Carla Miller 00:00
Do you find yourself feeling tongue tied and inarticulate? When you're put under pressure? Do you feel stress every time your email or your phone flashes up to tell you that a certain person is trying to communicate with you? Are you able to calmly respond in those situations? Or do you find yourself reacting?

In this episode, I'm going to share what's going on for you when you're reacting, and how you can calmly respond in those situations and manage your reactions to stressful people, and stressful situations. Welcome to the influence and impact podcast for female leaders. My name is Carla Miller. And I'm a leadership coach who helps female leaders to tackle self doubt, become brilliant influencing and make more impact at work.

I've created this podcast to help you to become a more inspiring and impactful leader. And I want to become the leadership BFF that you didn't know you were missing until now. Now, before we go into that, an update on what's going on over here, we have just finished a cohort of be bolder, our four week confidence and assertiveness course for women at any level.

It's been really interesting doing this one because I have engaged a learning designer. So someone who is incredible at designing high quality workshops. Despite the fact I had had amazing feedback about the boulder, there was still a bit of kind of impostor syndrome creeping in there.

And I was thinking, you know, I'm starting to deliver this now to quite large companies. What if it isn't actually good enough. So I brought in a learning designer who reassured me that actually, the content is absolutely fantastic, but has been brilliant at teaching me how to get better at designing these workshops so that they are even more interactive, and we're bringing more of the participants voices into the room. So this is the first cohort we've done implementing some of those techniques. So I was really interested to see the feedback that we received. Now we've had about half the group feedback so far. And what has been absolutely brilliant is that 100% of people have said, they feel more confident now than they did at the start to be bolder, their mindset is more positive, they feel more equipped for challenging conversations, and they're more willing to have those challenging, or courageous conversations, they feel more confident speaking up in meetings, and they're more likely to contribute to meetings. So all the reasons that they wanted to join, they have seen results in that. So that is fantastic and well worth the investment in the Learning Designer, but also that stepping out of my comfort zone and realising I guess, recognising that in order to get better, there's got to be some discomfort, and some acknowledgement that what I've been doing so far, isn't perfect. And for those of you that have listened for a while, you know, I'm a recovering perfectionist, and that did bring up issues.

For me, they definitely did bring up an initial wave of defensiveness but I've managed to get over that and I have learned a huge amount and I'm really pleased that we've taken something that was already really good and we've made it kind of world class in terms of quality so that I can confidently, um, Put it out there in front of organizations of any shape and size. So that's exciting. A

If you're thinking I want some of what those people have got, the next open cohort of Be Bolder is in October. Um, and we are taking bookings for that now. We're only going to run it twice a year. So we expect those cohorts to fill up quite quickly. The other thing, our other open program, Influence and Impact, starts at the end of April, and that is filling up quickly, we've got just, um, it's for a group of just 20 women, so it's a small group, really getting to know each other, building your support network, working closely with me, covering what we usually cover in Influence and Impact, so confidence, increasing your impact, and influencing the Senior stakeholders, and we've also trialing this time some peer coaching triads, so time spent with two others coaching each other on what's going on for you.

So it'd be really interesting to see how that goes. So that's what's happening on the work front. We also have some new stuff coming very soon, including new website, new brand. So hopefully they'll be out in about a month, and it's nearly Easter holidays. Well, in fact. As you listen to this, it will be Easter holidays for those of you that are doing school holidays.

We are off To explore Northumberland for a few days during these holidays, really, really excited and when it'll boys really excited to go to the beach. I don't know about you, but I feel like I need an Easter break. And I am praying for sunshine. It's him pretty wet and windy up here in Cumbria, although we did have a beautiful sunny day on Monday, so I escaped from my desk as much as I could. But I'm really hoping the sun comes out at some point over the Easter holidays for all of us.

Okay, so let's talk about managing your reaction to stressful situations. And the way we're going to structure this podcast is, first of all, we're going to talk about how to know your stress response, because actually, many of us are stressed and don't even recognise it. And also how to get to know what situations or people trigger your stress response and how you can proactively deal with that. We're going to look at how you can use your body to reduce that stress response. And we're going to focus on how you can respond rather than react when you're in a stressful situation. And finally, we're going to look at how do you recover from a stressful situation.

So hopefully, that sounds like it will be a really practical episode for you, and help you to get to know a bit about why you react in the way that you do. I always like to understand myself better. And hopefully, sometimes this podcast helps you to understand yourself better as well. Okay, so step one, know your stress response.

