[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Women at the Top of Telecoms and Tech. I am your host. I am Nicholas goco, and I help telecoms and tech organizations to recruit, retain, and. Women at the top and talent, future talent to close the gender pay gap and create more inclusive cultures. So today I’m gonna be talking about two things that kind of link together in two episodes.

But again, I think with the current context of the world and what’s going on, I really want to focus in on how to help you as a leader to identify and meet your own needs first. So this is what I talk about. So in my first, first part of my program, before we get into leadership identity, before we get into like thinking about your purpose and purposeful relationships.[00:01:00]

We look at something called feel good foundations and that’s really, that’s what I wanted to focus on today and talking about what are your feel good foundations? So the reason this is so important, so I’m seeing it again and again at the moment, is in the lived experience of my clients and on my leadership programs that I’m running in organizations, there’s that real lived experience of just the challenging times that are in telecoms and tech at the moment.

So there are headcount freezes going. There is a reduction in head count, there is budget restraints. There are just real pressure to still deliver, so still to meet the company strategy, to still deliver on implementing a deal, to deliver a project to a new product launch. There are still all those pressure, but there’s less and less resource, and the women that I work with are the women that are the glue holding this altogether.

So they are. Women that are leading the [00:02:00] teams and the divisions that are gonna deliver on the strategy, that are meeting the goals, that are implementing the deals, that are running, the product launches that are delivering on a new piece of software. They’re delivering all of that. Yet they’re also, they’re leading their teams are leading their areas and just with that, the continued pressure of the expectations are still the same, yet the resources less and less so they are facing.

Days and weeks and months where they’re having to make trade offs where they’re having to say no a lot, that they’re having to. Just support their team every day in where do we focus, what are our priorities? And that it can be really exhausting and that can be really draining. And I saw again and again when I worked in corporate world, that you’d go through a cycle of, um, every 18 months or two years, particularly in the larger organizations that I worked in and telco organizations, that there would be the budget restraints, the head count frozen.

No new recruits, not replacing people [00:03:00] as they’re leaving. So resource gets really, really squeezed and then there’ll probably be a big restructure that would result in redundancies. So, and that just was a natural cycle of working in those, those large, large organizations and the women that I work with are the women that are feeling this pressure.

They’re trying to meet expectations that really aren’t possible with less and less resource. They’re then also having to challenge back and make it clear that not everything can be delivered. And if they’re trying to still push their teams to do everything, that actually what they do deliver, it’s gonna be really compromised.

So all of this has a real impact on them. All of this is gonna, if you are one of those women, I’m talking to you today, you probably are feeling. Lots and lots of different emotions. It’s dark at the moment. We’re moving into winter in the uk. Um, and there’s this pressure, there’s this expectation. You are probably an empath.

You’ll probably have a lot of empathy for your teams. You’re probably feeling a lot of feelings. You’re sensing their frustration. You yourself [00:04:00] might move into a new roles. There might be a frustration there that’s a headcount for you. So it’s not an option for you at the moment. And just the day to day it’s, it’s kind of beyond busyness and it’s.

There’s a disconnection between what is expected to be delivered and what you can actually deliver purely through the resource available, and you are taking all that responsibility and that pressure on yourself. So with that comes the physical. How do I look after and support my team? The practical that comes with that.

And then also emotion, like it’s emotionally draining to be saying no and making trade offs and being that that negative energy where actually you are a woman that wants to change the organization drive positive change, but at the moment, that’s not something that’s available, is not the budget necessarily for the training that you want to do with your team, for example.

So you’re kind of having to make, make the best of what you can every day and support your team in the way that you can. So if you are one of those women, I’m talking to you today because we’re gonna help you today with the first module that I cover in my [00:05:00] leadership program, the Find Your Fire Program, and it’s all about feel good foundations because your feel good foundations will help you create time and space to identify and meet your own needs.

And this, this is your leadership oxygen mass. This is what will help you sustain being a great and impactful and influential leader. So first of all, let’s explain what they are, then let’s help you find them, and then I’ll share some examples from clients as well of what theirs are and just really just through all of that as well, just help me understand why they’re really, really important.

So feel good Foundations do exactly as they say on the 10. So feel good Foundations are your leadership. Oxygen mask are gonna be the things that help you not just survive, but help you to thrive. Being a leader in the corporate world and telecoms. Particularly, so feel good. Foundations are things that you do consistently in your day to day and your week to week that help you to feel positive, to help you feel energized, to help you have a clear head as you go into your days.

So they’re [00:06:00] really, really important to help you be the most impactful and influential leader. And what I see time and time again is women. Women that are leaders in organizations that are the glue holding things together, that they are self-sacrificing. They give easily of their time. They give easily of their energy probably too easily, cuz they don’t necessarily always see their value and worth.

