I have a little notebook that goes with me everywhere. It is small enough to fit in my purse and when I hear someone say something funny, or I need to make a note of something significant – I’ll pull it out. The journal is far from sequential, and I’ve written passages in the middle, margins, back, and on the side in every color ink and pencil. It represents different days and events of my life like a fuzzy, out-of-focus, Polaroid camera. The other day I sat down and read it from cover to cover and one particular day stayed with me.

March 5, 2016, was the day I started interviewing silenced female leaders for my dissertation. Fast forward to today, I now have data on 65 women. However, this cold March day from two and a half years ago was my first official recorded interview that was later transcribed and analyzed for hours.
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These notes were captured in my car as I sat there reflecting after the 90-minute interview. They are private reflections that now represent something more significant. In no particular order:

• Always start with full batteries – I know I was referencing my hand-held recorder, but I cannot help but note the significance of having a fully charged body, heart, and mind when engaging in meaningful work.
• Empathy hurts – felt throat tighten in interview – lump in throat. Wanted to connect, touch, express and my eyes may have given my pain away. I believe that empathy is one of the greatest gifts. For those who share this particular strength, we know the sorrow it can inflict. I will not trade my ability to empathize, but sometimes I have to put it squarely in its place as empathy can cause a great deal of pain.
• It’s okay to sit in silence – this is something that used to cause me so much discomfort, and I would immediately speak to fill the void. I have learned over time that my uneasiness with silence is a form of selfishness. Sometimes we need to sit quietly until someone else is ready to speak. Silence is a gift for someone who is processing what they need to say.
• It is an honor to witness someone’s story – when I wrote this I had just interviewed an executive female with an intense history of feeling silenced. She had never told her story in totality to another person. Often people need a witness to their life and solving or analyzing is not required.
• Voice can emerge with space – I gave space for something to surface; for voice to arise; for healing to lift its eyes even with its head still bowed. There is a view beyond the pain. Voice is never the opposite of silence, and you cannot always flip it on like a light switch. We may speak and utter sound but do not mistake that for having a voice, which takes longer to surface.

There was more written. I was wrestling with varying degrees of thoughts and emotions as I surfaced from the first, and entered into the journey of many, research interviews. Words like beauty, sadness, sacred, privilege, validation, comfort and allowance all hold unique and special meaning as I reflect. After that first interview, I made a change to my protocol and began asking: How does it feel to participate in this interview and answer questions about voice and silence?

That one small question, a slight shift to end the interview, one last chance to gather any last-minute participant thoughts or ideas created the highest level of learning and research finds. We never know how one small question – insignificant as it may be – can be the very thing that unlocks something powerful. As a social scientist and leadership coach, I continue to sit in wonder of the power of a simple question.

What simple question do you need to ask?

This question was posed to me at a recent conference I was attending. As you can surmise, the presenter was discussing self-limiting behaviors and how they not only limit, but they can be poisonous to the body, mind, and soul. As I reflected on her question, I could not help but think of adolescent behavior. In many ways, the SELF that limits the self is much like a mean girl.

Consider what mean girls might do to others:

1. She is envious – she wants what others have and may be hurtful to those who have something she does not have but wants.
2. She is appearance focused – she is hyper-focused on looking a certain way and may make decisions about who is in her friend group based on appearance.
3. She is status focused – she wants to appear popular and important.
4. Drama surrounds her – she struggles in her friendships and may have a difficult time staying in harmonious relationships.
5. She has a strong desire to be in control – she wants to be a leader, and she wants her friends to accept and follow her.
6. She belongs to a clique – she desires to have an inner circle or ingroup; her sense of self-worth is questioned when she is in isolation.

Mean girl behavior may also encompass other unhealthy aspects such as disrespect for authority, physical outbursts, name calling, etc. I think most functioning adults would be horrified to think of their child acting like a mean girl or being on the receiving end of mean girl behavior. Given this assumption, why do so many people find themselves on the receiving end of mean girl behavior from SELF?

Here is how it might look to limit the self and what the SELF may say to you.

“You are not as talented as those in your peer group; you do not have as much to offer, and your qualifications are not as strong. Everyone else is better than you.”

“You are not as slim, attractive, or fit as others in your department, organization, or field. Because of your lack of physical discipline, you will not be chosen.”

“Be careful how you speak up – if you say that, you will jeopardize your status in this organization. Do not rock the boat. Play it safe, so you do not lose points with your boss or peers.”

“This is your problem, and no else seems to struggle as much. Just find a way to deal with that person. Everyone else has been able to figure it out – why can’t you?”

