Everybody hurts sometimes
Musings on Heart Powered Human Leadership
I have been working with senior leaders as a trainer, coach, mentor since the early 90’s. I have sat in uncountable rooms with hundreds, maybe even thousands of leaders…
Asking this simple question: How are you, really?’
This has had many a leader reach for the tissues.
It seems to me that when it comes to business leaders — not many people are really asking this question, and even less are deeply listening to the response.
Understandably, when we are at work, many of us have our own stuff going on. I get that. At home too, our loving partner/dearest friend who has in the past been there for us, is also navigating their day job + all the things. Just like we are. I don’t know about you — but everyone seems so much busier these days since, you know — phones.
One of the great privileges of my work is that I get to ask that question and be there for the answer. You may or may not be surprised to know that — no matter the age, gender, status, type of business, amount of people they lead, or financial number they manage — everyone — no exceptions in the end has good days and bad days. And on the bad days it hurts.
Recently I was with an impressive very senior Leader who works at a strategic level, tasked with the turnaround of a house-hold name. By every measure she seems brilliant to me. A creative genius, a wise woman, capable and instinctive. She was wheeled in last minute to a room full of male 65+ grumpy, finance focused and demanding investors and was told later ‘they were really impressed’ and afterwards they put their money where their mouths were. (I sense because of her — she was modest about that bit)
You’d think that would give her the confidence and faith to just know she is great and adding huge value by just being her — but no. She is dogged by an internal familiar critic that says something like ‘other people know more and are better than me.
And she’s not the only one. I worked with another CEO who ran a fast expanding retail business — his ‘old chestnut’ issue was ‘feeling like an imposter and that the axe is going to fall at any moment.’ which left him lacking in confidence and not keen to take a stand or a risk, even though others had great faith in him.
Leaders (because they are human) often compare themselves to others — and find themselves lacking.
That’s because they often compare other peoples’ outsides (behaviours, achievements, demeanour) with their own insides (feelings and repetitive thoughts).
And as a small aside – it’s always good to remember that as Theodore Roosevelt said…
Comparison is the thief of joy.
Yesterday my creative genius and I took a closer look at that ‘old chestnut’ and asked a few questions. Simple ones, like — Is it really true? What happens when you believe it? What’s the cost of it? What’s the benefit? How does it feel and where do you feel that? What would the people you trust and respect say to you if they knew? Does it move you towards or away from what you want, what you really, really want?
Sad, bad, mad feelings always look very real when we have them and the nature of them – when they get our focus – is to self-perpetuate and gather lots of evidence so they seem as if they will always look real, true and permanent — they can have been around on repeat like an old record, a long, long time, quietly hurting in the background.
Luckily though like our thoughts, feelings are always temporary and are not telling us any permanent truth. Just a glimpse into what is true right now for us, given our own personal story of how we have created life to be.
By the end of the session — something else looked a lot truer to her that felt a lot better: ‘I have real value to add and I am equal to anyone.’ And she suddenly remembered all the places where that was already true and that she had plenty of evidence. Lets see how that now goes — but I feel confident that she has seen something that is truer than that ‘chestnut’.
In any event — sometime when it hurts, the best we’ve all got, is to share it with someone and bring it all into the light. It’s amazing how different things can look with someone else’s deep, present listening and genuine curiosity.
And it’s good to remember that no matter who you are or what you do…Everybody hurts sometimes and no, no, no, you are not alone.
Working with Changemakers to let their wisdom lead real change.
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