THROUGH MY EYES

“May this stillness stay, and quiet the noise in my head so I may hear the voice in my heart.” -butterflies rising

For weeks and weeks, I would listen to my friend list her struggles at work.  I would hold her as she sobbed over her perceived failures and inability to excel in her new role.  We would rehash her most recent meeting and she would beat herself up over an answer she did not have or a slide that was missed.  The way she described her performance at work was a constant beating on her own self esteem.  She would spend 1% of every day celebrating her success and 99% of every day treating herself like crap.  She would explain her failures to me and ask how she should proceed; what she could do to fix the situation she had gotten herself into.  Every day felt to her like she was standing on the edge of a cliff and with one strong wind gust, she would be blown over the edge into a freefall that she could never recover from.  The voices in her head said, “You are not good enough, you are not smart enough, you are not capable, you cannot do this.” …. she nearly gave up, nearly convinced herself that those voices were speaking the truth.  The truth was that all along those voices in her head were telling bold faced lies.

This past week my friend received the highest performance rating available at her company, the highest rating she has ever received in her current position, the most amazing acknowledgement that not only is she smart enough and capable, she is a god damn queen!  Her reaction of shock when she received the review was not surprising to me, she has never seen herself like I see her.

If only you could see yourself through my eyes, if only you could see the beautiful colors that I see.  If only you could hear your brilliance through my ears, if only you could love yourself the way that I love you.  A butterfly does not know the color of their wings, but human eyes know how beautiful it is.  Likewise, you don’t know how beautiful and amazing you are, but I can clearly see you are special.

My friends story is more common than not in this crazy world we call life.  I have written many blogs about the challenges women face with the voices in our heads. (See SEARCHING FROM WITHIN and THIS PLAYING FIELD IS NOT EVEN) The “I have sold them a bill of goods” voice, the “I am not enough” voice.  There are so many strategies that can be used to work to change these voices in our heads, so many step-by-step processes that we can use to prove our voices wrong.  However, this week I would prefer that we not waste any time battling our own thoughts but instead we all just go straight to a source that we trust.

Reach out to a trusted friend, colleague and family member.  Ask them one simple question, “How do you see me?”; allow yourself to take it all in, absorb the reflection of your beautiful colors.  Let the beauty of how you have impacted others caress your soul.  Feel the positive recognition wash away all of your negative thoughts.  Dust off your wings as you listen to those that mentor you and those that care for you and love you; take in their words, let your internal butterfly take flight once again.

DO THE NEXT RIGHT THING

“If you get tired learn to rest, not to quit.” – Banksy

In June of 2004, I had given birth to my first son just 8 weeks prior.  Six weeks after having him I was forced to return to work in a new role as a Regional Manager; we were young broke parents with no additional paid maternity leave left.  The first couple of weeks back to work were a complete blur between night feedings, conference calls, nanny drop offs, bottle cleanings; not to mention the pain and discomfort I was still experiencing after an incredibly long and difficult delivery.  The world seemed to be running around me as I stood in a dazed state going through the motions with little idea of when it would all start to get better. 

As the days blurred into nights and my emotional health began to deteriorate, the daze began to turn dark.  The thoughts in my head became increasingly sad, the joy I should have been feeling when I held my new son no longer existed.  I was becoming numb, almost zombie like.  I would cry every evening and usually a few times a day.  All those years ago, post-partum depression was something that was not really discussed, not totally understood and sometimes difficult to diagnose.

At my 10-week post-partum appointment my female doctor was thankfully quickly aware of my condition.  The exhaustion and helplessness written all over my face. After a brief discussion on the medical means she would prescribe to assist with my condition, we moved on to the pure overwhelming feeling I felt every moment of every day.  Never knowing what to do next, just looking around me hoping it would all go away.  She hugged me as the tears flowed down my face and fell off my jaw line.  As she pulled back to look at me, she said “Just do the next right thing”.

The advice though simple was something I could work with.  I began to use it as my mantra as I faced every day.  Standing in my kitchen holding my son looking at piles of laundry, a sink of dishes, emails flooding into my inbox, bottles stacked to clean, breasts that needed to be pumped…. I would say quietly under my breath “Melanie, just do the next right thing”; and then the next and the next and the next.

Once I survived the first year with a newborn and began to master my new job and the working mom thing.  I did not have to use the mantra as often as before but I found myself coming back to it as the years went on when I started a new position or I faced a new challenge.  On days that I was overwhelmed with the mountain of challenges ahead, I would tell myself to just do the next right thing.  That overwhelming mountain soon became a mole hill and the process always worked.

