by Dana Theus | Jan 24, 2024 | Coaching Advice, Insights & Inspiration
To kick off Stress Awareness Month, Dana let her mind wander and this is what came out. – InPower Editors
I’ve been working hard lately and last week I hit a wall. My brain couldn’t take another step and it took me 20 minutes to write a two paragraph email simply because I felt so sluggish and uncreative. So three hours before I had planned to stop working I went downstairs to watch a stupid movie with my son before he went back to college. For a few moments I felt like a failure for not finishing the email, but I knew I needed to tap into my ace-in-the-hole stress reduction strategy.
When your brain plays, it creates amazing things. – Click to Tweet
The Surprise Value of Unstructured Time
I don’t remember the first half hour or so of the show (or what the movie was) but suddenly my brain woke up and I found myself laughing light-heartedly. My brain was clear! I started puttering around the room while we giggled at onscreen dumbness.
Note to self: take care of your brain with a dose of humor once in a while.
I read once that the brain takes more energy than any other human organ and I believe it. But I’ve noticed that I can’t eat my way to brain energy. Lots of downsides to that strategy! Brain energy flourishes on other things, too. Just like the rest of my body, it needs rest and work, but I find the most effective stress reduction technique—guaranteed to refresh my mental energy is simply giving it unstructured time to daydream and focus on “nothing”.
Sure, I need my ToDo lists, my intentions, and deadlines, but a few hours of puttering and cleaning or creative play seems to give my mind the kind of energy boost it needs to tap back into its creative best.
And it’s not just me. It’s you too. Psychologists call this phenomenon “incubation” when you daydream and focus on mindless tasks. Your prefrontal cortex relaxes and opens up new mental pathways to make unorthodox connections. Bam! Your brain finds its energy—and maybe some new ideas too!
After cleaning the room and laughing with my son I sat down and banged out that email in five minutes. And it was a much better email! More inspired and concise than the old version I had tried and failed to create. The three hours I hadn’t worked got done in one hour.
How Not to Undermine Your Goof-off Stress Reduction Strategy
I was lucky to be at home on the day I needed to reduce my mental stress and revive my creative mind, but when I first discovered this strategy I worked in an office. I used to reorganize my paperclips and pencil drawer when I hit the mental wall. Or a file cabinet, my reading pile or my pc desktop. That way if a colleague stopped by I looked busy. Nowadays sometimes perusing cat videos on Facebook can have the same effect if I just need a little break. So does “forcing myself” to stare out the window until I finish a cup of tea.
Is this a cop out? Is giggling at cat videos just an excuse not to work? It can be, in which case you might find yourself feeling guilty—adding stress to an already stressed brain. Don’t do this! It undermines the effectiveness of your strategic goof-off time! D
How not to feel guilty? For unstructured time and mindless tasks to give you a creative boost it’s important to choose to give your brain a break. Believe you’re investing in your ability to do a better job when you refocus and you will be!
Ironic as it sounds, it takes mental practice to believe goofing off is a strategic investment in your productivity. Conduct some mental experiments on yourself to find out what kind of daydreaming and puttering help you get more done. Be intentional about how you deploy your stupid movie time, your midday yard work, shopping or extra walks around the block.
What strategies do you find most useful to reviving a stressed out and exhausted brain? Share in comments or our coaching forums.
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by Dana Theus | Jan 20, 2024 | Emotional Intelligence at Work, InPower Women Blog, Women in Leadership
Is women’s emotional intelligence (EQ) likely to help you or hurt you when you’re on the leadership track? How well do you handle your emotions at work?
Too many women and men read that question as a damnation of women who can’t control their emotions in the office. In fact, it’s more important that you learn to use your emotions intentionally at work, than merely control them. And in the ability to use their emotions, both women and men have a potential advantage.
We might even start with, “Do your emotions help you do your job better?” They do! Emotional Intelligence is one of the most important business and leadership assets you can develop, but emotional intelligence doesn’t always look as “emotional” as most people think. Often, it’s the more subtle emotional clues that give you the “intelligence” to decode a tricky interpersonal situation, read a negotiating partner or motivate challenging employees (and employees in challenging situations.)
How does understanding emotional clues make you a good leader?
Here’s a short list:
- Reduce stress (yours and others’)
- Build win-win relationships
- Motivate yourself and others
- Communicate more effectively
- Give and receive constructive feedback
- Run meetings
- Handle difficult situations and people
I often hear people say that women’s emotional intelligence is more acute than men’s. Any broad generalization like this is going to be easily proven wrong, but it’s true that women do tend to be good at empathy, social cues, collaboration. However, men tend to be better at managing difficult and stressful emotions in social situations, including not allowing too much emotional empathy keep them from taking needed action. So maybe a direct comparison is less useful than an assumption that we all have emotional intelligence and that we can all become better at using it. In fact, given how important EQ is for being a good leader (according to all the leadership gurus out there), if women had all the EQ they needed, wouldn’t we be better represented in leadership than we are?
