Tag: Leadership

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Communication Leadership

In the Room Where IT Happened

communication

Leaders need to know about where they started to know where to go now #leadership #culture #communication

Hi, everybody. Sylvia Lafair here, with a tip for Tuesday and I have a question. Do you know where you were in the room where it happened? You know, Hamilton’s success has brought that song to everybody’s mind. I want to be in a room where it happened while we were in the room where it happened. There are two rooms I’m talking about right now. One is where you were conceived. And it’s a powerful concept to understand what happened at that moment when the sperm and the egg met and it became a you as the nine months went on.

We’ll talk about that in a minute. But the second place, the other room where it happened was the delivery room or the back of a taxi cab or a home birth, wherever you were. Those two areas are so critical to all of us, not just to women, to all of us, because when we understand what was going on in the room where it happened, we have a better sense of where to go now and what to do.

And we are not taking people down deep enough to look at some of these things that have created blocks, that have created overwhelm, that have created self-doubt, that have created the imposter syndrome that lives in us. But much of it happened in that room back then. And I’d like to throw out an idea just kind of imagined idea. John Lennon imagined idea. What if every child conceived was conceived in love? Every child conceived was provided for and wanted in this world.

Just what if. And what if we had no more abuse, and what if at the time, those nine months between conception and birth or whatever period of time there is? What if there were some skills that were taught to people? I know I was 24 when my first child was born and I had no skills. You know, I didn’t know what to do. I mean, I was trained and taught the youngest in my family, so I didn’t have any younger siblings to look at.

But what if there were some kind of healthy education, generic, universal in this country as part of the whole process from being in that room where it happened to getting ready for the room, where it happens because the birth process is a powerful, important place. So, I love to hear your stories about what it was like, as you obviously didn’t know too much, but what it was like as you go back and ask what happened in those two rooms.

Those are the two key rooms that we need to look at. So let’s keep going. Let’s keep growing. And I’d love to hear your comments about where you were and what you learned even now as you go back and talk to somebody and find out. It’s really important. Thank you. Have a beautiful day and a beautiful rest of the week.

 

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Leadership Stress

Stress, Leadership, and Parents

parents

Hi everybody! Sylvia Lafair here, and today I’m going to talk about stress and parents. No not us as parents, us as adult children with our parents who are aging and I’m going to focus very specifically today on mothers and daughters. There’s a different dynamic that goes with fathers and daughters or mothers and sons or fathers and sons.

Right now, I’m going to talk about mothers and daughters for a minute, and I’ve been getting a lot of calls lately with tons of frustration, and I know that we’re all up to here with stress and anxiety, and knowing how to behave, and we don’t have all the diversions that we usually have.

So, we can chill out. Anyway, I’ve been getting a lot of calls from women, saying my mother is driving me nuts, and what it comes down to, is really looking at some of the core things that happened, that when we were kids. Looking at them not judging it, just looking at it, and I want to talk about three patterns that have been handed from mothers to daughters, and if you’re a mother and you have a daughter, think about if you’re handing it to them, and how it impacts you in your relationships. Both your personal relationships and your professional relationships

So, the three main patterns people are talking about is, saying you know, my mother is used to me saying, ‘Yes to whatever she wants and needs, and it’s getting old, and I don’t want to do it anymore,’ or somebody else is saying, ‘You know, I was trained to always put myself last. I don’t want to do that anymore,’ and others are saying, ‘I feel like I’ve always been making up for my mother not being able to fulfill what she wanted in her life. So, I’m overwhelmed and climbing that ladder of success, and it’s driving me nuts.’

So here, the three patterns that we’re looking at right now are the pleaser, who does not know how to say no. The martyr, who’s into suffering and putting herself last, and the super achiever, who feels like she has the obligation to make up for everything that hasn’t worked in her mother’s life, and here’s what I’m suggesting. I’m suggesting, and I think it’s important that you take a generational view of this before you go, and have the conversation with your mother, and I brought my book over here. Gutsy, which is how women leaders make change. I brought this adjust to as a show-and-tell, because a lot of the information I’m talking about is in there.