I find when we are thrown into a complicated mess of a situation at work, some people prefer to just throw up their hands and refuse to get into the weeds.  They are unable to break it all down and resolve the mess so instead they live with it and just ignore it all together.  I on the other hand would prefer to get into the weeds so that I can break down the mess and figure out how to clean it up for future interactions.  It is often a manager’s job to do just that.  Ignoring the mess only makes it more complicated for the future and implications for the business are never good. 

Next time you are overwhelmed, ask yourself what is the next right thing to do?  Write it down, then after that what is the next thing and the next thing.  Break it down, whiteboard it out.  Soon you will see a path forward to a solution that once felt like it was filled with road blocks and sink holes.  Challenge your teams to do the same, whether to resolve a problem or to generate new business and energize their opportunity pipeline.  Ask them to continue to challenge themselves with “What is the next right thing to do?”.

Nineteen years later my little man is little no more.  He will be heading to college in September.  He is choosing what school he would like to attend and the thought that he will be leaving this house and heading off on his own is just as hard to face as those first few months after I gave birth to him.  The day we drop him off at college, those tears will most certainly flow again and as I stand next to our car, and I watch him walk into his future, I will feel like a part of me has left my body.  I will stand in a daze like state and whisper to him under my breath as he leaves my site… “Just do the next right thing my amazing young man.”

FROM HERO TO ZERO

“I would prefer to reconsider the thought of “from hero to zero” and instead reframe to the thought of “I went from zero to my own hero.” – M. Brechka

There is a common saying in sales when one has closed out a profitable fiscal year one day and then the very next day a whole new fiscal year starts.  The saying is “From hero to zero”.  The close of 2022 should make all of us feel like heroes. Whereas 2020 and 2021 had many challenges as we worked from our home offices and attempted to balance work as it blurred into life.  2022 brought its own special challenges where the comforts of home felt more like a prison at times, and we started exploring outside of our cages once again.  The economy slowed, inflation spiked, gas prices soared and when it came to business deals “easy come easy go” became more like “hard to come by and easy to lose”.

There is not really anyone I have spoken to in the last few months that have said anything about work, that has been “easy”.  No one has expressed the ease of getting a deal done or has even said, work is not consuming me right now.  Everyone I have discussed work with has basically said “It is hard, everything is hard.”

I recently had a meeting with a colleague that is in a senior role to me.  They scheduled the call to review a recent situation that they were frustrated by; unbeknownst to them, they did not have all the right facts which ultimately contributed to their frustration.  I prepared for the call over a number of days, gathering information, consulting with team members and colleagues, compiling a timeline, speaking with mentors to gather their thoughts.  I prepared for the call assuming I would have an individual interested in understanding the full story and a colleague invested in a moment of coaching and guidance.  I was wrong.  The conversation was tense, not supportive; the feeling was of being attacked not of being in a discussion.  The preparation I did was not beneficial and there was little to no consideration of the timeline or work I had prepared to share the “rest of the story”.

I am experiencing and hearing from others that unfortunately these types of interactions are becoming more common these days.  People are tired, colleagues are overworked, and heightened frustrations are leading to conversations where a colleague is criticized like the competition and the “rest of the story” no longer matters.  The most concerning part to me is that the behavior is contagious much like the pandemic we recently survived.  The immediate thought is “if my boss demonstrates this behavior or another colleague, then I have a right to pass it on and do it to someone else.”   To someone that does not see things the way that I see them.  In an environment where time is not on our side and patience is running thin, steamrolling and criticizing can feel like the path of least resistance and also feel quite good when you are on the winning side of the argument.

The ultimate issue with this approach amongst individuals in a corporation is that the person being attacked is someone within your own organization.  When on the receiving end of this attack the natural tendency is to want to retaliate, to protect ourselves from further ridicule.  In certain situations, this may be necessary, but I would argue that two wrongs do not make a right.

As I reflect on 2022 and prepare for the new fiscal start of 2023; I would prefer to reconsider the thought of “from hero to zero” and instead reframe to the thought of “I went from zero to my own hero.”  This new fiscal year will bring on all kinds of attacks, the battle will be bruising at times.  Even my own team will experience moments of frustration and misguided aggression from the inside.  However, I will challenge myself to be better than that.  To lead with purpose, to rise above the frustration.  The feeling of “winning” when someone from within is “losing” is a feeling that I will try not to search out.  I am certainly not the picture of perfection and if I follow my own advice 50% of the time then I am heading in the right direction. 