Get ahead strategy: use your emotions intelligently – Click To Tweet
As you can probably already tell, I’m a big believer in emotional intelligence as a coach and I see many opportunities for women to refine their natural emotional talent. I’m not talking about emotions like crazy-in-love or seeing-red-anger. I’m talking about the emotional clues that help you understand yourself and others better. Intelligence like this comes in handy when you’re trying to suss out things like:
- when people are buying into what you’re saying and when they’re holding back without saying so directly;
- when you’re genuinely excited and want to go for a new assignment and when you’re not interested but likely to do a poor job because you think you “should” do it even though you’re heart’s not in it; and
- how to tell what to say to keep a rocky working relationship from spiraling out of control.
Women with Emotional Intelligence Often Outperform Men
While the benefits of the above scenarios may seem obvious from an interpersonal standpoint to help reduce stress and improve communications, there is another benefit for women–promotions and salary increases! It’s long been known that good leaders of all genders modulate their responses based on the situation. This kind of situational leadership means that when time is short and the stakes high, for example, the leader can be decisive without needing to bring a lot of people into the decision process (which threaten to bog down the process unnecessarily). That same leader can encourage and stimulate more collaborative, consensus-oriented discussion when there is time and engaging more people in the decision builds consensus and buy-in. Another example of situational leadership might be that when a worker is struggling to learn a new skill the leader can be patient, supportive and non judgmental. In other circumstances where the worker simply isn’t bringing their A game to the office, that same leader might choose to be more judgmental and less patient.
When a single leader demonstrates the ability to use judgement to decide on the most appropriate response in any given situation, they tend to advance in salary, title and responsibility. Impressively, however, in these increases, women outperform men. This means that a woman’s best chance for advancement at work is to master her emotional intelligence and use it to build a wide range of leadership responses to any given situation.
So how do you start refining your emotional intelligence and leveraging it for your leadership skills? Start by paying attention to your emotions and looking for the good information they’re bringing you. Become aware of how they guide you to make decisions and take actions tailored to each situation more effectively. Stop pushing emotions away and start inviting them in for the gifts they bring along with them. If you’re struggling with too many negative emotions, practice detriggering, but keep paying attention to what the good – and bad – feelings are doing to help you. This isn’t a race won by the hare, it’s definitely a race where the tortoise has the advantage. Be patient with others, and with yourself.
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by Dana Theus | Jan 18, 2024 | Change Management, Coaching Advice, Dear Dana (Workplace Advice)
Welcome to “Dear Dana”, our weekly column to give you career and workplace advice/coaching. Please write in and tell me about a career challenge or frustration you’re facing at the office! – Dana Theus
Dear Dana, I loved your article on why my dream job isn’t a dream! It sums up how I’ve been feeling lately in terms of my dream job. As you know I have had some pretty tough work environments and I am wondering if it is possible to change a bad work culture. Is it better to stay and try to help improve it, or is it better to search for the right job? — Wondering in Washington
Dear Wondering,
Glad you liked the article about dream jobs. Your question is an important one, can we change a toxic corporate culture or should we just give up and leave? I think I’ve had that question on my mind in every job I’ve ever had – especially at the end when I’m getting tired of the extra “stuff” I have to deal with as a result of that particular job.
I don’t mean to sound wishy-washy but the answer is yes and yes. Here are three things to consider when thinking about how to handle a toxic corporate culture.
1: Get what you can
Every job has some gifts to give you, whether it’s learning a new skill, new ways of handling challenges or how to survive and work to shift a tough corporate culture for the better. You owe it to yourself not to throw the baby (i.e., career experience and knowledge) out with the bathwater (leaving a toxic culture). That said, there comes a point in every position where it’s taking more from you than it’s giving. That’s when it’s time to go. The trick is to be aware of this throughout your tenure there and stay conscious about (a) getting the experience and knowledge you can while also (b) staying attuned to what might be a good next move and planting the seeds to get you there when the time is right. You want to stay aware of noticing “when the time is right,” so you can start making your exit before the toxicity has really gotten to you because if you’re not careful, you’ll carry it with you to your next job. The last thing you want to do is to “hate your job” all the way through, feel “stuck” in a toxic environment and then have it “stick” to you when you leave. Ick.
2: Shift the parts of the culture you can
You also owe it to yourself, and the people you work with, to do what you can to shift a bad corporate culture in the ways you can. Why is it your responsibility? Because organizational cultures are made up of people and a crappy culture can’t change unless the crappy attitudes of the people do. Of course you’re not the only one who’s part of the problem (i.e., by contributing to or tolerating a bad culture), and you’re also not the only one who’s part of the solution. So you have to do your part.So you have to do your part. First, you can learn to detrigger to release the toxic feelings that contribute to your own toxic attitudes, such as frustration, anger, bitterness. When you can reliably stay clear of the emotional food fight* flying around the office, you can let the toxicity slide right off you. A non-toxic attitude polishes up your personal brand and gives you executive presence so that even in a toxic culture, people want to work with you and the leadership sees that you’re able to stay steady even when things are tough. This can open new doors, and behind some of them there will be less toxicity.
