Speaker 1 (00:00):

[inaudible]

Speaker 2 (00:12):

Welcome to the female leaders on fire podcast, the podcasts of women who are leading in the corporate world and want to be a force for good.

Speaker 3 (00:22):

I’m so excited that you’re here. I’m your host, NYCLA

Speaker 2 (00:25):

Buckley. And in episode one today, we’re going to be talking all about

Speaker 3 (00:30):

Self-leadership being at the heart of being a leader with the impact and influence

Speaker 2 (00:35):

That you want.

Speaker 3 (00:37):

I’m so excited to talk about this because I think it’s a really, it’s not a subject that’s talked about a lot. We just assume as soon as we get to a certain level, and then we may end up managing a team or leading an area, we just become a very natural leader. Uh, for many women, that’s not actually true for many women. It’s a real challenge to own and see themselves as a leader and to have that impact and influence that they have the potential to. So today I’m really excited to be sharing because I think it’s so important that as a leader, you start by leading yourself and actually you’re leader of one from the day that you’re born for all of your life. You lead yourself and to become a really powerful and impactful female leader in the corporate world, it starts with you.

Speaker 3 (01:30):

And it’s not just about learning leadership models and techniques and frameworks. It’s actually about you starting with leading yourself and leading yourself to help you grow and learn and develop, and really nurturing yourself and giving yourself what you need when you need it. Brittany Brown, we’ll talk about Brittney brown, a fair bit through this app, I think, but she talks about leadership or all about being at the heart of it. It’s all about care and connection. So again, it’s putting you at the heart of that and starting with the moral modeling, being a leader of yourself. So we’re going to be talking about why it might feel difficult to lead yourself, why it might be difficult for women to own that leader title. And then we’re going to go into, I’m going to share six super simple, but really powerful tips to help you to become that self leader and really own that title of leader.

Speaker 3 (02:27):

So let’s start at the very beginning, let’s start with a definition of leader. So I’ve gone to the Oxford dictionary and the definition of leader from that is that you are, if you’re a leader you’re leading or commanding a group, an organization, an industry, or a body of people, and it’s a bit of a dull definition, it’s a little bit dry. So I much prefer I’m a huge Britney brown fan girl. So I much prefer her leader definition and her definition is a leader takes to find the potential in people and processes. And then it’s very much about supporting those people and processes to develop them to their full potential. And I much prefer that definition because you it’s all about helping your team to grow and to develop. And also the processes that sit behind them, a new owning that growth and that development.

Speaker 3 (03:25):

So not only are you identifying those processes and potential, you also then fulfilling them. And I, I so much prefer that definition of leadership over the very dry a leader or commander of a group or organization. I don’t like that word commander because it’s almost, it makes leadership sound like it’s, you’re just leading and everyone else is passive because that, to me, isn’t the most powerful form of leadership. To me, the most powerful form of leadership is you role modeling, being a leader of one and leading yourself so that you’re growing and you’re learning, and you’re developing to inspire those around you to really shine your light and also bring in other people on that journey with you and doing the same for them, helping them to see and fulfill that potential and really have that huge impact on the business that you have the potential to.

Speaker 3 (04:18):

So why, why is it so difficult for women to really own that title leader? Why is it such a challenge to feel like we can just inherently become leaders? And I think we’re going to, we’re going to go a little bit deep on this for a moment. So I don’t apologize for this, but just really think about this and apply it to yourself, but it starts, it’s not about now. It’s actually about when we were growing up. So if you go back to your childhood, if you think about the films that you watched, if you think about the magazines that you read, and if you think about even the fairytales that you were told as you fell asleep at night, those examples that we saw a day in day out, that we experienced in our childhood, they split into two. So they split into the princess.

Speaker 3 (05:06):

That was good and beautiful, but she was passive and waiting to be rescued by her prince charming or the evil witch type character that was very destructive and very much just a force for evil. And those are the two things that we saw so much as we grew up. So just that, that whole framework just shows that there’s that diverse split between that passive princess waiting to be rescued or that evil, which with the powers, but not to be used in a good way, but to be used in a destructive way. So what does that mean? What does that create that actually creates a childhood belief that women aren’t seen to be leaders, women aren’t naturally meant to be leaders. And you also think about in your childhood, what did you see? What did you feel? What did you experience? What things were you told, what shaped you?

