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Would you like to feel confident that you will be able to maintain your composure in your next meeting or conversation? If you are like most leaders... You have a tough conversation or meeting coming up.
But what you deeply desire is to feel composed. You want to walk away feeling like you didn’t get your panties in a knot; unruffled and clearheaded.  What gets in the way of that: Unmanaged thoughts and emotions. That’s the bottom line. When you feel flustered in a meeting when your nerves get the better of you, and you feel anything but composed, it’s because your thoughts and emotions have gone crazy. Your thoughts and emotions are in control of you instead of you being in control of them 🥴
I felt that way too! I know, me too! I spent years worried I was not in control. That left me feeling incompetent, afraid and wondering if I was cut out for a leadership role. Over time, I learned how to regain that feeling of being in control. Being in control of my thoughts and emotions gave me the courage, confidence to lead. Let me show you how, so you can lead your amazing team and make the difference your org can make! So, what exactly is composure? Being composed is when you are in control; in control of your thoughts, emotions and behaviour. Being composed is feeling calm, confident and in control! How do you get more composure? You get control of your thoughts and emotions by training your brain, which will help you become Emotionally Intelligent. 🔸Emotional Intelligence is being able to both recognize and manage your thoughts and your emotions. Training your brain, your thoughts and the subsequent emotions requires willpower. Willpower, or lack of it, will either give you a sense of composure or leave you feeling anything but composed in tough conversations. If you want to find yourself feeling calm, confident & in control in your next meeting, learn to develop your strength of will. 🦉Daniel Goleman defines willpower this way: "Willpower is the ability to consciously regulate what you feel and what you do". Think of any strong, competent and composed leader you know, and I bet they can regulate themselves! The good new is you can also learn to regulate you what think, feel and what you do too! If you want to become a more composed leader, grow your willpower! 
Ongoing training to grow women leaders in 🇨🇦 Canada's Nonprofit Organizations. Not a member of The Training Library yet? Join for $19.97 and enjoy a monthly webinar plus a library of courses to support your ongoing personal and professional development that is affordable and easily accessible! Discover the details here
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Do you ever find yourself about to enter a tough talk and wonder if you've got what it takes to pull it off? If you have read the first chapter of my book, you know I have! One particularly challenging meeting, that's hard to forget, I wondered if I was about to upchuck my morning oatmeal...but I digress... ️If you are really curious to hear the whole story, you can listen to the first part of my book for free here! If you struggle with tough talks and want to learn how to prepare for them, keep reading!  3 Kinds of Tough Talks! There are certainly more than 3 kinds of tough talks, but let's look at what might constitute a tough talk.
What makes these talks tough? What makes these talks tough for you or me or anyone for that matter? For any talk to be considered "tough," they all have one thing in common. Do you have any guess what the one thing is that makes talks tough? The one defining factor is... The thing that they have in common is that you THINK they are tough. That's it!! Each of us can enter the same meeting, and some of us will think that it's going to be a tough meeting and some of us will think it will be just fine. It's your perspective on it that makes any conversation tough It's time to turn it around If you want to enter your next meeting or talk and not see it as tough, you need to change your perspective. I am not suggesting you snap your fingers and say, "It's easy peasy!" No. A perspective change is about seeing in a way that is ALSO true. 3 ways to change your perspective about upcoming talks To change your perspective, do these 3 things:
Want more practice? Not convinced? No, perhaps not. This work takes practice. But please keep at it. This is why I am always harping about the need to do the inner work. Practice makes progress! ️If you need more help with preparing for upcoming tough talks, I encourage you to register now for this month's webinar: Preparing for a Tough Talk: So you can handle it with integrity! Here's the bottom line: I believe you can handle tough talks with your confidence intact? Do you? 
