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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.
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Hi there. And welcome back to another episode of the 360 leadership podcast. I’m your host, Lucy Garnon, a multi award winning executive coach and CEO of 360. Leaders Club. Today we are diving into a really important topic, I believe, for women in leadership all about reasons you could be falling behind. And today I’m going to be sharing my insights based on years of experience, both working in corporate leadership myself and working with my amazing incredible female leader private VIP clients, and the members of 360 leaders club. So just to back up a little bit. Today, we are going to be talking all about how you can unlock your potential. Because I am a firm believer that you only live once, and you are here for a reason. I’m talking to you, okay, you are here for a reason. And you have so much to give to the world. But sometimes we fall behind we hold ourselves back. And as a professional coach who has supported countless women, like I said in my one to one and also in my membership 360 meters Club, which is the ultimate high level membership for women leaders who want to have it all. I have had the privilege of assisting so many women, so from senior managers all the way up to executive level leaders in achieving their goals and overcoming challenges. And the reason I wanted to come on the podcast today was because I have noticed some common blocks that stop women in leadership from achieving their career and life goals. So today, we are going to explore five common reasons you might be falling behind in your leadership career. And I’m going to be sharing some solutions to support you to break through these barriers. And best of all, at the end, I’m going to be sharing something free to help you with all of this this and in all of my time in business. This is literally the best free thing I have ever, ever, ever offered in terms of value. So stay tuned to hear all about it. And just before we get into it, if you haven’t already, please don’t forget to subscribe to this podcast. So you don’t miss an episode and give us a little review on Spotify or Apple. Because that will help us to push the podcast to more female leaders, just like you. Let me just set the scene for a second. I have been working with like literally hundreds of women in leadership, probably 1000s When I look at all the corporate talks I’ve done and all the conversations I’ve had in my DMs with my clients, everything. And there has been so many things that I have supported women with so things like achieving better work life balance and supporting them to handle conflict, overcoming imposter syndrome, getting more organized, reducing the pressure they put on themselves, supporting them with things like getting promotions, salary increases, the list goes on. So no matter what the I suppose the goal is, I have supported women in leadership with so many different things. And like I said that what I’ve noticed is there’s these blocks that come up. So for example, I had a client Her name was Olivia, and she was a senior manager in the pharmaceutical industry. She was an extremely talented individual. She was a mother, she had two children, and she cared a lot about her career. Okay. And I know you can probably relate to that too. If you’re listening to this, whether you have kids or you don’t. And she was putting herself under so much pressure to have all the answers to everything she had was working 60 hour weeks, she had really poor work life balance, not even in terms of hours, but it was more she beat herself up for not being better. She could not switch off in the evening time. It was affecting her family and her loved ones too because she felt like work was getting the best of her. Her family was not getting the best of her. That made her feel really guilty. So this cycle went on for years and years. Okay. And there was five things that I noticed with her that I also noticed with my client Suzy who was a
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Vice President in the financial services industry. Now Suzy again, had children, she was a VP looking after an international region responsible for, you know, millions and billions in revenue, lots of responsibility, lots of pressure. And again, work life balance was a problem. There was self belief issues, there was confidence issues. And what I love when I work with women, that makes me so happy is when I can help them to see what I see. And when I can help them to see what everyone around them season they can’t. And when they do, everything changes. There was another client of mine, her name was Nicola. And she was a director in tech. And again, Nicola was one of the nicest ladies you would ever meet, she didn’t have any kids, she had no interest in children, and she was just working hard for herself to achieve her potential. And so she could support her family back home, you know, she wants to help her brother, right with paying his mortgage, she had plans to, you know, treat her parents to lovely holidays and things. And that was all of her motivation. So that’s the thing we all have motivations to, I suppose, in the reasons why we do the work that we do. But the paradox of it all, is oftentimes, the reason that I see my clients are doing these things is for their family, but yet their family are the ones who are who are suffering at the consequences of work. So my whole mission is to support you to truly unlock the power and potential that lies within. So you can accelerate your impact and your potential and really just get to where you want to be in life, without burning yourself out or missing out on everything. Because I know for sure with I noticed girls, okay, I know that success, balance and happiness is possible, because I have supported so many women to achieve it. With all of those ladies that I’ve shared a little stories about, there were five common things that I see, that stops women like you from reaching your potential.