In 2023, may we all seek to be our own heroes, may we find ways to learn and grow together without leaving a single individual left behind.

THE VALUE OF GRATITUDE

Happy Holidays! Please enjoy a repost of “The Value of Gratitude” for this holiday season. On a Christmas Eve when nothing is going as originally planned, I am reminding myself of all the things I have to be incredibly grateful for.

“This is a wonderful day I’ve never seen this one before.” Maya Angelou

In the early morning of January 15, 2004, a heavy snowstorm blew through central New Jersey.  Six months pregnant with our first son I laid restless in bed while listening to the howling wind outside of our 3-bedroom ranch home.  The baby boy that I was carrying had the hiccups and every minute or so my stomach would pop out with a violent shake. To fall back asleep, I started to count the seconds in between every hiccup hoping the counting would benefit me as much as counting sheep did when I was a child.   In between a hiccup and at the number twenty-three, the house phone rang around 5:00 AM. My husband answered quickly as we both knew exactly what this call meant.

For years, my mother had been fighting a rare liver disease.  Primary Biliary Cirrhosis treated my mom’s liver like a foreign entity.  PBC had caused Mom’s immune system to attack and methodically destroy her liver.  The body’s one and only liver which is absolutely required to live.  Diagnosed when I was a teenager, my mom bravely fought the disease for over 10 years before she was put on a transplant list at Albert Einstein hospital in Philadelphia.  For the past 14 months she had been living with my aunt in Princeton so that Mom could be within the required distance to be registered at such a prestigious transplant hospital. My dad continued to work and live in Louisville, KY (glued to his cell phone) while day in and day out we all waited for that lifesaving call.  Over the last 14 months, mom had been called into the transplant center four separate times as a “backup”.  If the primary recipient was unable to accept the organ, then the backup was always prepped and ready to go so as to not waist one precious gift of life.  Four separate times we waited for hours in a hospital room all together, only to be told that the primary recipient had received the organ.  Every time was a painful mix of happiness for the recipient and their family as well as grief for the donor family and for our family as well.

As my mom’s disease progressed, we were informed at the beginning of January that she would only have a few months left to live without a transplant.  She was moved up the UNOS list but there was nothing we could do except wait and pray.  Knowing that I could lose my mom around the same time I was giving birth to my son was a pain that no mother-to-be should ever have to contemplate.  At the same time, I was a sales manager for Hormel Foods and trying to financially assist with our growing pile of household bills.

The call this morning was different.  My mom proceeded to inform my husband that she was the primary and that they were in the car on the way to the hospital in the snowstorm.  The organ was originally meant to be transplanted into a patient in New York, but complications had prevented the transfer and the back up in New York spiked a fever.  They were transporting the organ to Philadelphia with only a few hours left on the ticking clock of a live organ.  My mom was the last chance that this liver would have to save a life before it expired.

My husband and I quickly gathered our things, at this point we had “transplant hospital” bags ready to go instead of the traditional “labor and delivery” bags.  I hobbled into the car as we began the nearly 90-mile white knuckle drive to Philadelphia.  Stopping to pick up my sister along the way, about an hour into our drive, my mom called to say goodbye.  They were taking her in for transplant immediately and if she did not make it through, she wanted to say goodbye and tell us she loved us both very, very much.  Six months pregnant, saying goodbye to your mom on the phone for what might be forever as you drive through a treacherous snowstorm on an abandoned highway is never a good feeling.

Emotionally distraught and unable to complete a full sentence, my next phone call was to my manager at the time.  We had meetings planned for that day which I obviously was not going to make, and it was highly likely I would not be making it into the office for a couple of days to come, no matter what happened in that operating room.  I do not remember a whole lot about what was said on that call but what I will never forget was his instant reply, “Take care of yourself, take care of your family, I will take care of everything at work… for as long as you need.”  The sense of relief I felt as I hung up from that call was something I needed in that very moment.  It was the knowing that my boss had my back and cared enough about me as a person to remove at least the burden of work for the time being.

Many weeks following the successful transplant, my work hours were inconsistent.  What was normally an 8 to 5 desk job in an office became on and off hours at my mom’s bedside.  I did what I could and somehow the rest got handled when I was not looking.  A couple of months later, my manager would be promoted to another division of the company, and I would assume his position when I returned from maternity leave.  The kindness and understanding that was gifted to me at that time would forever stay with me.  A few years later when he offered me a role at another company, I eventually accepted.  Partially because it was what I needed at the time, but even more so because I was grateful.  Grateful to know that I could work hard to return the favor.  As the years went by, when he needed extra dedication and effort from me, I would have his back as well.