That’s, that’s a whole nother podcast episode. But they just give, give away too easy their time and their energy. They’re trying to be everything to everyone. So they’re trying to obviously support their family at home. They’re trying to support their team at work. They’re trying to drive and own their career, career as well.

And that all just bounce off into just giving so much of themselves that it leads to that martyrdom, it leads to self-sacrifice. You pit yourself at the bottom of your own priority list. You become an afterthought in your own day and as a leader. That’s not something that you can afford to do. And actually I [00:07:00] would challenge you to think if you’re a woman, that’s, if this is all resonating with you, if you pit yourself at the bottom of your priority list, if you are martyring yourself, if you are self-sacrificing what you need, then actually you are being irresponsible.

Because you need, you are so needed to drive positive change in organizations to support your team through challenging times, to be a role model for these times when, um, there’s not many women, women in organizations at your level. So it’s for you to take responsibility for making sure that you focus on you first because you are a leader of one from the day that you’re born.

And that’s where leadership begins. That’s what, that’s a foundation of leadership. And if you’re feeling exhaust, if you’re feeling burnt out, if you’re feeling frustrated, come back to that. Come back to leading yourself first, because that’s where you will not just survive, you will thrive and you will have the energy then, not to deliver on the day to day, but to drive those company-wide [00:08:00] projects to be a voice for diversity, to really pursue the things that you’re passionate about, to be a speaker.

On different boards that are important to you and work on those passion projects that you just, it’s at the heart of who you are. So my challenge to you today is just to really think and be honest with yourself about where you are right now with your feel good foundations. And all of that is gonna help you to feel, just really step into, back, back into feeling like you’re on fire rather than feeling like you’re just burnt out and exhausted.

And just as an example to this, I had, um, I had a client, I think I’ve mentioned this on the podcast for when I first started coaching, when I had my gym business, but I was also moving more into focusing on mindset coaching. And I had a client. Who had a busy job in London. She obviously came to the gym with me.

She had two children, a house, a husband, and there was a lot going on for her. Um, and when we went through her priority list, cuz she was feeling burnt out, she was feeling exhausted, she was struggling to get to the gym. [00:09:00] She had put herself below the family cap. When we went through the actual order where she sat on the priority list, she’d put herself below the cat.

When was she? When she said it, she was embarrassed. She was flustered. She was like, oh my gosh, no wonder I’m feeling like this. And also, when you don’t meet those needs, those needs, they just become, they will grow and they will become more demanding. You are at some point you’ll be forced to stop, and the more that you over give your time, your love and energy, the less it would be valued.

So we’re gonna help you today create these feel good foundations so that you can show the world that you, you really value yourself. You really know how important you are, you really own your worth. And actually, it’s, it’s worth setting in place these feel good foundations so that you can demonstrate that day in and day out.

Just a quote as well that I really love from Glenn and Doyles. So if you haven’t read it, I would highly recommend re um, reading Untamed. Um, we’ll put it in the show notes, but this is a great quote to kind of set the context of why, why there is this [00:10:00] Marty, why there is this self-sacrifice with women leaders.

Um, selfless women make for an efficient society, but not a beautiful true or just one. When women lose themselves, the world loses its way. We do not need any more selfless women. What we need right now is more women who are full of themselves, a woman who’s full only, not only of herself, but no longer internalizes, world memos and expectations.

A woman who’s full of herself knows and trusts herself enough to say, and do what must be done, lets the rest burn. This is how you find. I get goosebumps reading that I really, really do. Right. Okay. Feel good foundations. So we said what they are benefits are as a leader, you’re gonna move into, um, not just surviving, but into thriving.

Um, you’re gonna be a real role model for your team and, and just some of the newer science that sits behind this as well. Just neuroscience of wide feel good. Foundations are so important, so, You’ve, you’ve felt every emotion there is to feel, which is kind of crazy to me in [00:11:00] your life at some point you’ve felt every single emotion there is.

I love the emotion we on the eight different key emotions, but there’s a lot more emotions that sit under those eight. So what that means is that your brain has a recipe for feeling a certain way. Your brain has a list of ingredients for you to feel positive, for you to feel inspired, for you to feel on the flip side of that, frustrated to feel, um, exhausted.

It’s really about. Taking care of yourself first is focusing on you. And as women, we can easily spend our time pleasing, fitting in and changing who we are. So feel good foundations create that consistency. They create the brain’s recognition of safety because you have the foundations in place that are gonna support you.