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So the first one is fear. So whether that’s the fear of getting it wrong, of not having all the answers of worrying about what other people will think of you a fear of not being good enough, a fear of being too visible, a fear of coming across too ballsy or aggressive, the list goes on. Okay, fear, fear, fear, fear, can you relate? Now, fear is a totally normal and natural human response. But when you don’t have the tools to overcome this fear, you’ll stay stuck. It can paralyze your decision making, it can lead to missed opportunities at work, it can lead to you not applying for roles that you know you’re capable of. But because you don’t tick all the boxes, you hold yourself back. And then lo and behold, your male counterpart or some young up and comer from an external organization comes in, they get the job, and you’re looking at them going what, right, I could have done this better. And as a result of all of this fear, we have less women in leadership, we have less women in those senior roles. Or we have women in those senior roles who have really poor balance, who set a really poor example for the rest of the younger generations in their organization, and who are stressed out all of the time. So we want to be able to get to a place where fear is a natural and normal response, you’re never going to get away from it. I know I’m certainly not. But what we want to do is realize that you can overcome this fear. And how you do that is by getting outside your comfort zone. Now, I know getting outside your comfort zone is totally uncomfortable. That’s why it is fear. But I have done it myself again, and again and again. And I can promise you that everything you want be that work life balance, be that to be noticed at work to get a new opportunity to get a salary increase to move up a level. Whatever your career and life goals are, you’re not going to what got you to where you are right now is not going to get you where you want to be. I’m going to say that again. What got you to where you are now is not going to get you where you want to be. So you’ve got to move beyond your comfort zone, we have to step into that next level identity in order to truly have that career and life that you really really deserve. Okay.
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The second thing that I see then is boundaries. So I don’t know what it is about us women, but we are shocking at times at certain boundaries. I know I used to be I remember I was the Yes girl. I said yes to everything. When I worked in corporate I was I really cared and I know you can relate to this too. You know, our jobs become a massive part of our identity. And we we care deeply about, I suppose our own success and reaching our potential and wanting to make an impact and to serve you know your customers and your clients or whatever. And also we want the finances behind the two
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Right. And as a result, because we might have insecurities about ourselves, we may not believe in ourselves enough, we were afraid to set boundaries. Now I am here today to tell you my gorgeous, gorgeous listener, that it is okay to set boundaries. And I have something important that you need to know. But you’re probably not going to like, so if you’re multitasking come back to me.
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I heard a coach recently talk about boundaries. And it really landed with the story. She told I don’t remember her name. It was someone I came across on the internet. And she spoke about boundaries and talking about how
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if you have a kid, okay, so picture your niece, your nephew, your neighbor, your own daughter, your own son, and you have two parents, okay, and the kid wants a cookie, or the kid wants something a treat?
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Who do they go to?
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Do they go to the parent they love the most? Do they go to the parent they have the most fun with? Do they go to the parent? Who is the most educated? Who is the most capable?
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No.
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Who do they go to?
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They go and ask for the treat from the parent they know will say yes.
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So it’s nothing got to do with both parents can give the treat equally. Okay, both parent, maybe one parent picks a slightly better cookie than the older, however, the child is going to the parent that they know is going to say yes. And I’m afraid to break it to you my gorgeous listener, it’s the same for all of us. People will keep asking you to do things as long as you keep saying yes.
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That’s why I created a method. You’ve heard me talk about it before. If you go way back to episode number two, I think it is the ultimate guide to setting boundaries, I talk you through my three step dad method. And this is where you are going to define your boundaries, you’re going to apply your boundaries and you’re going to defend your boundaries. Now I do a lot of corporate talks on this. And one thing that comes up is we want people to be flexible, and we don’t want boundaries. And I get that because when you’re running a business, you want collaboration, you want people to work together because you’ve got to create results. So I prefer to see boundaries as collaboration guidelines. So you’ve got to teach people how to treat you. Otherwise, they’re gonna walk all over you. Okay, so we’ve got to set boundaries.
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The third thing that I noticed too, is conflict.
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Conflict Management is an essential, essential leadership skill, and the life skill. Okay. And so many women who I work with are terrified of conflict, they don’t do not like conflict. Now, personally, I am quite strong and quite direct in most cases. And I tend to see conflict more as conversation, I don’t label it as conflict, I actually go into every single confrontation situation with a big heart, looking to try to resolve it, because you cannot have conflict without two parties. And so if I’m not willing to enter into conflict, and I’m trying to enter into solution, when it kind of just dissipates the energy a little bit, okay. So, I definitely noticed that a lot. And it would come up a lot with the ladies in 360 leaders club to where there’s different situations at work where conflict arises. And if you are not, you know, if you are a leader, you have got to be able to manage conflict, but it doesn’t have to be as scary as it sounds, okay. And I actually have a free guide on my website, all on conflict management, I have broken down some really, really common scenarios that you’ll see, when it comes to conflict management, I’ve given you exactly what to say what not to say. So if you want to go to my website and grab that resource, you’ll see it under the free resources section, just go to Lucy garland.com. And on the very homepage, you’ll see free resources and you can grab it there.
