As I walked into my office, my administrative support, Wendy, asked me a question. I turned and glared at her. Then, as I turned back and kept on walking, I answered Wendy through my teeth! I certainly didn't have the patience for her BS right now. 

Timeout!
But....why didn't I have the patience for Wendy at this moment? 
Was it because she had done something wrong?

** Possibly, but the way I handled it was all on me.

Being Bitchy
Ok, let me start by saying I do not like that word at all! If you can give me another word that we all know and understand to describe what I mean, please message me and tell me a better word. It's not merely being rude or being cranky it's more than that. And we've all been there.


Staff challenges
I've had my fair share of staff challenges, and I bet you have too. We have staff that don't get along, stir the pot on the team, mess up with clients, neglect their paperwork, or in general, are somewhat incompetent at their job. And we need to address those issues.


How are you addressing the issues?

• Confidently?
• Respectfully?
• With your integrity intact?

The way you handle situations comes back to your character and your reputation. What do you want people to say about you and about the way you dealt with the situation? My guess is you don't want them to leave the interaction, head to her co-worker and say, "Holy smokes, is she ever bitchy today!"

Instead, you probably want them to say something like, "That was a tough conversation, but I feel like she's supporting me and wants to help me out."

What gets in the way?
We are women leaders. There is a lot that can get in the way that has nothing to do with the work, the person we are dealing with, the sector or the issue at hand.

▶︎ It might, however, have to do with that time of the month.
▶︎ It might have to do with that time in our life cycle.

▶︎ It could also be that our hormones are off due to our diabetes or thyroid issues.

▶︎It might result from a lack of sleep because our toddler kept us up, we fought with our partner or dealt with night sweats half the night.

Hormones, emotions, burnout
How you respond to a challenge with your employee is less about the words you use and more about how you deliver that message. Hormones, emotions and burnout all factor in. They are all things you need to be aware of, manage and, yes, at times, workaround. 


3 strategies to help you manage your reputation

1) Be mindful of your body, mind and soul

• Tune in to your body to see what's really going on.
• Practice mindfulness

2) Be in control of your schedule so you can adjust when needed based on mood and energy levels.

• Work at home some days. 
• Take a break to move your body, have a healthy snack or give yourself a few moments of much-needed solitude
• Move a talk to the afternoon if you need time to settle your emotions from the night before.

3) Be honest

• Communicate somethings off
• Role model vulnerability

We respect vulnerable leaders
Most of our nonprofits are full of women, all of whom are likely going through similar emotional, hormonal and energy roller coasters. When you acknowledge where you are at, it makes you seem more human and permits others to do the same. Humour is useful in these kinds of situations if that's a strength of yours, but so is self-compassion, kindness, honesty and bravery. 


Extra Resources 
For those of you in The Training Library, here are some resources you might want to check out to help you ditch the bitchiness and lead with confidence!

• WEBINAR: Gossiping, Hormones and Backstabbing: Leading in Predominantly Female Teams
• WEBINAR: Develop Your Strength of Character
• WEBINAR: Managing Your Emotions at Work
• WEBINAR: Staying Composed During Meetings, Conversations & Challenging Times
• WEBINAR: Breath Magic - Breathe your way to being a calm, composed and in control leader!
• WEBINAR: How to deal with OFFICE POLITICS with calm confidence
• WEBINAR: Managing stress on the fly!
• WEBINAR: The 5-Minute Self-Care Strategy for the Swamped Gal
• WEBINAR: Thriving Through COVID-19 - Mini Training
• COURSE: Wellness AT Work

You are human! Don't forget that
Remember, it's not what you do as a leader that counts. It's how you do it. And you are a human being. You have emotions, hormones and a life outside of work that factor into how you lead. Don't forget to take that into account. When you do, you'll ditch survival mode and learn to thrive in both your leadership and your life!

You don't have to live alone to do this!
But you might be saying I can't do that. I have a houseful. True. And when you sit and eat and listen to the sounds in your household, what do you hear?

• My daughter would hear her roommates fighting 
• Perhaps you hear the TV on, music or kids bickering 

You might also tune in to what you taste.


Use your senses at any moment to be mindful
Your senses are wonderful ways of bringing you present, being mindful in this moment 👃🏼👂🏻 👋🏻 👀 👅 Even during a meeting, travelling or watching tv, you can practice tuning into your senses.


As I practiced mindfulness this morning, I tasted the cinnamon in my oatmeal, the ground hazelnuts, craisins sprinkled in and the almond milk on top.


Mindfulness is being mindful of this moment...it's that "easy"
Practising mindfulness is simply just that, practising being mindful of whatever is happening around you. 


Are you present or in the past or future?
Instead, most of us let our thoughts pull us back to what happened and regurgitate what went wrong. Alternately, we focus on the future and fret and worry about what is to become. To be mindful is to be in this moment, whatever is going on!


Mindfulness helps you build compassion, care and connection in your nonprofit
In this week's episode of the podcast, Elizabeth Bishop and I talk about love in your nonprofit. By love, we mean compassion, connection and caring. The problem is many of us have lost touch with that part of our leadership capacity. And it shows.

• We've lost the passion for our work  
• We don't so much like the people we work with  
• Sometimes we forget the meaning behind why we do what we do, the outcomes for our clients and the community

You can regain your love for your job, your compassion for the people you work with and reignite that in your team.

