Tag: Fierce Leadership

Maria here… I recently experienced a crisis, when I had to quickly evacuate my home, as a terrible wildfire swept through my community in southern Oregon. Thankfully, I’ve since been able to return home. Across the nation, crisis upon crisis is occurring — wildfires on the west coast, hurricanes in the east, and we still have COVID-19. Both the best and the worst qualities tend to surface in these intense moments. Are you always happy with the way you react?

To deal successfully with a crisis, you really must find a way to empower the leader within you. Not every crisis we face is life-threatening. They take different forms in our personal and professional lives. For many of us, the ingrained reactions seem to fall within Fight, Flight or Freeze.

These responses can hardly be called value-driven! Under stress, your amygdala triggers the release of neurotransmitters and hormones – like adrenaline, norepinephrine, and cortisol — preparing you to survive an immediate danger. And when you’re dealing with chronic stressors, your body remembers and responds emotionally and physically in a default manner; your amygdala becomes trigger-happy, causing you to react impulsively, in a way you may regret.

To counteract this, retrain your brain to PAUSE.

Pausing gives your prefrontal cortex a moment to integrate the information from your amygdala with other information. Your brain can connect with your purpose and goals, giving you clarity of what action needs to be taken next. It puts you back in power. You get to choose how you’ll react.

Case in point is the story of how one of my neighbors handled herself during the evacuation. As soon as she smelled smoke from the nearby wildfire, she quickly visited all the neighbors to make sure everyone escaped. Without emotionally reacting and trying to save her own house and possessions, she chose to act in harmony with her values. Later, when I spoke with her, she was happy that she had been able to hold to her values under pressure. 

How would you answer this question: 

When confronted with a crisis, I tend to_________(Freeze? Run for cover? Come out swinging with anger?) 

We all have embodied responses that we’ve adopted over the years. It’s important to be honest in your self-assessment. Only then can you change your response by choosing a new and updated one, which you will need to practice deliberately until it becomes second nature for you. 

This process starts with changing your perception of the situation. Observe your reactions with compassion, curiosity and mindfulness. In what ways could you bring more positive states of mind, like curiosity or humor, to a stressful situation? This simple mindset shift is a powerful tool to help calm you down physiologically. 

Another powerful tool is called “Flow” or “getting into the zone.” Flow comes from a total engagement in a task that fully challenges the skills you know you have.

Here are four steps to move into Flow, which is a much healthier and productive response:

1. Become aware of what response you have embodied early on.
2. Observe when and how it gets activated.
3. Bring mindfulness and compassion and acknowledge how that response protected you in the past.
4. Practice your new response.

A practice of mindfulness will help you develop a deep self-awareness enabling you to notice, identify and accept your feelings and thoughts, as you experience them. This puts you in charge, not your emotions, which are neither good or bad. They are sources of information. 

Make a practice of asking yourself questions like these, with curiosity and without judgment…

• How does this situation make me feel? (Happy; anxious; etc.)
• How are these feelings showing in my body? (Light and expansive; tight and drawn inward; etc)
• Why is this happening? (The tone of voice and words hurt your feelings.)
• What past situation is my mind recalling to make this connection? (This reminds me of the time I was made fun of in school and felt powerless.)
• Is this old story still serving me? (No. I am no longer that girl; I’m a capable woman.)
• How can I integrate the past with the present? (Thank you amygdala for trying to keep me safe, but I’ve got this!)
• What can I do to remain in harmony with my intentions, values, purpose? (Breathe; Stay calm; Let it go; Correct a misunderstanding; etc.)

The precious PAUSE between stimulus and response gives you the opportunity to reconnect with your power. In times of crisis, you’ll hold true to your values and will be able to lead others to safer ground. You’ll avert arguments in the family; keep the team working together through a huge mistake; and find solutions to problems. Master self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management and you’ll be able to handle any crisis with less stress and emotional reactivity, as well as fewer unintended consequences.

We’ll be exploring our leadership and how to ensure that it always reflects our values at our 2022 Women’s Retreat, Bring Forth the Leader Within held on January 15-22, 2022, at Blue Spirit Costa Rica. Don’t you owe it to yourself to become an empowered leader who can handle whatever the future brings? Are you hesitant to even consider a retreat with everything going on? Understandable! Learn about our stress-free cancellation policy and the advantages of planning a retreat right NOW, even if it seems like a dream under current conditions.

Have you noticed as you watch the news how many leaders are exploiting others with antiquated leadership models, like “it’s my way or the highway”? Isn’t that leadership model based on a shaky foundation of fear and obsessive control? As a result, creativity and innovation are stifled, which can sound the death knell for businesses, organizations and even governments in today’s fast-paced world.

However, we also see a very promising trend…we’re seeing the new paradigm of community emerging — one based on trust and cooperation. Leaders are guiding from alongside or behind, which is an effective and more feminine model of leadership.

Women around the globe are becoming fierce leaders who are making a difference. When empowering women lead they do it very differently. Women are organized around care and compassion, fairness and justice. Often, when women are at the round table, the conversation is about how all can benefit. 

Historically, we have had male models of almost everything. That led to a misconception of how leadership should be. Now that there are more women in many types of leadership roles we have the opportunity to offer new models, move beyond models that no longer work, and bring a sense of wholeness or balance to the world of leadership that has long been lacking. We see a solution in women, in the distinct way women use power. Women’s leadership is a force that can and must be harnessed for the global good.

However, it’s not just empowering women who are embracing this style of leadership. Many men are seeing the advantage of adopting this more feminine, caring style of leadership. They see the benefits of focusing more on people rather than on the numbers.

Any organization built upon trust and security, instead of fear or authority will be more stable as each member is appreciated and is working toward a common goal. It creates a powerful synergy where the group accomplishes more together than they ever could as individuals alone.

 Like parenthood, leadership is about putting your staff or team before your own interests, being willing to sacrifice yourself for your people. It means being a good listener first, and then a good communicator who understands each individual. For example, empowering women know that Millennials especially want to be given the freedom to experiment, a voice within their organization, and the ability to pursue what they view as meaningful work. They want to feel challenged. Anything less they view as limiting.

It’s time to shed the old-fashioned view of “the boss” and start influencing others by coaching and leading them.

Empowering women don’t need to control everything. They recognize the talent of the team, and they encourage the most qualified person to run with a project or initiative. They step out of the way and guide from the background, when needed.

It’s more important to build solid relationships within your organization than “getting the job done” at the expense of your team cohesion. It’s not always easy to effectively resolve conflict among a diverse group of people, but if you show you’re willing to roll up your sleeves and work alongside them, or you’re willing to fill in for them when necessary, that goes a long way to building a “collaborative, family feeling.” This approach fosters a spirit of understanding, communication, motivation, and even a sense of humor.

Coaching is one of the best ways to encourage your team to bring out their own abilities and find their own solutions. They learn to move past mental blocks and limiting beliefs to achieve things that they otherwise wouldn’t have seen as possible.

Imagine leading a team where everyone sees opportunities rather than barriers and each member is valued for their limitless potential. This is possible when empowering leaders train themselves and their leadership teams in the art of coaching.

Are you ready to embrace your leader within? Take advantage of our 30-minute free consultation to help you decide if the PADLE model is for you and how we can best support your journey. To get started click here to fill out our brief questionnaire that will provide you with insight based on our PADLE model. Discover how, with our personalized feedback and coaching support, you can make rapid progress toward your goals.