“You are not good enough if you do not get that next promotion. Success is never achieved if you stay in middle management.”

“There is something wrong with you, or you would be invited to participate in those project teams and brainstorming sessions. You are not strategic enough to join those important meetings.”

“You are an idiot. You are weak. You are a failure. You are too much. You are not good enough.”

I am sure none of you reading this post could imagine saying any of the quoted sentences to another person in a professional setting. So why (why? Why? WHY?) do we say it to ourselves? Notice the mean girl behavior and manage the SELF that limits the self. You deserve better - and you know it!

What type of self-limiting behavior do you engage?
 

At a recent leadership coaching conference, I learned the power of ‘I Must.' Sometimes I must lie on the floor and get nose-to-nose with my black lab. Sometimes I must hug my 14-year old daughter even when she holds herself limp or stiff. I must play the radio too loud, text my husband when he is busy, paint a wall, eat chocolate, drink wine, scroll Pinterest, laugh, cry, write. Sometimes, I simply must!
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We all have our ‘musts’ that make us abundantly flawed and beautifully human. I have also learned that to grow continually and develop as an adult I must be willing to break three things.

• First, I must break silence. As a private introvert who is deeply sensitive, I like to admire something I have learned within the confines of my own mind. Sometimes words fail and I lose interest in trying to find ways to voice something I have discovered. However, learning cannot be transformational when done in secret – it must be shared. Transformation is also best experienced in community.
• Second, I must break a pattern. Sometimes that pattern is a belief that I have the right answers. People who are committed to being right are often seen by others as righteous. Breaking a belief pattern requires letting go of certainty and getting comfortable with not knowing. I must get curious and push the edges of my consciousness to allow different, weird, and new into my thinking.
• Third, growing as an adult breaks your heart. Knowledge is socially constructed through stories, connections, and language. As I learn about my clients, and myself, I can stay at a cognitive level and collect facts or data. However, if I want to grow, I must allow myself to expand, to feel, to join, and to create space that pushes me to the point of heartbreak.

As a leadership coach, I need to name and know my personal and professional musts. Someone else cannot prescribe them, lest they lose their essential quality and become disingenuous.

What must you do or be? What must happen for you to learn and grow?

On November 16, 2015, President Obama held a press conference at the G-20 summit in Antalya, Turkey. His speech, following the Paris Terrorist attacks, spoke about the U.S. military strategy against ISIL and tactics to keep America safe. I watched the coverage from the comfort of my home as he addressed the world and answered questions from the press. Occasionally, the cameras would zoom out over the audience of more than 100 reporters. Very few of them had their heads up. Most were on their phones, juggling a computer on their lap or taking photos. I did not see eyes lifted or contact made. I saw multi-tasking and technology. All were using their various devices to capture his words and be quick to produce a news story. When his words heated or the conviction in his voice deepened, more eyes lifted to see him. Otherwise, people had their heads down. They were busy.
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Given the events that continue to happen across the world, it is time to lift our heads and look into the eyes of people that talk to us and surround us. Eye contact lets someone know they are seen – they matter. Some of the stories that have surfaced in the past few days are about strangers who sat with wounded victims in Paris – they bore witness to their injuries, experience, and in some cases, held their hand as they died. Tragedy should not be the main thing that precipitates connection. Every day there is a new chance to connect with people we know, by lifting our heads and putting down the technology. There is also an opportunity to let complete strangers know we see them.

It is hard to admit, but being present has become an act of courage.

We will never be able to change something we do not notice.

One cannot multi-task and make eye contact.

Peace and prayers to Paris.

The phrase “Hope is Not a Strategy” occupies the cover of several different books written by sales and business experts. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani used the phrase in his 2008 Republican National convention speech: "…because 'change' is not a destination, just as 'hope' is not a strategy...”

Prior to that and since then, some rendition of this phrase has been coined by consultants. Believing it to be smart and witty, I’ve even said it myself. The point of the phrase is to suggest that you can’t wish things away or wish them into being. You cannot throw a penny into the well, cross your fingers, blow out a candle, and dream away a challenge, problem, or current reality. It takes more than that to create change.

Yet, here is the thing - “hope” is not the same thing as “wish”. If we look at the Indo-European root of the word and its Hebrew and Greek equivalents, we get a different perspective. The root of hope is the same root for “curve”, meaning to bend. Hope suggests a change in direction or going a different way. It’s a strong word that goes beyond wishful thinking; the act of hope is about taking action to create a new reality.  It’s a generative word and it moves beyond probability, which is a form of positivity, and points to a direction of possibility. When we truly hope for something we can make change.

