Carla Miller [00:00:01]:
This episode was prompted by a request from one of the members in my women leading community who asked how she could build more personal resilience around the impact of decisions and work and be a little bit more what she called Teflon coated. And perhaps you can relate to that. Maybe you're able to make the tough decisions as a leader, but you take things to heart. You care about people and their well-being, and sometimes the decisions you make can have a significant impact on others. Or maybe you're not making the decisions, but you're the person who's implementing the decisions that others have made. So you could be cascading unwelcome news or making unpopular changes. You might be involved in a restructure, for example, or taking a team member through performance management. Now, I didn't want to call this episode how to care less as a leader because I don't think that those of us who care a lot would embrace the idea of caring less.

Carla Miller [00:00:59]:
Caring, having empathy, being conscious of the impact of our decisions on people, these are all wonderful traits for a leader to have, and may well be a huge strength of yours as a leader. However, if caring has no boundaries around it, then you could be heading towards sleepless nights, self doubt, and possibly even burnout. So in this episode, I'm going to explore 3 insights and 3 tools and techniques to help you if you self identify as someone who cares too much as a leader. Hi. My name's Carla Miller, leadership coach, author, and trainer. And this is the Influence and Impact Podcast for women leaders. Helping you confidently navigate the ups and downs of leadership, and feel less alone on your journey as a leader. In fortnightly episodes, I share practical tools and insights from myself and my brilliant guests that will help you to succeed in your career.

Carla Miller [00:01:56]:
Now, if you're a regular listener to the podcast and you're wanting more, then there are 3 ways that you can work with me. And I'm just gonna recap these because I am finding lots of people going to my website and seeing all the master classes that we run-in house for organizations, but not really knowing how you can work with me. So there are 3 ways to work with me at the moment. We have the influence and impact 3 month women's leadership development program. Our next cohort of that starts in May, and that covers all things confidence, increasing your impact, influencing successfully, and has some peer coaching calls in there as well. We also have my be bolder program, which is my 4 week course. This is for women at any level. So it's for you if you're a leader, but it could also be for your team members as well.

Carla Miller [00:02:48]:
And this is where we really build the foundations of confidence, particularly when it comes to courageous conversations and speaking up and getting your voice heard in meetings. And our next cohort of that is running in February March. And then finally, you can work with me 1 to 1 as a coach where we can tailor our coaching sessions based on whatever it is you need. So that's just three ways that we can work together. Okay. So let's start with the 3 insights that could help you if you're someone that cares too much as a leader. And the first one is this concept of a strength overdone. And the idea that even our greatest strengths can become unhelpful if we don't use them in a balanced way.

Carla Miller [00:03:38]:
I read a Harvard Business Review article about this, which used the phrase lopsided leadership. And it said, once you overplay a strength, you're at risk of diminished capacity on the opposite pole. For example, a leader who's good at getting people involved in decisions and has been encouraged to build on that collaborative strength may not realize that in engaging so many others, they're taking too long to move into action. So, basically, we can over rely on our strengths and not develop other approaches as well. So you could be super analytical for example, which is a wonderful strength to have. But if you can't balance that with empathy, it will cause issues. And if you're listening to this episode, you could have a lot of empathy and emotional intelligence. But if you can't put a boundary around that, then you're going to end up drained and probably in a bit of emotional turmoil as there's going to be times where your decisions will have a negative impact on others in the short term.

Carla Miller [00:04:38]:
So what I'd like you to do now is just take a moment to reflect. If one of your key strengths is empathy or emotional intelligence or just being overly conscious of the impact on others, are you overusing that strength? Has it gone so far that actually it's starting to become a bit of a weakness in terms of your ability to lead and to lead happily? Are you overusing your empathy or being overly conscious of your impact on others? So I thought that was a really interesting concept because I think until I'd heard of that concept a while ago, I would have thought, well, let's just optimize our strengths. And I am still a big fan of owning and optimizing your strengths and developing your career so you spend as much time as you can in what Gay Hendricks calls you a zone of genius. However, you can't sit in those strengths all the time. You have to be able to develop their counterbalance as well. And if you can't, then that causes issues. Okay. So that was insight number 1.

Carla Miller [00:05:49]:
Are you overdoing your strength of empathy or emotional intelligence? Insight number 2 is around what I call tightly held values. So a value is something that is important to you and we have values in life like family, love, adventure, freedom, all these different things. We all have also have values in the workplace like collaboration, empathy, success, all sorts of different things. Now in the same way as you can overdo a strength, you can also hold a value too tightly. And you know you're holding it too tightly if anything that's not completely aligned with that value feels morally wrong to you. And if you're having to put it into place, you end up feeling misaligned. So if you value harmony, caring, empathy for example, to take a decision that negatively impacts others that others will be unhappy about can feel really wrong because it it feels like it's going against one of your values. So it's a good idea to look at what does a healthy version of that value look like for you.