* An office food fight is what I always imagine when I see a toxic business culture because the emotional active/passive aggressiveness, insensitivity and outright betrayals are like invisible things flying through the air and even though you can’t see them, they make a serious mess.
When people change, organizations change. – Click To Tweet
3: Learn to create “culture bubbles”
Another reason to build your personal brand to include “managing yourself well in a bad corporate culture” is when you demonstrate that you can withstand the stresses of toxic corporate cultures, you’re also demonstrating leadership that can help you protect your team from some of the toxicity, making them more effective. Happy people are productive people and genuinely not letting the food fight land on you or your team builds their loyalty and your reputation. Sometimes this means you spend a bit more energy helping them ward off the toxicity but to some degree that’s part of your job. Even in good corporate cultures leaders should be mentoring and helping run interference with other parts of the organization to help their teams get things done. In a toxic culture this becomes even more important.
One other thing to remember about a toxic corporate culture is that its not necessarily equally toxic for everyone there. Everyone has a different experience and even though “all your colleagues” are complaining, there are people there who are using it to their advantage. Be the latter and when it’s taking more than it’s giving you, leave with a clear conscious and good experience under your belt.
Good luck and when you’re exploring other opportunities, be sure to check out our career planning tips to help you.
Good luck and let us know how your career search goes!
Dana Theus
Executive Coach
P.S. – Have a question you’d like anonymous support on? Write me!
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by Guest Author | Jan 16, 2024 | Emotional Intelligence at Work, Employee Engagement, EQ & Soft Skills Research
I rescued a pup last Fall. His name is Loki and he’s a Pomeranian and something-or-other mix. One thing I didn’t know about a rescue dog is that they’ve often been traumatized (e.g., abusive owners, time on the streets etc.) and it takes a while for their real personalities to become apparent. This was clearly true for Loki. He was subdued to the point of being depressed when I first brought him home, but slowly his perky little personality started to emerge. He’d clearly been well loved by a family because he was house trained, allowed me to groom him and felt at home curling up among the pillows on the bed or couch. I was relieved that he didn’t require much training.
The life of a coach is a life of analogies and patterns. I’m always seeing connections between people and the things we find in our lives — like dogs! So while walking Loki recently and pondering a current client’s dilemma, I was reminded of a direct report I had a long time ago. His name was Mike, and he was my first major employee performance problem. Mike and I got along well. He was bright and self-motivated. He was thoughtful, tended to produce good work and didn’t require a lot of house training. Mike and I slipped into a comfortable working relationship very quickly. I thought all was well.
Perspectives Matter
Similar to Mike joining my team, Loki slipped into my life pretty easily and I didn’t focus as much on training him as on getting to know him and his quirks (and teaching him mine!).
Then, the first neighbor complaint: Loki barks when I’m out of the house.
Of course, my little puppy has separation anxiety leftover from the trauma of wandering the streets for weeks before being rescued. But what can I do? I’m gone when he misbehaves and when he’s around me, Loki is my dream dog.
This reminded me of my reaction the first time my boss approached me about Mike. He said that in the next reorganization the powers that be were planning to let Mike go; he had a reputation for being difficult. I wasn’t really given a choice in Mike’s fate, and I was flummoxed. I didn’t find him difficult. By contrast, I found him very easy to work with. I liked Mike, and to make matters worse for me personally, he liked doing certain reporting analyses that I didn’t have the expertise to do. The things that seemed to bother others about Mike didn’t bother me at all. But I really didn’t want to lose Mike, so I convinced my manager to give me three months to work with him. With the clock ticking, I started devising plans to help him keep his job.
Engagement Is Personal
When I learned about Loki’s bad behavior behind my back I started getting advice from dog experts. Among other things, I learned that training gives dogs a sense of confidence and reduces separation anxiety. I was a little skeptical that this would work with Loki because he seemed hard to train. Without a treat in my hand he preferred doing what dogs do, not what I wanted him to do. No, the dog experts admonished me, it’s you who’s hard to train. It’s your job to learn to train him. After some more effort I affirmed that if I didn’t have a treat in my hand, I couldn’t sustain his attention. “So keep treats handy, the dog experts said. Even though his behavior didn’t bother me, I started finding things to train him on — treats in hand! — to engage him more. I raised my expectations of him, paid attention to what motivated him and took time out of my busy schedule to focus on evolving his behavior to be more acceptable and useful for the place I live.
Turns out he’ll do almost anything for turkey bits.
Mike didn’t have any particular love for turkey, but when I sat him down to tell him he was on probation (a surprise to him too) and that I was going to help him keep his job, he was very grateful and started paying more attention. I talked to other people about what bothered them about Mike. As I talked with others, I learned that I had become lax in certain areas — allowing Mike to bring deadlines down to the wire for instance. When I thought about it I realized that Mike’s last-minute attitude about deadlines was annoying and caused me more stress than I liked, too. So we started to focus on deadlines.