Before you stop reading – try to pronounce this word: Psychoneuroimmunoendocrinology (PNIE). Go ahead and Google it. It’s a real word that describes the unity of mental, neurological, hormonal and immunological functions. PNIE suggests that when we hope for something we can change the brain and the body because hope releases opiates into the brain. When a body changes, results change. In simple terms - it’s all connected! Hope is fundamental. It can create energy for action, influence others and their reactions, and inspire conviction and certainty. Hope is an awesome strategy!

Unfortunately, fear and anxiety eat hope like a snack. They are the very opposite and are often the culprits behind poor health, strained relationships and lack of success. So perhaps the sales and business experts have it mostly right. Hope is not a strategy when you are racked with fear and anxiety.

What is eating your hope? What if you allowed hope to thrive instead of letting fear and anxiety take over?

sources: 
http://www.townsendletter.com/Jan_2003/psychoneuro0103.htm
http://hope-international.blogspot.com/2011/04/meaning-of-hope.html

A – Replace Anger with Angst. Sometimes we start with anger but more often than not, we move to angst. The anxiety of the feedback and what it means keeps us up at night reliving the circumstances of the feedback. If we stay angry it gives us ammunition towards others.  Anxiety turns inward and we end up carrying a lot of baggage around that can be heavier than anger.

R – Replace Rejection with Rationalization. We may reject the feedback in our state of anger but once we move to anxiety it’s not long before we move to rationalization. We find ways in our head to explain why that feedback happened and how some of the circumstances were beyond our control or more about the other person. Our rationalization keeps us from owning it.

A – Acceptance! This word shouldn’t be replaced. Acceptance is such a release. We lay down the burden of angst and rationalization and accept that we are FHBs (fallible human beings) and we aren’t fully developed yet. We need further social encounters and learning experiences to help us grow.

H – Replace Help with Honor. Sometimes we don’t need help with feedback. We just need time before we can accept and honor it. When we honor something we regard it with respect. This means respecting the person who provided the feedback, respecting the situation and most importantly, respecting ourselves and how we’ve allowed the feedback to adjust our behavior and thinking.

Working through SARAH can take time. Some only sleep with SARAH a couple of nights. For others SARAH is a regular bedfellow. It’s such a privilege to help clients process feedback, deal with SARAH and look back from the other side.

What feedback are you hanging on to? Are you sleeping with SARAH?  

Last summer I posted a blog on Frustration. I’m resurrecting this particular post because it is one of the more profound topics in need of conversation. I find myself working with frustrated clients every day and I continue to wrestle with this phenomenon of how we deal with things that are less than positive or neutral. The word “frustration” is our “go-to” emotional word. It encompasses everything. We are frustrated with the number on the scale, the constant traffic, the weeds in the yard, the lack of communication between family members, how our boss leads, that one team member who doesn’t contribute, the kids, the dog, the neighbors and then we are frustrated with our frustration.

According to Merriam-Webster, frustration is a deep chronic sense or state of insecurity and dissatisfaction arising from unresolved problems or unfulfilled needs. Words like deep and chronic are pretty intense! Here lies the problem though – no one cares that we are frustrated anymore.

There are over-used words in the English vocabulary. Words like awesome, cool, and sweet have lost their original meaning. In business we misuse words like page, plate, box, loop and ball. I don’t even have to give examples. If you are reading this your brain knows what they are. Frustration is our emotional buzzword and it has lost its impact. However, behind every frustration lies a more targeted emotion that can be more richly described then the generic word “frustration”. Are we really frustrated with our kids or are we chagrined (which means embarrassed or humiliated) because all our good parenting doesn’t seem to stick? Are we frustrated with the traffic or perhaps we simply feel rushed? Are we frustrated with our boss or are we really feeling thwarted (which means the feeling of someone preventing us from accomplishing a purpose)? Sometimes behind the word frustration is a disappointing sorrow that some are reluctant to admit. Frustration is an acceptable label and it doesn’t make us feel as vulnerable.

However, to get different results in life you have to actually do something different. Often by shifting the language we use we can get a different reaction, a different conversation and maybe a different result. I guarantee you if I tell my husband he frustrates me, he may just chuckle and say, “You frustrate me too babe”! But if I say to him, “I feel nonplused by you,” my bottom dollar is he’ll drop what he is doing, look at me and say, “You feel what by me?” Nonplused (also spelled nonplussed) means at a loss for words or at a loss for what to think.