More help to build your compassion, kindness and mindfulness 

To help, tune in to my conversation with Elizabeth for tons of ideas, insights and the incentive to practice mindfulness.

For more information on how to use mindfulness to maintain your composure during tough meetings, those of you in The Training Library can watch this webinar.
​
TRY IT: Just for a moment now, tune into your senses. Be present to this moment!
Go make the rest of your day awesome!

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. 

• You worry you’ll say something wrong, and everyone will know you're unsure and worse they’ll see it! 
• You fear they will hear it in your voice, see your hands shaking or wonder if you are about to break down. 

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 🥴

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!

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 check out this webinar inside of The Training Library: Preparing for a Tough Talk: So you can handle it with integrity!

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. ​

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...

• How many notes are there in musical scales?
• How many subject pronouns in the French language?
• How many different emotion or feeling words are there?

I don't honestly know either 🙈however, Wikipedia says the chromatic scale has 12 notes, there are 6 types of subject pronouns in the French language, and there are 4, 6 or 8 basic emotions depending on who's theory you follow. Newer research is suggesting there are close to 30,000 emotional words.

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.

• I can sing: You are my Sunshine, as I often do to my granddaughter showing her how much I love her.
• I can ask you: Où se trouvent les toilettes
• I can tell you: I'm angry, annoyed or irate

Each time I am communicating. But just as easily I can miscommunicate and ask for something totally different than the washroom, completely off tune annoying my granddaughter or use the word angry when I really mean hurt.

How often are you miscommunicating your feelings?
Miscommunication is one of the biggest challenges in relationships, at home and at work.

• We don't say things clearly.
• We assume others know what we mean.
• We don't check to see that we were heard.

The first one, saying things clearly, means we must first know clearly what we want to communicate. That's the problem, many times we don't specifically know what we are feeling and so we can't clearly communicate it.

• We don't know if we are mad or hurt or jealous.
• We haven't sorted out if we are nervous or excited.
• We don't name feeling insecure, doubtful or a lack of confidence. Instead, we get defensive or shut down.

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.

• If you are travelling to France, you will want to increase your French speaking vocabulary.
• If you want to sing better, you may learn to read music.
• If you want increased Emotional Intelligence, you'll take time to expand 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!

​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.

• If you are stressed about an upcoming report that is due and slept poorly because you fought with your spouse last night, you may have zero patience left.
• If instead, you are in a good mood, their sarcastic comment may not trigger you. In fact, you may have compassion for them, knowing they've been struggling with their own issues at home.

It's important to remember, is that 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.

• But waaaaay back when I taught parenting to families, we taught this golden rule: Address the behaviour, not the child. The child isn't bad. But colouring on the wall is not ok.

Instead of taking their comment personally and biting back, we need to address the issue at hand.

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.

1. If you are a member of The Training Library, I've just added a webinar replay called Gossiping, Hormones and Backstabbing: Leading in Predominantly Female Teams. You'll find it in the webinar section. If you aren't a member of the Training Library and want this and additional training, join here.
2. The second resource is an invite to check out the work I am doing with my colleague at The Magnetic Workplace. Our focus is helping you move your culture from toxic or tolerable to a Magnetic Workplace.

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?

1. Express Positive emotions.
2. Feeing Engaged in what you are doing.
3. Ensure you are involved in good Relationships.
4. Finding Meaning in what you do.
5. Accomplishing positive things.

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.

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

• You can't do it all. Pick one area to focus on.
  • Perhaps you will choose to work on a specific relationship with someone.
    
    

.......... √ Create a habit of practice

• Change takes time and effort. Pick one small thing and make it a habit that you do.
  • You could start a habit of making eye contact and smiling at this person each time you walk into the office in the morning.
    
    

.......... √ Journal each day

• Documenting, reflecting and measuring is what truly makes a difference.
  • This might be as simple as marking a little check mark at the top of each day in your agenda when you do it. A line through the checkmark might indicate they smiled back at you. At the end of the week, you can notice how often you did it and how effective it was in making them smile. You might also notice what overall effect that has had on your relationship.

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.

Work on the 5 components of PERMA, and you'll be contributing to your well-being!

1. Positive emotions
2. Feeing Engaged
3. Involved in good Relationships
4. Finding Meaning in what you do
5. Accomplishing positive things

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 ever remember wetting your pants as a child and being mortified? 
• How about being called on in school and not knowing the answer and being ridiculed for it? 
• Did your parents ever tell you that you were a disgrace to your family? 

Can you feel the shame when you think of those scenarios? It's a familiar feeling, isn't it?

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.

• We should have known better. 
• We should not have let it bother us so much.
• We should have been able to control ourselves. 

I want you to know that you can get better at staying composed. You need to increase your emotional intelligence. That's both learning to recognize and then manage your emotions.

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:

• I did not think I was old enough to be in a leadership position.
• I was sure I did not have the right education.
• I knew I had zero leadership experience.

I was terrified someone would figure that out and out me. To make matters worse, I knew my administrative support had a direct line to my boss! 

√ 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!

1. Figure out what might trigger you in today's meeting 
2. Prepare for what you will do when you feel trigger before you go into that meeting!
3. Feel calm, cool and collected in your meeting today! 

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!