Speaker 3 (06:01):

And again, we’re going to go deep, but just go with this and just have a real think about what you witnessed and what you experienced as you were growing up. So were you told not to be bossy? Were you told not to be too loud? We told not to always be talking. We told little girls should be seen and not heard. And actually that’s one that I really remember from growing up. I don’t remember being with my grandparents. I absolutely adored my grandparents and I had this amazing childhood growing up in Cornwall and the beaches. Uh, my grandparents were very much part of that and they were so welcoming, such lovely people and they just had hearts of gold. And I just, I love them spirits. And I think I was the youngest granddaughter. So I do think maybe I was the favorite, but I remember being in the house one day and I was just, I think it was five or six and it was just really, really excited.

Speaker 3 (06:55):

And I was being really, really hyper. I was dancing around, I think I was singing as well. Uh, my granddad said this and she said it with a smile on her face. There was no ill intent behind it, but she said to me, just, you need to calm down. And that didn’t work. So then she said, little girls should be seen and not heard. And she looked at me in a more stern way and I had this real impact on me. And I just remember for the rest of the day, I felt a bit embarrassed, a bit ashamed of myself. And because I’d been being myself because I’d been energetic because I’d been excited because I’d been in the moment. And that, that, wasn’t how I was meant to behave on a no, my ground loved me deeply and I know she had no intention behind it, but actually those are the sorts of things.

Speaker 3 (07:38):

Those are the, those, the scenarios that create beliefs. So beliefs are very much, they become much more deeply instilled in us. If there is a situation where it has a lot of emotional impact on us and it’s from someone that we love and that we trust. And there’s a lot of emotion in there. So that for me just was like, I should be little girls should be seen and not heard. And what I would make a huge suggestion for you to read about more about this is to have a look at Glennon Doyle book untamed, because she talks about the fact that women are just they’ve martyred themselves. They’ve sacrifices, self. We tend to push down what we want and what we need, because we don’t want to upset other people because that’s what we’ve been drilled in. That’s our belief framework, you know, who are we to, who are we to speak up and to say what we truly want, but who we not to.

Speaker 3 (08:30):

And actually that’s part of the challenge of being a female leader is that we have these beliefs that actually the, the women and the girls that are meant to be leaders are the bossy ones that are the loud ones, the outspoken ones, the ones that just have this and endless energy, those traits downplay, those traits are not encouraged and they’re not accepted. So you just have this framework of a certain way to behave in a certain way to fit in. That means it’s difficult then to, to shoom being a leader. And you can see that with elected in the numbers of female leaders in the corporate world as well. So if you take fortune 500 companies, only 8% of those companies have female CEOs. So it’s only 14. She won out of that 400. Or if you look at the footsie 500 of the fruits, 82 50, sorry, there’s only five of those businesses that have female CEOs.

Speaker 3 (09:24):

And the further up the ladder you go, the percentages of where just drop and drop and drop. So what’s that mean? It means that there’s no role models. It means that we don’t necessarily have those examples of how to behave and those women to be inspired by and inspired to be. If I share my experience in corporate world, I know for me, my two, my best boss and my worst boss were both women. So my best boss was the first ever boss that I had in corporate world. When I was, what would I have been 21 when I was just started work at nationwide. When my I was engaged at the time we were moving down Swindon, I was super excited to have this interview for nationwide. And it was as a marketing assistant. And from the moment that I met the woman that became my boss, I just had this, she had this sense of surety.

Speaker 3 (10:15):

She had this sense of calm confidence, and also this way of just encouraging me to be myself, encouraging me to really demonstrate what I could do and to share my knowledge and share my expertise and with her coaching me and with her support, I had a great start to my career that meant in the three years I was at nationwide, I got promoted twice because she had this belief in me. She had this trust in me. She had this way of coaching. That meant the, she would push me, but she would also know what my limits were. And for me, that it just gave me certainty in myself because she had certainty in me. And that was a brilliant example of being a female leader. And she was respected across our division. She had this absolute knowledge and expertise in our area, and I often saw speak up and challenge when she didn’t agree with things.