So that’s what we’re gonna look at. So finding your fire starts with you and focusing back on you, your feelings and your needs, so your feel good foundations will help you have the time and space to really meet those your needs first and [00:12:00] create that leadership oxygen mask. So, Feel good foundations. So how do you find these?

So go back to a time when you felt as a leader, you were at your best. So think of a chapter when as a leader, you were the most impactful, the most influential. And think about what you were doing. What were the things that you regularly doing so that you had the energy to not just survive, but to absolutely thrive and be that most impactful and influential leader.

So almost think of these as becoming your non-negotiable. And then starting to pit them into your diary, but in a way that meets you where you are now. So what do I mean by that? So for example, if you want to get to a point where you have daily walk to clear your head, to check in with your mental health, to get out in nature, to reconnect, just to have some time away from your team to clear the emotions of the day, that’s a great idea.

But if there’s a, a woman leader, you’re gonna be ambitious, gonna be driven. You’re probably thinking, I need to do that [00:13:00] every single day, or I’ve. But meet yourself with where you are. So if you haven’t done that for a long time, you haven’t done that before, start with doing that one day a week. Start with doing that twice a week.

Build it up. Create the momentum, keep the promises to yourself to build that self trust. So that’s a really, really important part of, uh, identifying those feel good foundations of first steps. So go back to when you’ve. Been that most impactful and influential leader, what were you doing to look after yourself?

So, for example, from clients, it’s been things like going to the gym regularly. It’s been going, going to bed at a regular time. It’s been getting up and having half an hour for you. First, it’s about as a leader, having clear time in your diary to think of strategy, to think about what your team needs, to just really have some thinking time For some clients, it’s also been around just setting really, really clear boundaries.

It’s been around learning to say no. All of these can become your feel good [00:14:00] foundations. Then putting them in place, just that the first step. Identify with feel good foundations, second step, then put them in place, but put them in a place that means that you’re gonna, you are, you are winning, that you can meet your own expectations.

So that could be, like I said, rather than starting with a walk every day. That could be a walk twice a week and having some accountability for that. Could be going and meeting a friend, for example. My invitation to you today is to really look back. Take that chapter of your life when you were the most impactful and influential leader, and really look back and think about what were your ingredients there?

Let’s create that projection and response or a brain perspective and put those, start picking in those, in those into your diary. Make them a non-negotiable so they do not move. They do not change. Honor that time with yourself like you would a meeting with your most senior boss. So really, really honor that time and make sure that your.

Consistent with it [00:15:00] and just really tuning in yourself every day and just understanding how you are and what’s important to you and how you’re feeling. And ask yourself at the start of the day if, if you’re not used to journaling, if you’re not used to checking with yourself, you could simply start by asking yourself each day, what’s going on for me today?

What’s the story that’s playing out? What am I making today mean? Um, and off the back of that, what do I. Giving yourself what you need. So that’s everything I want to talk about with feel good foundations. My invitation to you today is in this, these challenging times come back to you. My final thought today, come back to you as a leader.

You’re leader of one from the day that you’re born. So make sure that you have your leadership oxygen mask first, so that you can not just survive. The challenging times that going on, you can really thrive and be that role model, be that most impactful and influential leader. So that for yourself, but for your team and for your organization and with that two steps [00:16:00] within, um, the feel good foundations.

So the first is really thinking about what they are. So what are your feel good foundations? Some examples from my clients that we’ve gone through, and then into picking them into your diary in a way that you can be consistent in building it over time. So setting yourself up to win. Um, and then the third point is then just checking in with yourself daily and just checking in with how you are feeling.

And just a quick example as well, from my experience over the last few weeks, just with having a really challenging time with. 90,000 pounds worth of contracts being, um, postponed indefinitely. Uh, last week, I, I went into a bit of a dark night of the soul around it. I really questioned myself. I was obviously upset for myself and the financial impact it was gonna have on me.

I’d cleared my diary, I’d set up associates. It was a lot that had already been done. We were ready to go. It was starting in a few weeks. So the kind of the disappointment from that perspective for me, but also the disappointment for the women that I was gonna work with. I found that also really difficult that actually given [00:17:00] those really challenging times at the moment, just knowing they weren’t gonna have that support of me from me, and also the space to think and feel into what’s going on for them.

Also, having a community to speak to. And having that connection to other people in the business that are going through similar things, knowing they’re not alone, that suddenly that that’s no longer an option for them. So the, the 50 women that will be impacted by that, that also kind of broke my heart. So, because I was caught in that dark night of the soul that I, I stopped doing the things that helped me to feel great.