My own experience has always shaped how I care for my employees.  I have their back.  Besides just being the good human thing to do, it results in employees that are loyal, dedicated and will give 110% when the need arises. 

Managing in the Middle:

  • Supporting employees behind the scenes in their time of need can be the difference between a grateful, loyal employee and a forever resentful one.
  • When an emergency or tragic event occurs, the very first and most helpful thing you can do is to remove the burden of work.
  • Go a step further and request IT to generate an out of office email for your employee if necessary, directing inquiries to you for triaging requests.
  • The good human thing to do is to care and to help, the professional benefit of doing so will come full circle for years down the line.

18 years later my mom is still healthy and enjoying her amazing gift of life with her now three grandchildren.

SEARCHING FROM WITHIN

“The only way to find your voice is to use it.” Uknown

In a preparation meeting for an upcoming speaking engagement, I was asked this week “When was the moment in your career that you found your voice?”  This was a very interesting question to me; the spectacular female leader that I am sharing the virtual stage with had an impactful story of the moment that she found her voice.   She had been working for a male dominated CPG company (very similar to Hormel) and had sat in a corner for a meeting that she was supposed to be leading but there were no seats left at the conference table.  Her manager at the time told someone else to move and insisted that she take her seat at the table.  “You are running this meeting; you do not sit in the corner.” Is something I imagine this manager said to her.  She described this moment as when she “found her voice”.

Since I did not have an instant answer or moment to share like my esteemed colleague, I was grateful this was a prep session and not the actual event.  As I flew to Nashville this week for meetings, I sat on the plane drinking my weak United coffee reflecting on “when the moment was that I found my voice”.  As I thought through many impactful events over my 25-year career, I could not truly put my finger on one moment when I “found my voice”.  I had many moments when I had “used my voice”; “heard my voice”; but the most relevant to me was when I started “having confidence in my voice”.

Many years ago, I started writing down my experiences, thoughts and feelings about my 25-year career and personal struggles.  Those writings are what eventually became this blog.  As I wrote and read back the words I had put to paper, I slowly started to realize that “my voice” was always within me.  Word by word, the voice that was always within me came out and as those words went to paper, my confidence in my voice grew.

It is no secret that most women struggle with confidence and therefore in a corporate environment may also struggle with making their voice heard.  However, the truth is that YOU DO NOT NEED TO HAVE CONFIDENCE TO DO CONFIDENCE.  You may not FEEL confident, but you can ACT confident and the amazing magic that happens when you act confident?  You BECOME confident.

So, as I reflected on that question of “when I found my voice?”; the answer is that I never “found” it.  My voice was always within me.  I over time just started listening to my voice, documenting my voice, believing in my voice, trusting my voice and sharing it with anyone that was worthy enough to receive it. 

SHAKE IT OFF

“Dear Stress, I would like a divorce please understand it is not you, it is me.” Thomas E. Rojo Aubry

Some of my good friends would tell you that I am very good at giving advice; helpful, actionable advice. However, they would also tell you that when it comes to ME following my own advice, well that is something I need to work on. I am really good at telling others how to address their stressors and resolve their challenges but when it comes to addressing my own, I am often deaf to my own words.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog about burnout. The impending feeling of burnout coming on and how most people show the signs and react to burnout. At the same time as I was writing, I was also feeling the impending signs of burnout and for once in my life, I listened to my own inner voice. I took a break from writing this blog, I gave myself the grace that I tell everyone else to give to themselves. For the first time in 30 some weeks, I just stopped. I released myself of the burdensome feeling that I needed to post something every week, that I had some kind of responsibility to anyone else but me for this “passion project” that truly was designed to be nothing but a creative outlet for my personal passion of helping others. For once, I took my own advice.

This morning when I woke, I decided that it was time to start again. No pressure to post by Saturday morning since today is Sunday and let’s be honest, no one really cares when this post goes up anyway.

In the last few weeks, I have been burnt out. Travelling to Las Vegas for a week, then California for a week, dealing with the impending holiday season and plans. Supporting my family along with a number of stressful work situations. These stressful work situations have been piled on top of a challenging end to a fiscal year approaching and an even more challenging fiscal year that is about to begin.