Just like Loki trots alongside me happily now instead of chasing squirrels when I have turkey in my hand, Mike started coming prepared to our weekly meetings. Deadlines were met early when they could be, and when they had to be last minute everyone was informed to reduce stress. With my support Mike became more engaged with his work and attentive to building habits that made him a more reliable team member. By the end of his three month probation, the higher ups agreed Mike was on track and agreed to keep him. Mike was happy he kept his paycheck and I was happy that I didn’t have to hire a new Mike or figure out how to do those reports myself!
Proactive, Positive Support Can Save A Job
I was reminded of Mike again recently when I read an article about how Amazon has started a “Pivot” Career Ambassador program to give low performers on-the-job coaching to help them improve their skills and ability to provide value or help them find a new job. As Mike and Loki both taught me, taking a proactive and positive approach to employee performance can have a good impact on employee performance and save unnecessary turnover.
In the Amazon article there is some debate about the wisdom of investing in performance coaching for low performers. Shouldn’t we invest in high-performers instead?
Here’s my expert opinion as Mike’s boss and as an executive coach: we should invest in coaching everyone.
Just like I had slipped into complacency with Mike and his last minute deadlines, and with Loki’s squirrel chasing, most of us slip into accepting low performance from employees until it’s too late. We write people off as “untrainable and uncoachable” when it’s really we who need to learn how to train and coach. We get into avoidance patterns until someone else makes it impossible for the behavior to continue, and all too often we take out the problem on the employee (or the dog) instead of figuring out what it takes for that person to do well in that job, or help them move on to another job where they can be more successful.
Good employee performance coaching can also help retain employees with the company, if not the job. Sometimes even a trainable and coachable employee is a good fit for the company but not for the job. Sometimes they outgrow the job and need a new challenge. Why waste talent if there’s a better fit in the company? The average private sector tenure is below four years; why lose a good employee who’s outgrown the job they were hired for a few years ago if there’s a better fit in another group? Our careers are more fluid these days and Career Ambassadors can help keep talent in the company by helping them grow into new opportunities.
I think Amazon’s Career Ambassadors are a fabulous idea to help low performers figure out how to succeed or move on, but instead of focusing only on low performers, I’d suggest giving Career Ambassadors (i.e., career and effectiveness coaches) to everyone. If your company won’t let you bring in coaches for your employees, my suggestion is for you, as their manager, to take on that role with everyone on your team and get yourself a coach to help you see your own blind spots and learn to become a coach leader.
So are my neighbors still annoyed at me and my dog? The jury’s still out on whether our new training regime will calm Loki’s separation anxiety, but he is definitely more engaged and I see potential to teach him all kinds of things that will make him a more productive pet.
I managed to save Mike’s job, so I have high hopes I can save Loki too.
Check out the resources in the InPower Coaching EQ at Work and Soft Skills Research Index.
Rewriting the narrative on women and power
by Dana Theus | Jan 14, 2024 | Career Development, Coaching Advice, Personal Branding
Let’s face it: work is work. Even the best dream job turns into a daily grind eventually. And what if you’re in a job search? Looking for a job is work, too! What can make work less work? Hint: know the answer to the question “What’s your dream job?”
Wait. You may be asking: Is it even possible to lighten your soul, seek career success and succeed at work all at once?
As part of our recent soul-lightening series of posts it’s time to take a look at the motivating power of knowing your dream job. At InPower Coaching we call it your “perfect job” because the dream isn’t about the job, it’s about you. Knowing which job would be the perfect match for your skills, motivations and goals will lighten you up and give you the energy you need to find success.
Why is it important to lighten your soul when thinking about your career? Let me tell you about my client, Terry. Terry was really good at her job and enjoyed it, but when I met her she was coming off a bad boss experience that really sapped her confidence. Her position was being eliminated and she needed income—fast. She was pretty clear on what she wanted but struggled to believe she could have it. As a result, her job search wasn’t moving fast enough for her and she was beginning to experience the panic that sets in when you start to imagine your income drying up within the next 30 days.
Let’s take a look at how taking a “perfect job” approach helped Terry in two scenarios: (more…)
by Dana Theus | Jan 12, 2024 | Career Development
Most of the time when I tell people that I am researching women and business, the conversation wanders into what I now think of as “the analysis paralysis” conundrum in which we try to suss out the why’s of women’s place in society. Here are common themes that come up.
- Women are more collaborative than men because we’re genetically programmed for nurturing, so maybe it’s not natural for us to lead authoritatively and authentically? (Research says no.)
- Girls don’t think it’s “cool” to be good at math, they’re used to seeing themselves objectified in the media, “insert other cultural truism here;” so how can we change social stereotypes?
- Maybe mean-girl bosses are mean because they’ve had to no role models and figure there’s no cultural tolerance for more women at the top, which makes them competitive with other women they see trying to displace them – like trying to keep the alpha female position in the pack?