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The fourth thing then the fourth mistake that I see that you know gets in your way of reaching your potential and causes you to fall behind
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is procrastination.
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Procrastination is the devil. Okay, now, I’m like the anti procrastinator, I probably need to slow down. I do not procrastinate. I just act. I don’t think I just act. And sometimes when we want things in life, we have got to be okay with taking imperfect action. Okay, we’ve got to be okay with taking imperfect action. You’ve got to knuckle down and do things, the hard things, the strategic stuff, the hard work at times that you don’t want to do or you need to delegate it right. But procrastination, all it does is it stops you from moving forward. Now procrastination can arise from so many different you know, so many different reasons.
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procrastinate has to do with our beliefs has to do with our values, it’s to do with a lot of mindset stuff that I will get into with my clients too. Because when you understand this, you’re like, ah, that’s why I procrastinate. And again, I can give you tools and techniques to be able to get out of that really, really fast. I had a client before. And she used to have to do this some, I think it was for every client they had, they had to do like a review. And there was 206 68 line items on a spreadsheet, it was a risk assessment. And this lady is absolutely dread doing it. And we came up with a couple of strategies to support her. And she is now doing it with so much more ease. Okay, so you’ve got to get out of procrastination, you’ve got to find what works for you.
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And then the fifth thing that I see, which is probably the biggest issue of all,
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is lack of self belief.
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The lack of self belief, lack of believing in your abilities, as a result, playing small, not applying for those jobs, not going for that promotion, not setting boundaries. So you can have more time, not even believing that you’re good enough to go to the bloody bathroom at times, because you’re so you’re working so hard. Now that breaks my heart, it breaks my heart. But you have got to believe you’re good enough. You don’t have to work your ass off every single day from morning until night to prove yourself, okay, you are good enough, just as you are. And once you see that, that’s when you’re able to set boundaries, that’s when you’re able to handle conflict, that’s when you’re able to do all of the hard things, when you have such certainty in who you are, and what you bring to the world. Okay. So they are the five roadblocks, I’m going to summarize real quick. The first one is fear, we’ve got to get over all of this fear and use tools to be able to get out of a fast without judgment without you know, beating yourself up. The second one is boundaries, you’ve got to set boundaries or collaboration guidelines, as I like to call them. The third one is conflict management, it is essential that you are able to deal with poor performers quickly that you can have those candid conversations with your peers, that you can talk to your boss openly and say when you don’t like something, okay, you you own that you owe that to yourself to be able to do that. The fourth one is procrastination, Okay, gotta get out of procrastination, start getting into action and moving towards those goals that you have. And then the fifth one, which is the most important, which is the linchpin of it all is self belief. You’ve got to have certainty in yourself, you’ve got to believe in your abilities. And you’ve got to believe that you are good enough, because I know that you are
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now the good news is, I know that was intense.
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Underneath all of this lies, a lack of confidence and self belief. And if you’re listening to this podcast live in November 2023, I am so excited to announce that I’m hosting something super special just for you. From the 19th of November, the 24th of November, and it’s going to blow your mind. Are you ready?
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It’s a free five day live online challenge called the champagne confidence breakthrough challenge. So in this five day challenge, you’re going to discover how to sparkle like champagne and break through the blocks that are keeping you from developing more personal confidence in your role as a leader. So you can empower your team so you can delegate more so you can stop procrastination, navigate politics at senior levels, and staying true to yourself. Okay, so if that sounds like something that you want to attend, I would love to see you there. So you can just go to sign up dot Lucy garden.com forward slash challenge. That’s sign up dot Lucy garden.com forward slash challenge. And I will link it in the show notes and it’ll be below where you’re listening to this video, but it’s only if you’re live listening only in November 2023. If you are listening later on, don’t worry, I will have more free master classes and challenges coming up soon. So just check out my website for more details. So that is it for this week’s episode. My gorgeous gorgeous, gorgeous lady. Please, please know that you were amazing. Success, balance and happiness are possible. And if you’re listening to this live, please go sign up come to the champagne confidence breakthrough challenge because I am literally going to be teaching you all of my secrets. I have never given away this much value in a free challenge before and I’m just I’m so incredibly excited to support you to end the year on a height. So thank you so much for listening. I would love if you enjoyed this episode to share it with a female colleague. And don’t forget to subscribe
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and just stay connected with me for more empowering content so until next time be safe be well and I’ll talk to you then