As we all work through the feeling of burnout, thankfully there are strategies we can use to “complete the stress cycle” as described in the book BURNOUT, The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski, PhD and Amelia Nagoski, DMA. The book itself is a highly recommended read but for the purpose of a quick helpful tidbit, I will recap the most helpful advice that I took from the read; thankfully it was at the beginning of the book!

The biggest takeaway for me was as follows “Dealing with your stress is a separate process from dealing with the things that cause your stress. To deal with your stress, you have to complete the cycle.” The authors provide an example from nature that when certain animals are chased by something, and their life is at risk, they will freeze and play dead or hide in plain sight using camouflage. By doing so, they evade the attack and live to survive another day, in other words they have dealt with the “thing” that was causing their stress (the stressor) by evading the attack; however, they have yet to deal with the actual stress. That is when mother nature kicks in. Once the stressor has gone, an animal that is “frozen” will go into a full on shaking almost seizure like reaction. An intense physical “shaking off” of the stress through tensing of muscles and releasing of the adrenaline left within their nervous systems. Mother nature put this mechanism in place to allow these animals to “complete the stress cycle”.

In our everyday lives, we do not have the benefit of mother nature to step in and help us “shake it off” when it comes to stress. We work to resolve the stressor and once that is handled, our brains mistakenly believe that we have handled the stress. In reality, the stress lingers, it builds, it metastasizes within our physical bodies until we do something to complete the stress cycle or until our brains and bodies go into full on burnout brought on by the burden of stress that was never unloaded.

Thankfully the book provides detailed directions on ways to complete the stress cycle. A few of my favorites include 20 to 60 minutes of physical activity a day, this can include a walk, swim, dancing (physically shaking it off), running etc. Although physical activity is described as the “first line of defense against stress buildup”, there are also other ways described which include, breathing deeply and slowly, positive social interaction, laughter, affection (for example hug someone you love and trust for 20 seconds while standing on equal footing), a big ol’ cry and finally creative expression.

If you are caught in the stress cycle like most of us these days, I highly recommend reading the first few chapters of BURNOUT to get you started on your burnout recovery journey. In the meantime, turn on some Taylor Swift “Shake it Off”, physically shake it off and remind yourself that just because you have resolved the external stressor doesn’t mean that you have resolved the internal stress. Taking steps every day to complete the stress cycle is the best form of self-care and no one can take better care of you than you.

BURNOUT

“You are not required to set yourself on fire to keep others warm”

I have mentored and consulted with a few different professionals lately that are just burnt out.  They are holding themselves and sometimes their colleagues to a standard that is simply unreasonable and honestly unattainable from my perspective.  What I can see (but they cannot) is that this unattainable standard is feeding an inevitable burnout.

 I am not ashamed to share that I have a great therapist.  I started seeing her at a time when nearly everything I had believed to be true in my life was not true anymore.  One of the many things she has helped me with is understanding that I have a tendency to hold myself accountable to a standard that I would never hold anyone else accountable to in my wildest dreams.  She has asked me many times, if your son was in this position, if he had these feelings, worked like you work and sat down with you and asked for your opinion, your advice…  what would you say to him.  How would you judge him?   The truth is I would treat him with compassion, with understanding, with patience; and yet, I would rarely provide the same understanding and compassion for myself.    

The definition of burnout was published by Herbert Freundenberger in 1975, “burnout” he defines as requiring three different components:

1 – emotional exhaustion – the fatigue that comes from caring too much, for too long.

2 – depersonalization – the depletion of empathy, caring and compassion; and

3 – decreased sense of accomplishment – and unconquerable sense of futility; feeling that nothing you do makes any difference.

The signs of burnout when experienced individually are typical of a frustrating day or two at the office, it is when they are experienced all at the same time and many days in a row when the real burnout begins to set in.  Burnout can also be expressed and experienced in different ways.  The typical ways I have seen are as follows:

  • The Victim – Becoming so frustrated and tired with work and life that you have convinced yourself that you take no responsibility in your circumstance and everyone else is to blame.  Your circumstances and feelings are the result of everyone else working against you and you are blameless in it all.
  • The Standard Enforcer – In a world that feels like it is spinning out of control, you attempt to take control by enforcing your standards on others and expect them to perform at a level that is equal to or better than yours.  Then you get even more frustrated when your standards are not met.
  • The Emotional Cyclone – Every little thing that goes wrong in your day leads to an emotional and irrational reaction.  What would normally be a bump in the road feels like a sink hole that you are being sucked into.  The tears flow, the anger erupts for no good reason and your colleagues and family suffer as a result.

