#125 Why Seeking External Validation Holds You Back as a Leader

0:00
Welcome to the 360 leadership podcast, the top rated show for driven women in senior leadership with new episodes released every Wednesday. I’m your host, Lucy Gernon, a multi award winning executive coach for women leaders and the founder of 360. Leaders Club exclusive high level membership for career driven family orientated women just like you. I created the 360 leadership podcast to share practical tips, actionable step by step strategies, and inspiring stories to support you to unlock the power and belief within to accelerate your impact and potential. So you can build a life filled with success, balance and happiness. So are you ready to achieve 360 degree success? No more excuses. No more waiting. Your time is now.

0:49
Today, I want to have a real conversation with you. mean you heart to heart. You’ve probably known deep down for a long time that you’ve relied on external validation to know that you’ve done a good job for far too long. You’re committed, you’re hard working, you’re a problem solver. But you might struggle with setting expectations, holding people accountable and giving and receiving feedback, saying no might also be a challenge for you. And that’s often because your sense of self worth is tied to your work. And outside of it, you might not even know who you are. You might fear failure, stepping outside your comfort zone and not being liked and being quote unquote, found out. And these are all factors that lead into you seeking external validation. So today, my gorgeous listener, I am back with another episode hopefully to give you some love and inspiration. In case you’re new here, I’m Lucy garden. I’m a multi award winning executive coach working with women and leadership and host of the 360 leadership podcast. And today I am just really want to have a little heart to heart with you. And in this episode of the show, we’re going to dig into the validation trap and why it’s so dangerous. We’re going to talk about the real impact that actually has on your leadership. And then I’m going to share three strategies to break free of seeking external validation. How good would that be? Now, I don’t want you to think that I’m perfect. And let’s be real who hasn’t fallen into the validation trap at some point. But unfortunately, in my experience, it seems to affect women leaders more than men. And honestly, I’ve been there myself and so have my clients, which is why I really wanted to record this episode of the show so that you know you’re not alone. I honestly remember back years ago, I constantly sought approval from others to feel good about myself, not just in work from my since I was a little girl, I used to look to my mom to make sure I was always doing the right thing she would have always given me. You know, I remember her telling me that as a kid if I ever did anything wrong, I used to write a letter and send it down the stairs saying sorry, and always looking for her approval to make sure what I did was okay. And it was the same even with my teachers like I was that good girl, can you relate? I know a lot of my clients can. I was like a really good girl, I was studious, as much as I found it difficult. I sat in the front row, I was always really compliant. And I really linked everything I gave all my power away to other people. And even as I grew up, then and I started my career, I remember I used to be terrified of making decisions in case I got wrong and it wasn’t right and I’d get in trouble. And I’d look to others to make me feel good. But that actually only set me up for failure. Because when you’re a high achiever like me, and I know you are how you wouldn’t be listening to this podcast, you set the bar higher and higher every time. So there is never any achieving it. And I call it the validation trap. So you know what I’m talking about. It’s constantly seeking approval from others to feel like you’re good, you’re good enough. So you feel like you’re, you know, good about yourself. So whether it’s waiting for a pat on the back from your boss, or obsessing over likes or comments on your social media, if you post, we’ve all been there. But I think of it like a mouse chop with a piece of cheese. So imagine you’re you’re the mice and your boss is the cheese and your boss is holding the cheese. And you run over and you take a nibble of the cheese and you don’t get caught and you get a little nibble and and you keep getting you keep wanting more and more. And you’ve you’ve realized, you know, there’s a way for you not to actually fall into that mouse trap if you just skirt around the edges and but what you don’t realize is that the more you go back and forth and back and forth and back and forth, you’re in this like addictive cycle and eventually that trap is going to snap. And that has happened for so many of my amazing clients that they get to a point where they end up putting their self worth in somebody else’s hands which really is a risk

5:00
Pay for disaster. Now, let’s talk about the elephant in the room. How does seeking external validation affect your leadership? And spoiler alert, it’s not pretty. Because when you’re constantly seeking validation from others, your team or source are suffering, because you might not make be making decisions fast enough, you might be focusing more on pleasing your boss and getting in front of those senior leaders instead of actually leading your team and being there for them. Now, I remember years ago, one of my bosses destroyed me, because when I started out my career in the pharmaceutical industry, I had this boss and he should not have been a leader, okay, he was one of these leaders that just should not have been a leader, he couldn’t have cared less about his team, he was enough for himself purely enough for himself. And he did very well, more power to him. But I was terrified to make decisions. Now, I was only an entry level manager at this point. But because I had always looked to my mother for validation, look to my teachers for validation look to my boyfriend’s for validation. And I look to my husband for validation and bloody the postman, whoever I could for validation. It really, really affected me so much that I was terrified to make decisions. And you know, even if you can’t resonate with this, there’s definitely people on your team. If you see people who are people pleasers and struggling to make decisions, it’s because they’re afraid they’re gonna get it wrong, and they’re gonna get in trouble and people won’t like them. Okay. And that’s a whole other episode, if you’d like me to do on how to deal with team members like that, because I know exactly how to do it because I was there. But it took me years to recover from him because he was he didn’t, he never gave me the validation. So he never gave me the validation. And I would look for it, and I wouldn’t get it. So I try harder. And then he I’d look for it again. And I would try harder. And I would try harder, and I would work longer hours. And it never came, never ever came. So what I realized from that was actually, if I want to do really well in my career, which I did, I’m going to have to learn how to validate myself, I’m going to have to learn that my ideas are good. And how I did it actually, is I went back to science. So every decision I made, I would make like a science or data driven decision, which enabled me to feel more confident and stop looking for the external validation. Because what I really want you to know, and if you’re multitasking, come back to me,

7:35
everyone, no matter who they are, they’re in it for themselves, okay? It’s not that they don’t care about you. And it’s not that, but everyone has their own agenda. And everyone is going to put their needs before your and your needs because it’s a basic human psychological thing to want to protect yourself first, because you’ve got to feel safe, whether it’s psychological safety, or actual physical safety, okay? So the more you start looking to other people, like you’re just you’re just gonna fall into this trap that you can never ever ever get out of. Okay. So how can you begin to break free of the validation trap

8:13
and become a confident empowered leader? Because you are.