I often encourage my clients to not use the word “frustration” and ask them to choose another emotional word that best targets what they are feeling. If they struggle, I’ll pull out a list and ask them to review it and then pick. Sometimes you just have to name your feelings differently. When you name it, you can claim it for what it really means to you and then work on taming it so it doesn’t keep getting in the way of what you really want.

What is causing you to feel frustrated? Is it really frustration you feel or something else? My challenge to you is to go all week and not use the word frustration!

In recent conversations with clients the following topics have surfaced as heartbreaking for them:

• When a child is told they aren’t smart, or is treated as worthless
• When kids go to school hungry or worry they won’t be safe
• When anger sabotages a child’s ability to function properly
• When patients are morbidly sick as a result of unhealthy lifestyles
• When patients have no safe place to go after a hospital discharge
• When adults lose their passion for the work they love
• When people stop contributing or stop caring

You learn a lot about someone by what breaks their heart. A broken heart can either cripple you or it can motivate you.

Western culture certainly has its share of heartbreak. Life can bring blows that swallow people whole. Weather disasters, disease, crime or accidents can be very indiscriminate with the few. 

On the other hand, most people find they live in constant low-level stages of suffering that just cause numbness. Delays, failing technology, financial worries, traffic, gray hairs and fatigue are a few first-world problems that are excellent at numbing us.

When numb, we stop noticing the truly heartbreaking things surrounding us. When we do notice, we quickly shift our focus because we want to avoid the pain. How often do you look someone in the eye who is holding a scribbled sign at a street corner saying, “Every little bit helps…”? Wouldn’t you agree that we must live extravagant lives when we get to choose what we notice?

  “The heart was made to be broken.” ― Oscar WildeOOoOO

If Oscar Wilde is correct, then we need to shake ourselves to get out of our numbed state and look around at what we want to change. A collective heartbreak is grounds for significant social movement. Consider Vivienne Harr of Fairfax, California. At the age of eight, she vowed to fight against human-trafficking after seeing photos of two Nepalese children carrying massive rocks with leather straps covering their heads. She couldn’t look away and used her heartbreak to open a lemonade stand. Today she has over 22k on twitter who stand with her to make sure kids are not for sale. A small reaction can have significant impact.

Will you allow your heart to break? How will that heartbreak motivate you to take action?

Blog provided by Ronald Fay, Principal at Rangeview High School, Aurora, Colorado 

As the high school principal, I was recently asked to provide a top ten list of my favorite movies for the school paper. I love movies and was happy to oblige. Two of the ten movies, both comedies, made this list simply because they make me laugh. They make me laugh every time I watch them. Why they make me laugh is not as important as the fact that they do. We all have different senses of humor and different events, ideas, and people that make us laugh. Yet how often do we laugh during the day?

One of my former principals loved to laugh. I know this because she had a hearty laugh which she used frequently. During her time as principal at Rangeview, much of her laughter came from the personal escapades of one of her dean’s classic moments: coming to work with her pants on backwards (elastic waistband allows this to happen) or not being able to find her cell phone, calling her cell phone from her house, finding it, and moments later being upset that someone would have the gall to call her cell phone so early in the morning, only to realize after calling the number that it was her home phone number! She did not need classic moments to laugh; she had a knack for finding humor in the day-to-day events. If we were at a conference or meeting, we did not have to pre-determine where to meet during breaks; we simply listened for and followed her jovial laugh. I suspect she made it a priority to laugh, and over time, it became part of who she was as a leader.

So what keeps us all from laughing throughout the day? Peter Bregman, author of 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done suggests we lack laughter in the workplace because of our incessant nature to multitask. When we multitask we are unable to feel joy or pleasure. The angst of multitasking does, however, provide a ripe emotional state for showing our frustration, anger and annoyance. I am not suggesting that we eliminate multitasking. What I am suggesting is that we not let multitasking overshadow our need to create moments throughout the day to laugh. Bregman suggests establishing a metric for the number of times you will laugh each day. This helps establish a pattern, and patterns eventually become habits.

As a leader of a larger urban high school with 2250 students and 140 staff, I am quite sure at any given moment someone has a story that will make me laugh. The aforementioned dean is still part of my leadership team, so I am just a short walk from being frustrated to laughing and realizing that pants with an elastic waistband are going to be part of my wardrobe some day!
  
How many times will you laugh today? Who in your organization laughs the loudest; who provides the “comedy of errors” for others to enjoy?  
 
Interested in being a guest blogger for The Willow Group? Contact Carrie Arnold for entry information.