Much like the signs of burnout, individuals can express and experience burnout in one or many ways as described above…  the most severe being the victimless standard enforcer that is an emotional cyclone.  No one wants to work or live with THAT person.

So how do you get through it?  If you are on the receiving end of the burnout, it can be the most frustrating position to be in.  The person going through the burnout has to be ready to receive your feedback and people that are burned out are often NOT IN A RECEIVING FEEDBACK KIND OF MOOD!  If you are the one experiencing burnout, Emily and Amelia Nagoski would say that you have to “complete the cycle”.  Emily and Amelia are the authors of Burnout; The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle. 

Given how prevalent burnout is becoming, I will dig more into this book and suggestions around getting through burnout (both the receiving and the experiencing) in a future blog.  For now, look at yourself in the mirror….  are you experiencing signs of burnout?  Are you on the receiving end of burnout?  Call it what it is, give yourself some grace, give others some grace.  Preventing burnout begins with taking care of yourself and recognizing that the impending feeling of burnout is a sign that something needs to change…. and that change must start with you.

NEW TO THE MIDDLE

Guest post this week by Nichole Kennedy. This amazing new mom and new manager shares a great new perspective!

As a recent resident of the middle, I’ve found it harder than I expected to find my place. I’ve learned a few things along the way, but I am by no means an expert. If you’re new to the middle too, it’s sticky. We’re all a little bit stressed, we’re all a little unsure, but it’s one of the best opportunities I’ve had to really discover myself. 

I’ve been with my current company for over 12 years. It was my first home after college, and it feels like home most days. I pride myself on having a deep knowledge of the company and many allies across the business. I count some of them as mentors and friends. I was a highly skilled individual performer, and I thrived in that role. 

Recently, the opportunity arose for me to take on a leadership role. I was the best placed within the company to take on the role and many of my colleagues supported the move. However, I was at a turning point in my life as well. The move coincided with my daughter turning one. Additionally, there was already more than enough on my plate. I had also taken on a stretch role coming back from maternity leave and it was made clear that would not be going away for at least six months. Something had to give, as it turns out, that something was me. 

The first three months after my promotion, I was stressed. I cried a lot. I didn’t sleep well. My days were filled with worry and my nights with dread for the next day. Then one day, I just had enough. I had taken on way too much without letting go of the individual performer in me. If things were going to get better, it was entirely up to me to manage myself, my team, and the expectations of our role. In the following weeks, I took some time to re-center, and I asked for a lot of help. The following is what I came up with; it has helped me thrive and find a bit more peace in the middle.  

1. Get your priorities in line

Let’s face it, the last two-ish years have really blurred the lines between our work and personal life. I was always very good at achieving separation. It helped that, in my case, it was a physical one and the drive home provided the separation time I needed. Post-Covid and post-newborn, those lines are constantly being blurred. For months I lived with oscillating guilt; either I’d lost my previous persona of the ‘ideal employee/manager/team member/etc.’ because I had to devote more time to a growing baby, or I wasn’t the kind of mom I wanted to be. There was no in between. It didn’t help that the additional role I had taken on was to cover for someone on a year-long maternity leave. I was constantly bitter at team leadership that my work-life balance was out of whack while they allowed someone else to prioritize theirs. 

After a tough conversation with a former boss, I had to get serious about what was important to me. My time was in constant flux. The days of black and white work-life balance were long gone. 

Once I had my priorities in line, the guilt softened, and time became more malleable. The guilt didn’t subside and there could always be more time in a mom’s day, but the days became manageable.

I prioritized by identifying the big roles in my life: mother/primary caretaker, partner, manager, and most importantly, still me. I choose to provide and prioritize for those four roles regularly. Once I was clear on what the big roles in my life were, I had a playbook to quickly determine if the many things that were being asked of me fit into those roles. If not, then they didn’t need my immediate attention. 

I also got clear about what my team’s priorities were for the organization. As the leader of a support function for multiple cross-functional teams, individual requests can become overwhelming. Getting clear and transparent on what work was strategic for the business took a lot of pressure off my small team and me. I also started delegating more, realizing that just because I could do something doesn’t mean that I had to do it. Which lead to my next epiphany. 

2. Leaning into ‘power with/to/within’ manager mentality

Harnessing the power of my team has been one of the greatest gifts of the middle. Letting go of my own insecurity was the biggest hurdle to getting there. As a former high performer with a competitive streak, I needed to stop myself from getting insecure when a teammate had a great idea. 