8:18
It’s all about shifting your focus from external validation to you guessed it, internal validation.

8:26
So how do you do that?

8:29
The first thing you can do is celebrate yourself. Now, this is a this is proven in the science of positive psychology, okay, that when you celebrate yourself and you shift your mindset, from scarcity to abundance into a more gratitude state of being, it improves your performance. This is all proven in the data and the science, okay? It proves, it improves your well being it improves your sleep, it reduces cortisol, like there’s so many benefits to actually celebrate in yourself. Now my 360 liters club, ladies know that we always start our sessions with celebration. And one thing I notice is people still tend to revert to what’s going wrong. It’s like It’s like a It’s just something that’s ingrained in us we we tend to focus on what’s wrong, but honestly I have trained myself to focus on what’s right now not in a toxic kind of a way there’s always stuff going wrong in my life believe me, from personal problems to business challenges to team members not working out to like you know, business challenges like tech issues, Team issues, everything that you have I go through okay, everything like there’s so much stuff you know, you think you know, people like you have no idea what goes on in my life really okay. But everyone says to me, I seem to be quite positive I am and it’s because I have trained myself to be okay. And that all starts with celebrating yourself. So giving yourself permission to just celebrate your wins big or small.

10:00
So every week in 360, leaders club we have an accountability check in. And in our LinkedIn group, we do a weekly wind celebration post, which the girls love because they they go through the week and they think they haven’t done anything and everything is wrong. And then when they actually pause and celebrate the actually realize that there was a lot of things that went well. And they end the week feeling so much more, I suppose in a higher vibe than they would have. Okay, so give yourself that permission. The second thing that I invite you to do is trust your gut, okay, trust your gut. So we know, okay, that we have, there’s a style of coaching called envious, which is multiple brain integration technique. And most of us spend the majority of our time in our brain, right? It doesn’t in our head. But we actually have our heart and got brains as well, if you like. And when you actually tap into your head, heart and gut, when it comes to decisions, and when it comes to own and your talents, you are going to like there is no there is no going wrong, okay? Trust your gut, trust your heart, trust your instincts. And, you know, you do have what it takes to make those tough decisions and have those conversations. And I always think, you know, sidenote, when it comes to delivering constructive feedback or having those difficult conversations, if you come at those conversations from a place of heart, like I will always have a constructive conversation from place of heart because I care about the person didn’t used to, I used to go in it with blame, and it didn’t serve me. So my invitation for you would be to really like just trust your gut, trust your instincts. And I want you to know that you have what it takes.

11:45
The third thing, then to begin to move from external validation to internal is to embrace feedback, embrace feedback. Now, feedback is a gift, if it’s from the right person, okay? What you want to do is you you want to be selective about what feedback you actually allow yourself to receive. Now, you know, if you have somebody who taught who you trust, who you know, has your best interests at heart, and they give you constructive feedback, take it. If you have somebody who you know, doesn’t really align with your values, who you know, you just rub each other up the wrong way, and they have feedback for you, then maybe you might decide that you’re not going to take that, again, it’s all about it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, terrible person, it just means that you’re on different pages, okay? So that will be my invitation for you is to like, seek out that feedback. But remember, only take the feedback that you believe is valuable, because you get to decide, okay, you only have one life. And the more you keep looking externally, you are just giving away your personal power. And my invitation for you today, okay, is to take that power back by committing to me here and now today, that you are going to begin to love yourself as much as your family and your friends and your team love you. In like a non weird way. If it’s like a team thing, you know what I mean? Please, please, please, because I even though we may not have met yet, we may have met. But I know that if you’re a woman in leadership, you care deeply about people, you are driven, you are ambitious, you have so much to give. And it’s really time that you prioritize yourself. It’s time to change how you work. So you can be more effective at the level that you’re now operating at. Because the more you start, you know, the more you keep going for that validation.

13:42
Your workload was going to struggle, your work life balance is going to struggle. And it’s time that you stepped up to be the leader, your team and your function need and deserve.

13:51
Others wants you to be guiding them. But you’re stuck in the weeds during the busy work because you want the validation and because you want you know, you want to be in everything. But it’s this constant need to please and receive validation is really what’s keeping you stuck. So three tips again, just to summarize, celebrate yourself, do it right now. What could you celebrate about yourself? What have you done recently, big or small, that you could congratulate yourself if you gave yourself permission? Do it right now.

14:24
The second thing, trust your gut, trust your instincts and just know that you have what it takes to make those tough decisions and to have those conversations. You cannot get it wrong because there’s always tomorrow and you can make a new decision. And the third and paying is to embrace feedback, but just to make sure that you are taking it from the right people who have your best interests at heart.

14:45
So that’s it for this week’s episode of the 360 leadership podcast. I love you lots. Thank you for being here with me. If you found this valuable, please send it on to some female leader or colleagues because I really want to help get this message out.

15:00
More women we need to stop all of this take we need to take our power back and we need to show those boys how to lead okay so until next time have a great week and I will talk to you again same time same place bye for now