Here’s where it is, before you decide to have a conversation with your mother that will lead to yet another it didn’t work. I’m not good enough. She’s annoying. She’s not doing what I want. All this stuff that goes on, it is the most powerful relationship. Here’s what I’d like you to do. I’d like you to take a generational view, and begin to look at your life, and the patterns of behavior and the cultural socio-economic aspects of your life. Then, go back, you have to talk to her, and look at what your mother went through, and then go back one more generation into looking at your grandmother.

Now, once you have some of that, you can sit down with your mother, and have a conversation, and keep it to, ‘In what way were you trained or taught to be a pleaser, to say yes all the time?’ and ‘In what way did you put yourself last?’ and ‘In what way did you feel you had to make up for the things that never got done in past generations?

Those are the questions to ask, and I’d love to get the answers to that from you. So, that can begin a dialogue. So, those of you who are looking at this, what is it that you are doing that you feel is left over from the past, that needs to be re-balanced and changed? And my last question is, how did you learn to ask for what you need? I’m not even saying why. How did you learn to ask for what you need? So, remember the patterns we’re looking at are the pleaser, the martyr and the super achiever, and once you begin to look from that direction, the dialogue with your mom will change and will grow, and it will change in the way you talk to any of the women you work with.

We all have stories that work on us about those areas of our lives. So, talk with your mother after you’ve done the research, and if your grandmother’s still around, she’s still alive, that’s great. The three of you can have a wonderful conversation.

So, let’s do that because during this time, when we don’t have as many diversions, maybe it is time to go deeper and find out more about ourselves, and then look at what we, whether we have biological daughters or children or not, what we’re passing to the next generation. So, this is to your success.

Have a beautiful rest of the week and find some freedom inside you, so we can celebrate freedom on July 4th. Thanks so much. Good time.

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Leadership

Leadership and What We Can Learn From Gen Z

leadership

Hi everybody! Sylvia Lafair here, with the Sylvia speaks, where Sylvia says for Tuesday.

What I’d like to do is just talk a little bit about the polarization that’s in the world, and what to do about it, and I learned a lot the other day from my 15 year old granddaughter, Arielle, who was saying to me, ‘Grandma, what do you do when people are fighting about points of view when nobody’s listening?’ And i said, ‘Honey, that’s one of the biggest issues we’re dealing with, and I remember in school, learning about how to debate, and debate means winners and losers.

So, we talked about the idea of dialogue, and she said to me, ‘Do you know about the youtube channel, Jubilee and Middle ground?’ And I didn’t. So, those of you watching this, if you don’t know it, please go and find it. It was fascinating. What they do is, they bring people from polarized points of view or separate points of view.

Let me put it that way to begin to talk with each other, and it’s so interesting to see how that happens. They have democrats and republicans. Young people coming together. They have pro-choice and pro-life people coming together. They have atheists and Christians coming together. They have pro-gun and anti-gun coming together to talk to each other.

Now, I’m curious to see what kind of real changes come about, but listening to Arielle, she said, ‘You know grandma, my generation is much more open to differences than the older generations have been,’ and she said, ‘As the older generations kind of go away, we’ll take over and we’ll make the world a better place,’ and I thought, you go girl but it then reminded me of something we’ve used in our leadership program, in our total leadership connections program, and it’s little segments from the play that became a film called, ‘ 12 Angry Men,’ and if you haven’t seen it, please, please watch it. It’s not a rang bang shoot ’em up thing. It’s about 12 men sitting in a room, a fairly dingy room in New York that are jurors that have to do a case to see if an 18 year old young Hispanic boy has murdered his father and they’ve been in the courtroom. They’re the jury and it’s interesting 12 angry men and that’s because women did not get the right to sit in juries until 1970s, which isn’t that long ago.

So, it’s interesting to see how changes occur but in this with 12 angry men, and the one I really liked is the one that was done. I think in 1998 with Jack Lemmon in it, and some other people that you certainly will recognize but they’re sitting there. These jurors and they come in and they have their points of view, and they’re ready to convict this young young guy of murder, and then he will be in jail for the rest of his life or then possibly get a verdict for death. There’s one man in there. He happens to be an architect. It’s the role played by Jack Lemmon, and he’s very quiet, and while they start the voting, it’s eleven to one. Eleven to one, when they take their first vote, and I don’t want to destroy the film for you because it’s so powerful, but there is a moment where Jack Lemmon as this architect says they’re very upset with him. They just want to get out of there. It’s hot. The air conditioning isn’t working. There’s a baseball game in town. They want to get out of there, and finally somebody says to him, what do you want? And he says, ‘Can’t we just talk?’ And that brought back this whole idea of jubilee and middle ground, and the question is, can’t we just talk and really get to know each other? And it is fascinating because in 12 Angry Men, they begin to just talk, and what happens is what I know from the work.