So many of us are walking around quite disconnected from our bodies, almost as if our body just exists to carry our brain from A to B. Now, if you are someone who exercises a lot, or someone who does yoga, or meditation, then you are probably quite tuned in to what's going on in your body. In meditation, for example, specifically, we do that.

But for lots of people, we are not sat there doing yoga and meditating as much as perhaps we would like to. And we don't pick up on the signals that our body is sharing with us. And sometimes we're in stressful situations so frequently that those signals have just become a default. So first of all, what we want to do is to notice how your body reacts when you're in a stressful situation.

Now, you might notice it in extreme situations. So what you could do is kind of do a bit of a scan of first of all, notice how your breath reacts. So many of us when we're in a stressful situation, our breath gets faster, and it gets more shallow, we tend to breathe from the top of our chest rather than right down into our diaphragm.

I sometimes find that actually I yawn when I'm stressed, or nervous. Actually, I always yawn before an interview. And it's really annoying, I have to hide it very well, if I'm sat there in reception waiting, but it's something about wanting to get that extra oxygen into my body. So notice what happens to your breath when you're stressed. And you can think about that. Now, also notice Do you feel tightness in any area of your body. So common places to feel tightness when you're in a stressful situation, your jaw, and the back of your neck, your shoulders and your back? For me, my shoulders go up to my ears. And my jaw gets really tense. So look for signs of tightness.

And then finally, look for sensations. So it might be heat. And you might feel heat. If you're someone who blushes you might feel heat in your cheeks or your chest. It might be almost a feeling of butterflies in your chest or your stomach. You might have tingling, somewhere. Everyone's sensations are different.

Being able to tune in to those sensations gives you a bit of useful information in a couple of ways. One, it tells you that essentially, you're being triggered your nervous system is being triggered. It's not fully regulated, it's become dis regulated. And secondly, there's something we can do to counteract those bodily sensations and experiences if we know what they are.

So just think for a moment about the most recent time that you felt really triggered in the workplace where you felt really stressed. And have a think for a moment and think, actually, where do I feel it? In my body? What are the sensations that I experience at that point. And I would just make a note of that. Because then what will happen is if you start to regularly tune into your body, you will notice when you are triggered, because often, we don't even we don't realise, particularly if it's maybe a particular person that triggers us, we don't realise until the external signs happen that we're triggered.

So we've talked about your body and that's the internal signs, but there will also definitely be external signs that you are in a stressful situation, that you're having a stress response. And these vary according to your personality. So for some people, They will get defensive, and that might show up in what they're saying, or it might show up in how they're saying things.

I get quite high pitched when I'm defensive. I also talk quite quickly. For others, it might show up as snapping. So, normally, you're a really sweet, kind, lovely person, but you do snap at people when you're feeling stressed or feeling under attack. For some people, it might be embarrassed. Um, and they struggle to think about what they want to communicate.

They're kind of fumbling for their words, or they're really conscious that they're going red or that they're not saying anything. Some of us might shut down. Like, we just refuse to engage. Our body just goes into kind of, um, lockdown and can't engage with it. And some of us might get more passive aggressive.

So we might go, yeah, yeah, no, that's absolutely fine. And then go and rant about it and not do what we said we would do. So it shows up externally in different ways, but you can be sure that people will notice The way in which it shows up, people will notice if they are on the receiving end of it or if they work with you closely and they are watching you.

So that's step one, know your stress response. Now, step two is to know what situations or people trigger your stress response. And some of these might come to mind quite easily, but others might require a little bit of thought. So you can think for a moment now who or what situations trigger your stress response?

Does talking to your chief exec, or a board member or your line managers, line manager, bring up a stress response for you, because of their authority. Do particular types of personalities bring up a stress response for you? Maybe because they clash with your personality, or maybe because they remind you of someone that you didn't have a good experience with.

Do particular phrases that maybe someone has unhelpfully used in the past or that means something negative to you bring up a stress response in you or do particular situations. It might be when you're put on the spot. It might be when there's ongoing tension, it might be when you have your annual appraisal, or your boss says, have you got five minutes, or when you're receiving feedback. You are human.

You're allowed to have these stress responses. And actually, we think that they're happening from our brain and going down to our body, but actually, our nervous system works the other way around. So, 90% of the communication is from our nervous system to our brain, rather than from our brain to our nervous system.

