Nicola: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Women at the Top of Telecoms and Tech. Hi, I am your host. I’m Nicola goco. Um, I help organizations in telecoms and tech to recruit, to retain. And develop women at the top and their future talent to close that gender pay gap, and also to create a more inclusive and safe culture. So welcome to the show today.

Nicola: I’m really excited to be here because I’ve been talking about something that I am really incredibly passionate about and something that I experienced in my corporate. A lot, and I see a lot of women leaders that I work with really, really struggle with this idea. So today we’re gonna be talking about the power of feelings in leadership.

Nicola: And it might feel like quite a different subject. It might feel something that, how is it relevant to being a leader? How I feel, [00:01:00] um, why is it important? Why is it powerful? And actually for me, if I could just share a little bit of context about why I’m so passionate about this, it’s. Being human is not about being happy.

Nicola: It’s about feeling everything. That’s a quote from Glenn and Doyle and her book, untamed and in the corporate world. What I found in the corporate world and what I see it again and again, the women that I work with, feelings aren’t always welcome. They’re not always understood. Feelings aren’t logic. They aren’t reason.

Nicola: They aren’t a PowerPoint presentation. They’re very intuitive. They’re from the soul. They’re a reflection of that person and actually given. A lot of the leadership in telcos and tech organizations and predominantly men, it feels like corporate world at times is very led by head and logic and reasoning and proving through facts and numbers.

Nicola: So that’s very known. That’s very understood. That’s very recognized. You can rationalize things. It’s very [00:02:00] head led, whereas feelings don’t always fit in. Feelings are from the. They are about you as a person. They’re about your, you being human. And they don’t always fit in. They’re not always appreciated.

Nicola: They’re not always understood. So I know for me in my corporate career, so I spent 16 work years working in telecom and tech running multimillion pound launches. So I was a go to market specialists. I was commercial. My last role was the head of commercial role. I would run these multimillion pound launches, and I was incredibly proud of what I did, and I gave a lot of myself to my corporate career, and I loved it for a long, long time, but I knew as a person that I didn’t really fit into corporate world.

Nicola: When I looked around me, I didn’t see that many people like myself that are the most senior levels and the ones that I did see, I was really heartened to see, and I was really excited and inspired by. Because I didn’t see many women, and I certainly didn’t see many women that hadn’t [00:03:00] just moved to really more masculine traits because that was what was recognized, what we call hard skills drive, the ambition, the delivering, um, the influencing versus what have been called for women’s soft skills that really aren’t around intuition and empathy and vulnerability and understanding.

Nicola: That aren’t as recognized yet as a leader to be that most impactful and influential leader. To be a leader, that changes the freaking world. That drives really positive change, that creates a more inclusive culture, creates a safe culture. A huge part of that is having the balance of the two and having both of those in your toolkits so you can go to them when you need them.

Nicola: Yes, at times you’ll have to be incredibly direct, probably incredibly assertive. Absolutely. That times you would really have to influence the agenda and the focus of the organization and use some negotiation skills to do that. Absolutely. But also with how the world is now, I’d really invite you to go back and listen to the podcast episodes where I’ve talked about [00:04:00] just how to support your team in challenging times and quite quitting and given the war and talent, and given the lack of talent that’s available, especially in telecoms and tech at the moment.

Nicola: It’s that real difference between being a leader. That really creates loyalty. That creates a great experience for employees versus the ones that don’t. And employees are voting with their feet. Now they have that power too. What I want to do today is just talk about what I teach and coach around the power of feelings in leadership and how actually it’s incredibly important that you embrace new, lean into those feelings and you don’t push them away.

Nicola: Because if you do push ’em away, you do try and hide. And not allow them to, to surface and be part of who you are, that actually they’re gonna come back and they’re gonna come back louder and they’re gonna show up where you don’t want them to. They’re gonna show up when you are irritated in a meeting or frustrated and it comes out as anger, they’re gonna come out by maybe getting upset in front of someone that you don’t want to.

