Holding yourself back as a female leader?

Here's a bitesize guide on how we often hold ourselves back as female leaders.  I'll share my top five culprits and some tips and questions to help you avoid these and create better habits. See what hits home with you?

No.1 - Not owning our successes.  Whilst men are often the first to shout about their achievements, women are often more reluctant to partake in this approach. If you feel uncomfortable claiming the credit you're due or bat it away as someone else or a team effort, you're not doing yourself any favours.  This becomes especially important if you're looking to progress or move to a new role as people will not see or remember your achievements or might think others led to the result.  Speaking up about what you achieve, how you contribute and your experience does not make you self-centred or self-serving but it does send a message you’re ready to rise. 

TOP TIP: If you really do feel squirmy in this area - when you get a compliment on something you've achieved, say 'Thank you', smile and stop there.  After a pause, if it really was a team effort you might say something like; 'Me and the team are really pleased with the results and I'd like to mention X's valuable contribution...'.  It's always good to elevate others when you get the opportunity and make sure you're getting recognised and noticed for your achievements too. 

QUESTIONS: How might you claim credit for your achievements in a way that makes you feel comfortable and empowered? What can you learn from other women who are skilful at owning their achievements? How can you help your female team members demonstrate this too?

No.2 - Only building rather than building AND leveraging relationships: If you're wanting to progress as a leader and increase your impact and influence, we know building relationships and networking should be on our radar yet often as women we're less comfortable with it. Whilst our natural talents of building relationships, collaborating, helping, supporting, communicating and developing others should mean we thrive with it, it's not our thing? We seem to recoil at the idea engaging others to help us with our next role or leadership journey. We'll happily spend time and energy offering others help, listening to peoples worries, sharing advice and guidance, building relationships and getting to know people - all great yet we miss a trick in leveraging our network built on this to help pursue our aspirations too. Research points to men being much more comfortable in leveraging the relationships they have built. Leveraging works both ways and is often mutually beneficial - the stronger the relationships and network we build, the more we can help ourselves and others. 

TOP TIP: Create a list of people you believe are key to your current and future success. Now rate on a scale of 1 to 10, which relationships are strong and which ones need more attention? With your top relationships, what do you could you do to leverage them more effectively so you both gain? What could you ask of one person to help you progress as a leader?

No.3 - Be perfect!  Women are more susceptible to the perfection trap, the belief that they will progress if they do their job perfectly and never mess up. We give ourselves a hard time striving for perfection, add on the motherload and you've got a recipe for stress and burnout right there. Pushing for perfection may have helped get you where you are yet it gets in your way as you aspire to higher levels and the need to be agile increases. Why:

·        It creates stress, for you and for those around you, with a focus on expectations that we may sometimes achieve but which are tough to sustain.

·        It keeps you in the weeds, micromanaging details and away the big picture strategic thinking that is expected for leadership roles.

·        It creates an exhausting and critical mindset, serving up criticism, even panic, looking for things to go wrong and a negative spiral that ruins the atmosphere when even little things go wrong - who wants that in a leader?

·        It's unrealistic and takes much more time than 'good enough' setting you up to work longer hours for marginal gains and to fail in your own mind.

·        It limits creativity and innovation as perfection likes stability and means you can be reluctant to take risks in case it goes wrong - where's the growth and learning in this.

TOP TIP: Reframe your mindset for 'progress not perfection'.  Really think about what's important to your audience and stakeholders and where you've been striving for perfection for you, not them?  Get comfortable with taking some measured risks and see what you learn and how people respond.   Get out of the weeds, delegate, prioritise and make how you use your time purposeful.  If you have perfectionist tendencies and you want to develop as a leader, you'll need to work out how to let go so you can step into being comfortable having less control and focus on what's important at that level - this will create a less stressful environment for you, for others and show you're ready to progress.

QUESTIONS: Ask yourself in which situations are you exerting more control or seeking more perfection than you should?   How does this impact you and your team?  How will you let go of perfectionism a bit more?

No.4 - The Disease to Please:  Yep, we often know who we are and even talk about it like we know it may hold us back.  We like to be liked, helpful and not offend people.  Truth is, when this is overplayed, you find yourself constantly trying to please everybody, compromising amongst competing needs in the pursuit of not offending anyone and getting consensus which rarely happens.  This undermines your ability to make clear decisions and can lead to multiple decision loops and changes of heart and mind. At best you appear a bit indecisive, likeable and open to others’ views. At worst you appear indecisive and ineffective, which is not going to help you rise to senior levels.  It can also leave you open to manipulation by others who recognise your need to please and accommodate to get their needs met. People pleasing can leave you stuck with the fear of disappointing people or making them temporarily unhappy and can make you look erratic or easily swayed.  People often say they respect leaders who make tough decisions, manage their boundaries or who disagree with them on occasions.

TOP TIP: Once you recognise this, look over the last few weeks and identify where this is playing out for you? (Where or with who have you been overeager to please or accommodate?)

QUESTIONS: What, if anything are you actually gaining from people pleasing? (Sometimes we have a need playing out and need to find something else to satisfy it.) How is this potentially impacting how you are seen as a leader? What one small change can you make to try out over the next week?

No. 5- Minimising: This is a very real physical and psychological thing that we've perfected to protect us.  Moving into the corner of the room, making ourselves smaller, sitting at the back, using apologetic language without realising it.  'I'm only part-time', ' I just wanted to check in on progress',' I just thought', 'It's only me' - losing the 'just' makes these much more impactful and powerful, not apologetic.  Acting in this way can then impact how you feel and what messages you are sending to yourself.  It undermines your ability to project credibility and power and stand in your own light.   The antidote is to catch this behaviour and focus on having more presence instead.  Leadership presence is about showing up in the right state, comfortable in your own skin and ready to be fully present for a task, conversation or opportunity.

TOP TIP:  Ditch the 'just’s', 'only’s', filler words and hesitation.

QUESTIONS: Identify when and how you are exhibiting minimising behaviour? What is it that you do, think or feel when engaging in it? What change could you make to increase your presence in a particular situation or with specific people?

If you recognise some of these and want to develop yourself as a leader, why not explore how coaching can help? Just message the team to book in a complimentary chat.