While interesting mental fodder, I’ve come to see this kind of discussion as unhelpful to the general dialog or for our individual career advancement challenges, because it usually leads us into explaining away the problem instead of confronting the reality and strategizing what to do about it.
Here’s a stark example a friend of mine told me about the cost of such analytical and empathetic reactions. She held a second-in-command position in an company where her second day on the job her male boss told her – to her face – that she would fail. In fact, she lasted almost two years (which everyone working with her seemed to believe was a great success under the circumstances.) After one particularly bruising disagreement that she lost rather publicly, she received emails from female colleagues within and outside the company, at her peer level and more senior, empathizing with her situation. Not one email held advice. In trying to figure out what to do about the situation, she felt betrayed by her male peers and abandoned by her female colleagues – even as they were trying to “help” her by demonstrating they, too, had faced and lost such challenges. Where was the advice on how to win next time?
To the extent we spend our time analyzing our place in business and society more than we spend strategizing actions we can take to deal with it, we’re holding ourselves prisoner to the traditional feminist narrative that holds that we’re oppressed. This only solidifies our perception that we’re oppressed. The InPowering approach to this is to accept things as they are and move to make them better. This is what I find so refreshing about talking with Gen Y women. Raised to believe in their own value, most of them start off here and don’t get stuck in analysis paralysis.
Analysis Can Give Out An Unintended Pass
There’s nothing wrong with having sensitivity to the why’s and wherefore’s of any situation, especially those which are unfair. Understanding history helps us avoid repeating it and certainly research must explore the past and highlight differences. But just like we should place limits on our empathy to help others interpersonally grow through discomfort sometimes, we must also place limits on our over-analysis at a larger level. If we – meaning women and men who are interested in fully tapping into the deep talent pool professional women represent for our economy – get stuck in the analysis, we never move out of paralysis. If we’re not careful, we explain away all that potential to the point where thanks to our analysis it can never be fully tapped. If this happens, we end up giving out a pass to all the bad behavior, thus perpetuating it.
As a blogger (I’m not sure “journalist” quite fits here), I take this responsibility for not perpetuating the helplessness that analysis paralysis can generate. That’s why at InPower Women we’re being very intentional about the new narrative that we’re developing and using, which emphasizes positive, actionable aspects of the analysis we do and report on. We are emphasizing the potential and example for women and men to work together in partnership and create stronger leadership teams that value the strengths both bring to the table. We welcome anyone who wants to write in this new narrative to join us. We are decidedly NOT going to fall into the trap of handing out passes for behavior.
A Special Place In Hell
“There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t support other women.” – Madeline Albright
Madeline has it right. Of all the analysis paralysis that makes me crazy, I have to say the discussions that excuse mean girl bosses is the one I have virtually no tolerance for. Can we please stop giving mean girl bosses special attention and just accept that a jerk is a jerk whether s/he is a woman or not?
I believe that when we can start calling on women to stop mean girl behavior instead of trying to explain it, we will have taken a big step towards accepting that women are people, and we are not all to be lauded and protected simply because of our gender. There’s a special place in hell for anyone – woman or man – who doesn’t support other people – man or woman.
Be the solution. Focus on building your own internal power so you can accomplish good things in the world. Spend enough time understanding what’s messed up to present a powerful and positive alternative and then move on following your own truth and model a better way. Don’t get stuck in the hell of trying to empathize with someone else’s dysfunction – of an individual or a society – or you are doomed to become trapped in it.
Do you go out of your way to provide strategy and advice to colleagues or spend most of your energy analyzing why things are? What habits do your colleagues and girlfriends fall into in conversation? Do you find yourself in powerless kibbutzing about the negative or powerful conversations about to make things different? Should we be easier on women? Work harder to understand them? Should we give out passes and forgive? Pass on your wisdom in comment below!
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by Dana Theus | Jan 10, 2024 | Coaching Advice, Personal Mastery
I no longer believe in ToDo lists. I sometimes use them to help clear my mind of stuff that’s in the way of important thoughts, BUT, I have found that in being productive, in running effective meetings and even in moving projects along a diffuse and choppy timeline, lists of 5, 7 or 10 things are not nearly as effective as
A
Single
Well-crafted
Intention.
How Do You Set A Leadership Intention?
For this quick-read I’ve listed the 5 step process I use in setting useful intentions at the end of this post.
Weed Whackers Can’t Lead
Why Intentions? At several points in my career, I’ve been a project manager – an in-the-weeds type sweating over the impossible-to-keep-current-MS-Project-sheet. Project management is a great way of thinking because it forces you to look into the future and identify dependencies and critical path that will tank your effort unless you clear the way for them. But it also teaches you to create more lists, more often, in more minute detail than are really necessary unless you’re building a rocketship or complex software.
What I’ve learned building complex software (no space adventures for me, sadly) is that creating lists will quickly lead you into the weeds and if the leader is in the weeds, who’s looking for signs of a forest fire or how to handle success?