Nicola: It might be that you end up crying because you’re so frustrated and you’ve had that same conversation with someone [00:05:00] and that’s not something that you want to experie. But actually, if you manage your feelings day to day, if you go back to them, you lean into ’em, you look at them, if they feel listened to, it sounds very woow, but bad with me, but feel listened to.

Nicola: They don’t need to grow because they’ve been listened. The message is being delivered. I know for me in corporate world, and this is the experience I see often for the clients I work with. Given a lot of feedback around just, again, the recognition of head and logic and reasoning, the PowerPoint presentations with the facts and the numbers versus feelings that are intuitive that are from the heart, that someone’s sharing their soul that aren’t as appreciated or understood.

Nicola: So statements that myself and my clients have experienced. Insight. Do you think that’s appropriate to say or behavior? Uh, do you need to go for a walk to the bathroom to sort yourself out? Um, you’re being overreactive or you’re being overemotional. You are overreacting. That’s not professional. Um, sometimes when you’re assertive, you are almost aggressive.

Nicola: When you’re passionate, you’re overly direct. It can upset other [00:06:00] people. I’ve been described spotty. I’ve been described as scary. I’ve been described as demanding. I’ve been described that I care too much because I give so much myself to other people. That was all statements from Eva, my clients, or I’ve experienced in the corporate world.

Nicola: But I wanna share, first of all, some truths about feeling. Why do we have this fear of feelings? Why are they not recognized and respected and welcomed? Why are they seen as something that just shouldn’t be part of the corporate world? If you’re a similar age to me, um, whatever age you are that you are listening, you’re very welcome.

Nicola: But if you’re a similar age to me, I know for me in when I was growing up, I was told really just don’t cry for examples. No need to cry or feelings. When I. Talking too much that I was too loud, not sharing how I feel. Especially, you know, for boys, for example, you man up. How, how incredibly disempowering is that?

Nicola: Just to negate someone’s [00:07:00] feelings by saying that they’re wrong. You’re never wrong for feeling a certain way. Feelings aren’t wrong. They’re just simply how you feel. And we’re from an talk from that early age to Hyde and fear and not share how you’re feeling. I do think that’s shifting and changing now.

Nicola: Absolutely. And it really, I really take heart from that. Um, and I think this is all part of a wider conversation in the corporate world about mental health and really supporting people, all of their mental health as well as their physical health, as well as their work experience. And we learn to see feelings as negative to be feared or positive and to be welcomed.

Nicola: So almost that idea or, you know, I’m having a good day or I’m having a bad day, or certain feelings are only ever negative and certain other feelings are only ever positive, whereas that’s only a label. That’s only how we define that feeling. So Frustra. Can be seen as negative, but frustration can drive you on to change something, to have a challenging conversation, to ask for the promotion, to ask for the pay rise to move to a new role because you’ve got that frustration.

Nicola: It can be part of what lights your [00:08:00] fire again. So just really that shift and change to just not labeling feelings as positive and negative, dead simply feelings. And as women as well, we’re led to believe our emotions are psycho a point of weakness. It’s absolutely not. It’s that we’re incredibly, women tend to be more intuitive.

Nicola: We’re more in tune with how we feel. We’re more likely to talk about it. We’re more likely to share that that should be welcomed. That’s good for your mental health. That’s how you create resilience. Feelings are not weak. They’re not selfish, not erratic. They only become loud or more erratic if you ignore.

Nicola: So another quote from Glennon Doyle that I absolutely love, and again, I really urge you to go away and read or listen to Untamed that she wrote. Glennon Doyle is an American, um, activist, I, I’ll describe her as an author and podcast host, and she’s just incredibly honest and real and true, and she wrote an incredible book called Untamed, which.

Nicola: Help me to understand a lot of the frame of reference of what I’m dealing with myself, but [00:09:00] also with my clients. I understand now that I’m not a mess, but a deeply feeling person in a messy world. I explain now when someone asks me why I cry so often for the same reason I last so often, because I’m paying attention and for me feelings and being a deeply feeling person, and I will cover another episode just around how to become an empowered empath leader.