Carla Miller [00:07:07]:
So what does a healthy version of empathy or caring look like for a senior leader who has to make tough decisions? So it might be that empathy cannot be front of mind when you are making a decision if that really contradicts what the organization needs. However, you might be able to communicate with empathy. Now I'd hope there aren't many decisions where empathy doesn't come into it, But sometimes you are responsible for restructuring. And if you were just being led by empathy, you would never be able to do that restructuring. You wouldn't be able to do your job effectively. So look for ways to bring that value into what you're doing, but don't let it dominate to the point where it feels morally wrong to you and you feel really, really awful and misaligned when you're having to push back a little bit on that value. And then the 3rd insight is to understand your underlying beliefs. Now if you've listened to this podcast for a while or listened to any kind of coaching podcast, you will know that a belief is basically a story that you've told yourself so often that you think it's true.

Carla Miller [00:08:28]:
And we have beliefs about ourselves, in life, work, all sorts of different things. Now as it relates to this topic, it could be you're holding an unhelpful belief like it's my job to make sure my team is happy or I'm responsible for my team member's happiness. Now that's a lot of pressure to put on yourself, responsibility for the happiness of everyone who works for you. I can't even always make myself happy, so I don't know how you can do it for all of those people. Actually, it isn't your responsibility. They are responsible for their own happiness and for their own emotional resilience when life or work throws tough stuff at them. They're fully fledged adults who know, or if they're new to the workplace will know with time, that the world of work throws curve balls. Managers make decisions they don't like sometimes, And sometimes their jobs can be at risk through no fault of their own.

Carla Miller [00:09:33]:
That's happening a lot at the moment. And that can bring up big emotions for people. And you can absolutely hold a space for those emotions, but you can't fix it for them. And, actually, even if you could fix it for them, then they wouldn't learn that emotional resilience for themselves. Like, you know how to cope with the tough things at work because you've had to learn. You've had experience and you've you've learned how to become more resilient. So it is wonderful to care about your team and how they're feeling. But, a, you're not their mother.

Carla Miller [00:10:17]:
It's not your job to protect them from everything. And, also, even if you were, you know, if you've got kids, you'll know that we want to protect our kids from everything, but that doesn't help them build their resilience. They actually need to learn how to go out in the world and have experiences that aren't pleasant and work out how to deal with those and how to process those big emotions that come up from them. So if you're, for example, leading a restructure at work at the moment, there will be some big emotions flying around, and people are absolutely entitled to those emotions. Obviously, there are some boundaries around how you express those in the workplace. If you are aggressively attacking everybody else verbally because you're upset, that's not an ideal way to express that. But you can hold a space for people to feel their emotions. And sometimes your team members are going to feel unhappy.

Carla Miller [00:11:12]:
Sometimes your team members are gonna feel unhappy with you. And that's okay. How you show up on a daily basis caring about them, you know, showing that you value them and that you value how hard they work and how important they are to you, that's how you show them that you care, not by avoiding making the tough decisions. Now if you do hold some limiting beliefs that you would like to make healthier, I'm gonna direct you to a free resource that I have had running for a while. It's called the how to say no challenge, and it's based around saying no, but you can apply it to this as well. And it helps you. It takes you step by step through how to reframe some unhealthy beliefs that are stopping you from being able to say no and turn them into healthier ones. So head on over to carlamillertraining.comforward/sayno, all one word, to download your, challenge.

Carla Miller [00:12:18]:
It will also be in the show notes as well. Okay. So that is the 3 insights to help you think differently about how you care for other people. And now I've got some practical tools that you can use as well. So I have 3 of these. The first one is around circles of control. Now this comes from Stephen Covey. You might have heard of it before, but perhaps you haven't necessarily been maximizing its use as a tool during stressful times.

Carla Miller [00:12:56]:
So the idea is that the things that are going on in our world at work, for example, can fit into 1 of 3 circles. So the middle circle is the circle of control. These are the things that you have control over. The next circle around that is the circle of influence. So these are the things where you might be able to do something to influence how they go. You might be able to, give someone some support, or you might be able to influence upwards to change a decision. And then the final circle outside of that is the circle of concern. And this is basically all the different things you're worried about that are not in your control and you can't influence either.