Speaker 3 (11:07):

So even though she had those bury more female leader traits, she also spoke up. She also had that confidence to challenge things and not just to be a passive role model, but to be an inspiring role model who challenged things who said when she didn’t feel things were right on the flip side of that. I also had a boss. Who’s my worst boss later in my corporate career, right towards the end of my corporate career. I joined the big company in London. I was super excited. I was to be their head of innovation. Yeah. When I joined, there was no resource, there was no budget and I had no team. So I was pushed into a program manager role to delivering a huge launch for the business on, I ended up working for a woman that had come into the business brand new, and she had this huge role and she just wanted to prove herself.

Speaker 3 (11:56):

And that meant that she led from a place of wanting almost to intimidate people, to scare them. And we had a meeting every Monday and the status of all these huge projects that we were delivering. So it’s me and four other senior managers. And in those meetings, it would happen every week that one person would just be really, really pushed, um, really torn off a strip and just be made to feel like they were just failing because she hadn’t read the updates. She, we sent her because she hadn’t attended the meetings that we needed her to answer the questions and of how she wanted to do things and the things that we needed her support with. And she just led with this almost trampling over people to demonstrate how powerful she was. And there was no trust. There, there was no connection there, and there was no care.

Speaker 3 (12:46):

It was just her demonstrating. I can get this done and I’ll get it done in any way that I can. And that made it very uncomfortable. The atmosphere and the environment in that team was really, really negative. And it was not something that I stayed in for very long. So we don’t have those female role models are not enough for them. And we see that reflected in the numbers, on the stats of female leaders across the corporate world. We also see men that are promoted on very much promotes on potential and what they could do, whereas women are promoted on performance. So women have to demonstrate their value and their worth again and again and again, because maybe they’re not self-promoting as much, maybe not owning their expertise and their brilliant so much. And they’re giving so much, they’re almost de-valuing their time and their expertise and that energy.

Speaker 3 (13:34):

We also reflected those numbers is also that there’s real. This is normally not the norm when women get to that very senior level. So when there’s a new female CEO of a huge company is reported in the price because it’s a female, not because it’s a, it’s someone who’s just really inherently capable of leading that company. So all of this blends together, that means it’s just, it’s, it’s really challenging for women to lead with self leadership at the heart. And remember when I worked with a particular client, she was already a director of a really huge irony new organization, but she was stand out different. This was a very traditional organization. It was an organization that expected you to toe the line and to behave in a certain way and to fit in. And that was how you were going to progress. That was how you were going to just really be offered more opportunities.

Speaker 3 (14:27):

And yet my client is this huge individual. She has this personality that combines this brilliant care and connection for a team and a want for a team to do well. Um, and this brilliant coaching and empathy that she has, and that combined with just this incredible logic and intuition that she has in her hours, she’s an absolute expert yet. Her character is loud. Her character is bold. That’s part of why she’s brilliant, but in this particular organization, she did not fit. She was not the norm. She was standing out and that scared people, that intimidated people. And over time we coached her so that she could truly show up as herself and leaders herself at work, but ultimately it led to her and the business parting ways. And then she stepped into a new CEO CEO role, and she now leads truly as herself. She leads as an, a leader at the heart of it as a leader of herself first.

Speaker 3 (15:23):

And that is what we really, really want to help you to do today. So how do you actually start to step into being that leader that you want to be? How do you start to own that leadership title? How do you start to really lead yourself first to have that impact and that influence that you want to? So I’m going to share six super simple, but super powerful tips now to really help you get started on this right here right now. So first thing I just want to talk about is really about making sure that you know, your needs and your wants. So, as I said, at the very beginning of this episode, you are a leader of one from the very day that you’re born for all of your life. So leadership starts with leading yourself and at the heart of that is knowing what you need and what you want.