During a two-hour drive to visit my team members in person, I re-listened to ‘Dare to Lead’ by Brene Brown. I’ve been a fan of her work for a very long time and had listened to this book at least a couple times, but it never really hit home. Her concept of ‘power with’ versus ‘power over’ really gave me the mantra I needed when I started to feel insecure. “Power with/to/within believes that power becomes infinite and expands when shared.” I am more powerful with the strength of my team members, and it’s already paid off in more ways than one. Another one that sticks with me is, “Getting it right is more important than being right.”  This is true in all aspects of life. 

3. The Kindness of ‘No’
As a recovering people pleaser, saying “no” is the hardest. I fully realize that for some people this doesn’t seem difficult. There are many who view saying ‘no’ to someone as an everyday occurrence that doesn’t lead them to overanalyzing all previous related interactions. I am not one of those people, no matter how hard I wish I were. It honestly sounds amazing. 

Take this blog post for example. I was asked to write it in July… It is now October. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve outlined this in my head (not counting the 3 times on my phone) or felt the sharp pang of guilt that I’ve let the brilliant keeper of this blog down. 

Enter another Brene Brown-ism. ‘Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.’ If I had been clear at the time of the request, I would have articulated that there was absolutely no way I was going to find time in the busy summer I was facing. Instead, I let my excitement over the opportunity outweigh the very real reality that I just didn’t have the space. I could not say no and that was unkind. And this is a battle I continue to face. In work, getting clear on priorities helped to determine what I should and shouldn’t take on, but the ability to be clear in the communication with that is still a struggle. It never occurred to me that I could say “not no” but “not now”.

So that’s where I am today. A little wiser about my priorities, a little smarter, slightly clearer, and a lot more grateful for my team. I am openly new to the middle. It’s been really, really hard but the growth has been so worth it. I’m a better mom, a better team leader and hopefully a better colleague. I’m learning as I go, I have and am going to make mistakes but maybe that’s the point. This is called the middle because it’s a journey. It’s not the beginning, it’s not the end but it’s the winding path through people, challenges, opportunities, and growth that makes this such a special place. 

A DIFFERENT MUSCLE

“I need a manager, a mentor and a friend; which one do you want to be first for me today?” A Colleague

I was reminded nearly every day this past week that “Management is a different Muscle”; and it is not a muscle that is strong in everyone.  It is a muscle that you have to develop and continue to work before it ever becomes toned.  Managing people and personalities requires very different skills versus a non-management role.  Patience and perseverance come to mind as skills I have repeatedly used recently. 

I sometimes wonder as I go from meeting to meeting trying to put out fire after fire and attempting to coach and mentor along the way, if anyone that I work with ever thinks about me.  I realize that seems like a very selfish place to be.  A “good” manager thinks about their team and the individual needs of their team.  They think about what is both good for the business and for their direct reports; but what about what is good for me?  Is anyone thinking about me?

There are days that I feel like I am the ring master of a three-ring circus.  In the ring to your left, you can see lions on display carefully listening to the commands of their trainer but waiting for one perfect moment that they can break free.  In the ring to your right, you can see clowns entertaining the audience at each other’s expense.  In the middle ring high above the ground floor there is a trapeze artist with no safety wire walking a tight rope but praying they will not lose their balance; all the while, the ring master demonstrates her ability to juggle 20 balls in the air without letting a single one hit the ground.  As I jump from call to call and meeting to meeting, I think about this three-ring circus and the juggling that is happening simultaneously and then as I reflect it hits me, no one is watching this circus; no one is paying for this ticket; no one is aware of this chaos, no one but me.

Patience and persistence are the two management muscles that I am using the most right now.  The patience one is something I have quite a lot of; however, I am starting to see that too strong of a patience muscle can result in an underdeveloped assertiveness muscle.  If I devote too much time being patient and talking through issues, I have the potential to lose the perception that I can make and act on tough decisions.

In all of my experience and consultations with other managers, there seems to be a “one or the other” type of manager.  Managers that are too patient and understanding so as to lead to the perception that they are “easy” and do not require any performance standards; or the type of manager that is assertive, quick to react and unengaged in coaching, instead asserting their rightful place as a manager and quickly calling the play without any consultative processes.  The place I am seeking to find is in the middle, but as we have previously ascertained, the middle is messy.