I stopped doing the things that make me. The most impactful and influential leader can be. So I stopped my daily walks. I stopped going to my fitness sessions. I started eating just for comfort. I wasn’t going to bed on time. I was binge watching. The crowd on Netflix to all hours. I just, I wasn’t looking after myself.

I wasn’t dressing in clothes that I feel great from. I wasn’t really looking after myself really well at [00:18:00] all, and I stopped all of those things because I, I was struggling to see my value worth because I’d had this disappointment and I internalized it and made it about me when it wasn’t, it was just about someone looking at a budget number and numbers, just having to, um, stop.

And just liquidity in the business. That’s not, that’s not a reflection on me or what I can deliver, but I’d still stopped and I let go of all of my feel good foundations and I felt worse. I felt so much worse. I think maybe at some level I blamed and made, made it my fault. Um, it always happens to me.

It’s too good to be, I knew it’s too good to be true. I should have known better. I was treating myself poorly and maybe even it was a bit of self punishment in there. I see many female leaders doing the. And giving so much that their, they’ve given away all their time, their energy and love, and they’re focused on deliverables, their team, their family, their clients.

And their time is squeezed. There’s nothing left for them. There’s just a overall mind and exhausted body and that really [00:19:00] heavy energy. So if this is resonating with yourself, reclaim you, reclaim your time, it is valuable. Reclaim your energy cuz the world needs that reclaim your value because there’s so much there.

Reclaim your worth because you are changing the freaking world. Reclaim all of it and show to others your value and worth and start with this really simple concept of the feel good foundations. If this is something that you struggle with, do drop me a message. We are just a point of releasing my um, leadership program.

For the first time outside of the corporate world to individuals I’ll, I’ll be looking for five people to test that. So if this is something you’ll struggle with, drop me a message, let me know and we can get you started. So that’s it for today. Thank you so much for listening. If you are struggling with those feel good foundations or you’ve got any feedback, I’d love to know what your feel good foundations are.

All my contact details are in the show notes. Do let me know and I will speak to you on the next podcast.[00:20:00]

If you love what I have to say and you like to find out more about working with me, easiest way to do that is to book a Get to Know You call. So there’s a link to that in the show notes. I can help you through working with your organization to help close the gender pay gap through women’s leadership program.

To help empower your women at the top to be more influential, impactful leaders and really own their leadership identity. Or I can create workshops around confidence, around emotional intelligence, creating a career strategy or developing your own leadership identity. Or I can work one to one or group coach your senior leaders to help them to overcome a very specific problem or just again, really own their own leadership identity.

Or I can work with you one to one. I do work with a small number of private clients and you can work with me either on my shorter focus coaching program where you pick one specific thing and [00:21:00] we just really focus in on it and help you to move past it. Or my deep dive. Find your five V i P program. Which really gets the root cause of what’s holding you back and also helps you to create a very, very clear idea of what you want for the future.

And within that, your leadership identity. The results I get from clients are as varied as they are. Brilliant. I’m incredibly proud of them. So some examples, my client being promoted twice within the six months they worked with me. Another client being invited to join the board, another client being offered a brand new role that wasn’t available to anyone else with a big promotion and a big pay rise, and a client that was pushed out of an organization to then being offered three dream roles that they could choose from.

And finally a client that decided that the corporate world wasn’t for her anymore and helping her to get really, really clear on what she wanted and sell a new company that she’s absolutely in love with. If you are not quite ready to work me yet, that’s absolutely okay. You can download my Overwhelm [00:22:00] on Fire Guide, which is.

Five simple steps to help you clear your head and help you get back to feeling on fire and take that inspired action and really be that leader that you know you can be. Or you can subscribe to my newsletter, which comes out on a Friday, which has the best bits of the week. And also hints and tips, new stats that have come out and things that I’m reading or watching.

So that’s a great way to keep in touch and a few quotes to my clients. I can talk about what I do all day. I absolutely love it. One client said, Thank you for transformation. Who I am now at home and at work is who I am meant to be. I can feel it, and that difference is just incredible. Thank you for what you do.

Nick, for another client who just stepped into a new exec director role. Her quote was, it felt like I was wearing a coat that didn’t fit. It was a coat that was new, that didn’t quite fit me, that I didn’t feel that I was good enough for now. I step proudly stand tall and proud for who I am [00:23:00] wearing that coat of leadership.

I am confident to speak up. I am the right hand woman of the CEO, and I have that coat that just looks great and I feel it fits, and I am just incredibly empowered leader. So thank you so much. So if you are looking to get some help just to be that most impactful and influential leader or help women in your organization by closing that gender pay gap.

Do Booker get to know you? Call me. All the details of this are in my show notes. I can’t wait to work with you. Um, and thank you for listening.