slay dragons. Ease is available and it will make you a stronger leader.

We’re living in a “specialness” epidemic; the desire for attention, respect, even adoration. It can lead us down a career path just to find it. Being seen as special isn’t just a goal, it’s a need, but it’s not an intrinsically motivated one. It’s driven by what you believe “special” means to other people, and it comes from a place of lack. Even being near special people can make you feel like you’ve joined the club. But no matter how much you seek it, you never actually feel it. Special becomes elusive, which makes you want it even more.

But what if you didn’t need to exhibit special to feel special? Chasing what we think is meaningful to others is exhausting and it doesn’t equal success. In this episode I’ll ask some questions about what you’re really looking for, why you need it and how it makes you feel. The essence of who you are, not what you do or achieve, is what makes you special. It emanates from within.

We humans love to judge, and there are two different biases we hold: descriptive and prescriptive. In this episode we’ll be looking at prescriptive bias and how women are expected to behave as leaders (good lord do people have opinions!). When women don’t act according to their prescribed role—kind, warm, gentle, caring, submissive—they can be punished. And it’s not just men who carry this bias, women do too. Being a decisive or direct female leader shouldn’t be a bad thing, but these biases can feel like being trapped in a box.

So how do you combat them? First by knowing they exist, and second by catching your own. Notice when you make comments about other women not “acting” properly. And when you hear that internal voice saying you should’ve been kinder or less aggressive, realize that’s probably your inner bias talking. We can’t change how other people think and behave, but we can act in alignment with who we are, instead of who society tells us to be.

As a female leader, overwhelm is probably not foreign to you. The mountain feels too high to climb, yet you feel pressure to get to the summit—pressure from others, but also from yourself. And the dictator in your head says you can’t do it; you’re incompetent; you’re an imposter. You want to slump down and cry in a corner, but if the leader is cracking, who’s in charge? So instead, you fantasize about escaping to a desert island or taking a low-level job that requires no leadership skills at all.

Even if you have multiple degrees and lead a Fortune 500 company, fear and low self-worth are probably in the driver's seat. Perhaps you’re afraid of looking at who you are and how you feel on a deeper level. You just hope that achieving the success you want will give you the freedom you feel you lack, so you keep pushing the boulder up the hill and exhausting yourself. But you can wait your entire career for external validation, or you can look at how YOU make it hard for yourself. So I challenge you to try something new: acknowledge your feelings and look at what you fear. Even if you hide your fear-based mindset really well, it’s still operating, and it’s what you’re actually trying to escape from.

You could have raised yourself.

You did not want to raise yourself, but it seemed the most logical step in what you needed to do to make it through childhood. Very few people understood you, although you might not have let on to it. In fact, with those few who understood you—they have been able to get the closest to you and that may not be very close at all. 

You are ferocious, voracious and fierce…..but there is a part of you inside that is disconnected and does not feel your worth. YOU THINK YOUR WORTH THROUGH THESE ABILITIES TO GET BACK UP AND GO!

The persona you have at work as the inferno fighting kick ass boss may have fans but people are intimidated by you. And you may prefer it that way.

But who is really in your corner? The people who say it? Nope…perhaps the people who act like it, as long as they are not doing it for just their benefit. The goal for you is to keep on fighting to either stay at the top or get there. You want that 360 view, and so when life throws you curveballs with your health, a break-up, death, destruction or even loss of clients in a major way as to seriously affect or zero out your revenue and cause you to have to get up by the bootstraps AGAIN.

You will eventually burnout and not give a shit.

You will eventually hit the wall where if you have not already questioned what drives you and why?

You will alienate others, even people you do not want to but your choices will isolate you, since you are so used to the role you play with donning your cape and making shit happen.

You may believe it is the only way to be and stay successful, but it is not. Far from it.

You do not need to be a superhero. You can bring a bit of something else to what you do, because YOU are not a one dimensional human being. 

Who’s the good girl and who’s the bad? I was always bad and tried to be good. I just did not fit in with the idea of good although, I was not out in the world doing bad things 24/7. I just questioned authority. I questioned the status quo and at times I felt I could do a better job at my work or in saving the world than others. You too? Cool you’re in the right place!

You may have felt this way, and yet there is a part of you waiting to be proven wrong. Not the mature adult you, but that old part that was conditioned to “girls need to fit in and take care of others first.” Among so many other messages that did not serve you.

The obstacles you place in your way start with you having to be the leader—yes you…if you were like me you were president of all your childhood clubs, you were inventing clubs for people to belong to…you were director and lead actress of all your plays as a little kid and so on….I always had to be in control but who knew then what my trajectory was going to be?

I did.

I marched to my own band. I also saw things from a different perspective, as many female leaders do. The issue only became an issue when I had to get others on my team to get as excited about things, that is when I started to sacrifice myself and say sorry, or worry I was wrong or bad, because someone disagreed with how I did my job or ran my business. Yes, always waiting to be found out but let me apologize in the meantime. 

Do you believe success requires you to separate yourself from your feelings? I’ve seen it happen time and time again where female leaders and entrepreneurs have trouble connecting with unwanted feelings once they’ve attained a certain level of success for fear of losing what they have worked so hard to build. Instead, these women bury themselves in more projects and compartmentalize their feelings, hoping it will simply pass. Not only is this NOT tied to success, disconnecting from your feelings also creates emotional isolation from others.

In this episode I debunk the myth that you have to stuff your feelings (and simply “put up with things” or pound it out at the gym) rather than acknowledging them and… eek!… speaking up. A successful and effective leader is connected to herself, allowing others to see and know her truth. It takes courage, but I’ve got an exercise to get you started.

This podcast came from my observations, my own life and being involved in how women say they support each other, but a lot of the reality (NOT ALL) is there is so much infighting that it makes it impossible to stay consistently on HER team, whoever she is without talking behind her back, after all a nice girl does not disrupt the status quo among women. A good woman lets the hierarchy remain and sucks it in, or spouts it off in ways that end up being beyond her control.

This of course is societal in terms of the environment we are raised in, women don’t need to fight men…they need to stop fighting themselves.

When you stop focusing on the struggle presented by a situation you have with another or other women and focus on creation, love and growth…..your world changes, but it doesn’t feel innate because of our condition. 

The conditioning of a patriarchal society. Now this is not about complaining about that, as I am not about the struggle.

It is about starting with how harsh a judge or an asshole you are to yourself. When you are a dick to yourself, and feel your value is only defined by what you achieve, have or are connected to….you have an opportunity to change your entire life and not only become a true support to other women but to stop being victimized by all the bullshit society saddles on women. 

You may be successful as a mom or as a doctor or a neuroscientist or even an entrepreneur—anything that has been your north star, but maybe you wanted to embody more or have a different occupation…. somewhere, somehow someone said it was not possible for you. 

As young girls we are often given a lot of mixed messages about what is possible, and this is from our home environment, society, teachers, entertainment, peers and so on…ya know…. are you a girly girl or a tom boy situation?

At the time, the person who gave you an uninspiring message may have felt threatened or was parroting what their perspective on girls was based on their exposure. It could even have come from someone who failed at what you want and so you were convinced not to do it. You got the idea that unless a path opened up that ensured success in that direction, it was a no-go for you! You needed to either rebel and show everyone you could do it, or conform in many cases to do what was expected. 

I mean if the statistic is true that 7 in 10 women want to change their careers or 73% of women…what does it say about the first choice we made? Who’s choice was it?

Even in some families girls are given labels—she’s the smart one, she’s the pretty ones and then it is the rock we trip over—what was possible for a sibling from your family’s perspective is not necessarily possible for you.