After all those MSProject-building years, here’s how I now manage projects – with this simple intention:
The project succeeds and everything that needs to get out of the way for that to happen – does.
As a leader (no longer a project manager) I set this as MY goal. Other people can keep the detail lists if they need to; my job is to make sure we get across the goal line.
We run our meetings according to this intention. Many go something like this:
“First item, what’s mostly likely to interrupt our dog’s inevitable success this week at catching the bus?”
“George forgot to open the gate.”
“Ah, George. Someone go wake him up. What else is in the way?”
And so on until all the things threatening our success simply work themselves loose and we can focus on where to get driving lessons for the poor dog who’s about to face a major challenge.
Letting Go Of the Details
I know a lot of folks are uncomfortable releasing the details – as am I when the details seem overwhelming. I still jot lists, but my goal is to toss that piece of paper out as quickly as I can after accomplishing it. I don’t use them to lead. Here’s two reasons I let them go:
- People don’t want leaders who are too good at the weeds. I could go on forever on this subject, but since Google did exhaustive research on the subject as they data mined “How To Build A Better Manager”, you can read all about it in the NY Times.
- If you set your intention well, the important details will find you. One beautiful thing about being human is that – despite the frequent occurrence of forgetting where you left your keys– the brain forgets nothing that the heart wants to accomplish. And it really wants to accomplish intentions; so amazing things get remembered when you’re focused on an intention.
The 5 Ways to Set A Leadership Intention That Will Stick
You can write lists to help your brain remember later when it’s important, but don’t get caught up in the lists. Trust your brain to accomplish what your heart intends and the vast majority of the time, it will.
Ok. So I promised you a list of things that will let you get rid of lists and focus on single, powerful intentions.
- Empty your mind. Write the stupid list so your brain stops shoving unimportant crap at you. You can probably throw it away once you’ve written it. If your brain is clear it’s done it’s job.
- Take a moment to imagine what success feels like when your project, company, meeting, __________ is crazy successful. What’s your emotional state? How do you celebrate? What is no longer keeping you up at night and which project gremlins are finally at peace? (Hint: take a moment ahead of time to feel the peace, it will help you through the dark times.) What new problems do you face? What new opportunities? Now describe it as though it exists today – this is your intention (write it down).
- See the path between where you are now and where success lies, clear, uncluttered and open. Know that things will try to encroach on the path and try to mess it up, but know that you will see them coming and fix whatever conditions are necessary to ensure they don’t interrupt success. Know you’ll accept any adjustments they will help you make and simply keep going. If you see any already crowding too close, jot them down and deal with them immediately (throw the jotted list away asap once it’s dealt with).
- Commit to yourself to achieve your intention. Feel free to declare this to others as well. In allowing others to bear witness to your commitment, you give it power.
- Remember your intention. You wrote it down, right? Remind yourself of it often – at the beginning of every day, meeting, project review, whatever frequency makes sense. You’ll be surprised what details just come to you at the exact time you can deal with them most effectively. Don’t question it, just be glad your intention is working and get down to doing the work.
This basic intention-setting process works on anything, not just business and leadership challenges, but weekend errands lists and vacation scheduling as well.
Try it and report back. And if you do this already, share! How does intention-setting simplify your business? Allow you to lead from a less frazzled, more centered place? Has it ever worked more or less miraculously than you expected? Hoped? Planned? What’s the biggest project you ever succeeded with by setting intention?
Rewriting the narrative on women and power
by Dana Theus | Jan 6, 2024 | Career Development, Coaching Advice, Leadership
Back in the old days, companies did branding and people did leading. Not so today. Now-a-days if you want to get into, or stay in, leadership and other positions of influence you must have personal branding. In our overwhelmed world, brands – both personal and commercial – consolidate the information consumers, clients and hiring committees need to know about us and our products into intuitively understandable packages that are memorable and valuable (or not). To make things more confusing, because commercial branding is more important in our noisy marketplace, leaders who never needed to know anything about branding before – CFOs and VPs of Engineering for example – today must be conversant in how branding effects their careers as well as companies.
If you’re not careful in the all this brand happiness, you might accidentally start trying to brand yourself like a bar of soap or brand your company’s bar of soap like a personality. While there’s a little value in both those approaches, beware the differences or you’ll drive away two markets at once.
What do Personal Branding and Commercial Branding Have In Common?
Even in the olden times, we had “personal branding” but it was called something else; it was called “reputation.” Products and companies have reputations too, and in this truism is the common ground between our professional identities and the widgets and thingamajigs we work so hard to profit from.
Branding can be hard to grasp because it doesn’t have it’s own line item in the financials. Even though you can do market research to try to quantify its equity, it’s still hard to prove a brand’s value because you can’t scientifically test the alternative to your brand (i.e., your market value without your brand/reputation.) All very wishy-washy, but in the valuation business at least, there are multiples for brand equity and several public indices for trying to quantify it.