So it's really useful to know what situations or people trigger your stress response, because then you can proactively put things in place to help counteract that. So if you don't already know, then now that you've paid attention to what is your bodily experience of a stress response, and how does it show up externally, then just keep a note, just notice spend the next couple of weeks noticing when you're having those sensations or when you are putting into practice the behaviour that implement that indicates that you are having a stress response so that you can kind of do research on yourself if you're not tuned in to what's going on for you. Emotional Intelligence is a part of it is about being tuned in to what's going on for you so that you can then manage those emotions and their impact on other people.

And no, I say manage I don't say completely suppress I am not a fan of completely suppressing emotions. But there's a time and place and we want to be able to manage those emotions when they come up. Okay, so once you know what triggers your stress response, one of the really simple things that you can do is that you can use a simple visual to help you feel calmer, when you know you're going into those situations or dealing with those people.

So a visual I find really helpful is to imagine I'm in a protective bubble. So as soon as I know I'm going into that situation, or as soon as I see that email even come up in my inbox, I like already feel myself starting to react, I put up my protective bubble. Now mine is kind of a pale pink, and it's really chilled out, because pink is my favourite colour.

But the idea is, that's my energy bubble. That's the energy, I want to be feeling, I want to be feeling calm, not triggered, I want to be feeling happy and the idea is that anyone else's energy just bounces right off the edge of my bubble. So it's not a bubble that pops. It’s a really strong bubble, almost like a protective shield around you.

So whatever they are bringing to the conversation, whatever energy, whatever stressful situation or question or demand they're bringing, you can hear the content of what they're saying, but you are not taking on board any energy from it.

So I was coaching someone the other day, whose role is really stressful. And there are particular people that call where she notices that she does get triggered by those. And so we've put into place this bubble idea for her to try. So as soon as their names come up on the call, she enters that bubble. And it just enables her to feel calmer than she would do an I guess less exposed, maybe than she would do if she was just picking up the phone and going into her normal default reaction. So choose a colour before your bubble or your shield. And you can pick that up as soon as you are going into that situation or dealing with those people.

Okay, now another thing that you can do. So step three is, you know, we talked about recognising your body's reaction, well, you can counteract it by doing the opposite. So if you know that your breaths get really shallow and fast, where you can take deeper breaths, she says, taking a deep breath, and you can slow down your breathing. If you know that your shoulders get really tight and up by your ears, then you can loosen your shoulders. If you're working from home, this is ideal because you can do the exact opposite of whatever is happening.

If you're you know, in a meeting or physically face to face with someone, you might need to be a little bit more subtle, we could roll your shoulders, or you could gently wiggle your jaw a little bit to loosen the tension there. But what that does is it sends messages to your brain saying everything's okay. So we're sending a message there from our nervous system in our body up to our brain. So that's another really simple thing you can do to try and calm down the physical reaction. And then fourthly, the most powerful thing you can do, and this is a really popular element of the boulder course that we talk about is respond rather than react. Now, I've probably mentioned this in previous podcasts. But it's such a useful tool and take time to learn and put into practice. So I think it's worth going through it again. Okay, so explaining how to respond rather than react starts with understanding why we react. So what happens is, there's a stimulus, so something happens, someone says something or the stressful person comes into the room, or it's a stressful situation that happens. And then when we find ourselves reacting to it, it's because we have in some way made it about us. So it might be someone gives feedback and we have turned that into a story that means we're terrible about our job, and understandably then our entire nervous system goes into panic, it sets in place the flight fight or freeze mechanism.

So what we want to do is to to try not to make it mean something about us. Now sometimes it's obvious what we're making it mean about us is playing an unhelpful story that we've had for a long time. Other times, it's us telling a story that is this person is this person doesn't like us, or this person always stresses us out. And there's all sorts of things that we tell ourselves that aren't actually completely factual. Like, if someone recorded what was happening with a video camera, they wouldn't be able to pick up the truth and what we're saying in those statements to ourselves. So one way that you can start to do this is just recognise, okay, so Sarah said something, and I felt like this, and this is the story going on in my head and lift. That's why I felt like this, recognising that story going on, in your head, will enable you to go Hmm, wow, is that actually true? Or is that a story and again, we we teach you to reframe these beliefs within be bolder and influence and impact. But a simple way in the moment to reframe it, is to instead replace that story, you're telling yourself with just an assessment of the facts of the situation. So Sarah gives you some feedback, instead of that, meaning, I don't know what I'm talking about, I'm rubbish. At my job, actually, the fact is, you've received ideas on how to improve in that situation going forward. Like, that is definitely a fact. No one's going to dispute that fact, it also doesn't mean anything deeper, meaningful about you, because everyone, however brilliant you are at your job, can still improve. And also, you know, being receptive to ways of improving is a great sign of being a leader. So instead of making it mean something about you, catch yourself if you're doing that, and instead look for what are the facts in this situation. And again, once you stop telling yourself that story, you will find yourself calm up. And there's a reason for that. So there's something called the 92nd rule, which came from Jill Bolte Taylor, who is a neuroscientist who did a fantastic TED talk, and has also written a really, really interesting book called a Stroke of Insight. And she shares the 92nd rule, which is when something happens that triggers you, your body floods with hormones and the chemicals related to those hormones for 90 seconds.

