The Highly-Sensitive Leader Podcast

Many of us are duped into believing that being highly sensitive means that we won’t be able to be as successful as others, or perform as well as others as leaders.

I am here to tell you that this isn’t true.

This week, discover how your life and your leadership will change once you have learned to manage and master your overwhelm.

I share with you how tough it has been for me growing up experiencing overwhelm and anxiety in most situations and with most people.

I show you how I have overcome this and how your world will open up once you have learned to allow and process negative emotions such as overwhelm.

I’m here to tell you that you can be highly sensitive and a high performer. That you can experience strong negative emotions and feel amazing. You can learn to control your sensitivity the way I did. 

And that it doesn’t have to be a complicated process.

I invite you to attend my free training and introduce you to the 3 simple steps I teach to get you out of overwhelm pronto, so you can spend more time thriving as a leader.

To access your free training, simply click: https://www.highly-sensitive-leaders.com/free-training-stop-overwhelm 

Join me this week as I discuss how we as highly sensitive leaders sometimes set expectations for others to behave in a certain way to match our sensitive experience of the world. I show you how these expectations can hinder our wellbeing and performance.

Part of the reason why we get overwhelmed is because we are not taking responsibility for our own emotions and are relying on other people to give us safety, reassurance and a sense of belonging.

I show you what are the things we expect from others and how we do this to protect ourselves and to have control on how much we get upset and hurt. I teach you how this approach of setting expectations on others has in fact the opposite effect and keeps us in disappointment and friction with the world.

I teach you 4 strategies to reframe your expectations, re-align and learn from the non-sensitive world. I show you how much we have to learn from the non-sensitive world, as much as they have a lot to learn from us. I encourage a compassionate and skilful collaboration rather than constant friction and shares practical tips to achieve this.

Access your free questionnaire at www.highly-sensitive-leaders.com

Free training “Master your emotions and avoid overwhelm in 3 simple steps” to be released on August 22nd – stay tuned to my website!

Join me this week as I explore our tendency to procrastinate on our own self-care as highly sensitive leaders.

I share with you how I envision and have worked on my own self-care over the years in order to feel and perform at my best as a highly sensitive person.

I teach you essential skills you need to develop to take your own self-care to the next level and avoid delaying it.

I discuss how important self-care is for highly sensitive leaders and how we very subtly (or not so subtly!) delay, push and procrastinate taking care of ourselves and driving ourselves into overwhelm as a result.

I share with you three top tips and a skillset which will allow you not only to stop self-care procrastination, but to also take your self-care to the next level, in order to master your emotions and perform at your best.

Access your free sensitivity questionnaire and other free resources at www.highly-sensitive-leaders.com

Link to Brittin Oakman’s LI profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brittin-oakman-msc-5543baab/

Thank you, Brittin, for sharing your poetry with the world.

Join us this week as I discuss how highly sensitive leaders and professionals experience perfectionism in our life and in our work. This week the focus is on understanding how perfectionism holds us back and how we can reframe it with developing a mindset of “practice” instead.

I teach you where perfectionism is coming from for us as highly sensitive people and how it manifests in ourselves and in our relationships with other people.

I discuss my concept of strength in excess as applied to perfectionism and show you its negative impacts on our work and leadership when we are out of balance. I also remind us of the value we get from perfectionism and how important it is to keep it in check at all times.

I teach you three ways of reframing the parts of perfectionism which don’t serve us, with three simple practices which you can start applying today. I suggest effective ways of reframing your current perfectionist practices and start implementing alternative ones which will serve you more and allow you to shine and perform as the leader and role-model you truly want to be in the world.

Access your Sensitivity questionnaire and other valuable resources at www.highly-sensitive-leaders.com

Join me this week for a deeper exploration of our highly sensitive body. We learn how our HSP body is wired in its own special way, and the integral place which our body holds in our highly sensitive experience, although we don’t always realize it.

I introduce you to a more “somatic” (focused on the body – “soma” meaning body in ancient Greek) approach to your highly sensitive experience and cover the details of how your brain and nervous system are set up as an HSP.

I discuss the importance for highly sensitive leaders to be connected to our bodies and how the separation of mind and body can be particularly unhelpful for us and our ability to control our sensitive experience.

I encourage you to reconnect with your body and the need for safety and belonging which often drive the highly sensitive body. I give you examples of how your body might respond to certain experiences and shape itself in particular ways which are not always helpful for you.

I share a simple, 3-step approach to re-connecting with your body in a deeper and meaningful way in order to, if needed, re-shape the response and experience your highly sensitive body has learned over time.

Get access to your Sensitive questionnaire at www.highly-sensitive-leaders.com

Join me this week as I help you question whether what your highly sensitive brain sees as a problem is in actual fact a problem.

This way of questioning my own reading of situations and conflicts has been invaluable for me as it allowed me to spend more time and energy on the things which truly needed my attention, and much less time in overwhelm and confusion.

I teach you how this problem-oriented way of thinking impacts us negatively with the way it triggers our emotions, preventing us from achieving our full potential as highly sensitive leaders. 

