1 · How to bend and not break
Podcast show notes
In this episode, I'm diving into what it means to be a resilient leader. I share my personal experiences with the trials of balancing a demanding career and family, plus how I've navigated personal loss.
This isn’t just my story, though; it’s an invitation for you to explore your own resilience. Whether you're a seasoned leader or just stepping into the role, this episode is for anyone facing the unique challenges of women in leadership.
Here are the highlights
(01:11) Resilience, emotional load, and maintaining balance.
(04:43) Gender roles and workplace demands
(09:21) Resilience in leadership roles
Links
Get the 5 Day Resilience Kickstarter here
Key findings from Women In The Workplace (McKinsey & Leanin.org)
Connect with Ruth
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Welcome to Frustrated and Exhausted the podcast for women in leadership, where I help you fulfil your ambitions without sacrificing your sanity, or hear resilience.
Welcome to Episode One of Frustrated and Exhausted the podcast for women in leadership! I'm really happy that you've joined me and that you're here for this. I am absolutely here for this. I've been hoping to get this out there for quite a long time. So welcome to this first episode.
Today, we're going to be talking about how to bend and not break.
Why is that? Well, many of the women that I work with our very first sessions kind of turn into a bit of an offloading, not everybody, but many of them. And that's because they're just carrying it all inside. And often don't have the opportunity to step back and just let it all out, in order to figure out how to move forward in leadership roles.
Resilience is absolutely pivotal, it's pivotal to our ability to perform to succeed, and to manage the huge complexities that we can face, we're not separate. So our work lives and our home lives and our families, and all of those things we've got going on, they're not all separate bits and bobs, our emotional life is one whole emotional life, our ability to be resilient, you know, we are a whole person. So when we're challenged in one area, it can really show up in other areas of our lives, too.
I've had a really tough year this year, it's probably been one of well, it's definitely been one of the toughest I've faced. Those of you who know me well will know that I lost my dad earlier this year, after a short and really unexpected battle with cancer. That was, yeah, hard. At the same time, I've got three children that I'm with my husband bringing up. Some of them have additional needs. So you know, that's a bit of extra challenge in there as well. And to sort through on top of that, this year, I've also been battling with our local authority to try and get them the support that they actually need, in order for them to succeed and kind of, you know, be able to do what they can do.
I just hit a point earlier this year where it's like, it's just all the things and just knackered and carrying a huge emotional load. But I've been there before, you know, I've had different tough times in the past. And I've learned a huge number of lessons from that, that I was able to draw on this year. And I'll speak a little bit more about that later on.
One of the key things for me about resilience is that, you know, we hear a lot of these messages that really get on my nerves actually about “We’ve got to go harder, we got to push through, we're going to be tough”. And there's this idea, it's quite a masculine idea of what resilience is. And I just don't think that's it at all.
I would also say the science backs me up on this. Resilience, it's got nothing to do with our ability to be tough, tough things break up snap. Resilience is our ability to adapt when things change, when we're faced with something moving and shifting in our lives that is going to require something more from us when we are required to change. And absolutely our resilience is tested most when the hard things in life happen. But we can't keep pushing and pushing and going hard and you know, clawing our way through things all the time. That just depletes us. It leaves us empty, and it leaves us unable to perform our best and to live in a way that is actually joyful, that we're enjoying.
You know, I had a conversation with a client the other week, and we were talking about how everything can feel very functional. It feels like you're functioning. But you're not really living. You know, you've got your lists, you're all organised, you're doing this at work, you're doing this at home, but there's no space anymore for you. For the things that you love for doing what really fills your cup.
So if there's one thing I want you to go away from this episode with, it's understanding that you don't have to keep pushing and pushing all the time. You can't do that that - it is a sure fire way to burn out.
What we need to focus on is being bendy, and I don't just mean yoga, being bendy and not brittle. Resilience is something that we can actively think about and work on. I think Sheryl Sandberg describes it is like being like a muscle. So it is something that we can grow and develop. And it's something that we need. We absolutely need.
I mentioned earlier that you know resilience is really essential in leadership and not just for women, for everybody. And that's because of the demands of leadership. Everybody above you, be below you and around you. It's complex. The dynamics of leading teams. Teams are complex, all the different relationships, managing stakeholders, putting things in front of a board, standing up and performing. All of these things can be quite draining if we're not looking after ourselves.
And then you throw on top of that the sheer mental load that most women are carrying, unfortunately, it is the expectation of our society and the way many of us were brought up that we are first and foremost responsible for remembering everybody's birthdays, organising the presents, getting the shopping in, sorting out the house, you know, caring responsibilities for children and parents and everything else. Again, absolute fact, the bulk of that, in many cases, not all cases, in many cases, falls on women.