Nicola: Feelings for me are just like, they’re at the heart of who you are. They are you living truly and deeply and experiencing those real highs and those real lows. And I would that a million times prefer that to living just superficially on the surface, telling people I’m fine when I’m not trying to hold it together in a meeting, when actually I’ve got tears in my eyes.

Nicola: I’d rather this experience, and I’d rather that experience for you living truly and deeply and consciously. Than just having those superficial feelings or putting them into a box and ignoring them so they explode out of you at the most inopportune times. And that can have more of a detrimental impact on you as a leader than just really learning [00:10:00] to lean into how you are feelings.

Nicola: If you want to know the truth of how, how you’re feeling about yourself, about your work, about your career, about anything in your life, look at how you’re feeling. So feelings are simply feedback guiding you to investigate, to understand or learn something more about something. Feelings are a light on the dashboard showing you what is true for you in your life and your career.

Nicola: Feelings are guidance system, um, to what is right and what is not right for you. Feelings are from the heart. They are your truth. They’re not right or wrong. They’re not bad or good. They’re not black or white. They’re just true for you. Feelings are designed to be felt. You don’t get through a feeling by pushing it away.

Nicola: You get through a feeling by leaning into acknowledging, helping yourself and meeting your needs. What you need to help you step past that feeling. When you ignore the feelings, they grow and they demand to be heard. A feeling to the corporate world will, part of you being yourself, is showing up as a true and authentic and real leader.

Nicola: Um, if you can choose. It doesn’t mean [00:11:00] that when you become more of that, that feeling led leader. That doesn’t mean that you need to share everything about e to everyone. You can choose what you share, you can choose who you share with, but it is actually the heart of you being true and a real and a powerful leader.

Nicola: And if you haven’t watched it, I’ve really urge you to go away and watch the power of vulnerability, um, the TEDx from Bre Brown, because it, it gives you that sense of why it’s important. So what I want to cover next was just really around how to recognize your feelings and how to, how to start to understand them.

Nicola: Then I’m gonna give you a really quick tool just to how to start to check in with your feelings and how to start to know yourself. So, how to recognize your feelings, first of all. So according to Plot Chick, I hope I say his name right. Um, our thoughts, patterns, behave and actions are influenced by eight primary.

Nicola: Emotions. So this kind of blew my mind when I found this wheel of emotions, and it’s actually something that my husband and I said that we must print out on pit up at home. So we can literally point to [00:12:00] how we’re feeling so that we can articulate it more rather than just being caught in the grace.

Nicola: Swirly, massive. Oh my gosh. I dunno how I’m feeling. It’s just really overwhelming. Um, so much going on. For me. It could be a huge help to articulate how you feel in the moment, and it might be hard to connect with how you feel if you’re so busy. If you’re giving so much to everyone else. If you’re a woman that’s self-sacrificing or you’re martyring, you are what you need.

Nicola: And it can also help you to understand your team members. So it’s a really great little circle and there’s the 10 top emotions that are really the ones that we can go back to again and again and again. So there’s a kind of primary emotions that we can mix them with other emotions to produce different emotions.

Nicola: It’s kind of an endless number. All emotions from PLA Chico based on this model, like colors are combinations of eight primary emotions. So we have, um, optimism we have. We have aggressiveness and we have submission, disappointment, and alarm. So if you break that down again, anger and [00:13:00] anticipation is aggressiveness, anticipation, and joy sits behind optimism, joy, and trust sits behind love, trust, and fear sits behind submission.

Nicola: Surprise and sadness sits behind disappointment and fear. And surprise sits behind alarm. So what that means is that it becomes easier to kind of describe and recognize. What you are feeling. So again, away from that grace, swirly mass, there’s so much going on. I don’t really know. And I know I say it to my husband sometimes when I’m tired.

Nicola: When I’m hungry, I don’t know how I’m feeling and therefore I, I dunno what I need. I don’t know how to look after myself through it. Given that there’s these eight primary emotions, uh, given that actually being a feeling first leader, um, is incredibly powerful and will help you to become a true and authentic and real leader, how do you start to.