I’ve done all these years, and that is that each of us comes into a situation with pre-formed ideas that happened from the way we grew up or it’s a generational thing that can go back a lot of years.

So, can’t we just talk. I’d love you to watch 12 Angry Men, and I’d love to get feedback. Send me feedback. Send it to sylvia@ceoptions.com, and we can just talk, but it’s time for a change. It’s time from the polarization to begin to melt away, and we can begin to see that there are ways through what we’re living with in a more effective appropriate, helpful way.

Join me in that. It’s an important thing and if you’re interested in learning more about total leadership connections or any of the other programs, call me, email me and let’s make the world a better place, and I want to thank Arielle for steering me to a jubilee and middle ground. I suggest you all watch that too, and let your teens watch it. It’s very powerful.

Thank you. Have a beautiful day. This is to your success. Thank you.

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Leadership

Leadership and Stress

leadership

Hi everyone and welcome to another session of Sylvia says.

I’m Sylvia Lafair and what I’d like to talk about today is leadership and stress.

We all feel it. We all have it in some way. Each of us is a leader. So, this is probably for everybody, but I’m really focusing right now on what happens during these times that seem to just keep the roller coaster going, and every time it looks like some situation is handled, and you begin to take a deep breath. It starts again.

Well, we don’t know. We can’t predict where things are headed. We know we’re in a time of change and most of us kind of pull back from change but what I want to talk about is very basic stuff. When stress hits the hot button bingo. We all tend to react with certain types of patterns that we learned early in our lives, and we need to go back and really look at that right now.

So, whether you scream it out or stuff it down, stress hitting the hot button is really critical and where does it start? Well, I in all the work I’ve done over the years, I’ve come up with three places that are foundational, that we have to look at family culture and crises. So, family and family as a little kid, we learned how to look at things around, gossip and backbiting and the gotcha game. All of us, either in our family of origin or in our larger family or in the neighborhood or if we were raised in foster care that was still the concept of a family, but as a little kid, we looked around and we learned all about the basic ways that we behave, and then we grow up and we go into a work situation. We have a grown up family that we live with. We do very, very important things around. How do we handle conflict? What do we do when the stress is the hot button?

So, I’d like you to go back, and look what did you learn in your family. How did you learn How to handle stress? Where you sent to your room? Where you listen to? Where their family meetings? How was stress handled? Did your father handle it by being macho and strong? Did your mother handle it by going in the other room and maybe crying? I don’t want a stereotype, but these things have been around for a long time. So, go back and really look that one too.

Culture, we create definite norms in our culture. In how we behave. I mean, some is good. Some of it is good. You’re driving a car. Red light means stop. A green light means go, and it makes things flow easier if you can follow some rules. Some of the rules we’ve had are old and need to go away. About how women were trained and taught to behave and how men were trained and taught to behave. We’re in a time of such exciting evolutionary change. If you can see past the hurt and pain and fear of the day. So, culture, what have you learned in your culture about how to handle stress? What do you do when things don’t go your way? I’d like you to think about it and start journaling this on.

The third has to do with crises and a crisis is something that happens. It comes at you fast you don’t expect it and you inhale and forget to exhale. I call it hardening of the emotions. When we breathe in and we freeze, we don’t know how to react. So, there are many techniques and tools that are available to help with that but what I’d like you to do as a leader in times of stress is, begin to track back my Stress Buster’s program. It will be out in a week, and I really think it would be something that you can really grab onto to see about how to change. If you don’t like the way you handle stress. If you either scream it out or shut it down. Either way, doesn’t work. We want you in that. It’ll save stress.

So, have an excellent rest of the day. Pay attention. Get it observation of your behavior when stress hits the hot button, and as leaders we need to learn how to navigate and handle it.