Speaker 3 (16:11):

So rather than giving away all your time, so freely, rather than giving away your energy to everything else and everyone else first, what do you need? What do you want from your life? And start to reclaim all of that. Start to reclaim your time, reclaim your diary, reclaim your energy, to feed into your needs and your wants. And a lot of clients, when they start working with me, we talk about their passions and their loves. And actually for a lot of them, they don’t know that anymore because their life has being, become so much about everyone else first and pleasing everyone else first. So get back to your needs and your wants become that role model leader of yourself. So how do you start that? You can start that in a really simple way, just by a day, check in with yourself. So each day, just checking, what do I need today?

Speaker 3 (17:02):

How am I feeling? Say, what do I want today? And those things that you need, and that you want start to put them in your diary and honor that honor that time, like you would a meeting with your boss honor that time because it’s, it’s that demonstration of your value and your worth, and you’re leading yourself. So that’s the first one second thing that I would then invite you to really think about is own, own your brilliance, own being a leader. And as part of that really define your leadership style, become the role model that you want, you wanted and you needed. I’ve really think about who do you want to inspire around you? How are you going to really own that title of being a leader? What does it mean to you and define it, give it your own definition. We’ve talked about the definition from the Oxford dictionary of being a leader, a commander that wasn’t really wasn’t really, for me alone.

Speaker 3 (17:55):

We talked about Brittney Brown’s definition as well, but right. Your own definition of being a leader, because in that you can really step into that and really own it because it’s at the heart, you’re at the heart of that. So number three, we just mentioned it about, but define your leadership style. All of my clients go through this huge transformation journey of getting to know themselves in a, in a deeper way than they’ve ever known themselves before. So that creates for them a really strong sense of who they are that gives them that confidence. And as part of that, helping them define their leadership style. So easy way to start with this is just think about war examples in the real world of really positive leaders or female leaders that you really inspire you. So for me, Camilla Harris, just in the other one, those are for me really positive and powerful role models because they have that balance of empathy and compassion and vulnerability.

Speaker 3 (18:56):

Yet also they are very intuitive. They make fast decisions. They trust themselves, and they’re not afraid to go against the grain. So just have a thing to feed into your leadership style. Think about the examples around you, of women that have really inspired you with their own leadership style and create that, and just think about the role model that you want to be for the women around you. So number five, I really I’m a huge Britney brown fan girl, but just really part of owning, being a leader as part of being a self leader, think about her too. She talks about two different definitions of leadership and one is armored and one is daring. So Ahmed is where you feel safe in just knowing everything, controlling everything. You’re not necessarily trusting your team. You’re not necessarily Daryl delegating. And you’re also, you kind of leading from a place of fear.

Speaker 3 (19:51):

You’re leading from a place of maybe not feeling enough and that’s very much armored leadership. So when she talks about armoring up, it’s almost hiding behind defense mechanisms when you’re leading. So that might be I’m the boss do. As I say, for example, or it might be leading from a place of fear. It’s almost that wanting to intimidate others around you because you’re scared of being found out. You’re scared of maybe not knowing the answer you’re scared of. Maybe you’ve reached the limit of where you’re going to go in your career and you armor up and you become defensive. And that just means it’s difficult to be that empowered empathetic leader because you’re armoring yourself up. So instead of that, think about being a daring leader. So a daring leader is vulnerable. Daring leader shares some feelings, a daring leader has empathy for her team around her daring leader.

Speaker 3 (20:43):

Also, isn’t afraid to say when they don’t know the answers, and they’re just honest and they’re open about that. So have a think about how you can relate to that armored leadership versus daring leadership and how that can fit into your definition of your own leadership style. And the final one final tip that I’ve got for you is really leading as yourself. And that’s all about getting to know yourself. Um, what is your brilliance? What is your magic? What is your, what are the things that you just find easy that just come naturally to you and leading as your true self. So you’re not compromising who you are. You’re not changing to fit in. You’re not becoming a yes woman or trying to lead like a man or acting like a. You are leading as yourself and bringing your whole person to work rather than putting on a mask or a disguise.