Nicola: Really understand how you’re feeling. This is a really brilliant little tour. It’s called The Morning Pages. It’s from um, a brilliant lady that I saw live a couple of years ago called Julia Cameron. Julia Cameron [00:14:00] wrote a book called The Artist’s Way, which is all about helping you to tap into your real creativity, how to set your environment, how to set yourself up to clear your head and move into just being really.

Nicola: Yourself time and space to do that. And this is a tool that she uses called Morning Pages. I’ve kind of adapted to what I call a daily check-in. This is kinda like taking a dust pan and brush your, your brain and clearing out some of the feelings and really checking in with yourself every day, which hence what it’s called, the daily check-in.

Nicola: So each day, just checking in with how you’re feeling, creating time, just truly feel into it and spend a little bit of time leaning. You can speak this, you can write it, you can share it. It’s kinda like maintenance work on your feelings, and we’re taking a dust pan and brush to your brain and what’s going on, and just all the tabs that you might have open.

Nicola: And for me, I find this easier in nature when water, um, or journaling, and I’m not interrogating myself. I’m just seeing what comes up for me. I’m not trying to run away from my feelings, I’m just being, I’m sitting with them. So questions, three questions that I, um, ask my clients to [00:15:00] think about with the daily check-in.

Nicola: How do I feel? What’s coming up for me today? So based on how I’m feeling, what’s coming up, what’s the story that’s playing out for me today, and then what do I need today? So based on how you feel today, what do you need? And you can go back and listen to that of a podcast episode about how to identify and meet your own needs.

Nicola: So just that daily checking, it’s really gonna help you just to know what is going on for you. You’re doing that maintenance on how you’re feeling, so you’re not overloading yourself with feelings, carrying ’em around. And almost think of your feelings as suitcases that you’re carrying with you. And if you can pick one of those suitcases down, or you can light and load and take some things out, you’re just gonna have more energy and means you’re gonna be able to manage more and deal with more.

Nicola: So this daily check-in is that maintenance. So I really, really invite you to think about using something like that. Speak it right at share it. You create it however it works for you. Do it in the morning. Do it in the evening. Again, it’s up to you. You might just sink it through to yourself, but it’s that daily check-in.

Nicola: It’s leaning into your feelings. You’re not running away from, you’re not hiding them. So they’re gonna come up at [00:16:00] moments that aren’t the most opportune. So it’s really, really important just to step in, to be that feeling first. And just also just be mindful. So also there’s some ways that you might be numbing how you’re feeling as well.

Nicola: I see clients stuck in different aspects of these at times are just really, they’re just, they don’t want to, they’re scared of how they’re feeling. Cause that might mean that they don’t want to be in their corporate job anymore. It might mean that their, their relationship isn’t gonna work out for them.

Nicola: So numbing behaviors can be that you just make yourself super busy. So you just, you give so much yourself. You’re making, you’re adding more to diary, adding more responsibility inside work, outside of work. So, for example, had a client, she has three children, very busy senior role. She was also head of the p t A committee.

Nicola: So actually over time we talked about can she give that back so she can have more time for herself. Just that super busyness. Always adding more overgiving and constantly proving. So you are overgiving, you’re over-delivering, you’re constantly proving yourself at work. You’re in that you are always in that, uh, energy of proving [00:17:00] yourself.

Nicola: Are you numbing by binge eating? Are you eating to complete yourself, to support yourself, to feel like you’re having a treat through the day when you’re not feeling great for yourself? Could you be drinking more? So in, in lockdown? You might have gone one ways. You might have stopped drinking, you might have started drinking mores.

Nicola: No judgment on which of those you did. For me, I just, I stopped drinking. I stopped drinking years before that, I think. But especially through lockdown. This wasn’t gonna help my mental health. Is it extreme self criticism? So really, Voice with yourself. Um, just that imposter syndrome really kicking in, in, along with that as well, your, how you talk to yourself, that inner dialogue being really, really hurtful to yourself.

