Transcript
[00:00:01]
You're listening to the Her Leadership Coach podcast for the quietly determined career woman who's looking to step up into a first or next level leadership role. If you're looking to make a bigger, more positive difference in your organisation, you've come to the right place. Well, hello, welcome in. It's Rochelle. Thanks for joining me for this week's episode of Her Leadership Coach, where we're talking all about questions.
[00:00:30]
I had a question from a client last week and I know a version of this question has come up for me before and I'm sure you will have either had this question or will have this question at some point in your career. She was at a point of trying to work out what was next with her career. When she came to me and we had a session on getting some clarity about her next steps, we also spent some time recognizing that some of the things she thought were her faults were actually her strengths, which was super exciting. Just a few days later I heard from her and amazingly, the almost perfect role had shown up out of the blue and her team. Now there's two things that I wanted to note about that.
[00:01:17]
The first is how often this happens and it's astounding for me, but it really does happen where you get some real clarity about something and in this case about your career. But anything really and opportunities seem to appear before you couldn't see anything, right? So it's like they just appear out of the ear. So there is some science behind this that we can go into another day, but I love seeing that play out in real time. The other thing that I wanted to note was we had also talked about in our session.
[00:01:56]
We talked about the environment that she was in and we talked about how the manager of the team wasn't a good fit for her. Didn't seem like a particularly good leader. Certainly not from what you're saying and from my standards of what a next level leader is like. This lady did not fit the bill. And really just the whole environment that she was in, the small team, it didn't feel good.
[00:02:23]
So her question for me was what do I do? On the one hand, the role really aligned with her next career step, so it would mean that she would be leading a few employees, so she would be in a leadership role and working with both a variety that was high on her list of values and the skills that she had described were important for her. So it matched really well with that. On the other hand, if she takes this role, it means staying in the same team, reporting to the same manager. So good things, bad things, I don't know about you, but my career, let alone my life, has not consisted of a straight line with simple black and white decisions to make along the way.
[00:03:09]
I wish it did. Every now and then I've got an easy yes that rolls come up and it's been like, yes, this is it. I'm done. Mostly, though, it's been I don't know, what do I do? And then there's like these pros and the cons and the goods and the bads and the shades of gray decisions that we need to make all of the time.
[00:03:33]
Sometimes the questions are not really like that big, right? In the grand scheme of things, they don't matter that much. And yet, honestly, how long I agonize over those decisions. Like the last time I had to buy a laptop because the one I was using died. I had my work one, but the business one and the home one, it had just gone kaput.
[00:03:56]
And so I needed to buy a new one and oh my God, it took weeks for me, weeks to finally make a decision. Way too many variables in the laptop for my poor little brain to chew on. And yet, really, when I look back and even at the time I kind of knew this, any one of them would have got the job done right. Any one of them would have been better than the laptop I was using before it died. Like it was about three years old.
[00:04:21]
So technology continues to move on. I would have probably got just as good a laptop if I'd gone with my first choice than the one I finally picked weeks later. And I mean, it's great. The laptop I've got is great. I'm just saying the first one probably would have been just as good, so I could have saved myself weeks of agony anyway.
[00:04:40]
So there are the questions that the answers to really don't make a big difference in your life, but there are other questions that really feel more life changing. Kind of that sliding doors moment, right, where if I make this choice, I'm going to end up in a completely different place than if I make this choice. It feels like there's just all this weight behind these questions. Questions like, which kids, which school am I going to send my kids to? That can be a really big question for some people.
[00:05:16]
Questions like, do I stay in this relationship or do I leave? And boy, that's life changing. Questions like whether to stay in a job or start up a business or do I choose this job or that job? So, like, those questions, they're waiting and they can literally change your life direction. So how do you work through those kinds of questions now?
[00:05:47]
If you're anything like I used to be, I often didn't work through the questions. So, I mean, not that I wouldn't agonize over them and think about them. I would like harm and har and I'd make a decision, I need to undo it again five minutes later, I would agonize and tie myself in knots.
[00:06:10]
And then how often do you leave it so long that the decision gets made for you. You've left it so late that there's just no choices left. One of my mentors I don't know if I've said this before in a podcast, but one of my mentors says, the quality of your life is determined by the quality of the questions you ask. And I love that. And I believe I am living proof of that.