There is no one way to go about this job and anyone new to management will learn sooner than later that the muscles they used out of management are completely different than the ones they will need to develop in management.  These muscles will cramp, they will be incredibly sore some days and you will lose sleep trying to figure out what your body and business needs to be successful.  Your strengths will evolve and what the business demands will also evolve. Twenty years into managing people and my muscles are still sore and still developing.

The three-ring circus will go on and as the ring master, you will need to keep your eye on everything all at once with the knowing that IF you are doing your job right, NO ONE will know about the circus, let alone be watching it; no one but you.

HOW FULL IS YOUR BUCKET?

This past week I had the pleasure of presenting to a group of employees and leaders of Givaudan.  I presented on ways that employees and leaders can make a positive impact in their own lives and the lives of their employees and colleagues.  We went through many of the key pillars that have been highlighted in this blog including ESTABLISHING BOUNDARIES, BOUNDARY RECOVERY (I put all of us on Boundary Recovery in this gathering), TEACHING PEOPLE HOW TO TREAT YOU and THE VALUE OF GRATITUDE.  A new addition to the discussion was a guide to feeling fulfilled.  Note I did not say achieving fulfillment; feeling fulfilled is all you need to be content and happy in the place that you are in. 

When my boys were young, I read to them a book called “How Full is Your Bucket?” by Tom Rath and Mary Reckmeyer.  This is the story of a young man who learns from his grandfather that everyone has a bucket above their head that they walk through life with.  When this bucket is full of water then the person feels good, content, confident, happy.  When their bucket was empty, they were sad, angry, frustrated.  The story follows the young boy though a no good very bad day.  As the day goes on you can see the water dripping out of his bucket until it is nearly empty.  Later in the day he is recognized by a teacher for a good paper and there is one drip of water that falls back into his bucket.  As the afternoon proceeds, he continues to have friendly and positive experiences that continue to fill his bucket.  At recess when he walks outside, he notices that every other person also has a bucket, and he can see all of them above their heads.  This young man proceeds to pick out the kids that have empty buckets and does or says something nice which results in “filling their bucket”; and unexpectedly to him, in filling someone else’s bucket he also has even more water plop into his bucket.

There is an adult version of this book, I personally prefer the children’s version as it is easier to read, and I am a visual learner so the pictures of buckets above everyone’s heads is helpful to me.  So how do you “feel fulfilled”?  The easy answer is you figure out what fills your bucket and then you find ways to fill someone else’s bucket. 

When finding what fills your bucket, you start with your personal life. Make sure that with the free time you have, you choose activities that fill your bucket.  These may include making tough choices on things like where and how you volunteer at your kids’ school, who you spend your free time with, trying new hobbies to see what intrigues you (and keeps you wanting more); and most importantly scheduling time for you!

When it comes to filling your bucket at work, getting involved in activities outside of your day-to-day role that you have a genuine passion for are big bucket fillers.  For example, I am the co-chair for our global network of women’s mentorship program.  Mentorship is clearly something I have a passion for, working on that passion on such a massive platform fills my bucket daily.  Mentoring someone or finding a mentor at work can also help you leave a conversation feeling full.  On the other hand, when I was asked to join an advisory group on finance practices…  that was a hard NO!

After defining what fills your bucket, then you can work on ways to fill someone else’s bucket, and in return fill yours as well.  In our personal lives, in most cases this comes naturally, we do nice things to help out our neighbors and friends, we take care of our families.  However, we often forget to do this at work leaving us and our colleagues feeling exhausted and beaten up by the end of the week, sometimes just by the end of the day.  Ways you can fill someone else’s bucket at work:

  • Listen; be a mentor – you do not need to have all the answers, just listen.
  • Send a thank you to someone once a day – put it on your “to-do” list, say thanks.
  • Give recognition – Send an email or even better, a handwritten note.  Start a link recognition chain in the office where people can write down someone, they want to recognize on colorful strips of construction paper and start a chain of recognition to grow and be seen around the office.
  • Find ways to connect; we are all human and connections are instant bucket fillers.  Ways to do this are taking walking meetings, travel to work with employees and colleagues, take them out for dinner.  Recognize birthdays and celebrate each other’s successes.
  • Have ice breakers at team meetings to encourage connections.  For example, what was your favorite concert ever?  What is your favorite food.  The joy of learning something new or finding something in common with someone will fill everyone’s bucket.
  • Cover for someone that needs a helping hand.  Instead of judging a colleague or employee that is drowning, offer to help.  Gratitude has tremendous value.

WHEN YOU FILL SOMEONE ELSE’S BUCKET; YOU WILL FEEL FULFILLED