Speaker 3 (21:36):

So how do you start with this? How do you start? Where do you start? It sounds like a big thing. Leading is yourself. You can start really simply by knowing your values. You can start really simply by thinking about what’s important to you for the people that you lead. How do you want to leave them feeling? What’s your relationship that you want with him? What are the values that you want to lead with? And from there, you can really start to trust yourself. You can start to believe in yourself. You can start to have confidence in the way that you lead and you don’t need to fit in and be like everyone else because you’re being yourself. And I would say as well, and I think we’ll talk about imposter syndrome on a whole episode, because it’s a huge topic, but when you lead it yourself, you can’t be an imposter.

Speaker 3 (22:18):

You can’t be fraud because you’re being real. This isn’t about being authentic. It’s not about being a version of your, a better version. It’s about being yourself. What I call the S version of you. You just showing up with your whole self and you’re being true and you’re being real and you’re being honest. So you’re not going to be caught out. You’re not going to be compromising who you are. You’re not going to lose those hard edges of who you are. So let’s just go for and summarize those tips. So how to be that leader of one, how to start with leading yourself, to put them become the leader that you want to be. So, number one, think about your needs and your wants. Number two, own being a leader own and appreciate where you’ve got to be proud of the journey that you’ve been on in the battles that you’ve been through to get where you are and be proud and own it.

Speaker 3 (23:09):

Number three is define your leadership style. So how do you want to be as a role model for those around you? What are the words that you want to leave as the impact with other people? Number four, who are your examples of really, really positive leaders? So think about the wider world who are brilliant leaders. So for me, that people like Glennon, Doyle, people like Brenae brown people like Camilla Hollis, Harris, juicy nerd, um, and also think of some may maybe more negative role models that you’ve had for your career that you don’t want to be like. It’s often easier for our brain to leap to what we don’t want Rob than what we do. Um, number five is then think about that. Bernie brown, those two styles of leadership, the Ahmed versus the daring, and then number six is lead as yourself. So show up with your whole self and really being yourself at work and bring in your whole self to work, showing some empathy, showing some vulnerability, showing some feelings showing when you’re scared.

Speaker 3 (24:11):

That means that you can really start to trust yourself. Hume really start. Your team will be able to connect with you and Brittany Brown. When she talks about this incredibly powerful daring leadership, she talks about at the heart of it is care and connection with your team. And if you don’t have that for the people around you, that’s something you even need to commit to developing, or maybe that’s not the area for you and Simon Sinek. When he talks about leadership, he just gives this example of a corporal that was leading Afghanistan and they had a really bad hit. And there was a lot of his team that were very severely injured and he was helping them get all these NGO troops out of the area. And he was helping the logistics, but he was also talking to every single person had been injured. He was hugging them.

Speaker 3 (24:58):

He was holding them. He was reassuring them. He was even seeing kissing one just to kind of let them know that he was there for them. And an unusual thing. Like it just, it’s a leader that has the care and connection with his team. So that’s it for today. I would love to know what you think. Uh, thank you for joining me. I, if you’ve enjoyed today, I really urge you to share this with people around you subscribe to future episodes. Cause I’ve got a lot to talk about or leave us a review piece of the more five-star reviews that we can get. The more that we’re going to be able to just encourage more people to come and listen and grow this revolution. So that’s everything I wanted to talk about today, but I just wanted to leave you with that final idea that you are a leader of one from the day that you’re born.

Speaker 3 (25:45):

So if you’re struggling to really own that title of being a leader, start there, start with, self-leadership start with giving yourself what you want and what you need day in, day out and just leading from there. So thank you for joining me today. If you’ve enjoyed it, I would love you to share it with your friends and your colleagues and your peers or subscribe for future episodes. Cause I’ve got a lot to talk about or leave us a review. And the more five-star reviews that we have, the more that we’re going to be able to bring

Speaker 2 (26:17):

Women into this conversation

Speaker 3 (26:19):

To really start that revolution. Shouldn’t say that we have more female leaders are feeling on fire.

Speaker 2 (26:25):

Thank you. Bye

Speaker 1 (26:26):

[inaudible].