Nicola: Could it be making your health a low priority? It could be that you don’t get out for your walks, you don’t go to the gym, you don’t, um, go out for those long walks with your dog. Could it be that you’re also not sleeping, you’re not letting yourself get to sleep on time, you’re just staying up, mate. You might be binge watching Netflix.

Nicola: Nothing wrong with that, but just be, be really mindful where you might be numbing to hide your [00:18:00] feelings. So great. Quote from Bre Brown on this, um, I think is incredibly powerful. Just set the context of why, just to look at that numbing. Just identify you might be numbing. No blame, no judgment. Just actually be curious.

Nicola: Be open. Why might I be numbing? What feelings am I scared of facing into from Bre Brown, you cannot selectively numb emotion. When we numb the hard feelings, we also numb joy. We numb gratitude, we numb happiness, so you can’t numb the negative feelings. What is seen in negative. To then just allow the positive feelings.

Nicola: That’s not how feelings work. So you can’t subjectively numb. So just be mindful if you are numbing and go back to that daily check-in and start checking in with yourself. How am I feeling? What’s going on for me today? So that’s everything I wanted to talk about today. Just a final thought for today.

Nicola: Tuning into how you’re feeling is part of your superpower is part of you and who you are. You’re likely to be a highly sensitive person or an empathetic person, or might even be an empath. So actually [00:19:00] ignoring your feelings, not letting them show, is gonna halt your progress as a leader. So great leaders need the two sides that we talked about, the action, more male dominated or m.

Nicola: Tendencies versus those more female inherent traits. So what were traditionally called, the softer skills that are now called power skills. So around empathy, vulnerability, understanding, creating connection, creating belonging versus the drive, the ambition, the delivery. So you need a combination of those, but you need both in your toolkit for the times when you, you’ll need to lean into one, one side more than the other.

Nicola: but you become that really rounded, influential leader. By having both of those and being part of that is being able to be honest with yourself about how you’re feeling. It’s not about judging. It’s not about good or bad feelings. It’s not about running away from him. You might be numbing them. It’s just start to turn, almost think of it, you’re starting to turn on the tap.

Nicola: You’re starting to just let a few drips through of how you are feeling. If you don’t need to let them all out once, um, but you can just do that [00:20:00] daily check. How am I feeling today? What’s the story that’s playing out? What do I need today? So just start there. So I would love to know what you thought of today’s episode.

Nicola: This is quite different. Maybe from what you were expecting or from other podcasts on women in leadership, but I think it’s really, really important, uh, to be that most true and authentic leader you’ll need to really know, understand, and use the power of feelings in leadership. That’s today. If you do have any comments, if you do have any views on this, just drop me a message or all the information to contact me is in the show notes.

Nicola: And also this is part of what we cover in the first module of my final fire leadership program, so it’s available for the first time as a self-study. Program, first time outside of the corporate world, and we’re looking for five women to test that over the next few months so we can refine it and make it even better.

Nicola: So if that’s something you’re interested in, just drop me a message and let me know all the contact details again in the show notes. I will speak to you on the next episode. Thank you so much for listening, and I’ll speak to you soon. [00:21:00] Bye. Hi, it’s Nick here. I just wanna take a moment just to say thank you for listening.

Nicola: When I’m sat recording the podcast in the deepest steps of Cornall, it’s incredible to think that it’s reaching women across the world in 30 different countries, and we have thousands of downloads a month. So thank you so much for being part of that and being part of the audience means the world to me.

Nicola: But I do want to grow this audience. I would love you to help me reach more women like you so that we can really drive positive change in the corporate world. So you can do that one of three. First of all, you can subscribe to the podcast. You never miss an episode. It’s always a new episode’s, always delivered straight to your inbox.

Nicola: You can review the podcast and leave us a rating, and the more ratings we have, we also go up in the podcast charts. And finally, you can just share a favorite podcast with a peer, with a colleague, or on your social media. So I would love you to do that. Thank you for all your help, and I can’t wait for what’s next.[00:22:00]