So, we become models for others and they can handle it better

Thank you so much and I’ll talk to you soon.

Categories
Leadership Managing Stress Stress

How Great Leaders Tackle Anxiety and Overwhelm

anxiety

So many people these days are asking me what do we do with the anxiety.

I’m feeling stuff I haven’t created. It’s out there, but I’ve got to handle it and we all all of us really need to know how to handle it. So, think about this, you’re taking a walk in the woods and in the distance, you see something that looks a little squirrely out there. Not a squirrel and you say to yourself, “is that a snake?” or a stick and what? Do you start to back off until you look and you say, “is it moving? Isn’t it moving?” and finally you get whew. It’s a stick and you keep going and kind of toss it into the underbrush. So, nobody else will be bothered with it. So, why do we get feel it was a stick? Why do we get so nervous? Well, we have all of the survival skills that have been handed to us for thousands of years to keep us alive, to protect us.

They’re good. We need them but sometimes they get out of control, and we become so afraid of everything that we don’t know. How to work, walk, live, breathe, be with each other and right now, with stress really at a high level as leaders or emerging leaders. It’s really important to know what to do.

So, one of the things I want you to get is what happens in the brain. Our brains are programmed to really go toward reward and away from punishment. Toward what’s good and away from what we think is bad. Think about, if it were a snake and we’re afraid, we would back off. It’s a stick, no big deal. Okay, think about that and what we do when we get a reward is, we’re rewarded. Our brain gives us extra dopamine and I don’t want to go into a major scientific understanding of this, but I really want you to get that when we have promotions, when have successes and we feel good. Our brain is saying, all right let’s give him or her something really good to work with and we get some extra goodies in our bodies and we feel good about it and that’s where it’s good.

Now, the other part of this is when we are faced with something that is frightening or difficult or creates anxiety in us. How do we handle it? Well, here’s my theory and it’s a lot of researchers going into this and I’ve worked with thousands of people who have come back and said, “you know, when I saw the snake, not the stick, this is how I handled it” and I want you to think about this: it’s about adapting to the moment, taking a deep breath and thinking to yourself, this too shall pass because things do pass. Change is the way of the world and think about one of the great leaders during a difficult time in the history in America, was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and remember his famous saying: the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

So, when you’re in a difficult situation, when things aren’t going your way, when you have to cancel a meeting, when you have to not be presented with an award because nobody can show up at the time, what do you do? You take a deep breath. You say to yourself, “and this shall pass.” That will give the brain a little bit of room to say, “well if it’ll pass, maybe I can show up and give her some dopamine and make her feel better,” but do something at home by yourself. Close the door and we know that what we do feels better when we dance a little bit, sing a little bit, look at beautiful things. So, take the time during these stressful times to handle your anxiety by doing something that is going to give you some of that dopamine and make you feel better. So that, then you can say to people the only thing we have to fear is fear itself and help people move on.

Have a blessed day and here’s to your success.

Thank you so much.

Categories
Business Leadership Leadership Strategies Leadership Styles

Have the Rules for Competent Leaders Changed?

Have the rules for competent leaders changed

Have the rules for competent leaders changed over time? 

Has social media and the fast pace of the world made the qualities of what real leadership is so different? 

I say NO. 

I spent time researching what the leaders of old did to keep projects moving quickly. I spent time looking at what was expected of leadership teams and leadership development way back when there were so few ways of calculating and keeping records

Here is what I found.

There are 5 qualities of competent leaders that have not changed over the centuries. 

I was musing about this looking at old photos from when we took a group of senior executives on our “Leadership in Action” trip to Peru.  

When we visited Machu Picchu, I was awestruck by the buildings fused together without mortar, as if dropped from the sky in the middle of this gorgeous Andean mountain range. I asked and really pondered over the magnificence, thinking “How’d they do that?” 

Then on another trip to Egypt, I stood in awe at the base of the Great Pyramid of Giza and had the same thought, “How’d they do that?” 

I imagined the leadership teams that were assigned the tasks of getting these sites completed. I mused about the challenges and disputes that likely occurred. How did the ancient leadership executives get the jobs done? 

Here are the 5 qualities of competent leaders that have lasted over time and are still in place today. Please let me know if you agree. 