The wishy-washiness is unavoidable, however, because the fact is, you don’t control your brand equity, your audience does. At the end of the day, a brand isn’t what you mean it to be, it’s what those who interact with it believe, feel and experience when they deal with the branded thing (you and the soap). All you control is what that you present to them.
This is the key to all branding, tall and small. Brands are successful when they stand for something meaningful to their audience and are consistent in this meaning. They have soul, which makes them trustworthy and believable.
That’s it. That’s the secret sauce. Learn this and you and your soap will profit from a strong brand.
How is your personal branding different from your soap’s brand?
To stop at that commonality would be to make the mistake too many leaders do. Having spent over fifteen years in marketing, and branded any number of commercial products and services, I can tell you that the most frequent branding mistake executives make is to equate their logo with their brand. Soap sales go south and the CEO starts casting about for a new logo and new messaging, crying, “the market just doesn’t understand us.” She or he turns to the marketing chief and tosses some money on the table to hire a big firm to come up with a magic color splotch, a new soap box and a new web site. Sometimes this is too little, too late. Quite often, the market understands better than the leadership that the soap has lost its way. It’s lost its meaning and its soul.
And why shouldn’t it? Soap has no soul. A product’s only meaning is the meaning we give it. A company, a product, a business doesn’t have a soul. But people do. People choose what we stand for and what our businesses and products stand for as well. Aligned in what we stand for, we collectively give power to our brands, through the culture we create with our many decisions and our personal behavior. Misaligned, we throw money at color splotches and deprive the people who give meaning to the brand the chance to be associated with something powerful and bigger than themselves.
The difference between you and the soap you sell is that you choose what you stand for. The soap can only ever be the soap. You, by contrast, can and will be many things through the course of your life and your career. You can and will stand for many things. Good leaders know this, and good companies want this in their leaders. They want their leaders to stand for something more than soap.
The question is, what do you stand for and do you take that stand consciously and consistently? How does your soul lead you in leading your company? How does your most fundamental uniqueness contribute meaning to your life and your business? These are hard questions to answer even for the most self-aware (and the best leaders are self-aware!) I encourage you to contemplate this until you can take a considered stand for yourself and for your soap. I invite you to take the personal leadership journey into your most authentic self, and emerge with the clarity that allows you to craft your personal brand so that it becomes the power behind your success, no matter how many brands of soap you stand for over the course of your career.
This article originally appeared in Smartblogs on Leadership.
Take charge of your career development to get the job that supports your work and your life. Check out the tools and resources in the InPower Coaching Career Center.
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What got you here won’t get you ahead. Stop working twice as hard for too little recognition.
by Guest Author | Jan 4, 2024 | Career Development, InPower Women Blog, Leadership
Many times the voice in our head holds us back. So it is quite often the voice in our head that needs to give us permission to move forward. Whether you’re an entrepreneur or not, Elizabeth’s advice will give you permission to do this more often! – InPower Editors
Don’t stand in the way of your own success. Give yourself permission to succeed in exactly the ways you want. – Click to Tweet
What if the only thing holding you back from experiencing the life and building the business of your dreams is yourself?
In general, women tend to struggle with more of a “confidence gap“ than men. Learning to have an ownership mindset and understanding how to communicate in an effective, factual way can help you feel confident and empowered at work. But when you own your own business, the only person to manage up to is yourself. Sometimes that can pose the most difficult challenge because you can only advance to a level that your mind perceives is possible. Once you expand your view of what you perceive as possible, you need to give yourself permission to believe that these possibilities exist for you.
As a woman business owner for over eight years, I’ve seen for myself and others that we need to give ourselves permission in these three key areas to move forward.
Permission to Be You
Being a woman in business puts you in a delicate situation. In my experience, you need to work very hard to give yourself permission to act and build your business in manner that’s congruent with who you are as a person. Don’t typecast yourself. I have an enormous amount of respect for many women business owners who focus on only serving women, who share their personal lives extensively — baby photos and all — and talk about things like channeling your inner goddess. But frankly, that’s just not me. My business serves both men and women. I keep my private relationships private. And I don’t focus on “feminine energy.”
On the other hand, I’m far from the stereotypical hard-driving, high-growth, VC-funded tech entrepreneur who lives by analytics and sleeps in the office. I own a primarily service-based business, focus on a sustainable lifestyle and believe that emotions — both my own and those of my audience — play a critical role in how effective my business is.
Give yourself permission not to fit a mold of what a “female entrepreneur” should or shouldn’t be, and allow your brand to grow accordingly. Unapologetically be yourself, and you will have the greatest capacity to thrive as an entrepreneur.
Permission to Pivot
Just because a direction was right for you or your business in the past doesn’t mean that you need to keep doing the same thing now. It’s natural to evolve and change over time and for your business to do so based on changing market demands, personal growth and emerging opportunities.