Ongoing training to grow women leaders in 🇨🇦 Canada's Nonprofit Organizations. Not a member of The Training Library yet? Join for $19.97 and enjoy a monthly webinar plus a library of courses to support your ongoing personal and professional development that is affordable and easily accessible! Discover the details here 3 Ways to connect to your inner world, so you can make a BIG difference in your outer world.18/7/2019 What is the thing you want most to accomplish as a leader? I mean most...not get through your ToDo list, clean out your inbox or have people just do what they are supposed to do. I mean, why are you in this job? Beyond the paycheque, why do you do what you do? Keep reading and find out how you can do that 👆️ more!  Do you want to make a difference? My guess is that it is to make a difference; To change lives; To do purposeful work. I bet that you work in your organization, deal with the politics, handle the immense responsibility, and put out all of the fires that you do because you want to know that somehow, the work you are doing will make the world a better place. I certainly know that's why I am here today emailing you and why I worked so hard with my teams over the years. It's because I know that together we can make the world a better place to live in for the next generation. How would you rate yourself? If that is your "Why" too, how are you doing? On a scale of 1-10 rate, how well you did that yesterday?
How do you feel about your score? Try these:
Are you unhappy with your score? If you are unhappy with your score, my guess is that you've been spending a lot of time chasing tasks, meetings, emails and projects. My guess is you've spent less time on relationships, people and in your inner world. Inner world? Yes, inside of your heart and your head...the part of your head that connects to your heart. You need to spend more time in your inner world Our inner world is our meaning-making system. It's what we use to make sense of the world we live in. Our inner world is comprised of our values, beliefs and morals. It's this inner world that creates our mental models, those assumptions, perspectives and opinions, and what we use to make decisions. Your inner world might be a bit of a mess! When you rarely visit your inner world, it gets overgrown with weeds! What was once a beautifully clear set of values around how you will treat others in life, has been taken over by the weeds of deadlines, checklists and company policies. You are hiding your inner beauty! You, my dear, have a beautiful heart. 💜You are full of love, compassion and fun. But you don't let it shine enough. You hide that part of you in favour of order, control and fear. God forbid you let your guard down, or you will lose control of your day, your people and your world. But in truth, you've already lost control. 😞 When you chase the task part of your world and neglect your people and your relationships with them, you'll never make the difference you want to make. Your ability to control your impact in the world will be lost. Connect to your inner world and to your people and your score will go up! The way to come back to finding a balance between the tasks you are responsible for and the people you are growing is to slow down and connect to your inner world a bit more. When you do, you'll find you naturally find more time to connect to your people and together talk about your united purpose and find more creative, fun and powerful ways to achieve your organizational mission and purpose together. 3 Ways to Connect to Your Inner World So you can make a BIG difference in your outer world.
When you connect more frequently with your inner world, you'll find your outer world more balanced. The tasks you are responsible for are essential. But please don't forget to balance them with the people in your life! If you want even more help to connect to your inner world, so you can make a more significant difference in your outer world, but are looking for a guide in that process? Check out The Training Library for a ton of mini-courses and training sessions to guide you to deeper understand your values, beliefs, emotions, and how to use those to more effectively lead. 
Ongoing training to grow women leaders in 🇨🇦 Canada's Nonprofit Organizations. Not a member of The Training Library yet? Join for $19.97 and enjoy a monthly webinar plus a library of courses to support your ongoing personal and professional development that is affordable and easily accessible! Discover the details here Women Leaders that expand their Emotional Literacy will increase their Emotional Intelligence14/3/2019 Emotionally Intelligent women leaders are more effective, stronger and more impactful than their less emotionally intelligent counterparts. How did they develop their emotional intelligence? By increasing their emotional vocabulary. The more accurately you can name your emotion, the quicker you can move through it. You get control of your emotions by getting clear on your emotions. Clarity is the ticket. In this blog, you'll begin to understand how to gain that emotional clarity thus giving you back emotional control and increasing your emotional intelligence.  Here are some trivia questions to get you started...Do you know...
Do you know what French, musical notes and emotion words have in common? Here is what they have in common. They are all ways of communicating.
How often are you miscommunicating your feelings? Miscommunication is one of the biggest challenges in relationships, at home and at work.