So something stressful happens, and your body sends adrenaline and cortisol, it just flushes through your body for 90 seconds. And that's why you're having a physical reaction. Often, that's why you're having an external reaction. Now, what we want to do is to let that 90 seconds pass before we respond, because if we try and respond during that 90 seconds, or at least during the beginning of it, when it's kind of the big wave of it, then we are going to react rather than respond because we're being fueled by those hormones and chemicals. But if we can wait longer if we can buy ourselves some time, and you can use phrases like that's really interesting, let me think about that. Or can you just give me a moment to reflect on that. And you can just buy yourself a little bit of time. Once those hormones and chemicals are flushed through you, then you should be back on a more even keel. And then you can choose how to powerfully respond rather than react. Because when we react, we're often defensive, we snap all these different things that we talked about earlier. And while sometimes Yeah, it's nice to get those emotions out.

Actually, it doesn't move the situation forward. It often doesn't achieve what we want to achieve, or we often regret it and think about it for a long time. afterwards. What we want to do is to be able to respond and to me responding is about thinking, or what do I want to get from this situation? And how do I communicate in order to do that. And then the final interesting piece about the 92nd rule is that your brain doesn't know the difference between something happening and you rerunning that thing in your head. So when you rerun that scenario in your head, and particularly the story that made it mean something about you. Your body gets flushed with those chemicals again, for 90 seconds. And I don't know about you, but I can certainly I have plenty of examples where I've spent pretty much a whole day in that state. Because something has agitated me so much that I've just been rerunning it and re running it in my head, not recognising that actually, I was just flooding my body with that and giving myself a really bad day. And that wasn't that person giving me a really bad day, it was me by repeating it over and over again, by making it mean something about me. So that's how you can use the 92nd rule. And then the other thing you can do to help you to respond in the moment, is to try and get a little bit of perspective. So when we're reacting, if like, we're, we're in the dynamic, and the dynamic is coming with us or through us. But when we respond, it's almost like we're able to take a step back, or helicopter upwards and look at the situation with some perspective and look at right, this is this person, and that's their agenda or what they're trying to achieve. And this is what I want to try and achieve in this situation. How can I respond in order to do that, so your brain is still fully engaged in the situation you're analysing what you can do and the dynamic that's going on. But it's doing that with more clarity, because it's not in the middle of that battle, it's kind of taking a step back and looking at that battle. So those are some really simple ways that will enable you to manage your reaction to stressful situations a bit more. Now, you might be asking me, yeah, that sounds great. But how do I actually respond, like what words and phrases do I use in the situation, or we don't have time to go into that now. But we do within influence and impact. And within be bolder, we do provide you with all sorts of really practical phrases, and statements and ways of communicating that you can use in exactly these situations. So if this is something that you continue to struggle with, and you want to be able to really powerfully respond and articulate yourself in those situations, I'd love to see you in Boulder, Oregon influence and impact. And then the final step, once you've done all of this is to recover, because your nervous system has been on high alert, it has been dysregulated. And you want to regulate it again, so that you're not triggered for the rest of the day or the week. So some simple things you can do for that. One of the things I like to do at the candidate doesn't work in an open plan office. But if you're at home, or if you want to go to the toilet, and do it is to physically shake it off. So I learned this on a retreat years ago. And I'm so glad I did, because I find it super helpful. So in nature, deers, they're walking around seeing the forest having a nice time having a snack, and then they sense danger, they hear a noise coming and they sense danger and they freeze, play stay completely, still no movement. And you'll you'll recognise that with our freeze response. as well. When we tighten up, we're freezing. And then once that danger has passed, they shake it off, they shake their limbs, because they've held that tension in their limbs, and they want to let go of it. Now what happens with us is we freeze, and then we freeze again. And then we freeze again. And if you've ever gone for a massage, and it's been painful, then you'll recognise what it feels like to hold all that tension in your body every time I have a massage, which isn't very often, I think, oh my goodness, what am I doing to myself that I've literally tied when muscles into knots like this that are really painful to loosen. So what we can do instead is we literally shake it off. Music helps. I do like to do it to Taylor Swift shake it off. But you will literally start with just shaking your hands. Shaking Sorry, I'm doing this as I speak to you. So shaking your hands, shaking your arms, shaking your head, loosen your jaw, shaking your legs just moving your body humming a little dance. And if someone if it's been really stressful or if that person has upset me or whatever I basically emerged and shaking off their energy like so that is no longer with me anymore. What you will also find when you do that shaking movement is you will notice energy probably in your hands and in your body and it's just a really nice feeling actually is a really nice sensation. So you can shake it off, and you will find after you've shaken it off, or danced it off or you can try walking it off nature will give you perspective as well. So go for a walk but don't go for a walk looking at the ground. Go for a walk looking up. Noticing nature. Noticing the little details that you see Again, that will give you perspective and it will be restorative. And then look at what can you do to top up your emotional energy bank, because dealing with these situations does take something out of our emotional energy bank, many of us that's running low anyway, especially if we're spending a lot of time putting other people's needs first, caring for other people carrying the mental and social load at work or in our household. So think what, what can I do to top up my emotional energy bank? It might be, yeah, a little dance, it might be reading a bit, a few pages of your favourite book, I can't remember who it was. But I saw someone on LinkedIn recently, where every hour, they'd stop and read a few pages of their favourite book. And I was like, Oh, that's really interesting idea. It might be caring for yourself and making a really nice cup of tea. Whatever it is, a little hand massage was super, I'm hangry anything at all. But anything that tops up your emotional energy bank so that it's not being depleted every time these situations happen. And finally, if you are in ongoing stressful situations, or you're having to work very closely with someone where it triggers a stress response in you, then do make sure that you're focusing on your own well being, resilience and avoiding burnout is about making sure you are topping up. Whatever brings you wellbeing topping up your emotional and physical and mental energy bank. So that is really, really important. If you are neglecting your own needs and self care at the same time as being in an ongoing stressful situation. It generally doesn't end that well. It's time to prioritise looking after yourself, if that's the situation that you're in. Okay, so we've covered a lot we've talked about knowing your stress response, we've talked about knowing what situations or people trigger your stress response. We've talked about how you can counteract your body's reaction by doing the opposite. We've explored responding rather than reacting and the 92nd rule. And finally, we've talked about recovery. I hope that you found this episode useful. I'd love to hear from you, if you did. And if you do enjoy this podcast, make sure you've subscribed so that it regularly comes into your podcast player. And also, if you haven't left a review, I would hugely value review, please, because I just want this podcast to get to as many people as possible. And reviews are the way to make that happen. So leave a review on Amazon, or do an actual review and tell someone that you like that they might like this podcast and recommend it. I know lots of you do that. And I really, really appreciate it. Take care. And I will speak to you soon.

Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you're not already subscribing, please do so, so that you don't miss any future episodes. And if you want to go deeper, On the topics that we talk about here on the podcast on confidence, self doubt, imposter feelings, increasing your influence, being better at leading, then there are a few avenues that you can take.

The simplest is to get yourself a copy of my book. Closing the influence gap. If you love this podcast, it is crazy if you don't already own that book because it's got so much of the content from the podcast in a really accessible way. And so many practical tools and strategies. It's basically a practical guide for women leaders who want to be heard.

You can grab a copy in any, uh, bookstore. Now we also run a couple of open programs. Uh, we run them once or twice a year each. There is Be Bolder, our four week confidence and assertiveness course, which is suitable for women at any level. And then there's also Influence and Impact, which is our women's leadership development program.

That's a three month small group cohort working closely. And then my team and I also work in house in organizations. Sometimes that's working with women leaders, whether that's running a whole women's leadership program or running one of our really popular masterclasses for women leaders. Sometimes it's working with early to mid career women, where we're often sharing our Be Bolder Confidence and Assertiveness program.

We also offer gender neutral versions of that, which are becoming increasingly popular because women aren't the only people experiencing confidence challenges. And then finally, we do work with allyship and supporting men to help bring about gender equity in the workplace as well. So if you are heading up a team or a department or within your organization, you're responsible for the people function or L& D and would like to have a chat about how we can work together, I would absolutely love that.

And you can go to my website and book a call, or if it's simpler, head on over to LinkedIn. Let's connect and let's work. I would love to take working with you to the next level, um, and help you to become an organization that retains and develops and supports the talented women that work for you.