So we're carrying all of this, as well as experiencing the demands of our daily roles at work is not sustainable. And there are some really big shifts that need to happen, you know, in our societies in the way that we bring up our own children. And these are kind of generational changes, and they are happening, but the rates are obviously very slow. These are slow changes. And if you're feeling that your resilience is low at the moment, if you feel like you're just coping, you're coping, you're not thriving, you're not in full on high performance, when it all feels easy. You're coping, you're getting through the day, and you're doing enough, it doesn't mean you're not performing highly, but it means that it's costing you, it's taxing you to perform at that level.
You're not alone in feeling that your resilience is low. Women are leaving their careers in droves. A lot of them are citing stress and burnout. And this is not a good thing. It's not good for women. And it's not good for our society. It's not good for the companies and organisations that they work for. We're losing a huge amount of talent. If you follow these things quite closely, you may have seen the McKinsey report - they do one every year in conjunction with Leanin.org about women in the workplace. And this year's report, the stats showed that in 2023, director level women are leaving the workplace or their workplaces at the highest rate ever, some of them will be moving to other companies and organisations. And some of them are leaving in order to work for themselves, or they're just taking themselves out of the workforce full stop.
Now, in some ways, this there's a little bit of a positive and that women are voting with their feet. And if companies were listening and organisations were listening, that should be telling them something. Many work cultures are just not built with women in mind, and the microaggressions and things that women face, they are depleting our resilience, those extra hurdles, those extra barriers, those feelings, like you can just never win, whether it's been talked over in meetings, or someone stealing your ideas, you know, all of these things that happen all the time is an added extra, that's more on top of the stuff we've already got on top. So it's a real kind of double bind that we're in. And again, that really depletes resilience.
What I want you to do now is just take a moment for yourself, I just want you to check in with yourself. If you were on a scale of one to 10 where one is brittle, like the next little straw on the camel's back is gonna break and 10 is bendy Wendy, full on high performance is easy. Where would you put yourself right now? What number would you give yourself?
If you're in the eight to 10, bracket, go you. It's amazing. What do you need to do to stay there? What do you need to do and keep thinking about in order to keep yourself in that high performance place? If you're lower than that? What do you need in your life right now. And we're talking about what you need, not necessarily what you want, what you need, in order to move one point higher on that scale. Now, this could be anything from handing off a piece of work to somebody else saying” I don't have capacity for this right now. Could you do that?” Or please could you help me with that? If you want to be polite about it?
It might be setting a new boundary with something or reinstating a boundary that slipped for you. You know, maybe you normally carve out some time for yourself that has just kind of gone a bit at the moment. What do you need to do to get that back in place? Or it could be saying no. Imagine that!
Again, bit of a fact. Women are much more likely to say yes to everything in the workplace. It's why we get dumped with all the extra stuff fairly often to organise and sort out maybe try saying no, no, I'm not taking on that extra thing. I'm at capacity at the moment, find that inner assertiveness somewhere this year. My thing alongside some excellent counselling to help me deal with the emotional load that I've been carrying. My one thing has actually to be a little bit vulnerable. Not something I'm very good at to be honest normally. I have massive be strong drivers and I see myself as a strong person. And that does sometimes make it hard to kind of show that vulnerability and actually say, I'm having a bad day to day, I'm having a bad day, I need a bit of space, I'm having a bad day, that deadlines gonna slip. I'm having a bad day, I just need you to back off a bit.
It's that ability to identify what you need, and articulate it to other people.
So we've covered quite a bit today, I've talked about why resilience really matters if you're in a leadership role. I mean, it matters full stop for everybody. But it really matters in a leadership role. And you really need to be thinking about it actively. I've talked a bit about why women in particular need to be thinking about it more than most to that extra mental load that we're all carrying, and the impact that that is having on us in terms of our careers at a societal level, as well as for individuals. And I've given you a little bit of an exercise just to check in with yourself, like what are you needing right now, if you would like a bit more help to bend and not break, I've got a very special 5 Day Resilience Kickstarter, which is completely free. And this is literally email into your inbox every day with something to listen to and a little task. And you know, there's some really great value in that in terms of thinking about resilience from lots of different perspectives, and getting you to start thinking about what some of the changes are that you might need to make. And this will really get you actively building that resilience muscle. If you'd like to sign up for that, you'll find the signup link in the show notes which are attached to this so have a little look there and you'll find the link to sign up.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Frustrated and Exhausted hit the Follow button for future episodes. You can also follow me on Instagram at Resonate Leadership and LinkedIn @ruthalexandrawood. I would absolutely love to hear from you. Frustrated and Exhausted is brought to you by Resonate Leadership and the wonderful team at the Podcast Boutique. I'm your host, Ruth Wood. Take care and speak to you soon.