I show you how worrying about potential problems hinders our experience and the way we are able to access our creativity and problem-solving skills.

I share with you the exact strategy you need to stop this unhelpful pattern, create some space to focus on fewer and real problems, and get rid of the ones which we have somehow absorbed due to our hyper-vigilance.

This strategy is transferable to all areas of your life and will be a game-changer, because it frees up so much space which was previously taken by worrying and which can now be dedicated to using your full potential as a highly sensitive leader.

Access your free Sensitivity questionnaire at www.highly-sensitive-leaders.com

Join me this week as I discuss how highly sensitive leaders naturally tend to take responsibility for other people’s emotions.

The professions we go into give us plenty of opportunities to use our empathy. Problems start for us when we cross the line between listening and taking responsibility for what we hear. When we are on this mad race to “fix” others and make everyone feel OK.

I show you how easy it is for us to cross the line between being empathetic and feeling guilty about what others experience.

I teach you the difference between being purely empathetic and taking responsibility for other people’s emotions, experience and even happiness.

I show you how to manage your gift of empathy in a way which is beneficial to you and to the people you are leading and supporting. 

I teach you several ways to reframe your mindset, as well as practical strategies you can use today to create positive impact for others whilst using a more intentional approach to being empathetic. I show you how to avoid overwhelm and perform at your best in the process.

Head to www.highly-sensitive-leaders.com to access your Sensitivity questionnaire as well as other useful resources.

Join us this week as we explore and celebrate taking things OFF our plate, as opposed to adding things on. 

Highly sensitive leaders often naturally default to stacking up ideas and details of things to do. I share two client stories which show how stacking up drives highly sensitives into overwhelm, which often leads to either procrastination or burn-out.

I show you the three main reasons why highly sensitives resort to “adding on” strategies and struggle to let things go. The overall result is that we think about what needs to be done but actually either don’t get things done, or drive ourselves into the exhaustion crash by over-doing.

I offer a fresh perspective and ways to reframe your “adding on” mindset, to replace it with a “taking off” mindset. This allows you to bring relief immediately, today, as well as start dissolving the deeper-rooted fears keeping you stuck into this unhelpful pattern.

I also share one concrete, immediately applicable strategy which has been a complete game-changer for me and many of my clients. I’m sure it will be for you too!

Eisenhower's 4D matrix: https://slab.com/blog/eisenhower-matrix/

Head to www.highly-sensitive-leaders.com to access your FREE Sensitivity questionnaire, which is a thorough investigation into your physical, mental and emotional sensitivity. It is inspired from the work of Elaine Aron and has been expanded to explore the various ways your sensitivity shows up in your personal life but also in work and leadership situations.

It will give you a clear diagnosis and score to evaluate your sensitivity. It will also unlock your access to the FREE Cheat sheet I have created called “What high sensitivity is and how it manifests” which summarizes in 5 slides all the ways your high sensitivity will show up at work, so you can gain a deep awareness and know where to start.

Join me this week as I explore over-adaptation and how this concept applies to highly sensitive leaders and professionals.

I discuss the theory and frameworks I use to make this concept simple and easy for you to understand. I show you how highly sensitive people are naturally likely to over-adapt without being aware of it and how detrimental this can be to your wellbeing and performance.

I teach you the various ways we highly sensitives over-adapt in personal and professional settings, and how this can be thrilling for us at first. I show you how you are using your natural gifts in excess and how you can rein them in to preserve your physical, mental and emotional wellbeing.

I also bring to the surface some of the deep-rooted fears, like our fear of conflict, which lead us to over-adapt even when this is not the best thing for us to do.

Finally, I show you how over-adaptation can easily switch to under-adaptation and how to bring this to your awareness.

I provide a step-by-step strategy for you to reflect on your experience of over-adaptation and start reacting to people and situations in a way which is more centered on you and your needs.

Find my cheat sheet “What high sensitivity is and how it manifests” at www.highly-sensitive-leaders.com to find out exactly how your high sensitivity manifests in the workplace and in your leadership role.

Join me this week as we discuss what it is like for highly sensitive leaders and professionals to be on the receiving end of intense colleagues. This intensity we perceive and absorb can trigger emotions on our end, and leave us frozen or unable to respond with the clarity of mind we normally have access to.

We as HSPs experience life in an intense way already, physically, emotionally, mentally, socially, and so being exposed to more intensity can be unsettling. Managing unexpected levels of intensity from others, whether positive or negative, can hold us back from voicing our opinions, showing leadership or making quick effective decisions.

First I show you what I mean by “intensity”, how it can manifest in others and how we might respond to it. I share many examples from my own experience and that of several of my clients. I discuss different ways we can be impacted by this intensity and how it can get in the way of how performance, leadership or simply our wellbeing.

Then I share 3 tried and tested strategies which you can start using today to make sense of this intensity you receive, manage it as you receive it and integrate it to your leadership strategy. 

The idea is to embrace our HSP trait and start preparing ourselves accordingly, to be able to manage intensity effectively on the spot, in real situations involving other people, and show up as the leader we truly want to be.