Quality #1: Effective communication.

Whether by megaphone or cell phone, a key requirement is to let people know what is expected of them. The words and the images these words create are vital to getting to the goal. 

Finding the exact ways of requesting and requiring what has to happen is a skill for leaders that transcends the centuries.

Quality #2: Preparation.

Being proactive is the ability to make things fall into place, rather than merely responding after the fact. When you are prepared, you can, in a sense, see the future before it occurs. 

You study the weather, the adversaries, the details, and you are ready to intervene rather than be at the mercy of unforeseen events.

Quality #3: Listening.

Leaders pay attention to the body language, gossip, rumblings of the subtle discontent. It’s not about arguing and making others feel stupid or unnecessary.

It’s about taking in all the information to make the most effective decisions rather than grandstand what you and only you think and want. 

Quality #4: Understanding the system.

 Knowing how the whole is connected to the parts is critical for leaders. It has been said that when someone sneezes in India, someone in Indiana may catch a cold (or a virus). 

The ability to facilitate sustainable change by identifying and strengthening positive connections and limiting the negative implications of a project is a high-level leadership skill.

Quality #5:  Balance macro and micro initiatives.  

Finding the sweet spot between too much or too little interaction keeps things moving smoothly. The need to exert excessive control can kill creative energy and teams become like robots. However, on the other side, letting it be a free-for-all creates havoc and shoddy work results. 

The key is offering suggestions and making definite calls in the moment, where they are required while permitting input from others, is the sign of adept leaders. 

While the modern workplace is now volatile, bewildering and frustrating, is it really that different in the human requirements? 

My e-book, “5 Leadership Development Lessons” continues the dialogue and is available here. 

Comments? Send me an email or better yet, pick up your smartphone and call me. 

Categories
Communication Leadership

Leaders and Rebels

leaders

Today we’re going to look at why we get so stuck when things keep repeating and repeating. It’s the old quote by Einstein, “if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” And that’s the truth. Ain’t it the truth?

So, we’re going to look at how in relationships we get stuck in patterns and today we’re going to talk about the rebel and the boss, and I got an email from the boss in a company where she said, “I’m going bunkers with Donna.” Donna is our best salesperson but she goes around and everything I say, she has to challenge everything. If I say “today’s Tuesday,” she’ll say, “well, it’s going to be Wednesday soon.” If I say, “it’s sunny outside,” she said, “well it’s going to rain. So, what are you talking about,” and she is driving me nuts. So, what happened was everybody said, “fire her, fire her, fire her,” and I thought there’s got to be a better way and I was reading ‘Don’t Bring It to Work,” and I thought, hmm, she sounds just like the proverbial rebel.

She has to challenge, then she gets all her friends and her colleagues on her side and sooner or later they’re going to swoop into HR with a complaint. So, I thought what can I do and how can I do it differently.

So, here’s an important tip for the day. What I listen to were some of the things that she said and it was always about me being loud. I can be at times, but not often… is what was said to me being being bossy.

Well, I am the boss. So, I have to tell people what to do, but I’m very inclusive and she she said, “you’re always telling me, I’m doing things wrong. Well, sometimes she does and sometimes she doesn’t and that’s part of being a leader.

Right, right, okay. So, I got some reading. The book “Don’t Bring It to Work,” and then I talked to some people and I thought okay, let me change me, “if you’ve always done what…” you go, “if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”

Forgotten, anyway I called her into the office and here’s the tip, I lowered my voice. Now, I’m not loud all the time but I lowered it, so she had to lean in rather than push back. Made a difference and then what I did was, I talked a little bit slower. I had lowered my voice. I talked a little bit slower, and I asked some questions. I asked her, “what is it that I can do so that we can get along together?” And then, I did something that I don’t do as much as I said. I zipped it and I listened and it’s called an accountability question.

So, I waited and she sat there and finally she said, “well, she said I often feel like you, don’t think what I do is right or good or appropriate,” and then I push back and she started sitting back.

Again, watch behavior. Watch body language. Listen to the words. What happened was, I made a commitment to be able to talk with her in a different way the next time, the next times we talked, but I said, “if there’s a problem, can you figure out how to come to me first and then we can discuss it before you start talking with your colleagues and creating a lot of stir of what’s going on.