[00:06:39]
The way my life has changed over the last few years, I believe is a result of the questions that I have been asking myself and that others have asked of me. I also believe that's why we should all have a coach or a mentor at least, because so often when we're in that space, in that decisionmaking space, we can't even see the questions that are going to shift the needle for us. Even as a coach, when I ask others good questions, I still need a coach to ask me the good questions because I forget to ask some of myself. When I'm in that overthinking loop. It's this loop of sort of anxiety thinking, what's the best decision?
[00:07:22]
What's the best decision? What's the right decision? What's the perfect decision? What's the silver bullet decision? We get stuck in this loop and so we need someone often from outside to ask us some questions to bring us outside of the overthinking.
[00:07:39]
So I went back to my client when she came to me with this, you know, what do I do? Question with some questions.
[00:07:49]
So something that could help her gain some insight. Because I don't know the right decision for her. She knows the right decision for her. She just needs to be asked the right question to bring that decision out. So I wanted to share these questions with you and add in a little bit more than what I went back to her with, at least the first time, in the hopes that if you're going through some decisions right now, this can help you out.
[00:08:19]
So the first question I asked, and this is sort of a common one, but it's a good starting point, I think, is to sit and feel and imagine yourself one year in the future and looking back at the decision you made a year ago. So you're one year in the future and you're looking back to today and you're really happy that you made the decision that you made one year ago. What's the first thing that comes to mind? What's the decision you made when you know that you are really happy about the decision? Now, you can take this two ways.
[00:09:02]
You can sit in there for a while and really think about, you know, what's the decision? What's the one that's made me happy? Or you cannot think and just feel. Kind of sounds weird, I know. But often our body knows the answer even when our thinking brain doesn't.
[00:09:22]
It can be your subconscious mind that helps your body to feel the answer. So you can use this question as a way of being present, just sitting with it and letting your gut or your inner instinct take the floor here. So whatever the first thought is that came to you when I asked that question, go with that decision, and I'll talk more about that in a minute. The second question I asked is, if you knew without a shadow of a doubt that you are amazing and that anyone who hires you is really lucky to have you, would this be the right role for you? Would this be the role that you would take?
[00:10:10]
Now, I know some of you are probably thinking, hang on a minute. What if I don't know this without a shadow of a doubt? What if I'm pretty sure I'm mediocre or I'm just really good at fooling people into thinking I'm good at what I do? Well, my lovely friend, it's time for you to do what it takes to have that feeling of knowing you are amazing and of knowing whoever hires you is really lucky to have you. So my next question for you is, what do you need to do right now?
[00:10:44]
So you genuinely know anyone who hired you is lucky to have you. So that might bring up some stuff for you. It might feel a little bit sad, and that's okay. Sit with that for a while. Don't wallow in it.
[00:10:59]
Sit with it, though, and see what else that feeling of sadness brings in. But if what it takes is working on your self worth, then I want you to step up and start doing that. And that's one of the main things we do in the accelerate Your leadership academy. It's around being the leader inside out. And that is about knowing your worth in this world.
[00:11:24]
If it's about working on particular skills, if you feel like there's a gap in your skills before you think that people would be lucky to hire you, then identify those skills and start to work on them. And if you can see that this role you're considering is going to be part of working on those particular skills or part of, you know, helping your sense of self worth, then that can help you make the decision in itself.
[00:11:53]
Now, if your decision after these questions is, yeah, I think this job is the one for me, it raises another question. Because for my client, at least, while the job might be great, she's still got the boss to deal with, right? So ask yourself, what can I do? In other words, what is within my control to do that will improve my relationship with this person?
[00:12:25]
So even if that's by 1-1-A day, I'm going to improve my relationship with this person. What's within my control? And if you missed last week's podcast on what a difference 1% can make, I encourage you to go back and listen to that one but what can I do to move this relationship one little step towards the positive every single day? Another episode, actually, that you might want to go back to is episode nine, Managing Up at Work. And that will also help with this question.