If you don’t like your business’s direction, shift it. You’re the boss. You don’t need to wait for someone to give you permission to serve a new market, develop a new product or service or reinvent your company entirely.
I lean into the risk when I’m considering a new direction. While in this phase, I continue to work with my existing clients but shift my business development focus to acquiring clients for the new potential product or service. If I can and I like how the process develops, I build up that new part of my business and either keep the other parts at a maintenance level or let them naturally drop off. By taking this approach, I can explore new areas of growth without a huge financial risk if an endeavor doesn’t end up as I expected.
Give yourself permission to explore the viability of your ideas. Remain open to pursuing them if you receive great results. Let them go if you don’t.
Permission to Be Happy
As an entrepreneur, if you’re not happy, something is wrong. You have the primary responsibility to redirect the course of your business. Sometimes that looks like making space in your schedule for essential wellness activities such as sleep, exercise and relaxation. Other times, it looks like a complete overhaul of the way that your business operates.
Just because you built something, someone wants you to do something, or you can make money doing something, doesn’t mean that you can or should move forward. Every business goes through some stressful seasons. But if you begin to dread or resent your company on a regular basis, it’s time to figure out what needs to change and shift. Also if you really, really love what you’ve created and it’s working, you don’t need to change what you’re doing just because others perceive something else as “successful.” For example, I love living in the Midwest. Although I appreciate my network on the coasts, I don’t have a desire to move to these epicenters because that would have a negative impact on my health and happiness.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, if you want to build a high-growth, fast-track business in Silicon Valley, go for it! Just because you’ll find a larger number of men at the table doesn’t mean that you’re in the wrong place. You should do what allows you to fulfill your potential. Find the people, places and business opportunities that not only produce a dopamine rush of initial excitement but also end up leaving you satisfied and fulfilled at the end of the day.
Consider this permission granted to be YOU; with a business as big or small, as local or as international, as focused or as diverse as you want. No one but you can define the scope of what’s possible and no one but you can dare to believe that you can make it there.
The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.
Originally posted on The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC)
About author: Elizabeth Grace Saunders is the founder and CEO of Real Life E®, a time coaching and training company, and the author of “The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment: How to Achieve More Success With Less Stress.”
Take charge of your career development to get the job that supports your work and your life. Check out the tools and resources in the InPower Coaching Career Center.
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What got you here won’t get you ahead. Stop working twice as hard for too little recognition.
by Guest Author | Jan 2, 2024 | Coaching Advice, Personal Mastery
I’m a list maker. There’s something very gratifying for me to be able to cross things off my “list”. They’re done. Finished. It feels good and satisfying. I’m sure those of you who are list-makers can relate. But what about the task list that never ends? The one that just keeps getting bigger and becomes overwhelming? Do you have one of those? Tackling the never ending to do list can be quite a feat – even for someone like me who gets so much satisfaction from “getting things done”.
How do you successfully get through that never-ending task list? Is it even possible?
Many of my clients are high achieving, high performing women who have not one but many never-ending ‘to-do’ lists. Sometimes these lists can become overwhelming, to the point where they are avoided, and then become an even bigger source of stress for my clients. What I typically hear them say is “If I can just get through this pile of things to do, then I’d feel better” or “If I can just plow through this list, then my mind would rest and I’d feel at peace”, or “When this to-do list is complete, I’ll take a day off”. What they often discover is that approaching the list from that perspective usually doesn’t work because the to-do list never ends. We know this is true. Busyness never ends. There will always be “things to do” on top of the things we already have to do. Waiting for the to-do list to be complete to feel better or feel at peace or take the day off turns into a never-ending waiting game. What my clients also discover is that dealing with your to-do list or feelings of overwhelm or excessive busyness from the opposite approach is what helps tackle the tasks on the list successfully – even those that seem to never end.
What the opposite approach means is to first, stop and take a breath
Allow yourself space to rest and feel at peace before tackling the list. Take the day off first and then work on the big pile of things on your desk. When you feel overwhelmed to the point of avoiding what you have to “do”, it’s a big sign that you need a break. But those signs are typically ignored – we think we need to push ourselves and plow through the list and THEN we’ll feel at ease. When you push through from the place of overwhelm and exhaustion, you don’t get much done. Why? Because you’re tired. You need a break. You need to allow yourself the space to recharge and restore yourself. Doing this not only makes the task list look less ominous but also helps you actually be productive when you’re working on it.
Giving yourself the time to be at peace, to take a break and feel rested allows you to have more energy and be a 100 times more productive than if you just “plowed through”. I know the tendency is to plow through the never-ending to-dos. It’s my tendency too but it almost never works. I encourage you to do the opposite. The next time you feel overwhelmed by your task list and find yourself saying things like “I’ll schedule the day off when I finish this project” or “Once I get though all this I’ll feel better”, do the opposite. Step away from the list. Take the day off. Go for a 20-minute walk outside and breathe in the fresh air. Recharge yourself, bring yourself peace, and then tackle the to-do list. Just try it and see what happens.
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