So, please this is a quick tidbit when you’re talking with a rebel. Somebody who always wants to challenge authority, will lower your voice. Talk more slowly and ask the question, “what can I do to make a difference?

When in our relationship, see what happens. Let me know, and the book ‘Don’t Bring It to Work’ it’s a good one. Take a look at it.

Thanks so much. Talk to you soon.

Categories
Communication Leadership Leadership Strategies

Getting the Rebels Who Challenge Everything You Do to Comply

leadership skills

You have the skills to be a leader. You are given great feedback about how well you communicate.

So, why is it still a struggle to get some of the rebels who challenge everything you do to comply with what you want done?

You question yourself all the time, wondering if you must always fire and hire to get rid of the troublemakers.

And yet, even with new hires you can’t be right all the time.

Lately, do you question yourself?

Maybe, just maybe, it could be in the way you handle the rebels.

Here is what Matt wrote, bet you can relate:

Dear Dr. Lafair: In reading your book “Don’t Bring It To Work” I began to realize that frustration and conflict at work is a two-way street. Until now, I always viewed the ‘troublemaker’ rebel at work as THE PROBLEM.

I would tell HR to get them out of the place as fast as possible.

This is what I learned from understanding the basic patterns that come from how we were raised and how we bring those behaviors to work.

Wish I had learned this in my leadership development program years ago.

However, glad I know this now.

MAKING CHANGE AT WORK IS A TWO- PARTY PROCESS!!

The rebel I’m talking about is Marcy. She is so skilled at her sales job I don’t want to fire her. However, she is a pain in the ass!

She is always rebelling against authority and then she spreads the seeds of antagonism to others on her team (her team is MY team).

She is always making me wrong or undermining me and telling folks that I must be stupid.

My colleagues said, “Just fire her.” My mind kept saying, “There has to be another way.

NOW I HAVE THE OTHER WAY.

Marcy sees me as the angry parent. She told HR that she thinks I am always judging her, that I scold her, raise my voice to her (so she said). She said that I give her more work than the others on the team (not true).

I took a risk and talked with her.

Now, I didn’t want to pry, or sound like a therapist. However, I did want to figure out what I could say that would give us both a new outlook on how to respond to each other.

IT WORKED.

Here is what I did and how she responded.

I used what I would always say to my kids when they were little, I used my ‘inside voice’. I am not super loud, however, when I met with Marcy, I talked just a tad slower and monitored my tone.

I noticed that she leaned toward rather than away from me.

I asked her to describe what she needed from me when we had some disagreements to discuss.

She sat up straight and sighed.

She then told me that when I talked with her in a demanding, you better do what I say, manner, it pushed her to stand up for herself.

Yikes, I had to look at myself, not just at Marcy. Yes, that two-way street of relating.

I realized that I did sound like an angry parent. I was surprised and even a bit shocked.

That was it. I did not ask her about her childhood. I did not ask her to change. I did not challenge her. I just listened and thanked her for her candor.

Fast forward a month.

I am starting to really like this woman I called a demon rebel to myself. She is more willing to have a conversation, more willing to think about what I request of her. And, is becoming the super salesperson in our group.

She jokingly told me after our last team meeting that she no longer says to herself “Dad, I wish you would just shut up.”

So, there it is. Your idea about bringing what we learned as kids into the workplace has been validated.

Now, onto the pleaser and the avoider.

I have a new leadership skill that will save me tons of aggravation and my company tons of money. I get it, when possible “Fix em, don’t fire em!”

Thanks,

Matt (Smarter by the Day)

Categories
Leadership Leadership Strategies

Leadership Tip: How to Engage the Petty Tyrant at Work and Win

Leadership Tip

Today’s leadership tip is about something that I think just about everybody has to find and figure out what to do with at some point in their work life.

What I like to call, the petty tyrant. It’s the person who can make it crazy, because they’d like to steal your ideas and then claim them as their own.  They like to tell you that they can’t get the work done. So, you have to do it and then they come in at the last minute, and they say, “Well, I’m glad that I had that great idea,” and it goes on and on and on.

So, every company I’ve ever worked with has some petty tyrants in there. Petty tyrants use psychology to really make you go wacko and if you get into what they’re saying, you’re going to have some problems.