[00:12:59]
So those questions are a great starting place and of course there are many more that you could start with or move on to from there, depending on your particular situation. But today I also want to give you a mindset shift to go with the questions. So mindsets are the beliefs you hold that shape how you see the world and how you see yourself within the world. Mindsets shape your thoughts, your feelings, your behaviors, and that means that they ultimately shape your results. Now go into mindsets further in a future episode because it's a whole huge topic on its own and super important.
[00:13:38]
But for today, I want to challenge you to simply being open to shifting one belief, and that is if you have this to shift your belief from scarcity to an abundance mindset. So what do I mean by that? Well, when you believe that this opportunity is the only one you're ever going to get, when you think, well, this is it, you're deciding between this job or nothing, right? However. If you shift that belief.
[00:14:15]
If you can see that there are an infinite number of opportunities out there for you. And I genuinely know that there are an infinite number of opportunities out there for you. Then the decision becomes this role or the next one that comes along. Or another one. Or another one becomes a question of does this one feel right for me right now?
[00:14:43]
Rather than, oh, I have to take this or I'm going to have missed my one and only opportunity. I've experienced this in action many times. Not that long ago, I was asked to apply for a role the next level up from where I was not in my team and another team, but someone kind of head hunted me and said, look, you're going to be amazing at this job, please apply for it. And I'm not going to lie, it was tempting. The role itself seems pretty good.
[00:15:10]
It seemed like a good fit for me. However, I knew there had been issues with the leadership in that team. Now, a few years earlier, I would have taken the role. I would have been flattered to be asked to apply for sure, and I still was. It was nice to be recognized that you're good at something.
[00:15:29]
I probably, a few years back, would have thought they must have been desperate to ask me and therefore I had better apply before that desperation went away and I would have applied. Whether I would have got it or not, I don't know, but I would have applied. But at the time this one came up, I had done a lot of work to become really clear on my value on the value. I bring two roles and also got really clear on my boundaries. And one of my really strong boundaries is I am never going to work within a toxic environment again.
[00:16:05]
At least not knowingly, I'm not going to knowingly take a role where I know that the environment is not absolutely positive for me. I'm in that environment now. Why would I give that up? I also knew though, that there would be many more opportunities for me to choose from and that this role was not the last role I was going to be offered. There are many, many opportunities and of course there was.
[00:16:33]
And one of those opportunities was the role I'm in now, which I've probably said before I absolutely love. So I'm so glad that I didn't take that role because I don't know about you, this might just be a me thing, but when I take on a new role, I have a sense of loyalty and I feel like I have to stick it out for at least a year, even if it's not feeling great. Now, again, this is something I've been working on. And now because of my boundaries, if I did that, I would step out. I would not hang around a toxic environment, but in the past, that sense of loyalty would have overridden my own sense of psychological safety and it would mean that I would not be in the role I'm in now because I would have stuck that one out even when this one came out.
[00:17:28]
So a question to contemplate from this mindset of opportunity, this mindset of abundance, is if I say yes to this opportunity, what might I be saying no to? And you can also ask, if I say no to this opportunity, what might I be saying yes to? And finally, and this is a big question, how about trying? Am I being guided by fear right now or by courage?
[00:18:03]
Yeah, the quality of your questions. So I would love for you to sit with some of these questions. If you're going through a decision making process right now, I write questions like this out in a journal. You can use a notebook, you can use Word, Microsoft Word, wherever you want to start writing the questions down and jotting down whatever comes up for you. Don't judge it, just write it down.
[00:18:28]
It can be really surprising at the things you might discover about yourself in the process. Now, if you're not working on big decisions right now, you might want to save this episode so you can come back to it if you ever find yourself in this space. And that's it for this week. Thank you for joining me and listening right through to the end. If you want to continue the conversation about quality questions, why not join us in the Women and Leadership Facebook group?
[00:18:55]
You'll find the link in the show notes for that. I am in there every day and I am happy to help you with shaping some questions you might like to ask yourself. If you got value out of this episode, I would love it if you could share it with others. And of course, if you've been listening to podcasts for any amount of time, you will know that writing the show and leaving a review helps others to find the show and I really would appreciate it. Until next week, continue to lead the way her way.