Given there may be 30,000 feeling words, here's the problem...most of us only use a select few...Brene Brown suggests we can only name 3 emotions. Click here to hear which 3. When we stick to those basic emotions, we are missing a big part of our own understanding of what is going on inside of us. That leads to us simply trying to shut our emotions off, minimize them or push them down. When that happens, we lose control. Emotional Intelligence requires emotional literacy Emotional Intelligence is being able to both recognize and manage our emotions. To do that, you need to increase your emotional literacy.
Practice Expanding your Emotional Vocabulary: Do this: Thank about a particular situation today. It could have been "good" or not so "good.? Then take a moment to write down a few emotions you felt then. Try to get to at least 10. Then grab a thesaurus and look for other words that might more clearly describe your emotions. Voila, you are on the road to expanding your emotional vocabulary! Continue to grow your emotional vocabulary, and you will become more emotionally literate. That will increase your emotional control and your emotional intelligence! One last thing: Emotions are not bad, wrong or a problem for women leaders. We just need to learn to harness the power of our emotions!!! You will do that when you expand your emotional vocabulary! Do you work with a bunch of women? Do they sometimes drive you nuts? I walked into an all-female meeting a while back and immediately knew it was going to be an hour full of sarcasm, snide comments and passive aggressiveness. And I was right! OMG! They cut each other off, spewed darts at each other as they spoke and refused to "play nice." I just wanted to shake them all and say stop! Can't you be nice to each other?  We work in a predominantly female sector The majority of people that are employed in the non-profit sector are women, so my guess is you work with a lot of them. I'm also going to venture a guess that you find them "emotional" and that those displays of emotions get on your nerves. I'm curious who's driving you crazy today? Your administrative support, your boss or the team lead? Maybe it's the whole dang team! Your mood today plays a big role! Here's the thing, how you are feeling, your mood, affects how tolerable you are of their behaviour.
Your mood impacts how their attitude affects you! This is what it can look like instead Coming from a place of compassion and feeling a bit more patience may allow you to address the issue, rather than the person. I am NOT suggesting you let things slide and allow people to be rude, ignorant and disrespectful.
Don't take their comment personally This is what you can do to deal with moody women on your team One sure way to find the patience for dealing with other women: Choose your mood. Tune into this Ted Talk to hear the science behind this idea. But here's the thing, you can change your mood. You can lift yourself up, and, it doesn't take much time. 🎶 Mambo # 5 🎶 🎶 Pump up the Jam 🎶 🎶 Rock around the Clock 🎶 Are you smiling? You didn't even need to HEAR the music, and I know already I've changed your mood! You are hearing the songs in your head...the beat..the tune..the energy. Makes you want to dance, doesn't it? Are you humming? Boost your mood!
If that's not enough
I get it. This is in some ways only a temporary fix. The reality is that ongoing negativity and moods in the office can turn things toxic pretty darn quickly. Here are a couple of more resources for you.
But always, start with you! Take responsibility for YOUR mood! Trust me that will have a ripple effect! Here is a quick quiz for you to rank how well you are doing in contributing to your wellbeing. Do work to do these 5 core elements of well-being?
If you wish for more wellbeing and happiness, you might want to increase your focus on these components. I'll give you some ideas of how to do that below! It starts with Positive Psychology.  What's Positive Psychology got to do with wellbeing? Lots! Martin Seligman, the father of positive psychology, says that when you practice these 5 things, (The PERMA model of well-being), you bring order to the chaos of your life. While these 5 components don't define well-being he says, they contribute to it.
3 steps to help you impact your wellbeing! When you focus on these 5 components, you'll be doing both. Here are the steps for doing that. .......... √ Be intentional
Other factors that contribute to your well-being Tom Rath, whom I mentioned above, wrote not only the Strength's Finder, but also a book called Eat, Move Sleep: How small choices lead to big changes. Tom knows that these are the foundations for being able to do the others: Feel positive emotions, be engaged in what you are doing, have strong relationships, contribute something meaningful in your life and accomplish good things. Don't forget to take care of yourself! This time of year can be tough on your sense of well-being! This can be an incredibly stressful time for many of us. I've fallen apart many times in December; physically, emotionally, spiritually and in my relationships. Each year I work to add new habits, routines and practices to ensure I enjoy December more and more. And do you know what? It's working!