So, you have to be able to stay far away and look at them. You have to observe what’s going on at first.  I know people like to be helpful and kind and give ideas to someone else, but once you start seeing that the other person is really a grabber not a giver, it’s time for you to speak up and be cool about it. So, here are four tips. I wrote them down, so I won’t forget them.

The first one is to show some empathy why you’re saying they’re absolute jerk. So, why should I show empathy? Well, I want you to know that they’re often in pain and they often live in fear. So, I know your next thought is, so why should I care? Well, it’s okay if you care. It’s okay if you don’t but you have to know about this. So, you know what to do with it.

So, the first thing you do when you have a petty tyrant to work with, is acknowledge them. Acknowledge whatever they’ve done. Often, they’ve worked wherever it is for a much longer time than you have and they feel you may be coming in to usurp their place. So, one of the things to do is acknowledge them for anything. I mean, acknowledge that they’ve done a good job in the past. Acknowledge that they’re created something you can like.

It will begin to limit the amount of fear in the room with them when you talk with them. The next thing and this is the most important is, don’t play their game. Don’t play the “could’ve, should’ve, would’ve.” Don’t play the “but I told you.” Simply say, “What’s going on isn’t working and you begin to look from your perspective. You’re staying very centered in this.”

So, you’re not going to play into their game because they want to suck your power and they want you to be afraid of them. Don’t let it happen. Don’t play their game.

The next thing is, create boundaries.

The next time we go in a meeting and you say to me, “Oh my goodness! Can you help me with this?” Say, “No, I told you that that wouldn’t work for me,” and the fourth is, if everything else fails, get a third party to sit with the two of you. It may be somebody from HR. It may be a colleague. It may be a coach, somebody that the two of you can agree to talk with.

So, how workable is this? I’d say it’s about a 70/30 that you can tame that tyrant and make them become a friend. 70/30 though that you will become stronger in what you’re doing and feel good about yourself because you won’t play their game. You have shown empathy and you’ve created boundaries and worst case is, don’t you be the one to leave. Go and talk with somebody about what’s going on because I’m telling you, you’re probably not the only one that they’re using. They’re really users. So, be careful, be kind, be strong and go for it in your career.

You’re going to find a tyrant somewhere or other make sure that when you do, you can’t tame them.

Thanks so much.  Talk to you soon.

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Gutsy Leadership

Gutsy Women Need to Work Together to Make the Changes in the World

Gutsy Women

Hey!

This is for all the gutsy women out there. All of us who are here to make change happen, to make the world a better place, to make our lives more fulfilling.

This is for all of you and all of you who have joined my women leaders inner circle.

I so appreciate it now.

Here’s what I’d like to say, because this is really important. We need to work together to make the changes in the world.

So, I need to hear from you. I need to hear questions. I need to hear comments. I need to hear critiques of what’s going on. Whether you agree, don’t agree, have other points of view. Everything, so we can have a really juicy discussion.

So, for all the gutsy women out there, those of you who have joined, welcome. Please contribute even if it’s a sentence or two, so that we can keep moving forward.

I have lots I love to share with you and I also want to hear from you, and those of you who aren’t sure about joining, check out some of my work on our website, on Creative Energy Options, and see if this is for you.

We really are moving into an era where, I believe that women with our creativity and our sense of self, can help make the world a better place and my formula, I think many of you have heard of before, is as we women become more daring in every area of our lives, we give men the room to become more caring, because the models were really locked in place. Women were at home and were passive. Men were out there doing whatever. It’s changed. It’s changing. It will continue to change.

So, as women become more daring, men become more caring and daring plus caring equals share, and we will have a much more, a world that is much more connected in a different way, where we can share and we can help each other. We can all be vulnerable, and we can all be strong.

So, go for it. Join women leaders inner circle.

If you’re not part of it and those of you who have joined, I so welcome you and our team of coaches is here for you and some of them, many of them, the women anyway are on the women leaders inner circle.

So, you can have a lot of interesting dialogues going on. Ask, ask question, critique. We want it. We love it.

So, here’s to you.

Have a blessed day, a marvelous week and let’s keep going and growing.

Thank you.