Carla Miller [00:13:43]:
We all spend far too much time hanging out in our circle of concern, and it's a complete waste of energy. And so if we apply that to what we're talking about here, you might find it a helpful tool to draw those 3 circles. And if you're thinking about caring too much about your team, then think about what is in my circle of my of control? What can I actually do here? What's in my circle of influence, and what's in my circle of concern? So their feelings might well be in your circle of concern. You can't do anything about their feelings. But the circle of control could be you control how you communicate with them, and you can absolutely do that with empathy and really thoughtfully. And the circle of influence might be there are things you can do to help improve the situation in some way, or you can put some things in place that might support them. I find that when we are worrying and going over things in our head, we think that we're being really constructive, and, actually, it's a little bit like a hamster wheel. We are having a lot of very repetitive thoughts.

Carla Miller [00:14:53]:
And so I find writing it down super helpful because I can write it down. I can see it on the paper, I've done my analysis, and then I can let it go because there's nothing more I can do. I'll put things into action, but then I'm done. So that's the first tool. Using those circles of control could be a a useful thing to do. The second thing that's a useful thing to do is to acknowledge that you have feelings around this. It might be guilt, compassion, frustration, anger, sadness. You might have a whole load of different feelings going on.

Carla Miller [00:15:35]:
And what many of us tend to do, and I know I'm big on this, is we just suppress them. We push them down because feelings are messy and a bit icky, and we don't really know how to deal with them. So we we push them down. We rain reframe things in our heads, and we just get on with things. But those feelings are still in there. So I think one of the most helpful things you can do in terms of your emotional resilience is to acknowledge those feelings, to hang out with them a little bit, to process them, to sort of move through them so that you can then let them dissipate and go rather than just suppressing them and getting them stuck. Now there are lots of different ways to do this, and I'll be honest, it's something that I am still really working on. For me, journaling is a really good way to do that.

Carla Miller [00:16:27]:
So I might write down what I'm thinking and just see what comes up. It could be meditation. Previous guest we've had on the show, Jen McKenna, she uses EFT, emotional freedom technique, or also known as tapping, can help you to do that. And I know another thing you can do is to is to do it through your body. So to notice where in my body do I feel anger or sadness or guilt. What does that feel like? Does it always feel the same? Does it move? Does it move if I change move my body in some different way? There's there's lots of different approaches you can take to this. I am not great at tapping into what's happening in my body, so I tend to find journaling really helpful. But the point is that second tool is it's okay to have these feelings.

Carla Miller [00:17:18]:
You're a caring human. That's lovely. But let's process them and deal with them rather than letting them hang over us all the time and make us feel bad. And then the final thing is in coaching, in counselling, there's something called supervision where you can debrief after you've had an emotional or challenging discussion. So could you create your own supervision? Could you debrief with a peer or with your line manager in emotional times? So let's say that you're having to implement a restructure and so is one of your peers in another department, and you're probably feeling quite isolated, and your relationship with your team might be strained whilst previously have been really positive. Could you debrief with that peer? Could you get together and just be there to listen and support each other? Not to fix, but just to listen and support. And then the final thing I want to say, having shared those three tools or techniques, is that all this empathy and caring that you've got is amazing. How about you apply some of it to yourself as well? Care about yourself too.

Carla Miller [00:18:33]:
Your feelings matter. They matter as much as the feelings of your team. And actually for you, they should matter the most because nobody else is going to be putting your feelings first. It is not selfish to think about what's best for you as well. Like, society trains us to always put others first, but it's a very patriarchal society that does that. You won't see as many men doing that. And actually, we do have to look after ourselves in order to be able to support other people. It isn't selfish.

Carla Miller [00:19:09]:
So your feelings matter. Where you put your energy matter. So how can you give yourself some compassion at having to make these decisions or implement these changes? What can you do to be kind to yourself and to talk to yourself with love? Often we wish someone else would come along and say it's all going to be okay, everything's going to be okay, you're doing your best, you're doing a really good job. And it is lovely when someone comes along and says that, but sometimes we have to say it for ourselves and really hear it. So care about yourself too. Don't use all of your empathy and caring on others, save some of it for yourself. It just doesn't make sense to have huge amounts of empathy for your team, but none for yourself. And that's also not role modeling what healthy leadership looks like.

Carla Miller [00:20:04]:
So I hope that's been helpful for you. Lots of different things that you can try there. Don't try anymore. Just take one insight or one tool, Put it into action. See if that helps you to feel more emotionally resilient. I don't want you to stop feeling. I love that you feel. I love that I feel as well, but I don't want you to feel overwhelmed with feelings about things that are in your circle of concern that you can't actually do anything to change.

Carla Miller [00:20:36]:
Have a lovely couple of weeks, and I'll be back soon.