Work on the 5 components of PERMA, and you'll be contributing to your well-being!
Do you need some help with the self-care components? This month's training is coming up on Dec 19th, 2018. If you want to learn some quick self-care strategies for you and your team, that you can implement quickly, join me here: The 5-Minute Self-Care Strategy for the Swamped Gal! Do you have a meeting coming up that is worrying you? Maybe you are not exactly worried about the meeting, but more about your ability to handle the meeting? Perhaps you are worried you'll be anything BUT calm, cool and collected in that meeting later today. What you really want is to learn how to stay composed during that meeting. In this blog, you'll learn a 3 step strategy for staying composed!  Once upon a time
Once upon a time, I had a meeting with my administrative support. We were meeting to clarify roles: What was her job and what was mine. Things had gotten a little murky around who was making what decisions. I felt like I was losing control. She had started making more and more decisions that were, in my mind, not hers to make. Being young and new to the role, I was feeling threatened. So, I decided to meet with her, put my foot down and set some clear distinctions about who did what. Can you guess how that meeting went? Well, let's put it this way. I still vividly remember it today. Within a few minutes, she'd questioned my authority. Or at least I felt like she did. I got defensive. (You know where this is going, don't you?) The conversation became heated. I got angry. And yes, it ended in me yelling at her. The whole office heard, not just the sound of angry voices, but every word I said to her. I totally lost my composure. I wish I could say that was the only time I've lost control of my emotions and my behavior. Sadly, that's not the case. In truth, we all struggle to stay composed at times. Loss of composure = Shame Here's the thing. When we lose our composure, do you know what we feel? Shame. Think of times when you might have felt shame:
Do you feel ashamed when you lose your composure? Shame is not a feel-good word. But shame is what we often feel when we lose our composure.
A trick to getting out of the shame Shame storms, as Brene Brown calls them, can send us spiralling out of control! One of Brene's recommendations to deal with shame is to identify your triggers. Knowing what might set you off, can help you play offence instead of defence! DO THIS: Think about your meeting today. What might trigger you? My trigger For me, in that conversation with my administrative support, the trigger was incompetence. At that point in my career, I was new to leadership. I had a serious case of imposter syndrome. Here's what I believed:
√ If I had known that was my trigger, I could have prepared for it and been able to stay composed! The 3 step strategy for staying composed!
If you want to learn a system for identifying triggers and learning how to manage your emotions when you get triggered, you can take training on this in my membership site: The Training Library. There is a specific training called: Staying Composed During Meetings, Conversations & Challenging Times. Find out more here. You have a job to do. A job I know you love. Don't let your emotions get the better of you and keep you from making your difference in the world!
You want to feel capable, credible and in control Confident & Competent! Yet some days you find yourself feeling fearful, flawed and foolish!
It’s time to get you going down the right path! This week’s training will plant you firmly in front of the path to confidence and competent leadership! 
LINKS FROM TODAY’S SESSION
Grab this week’s Guide sheets:
Join the CONFIDENT WOMEN LEADERS COMMUNITY here: Find MY BOOK - Mastering Confidence: Discover your leadership potential by awakening your inner guidance system
Do you want to learn to see possibilities where others don't? You become that type of leader when you cultivate the character traits associated with the virtue of transcendence.
LINKS FROM TODAY’S SESSION
Temperance is a virtue. It's one of the 7 virtues listed on the VIA Signature strengths list. Leader's who are temperate leaders conduct them selves in a calm and composed manner. Do you?
LINKS FROM TODAY’S SESSION
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Kathy ArcherWomen leaders often hit a point where they find themselves in over their heads and wondering if they have what it takes to lead. Archives
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