Jen Hope is back for round two today, and I can't WAIT for you to hear this one. We're digging into that nebulous idea of "leadership" and why it's not a dealbreaker if you don't feel like a leader most days.
Can't-Miss Moments:
Jen's bio:
Jen Hope is an executive and leadership coach for startup leaders. With a background as the Vice President of Marketing for multiple high-growth startup companies, Jen understands the complexity of startup leadership. She leverages data and evidence-based tools that accelerate growth and scale individual and collective leadership.
A self-kindness and mental health advocate, Jen is passionate about creating safe spaces for women and non-neurotypical leaders in startup and corporate leadership. Clients will tell you that Jen provides systems and habits that improve life and leadership. They love the sharp insights, structure, compassion, and accountability that come from Jen’s coaching process. Jen’s client list includes Tenable, Oracle, Altana.ai, TOMBOYX, DocuSign, Relayr, BlueJacketeer, and Uplevel.
When Jen's not working, you can find her cooing over dogs, running the hills of the PNW, and singing all of the songs that play in her local grocery store and CVS.
Resources and links mentioned:
Let's collab:
Let's connect:
If you dig the show and want to help bring more episodes to the world, consider buying a coffee for the production team!
Jen Hope is back for round two today, and I can't WAIT for you to hear this one. We're digging into that nebulous idea of "leadership" and why it's not a dealbreaker if you don't feel like a leader most days.
Can't-Miss Moments:
Jen's bio:
Jen Hope is an executive and leadership coach for startup leaders. With a background as the Vice President of Marketing for multiple high-growth startup companies, Jen understands the complexity of startup leadership. She leverages data and evidence-based tools that accelerate growth and scale individual and collective leadership.
A self-kindness and mental health advocate, Jen is passionate about creating safe spaces for women and non-neurotypical leaders in startup and corporate leadership. Clients will tell you that Jen provides systems and habits that improve life and leadership. They love the sharp insights, structure, compassion, and accountability that come from Jen’s coaching process. Jen’s client list includes Tenable, Oracle, Altana.ai, TOMBOYX, DocuSign, Relayr, BlueJacketeer, and Uplevel.
When Jen's not working, you can find her cooing over dogs, running the hills of the PNW, and singing all of the songs that play in her local grocery store and CVS.
Resources and links mentioned:
Let's collab:
Let's connect:
If you dig the show and want to help bring more episodes to the world, consider buying a coffee for the production team!
Welcome to Permission to Kick Ass, the show that gives you a virtual seat at the bar for the real conversations that happen between entrepreneurs. I'm interviewing all kinds of business owners, from those just a few years into freelancing to CEOs helming nine figure companies. If you've ever worried that everyone else just seems to get it and you're missing something or messing things up, this show is for you. I'm your host, angie Coley, and let's get to it. Welcome back to Permission to Kick Ass with me today. Returning for round two is Jen Hope. Say hi, hey there. Okay, you guys, I have to say for everybody listening, jen Hope was here on episode 105 where we talked about kindness and compassion being superpowers and being highly overrated in the business world, and that is still one of the most commented, most shared episodes that I've got to this day. People still reach out to me and say, oh my gosh, that one touched me. It really inspired me and motivated me. Rock on. So welcome back. I'm so excited to talk again, jen Hope, thank you so much.
Jen Hope:That was a fun combo. That was one of my favorites too. It definitely felt like one of those where you leave with like a warm heart and you know like kind of sit down with a good friend, where it was like certainly more full after, versus you know a day where you're like that was a lot of work. That one just was from the heart, easy, breezy. It felt great. So I'm excited to talk to you again.
Angie Colee:Well, that makes me so happy. That has always been my goal for the show. Just like a sneak peek, or if you could be on a fly on the wall with two people who just met, who are having a rocking good time having a combo right after the business event has ended Just to create a casual environment where we can discuss and most people don't believe that we had just met. When we had that conversation, like that was our first time talking. This is really our probably like third or fourth time talking and it's still just as exciting to me, so I'm not going to belabor that point too much. Jen is awesome. I'm excited to have you back. Tell us a little bit about your business.
Jen Hope:Yeah, so my business entrepreneurs and leaders in real estate and tech and nonprofit hire me to coach them in the realms of business coaching and leadership coaching.
Angie Colee:That's so important. It's been something that's more on my mind recently too. I don't think I actually had a chance to share with you I was still in marketing, I think, the first time that we talked but I've been making a transition toward leadership in a different sector from you. But I think that that's so important because there are so many people that were either kind of forced is the wrong word but they were elevated to a leadership role where now they've got a team and maybe they were like the top performer. They've got the skills, but they don't necessarily do the people in very well. Or they have seen from media, from you know, shows.
Angie Colee:What's that one? The you Are Fired show I can't even remember with what's his face, but where it's like it's competitive, it's backstabby, it's the boss comes in and lose down the law and people follow. That's not what gets people to follow. Guys. Leadership is important. If you suck at people, it's okay, but in this era of technology we have a natural you know well not natural, but we have very understandable retractions that keep us from becoming better at people. We've got these phones that are constantly in our hands. We've got screens that we're doing our work on. It's just not easy to be good at people in these days, which is why it's handy to have a leadership expert like Jen to give you some great advice.
Jen Hope:I would add to that too. I think it's becoming. There are tools available now that can help us accelerate that path as well. Where there's been a lot of leadership assessment, there's been a lot of like how do we go and get some information and reflect internally, and what I find is that for those folks in the industries that I work in, we can be like really, you know, data oriented, and so when we have some of these tools that are getting more and more what I would consider approachable, I find that folks really can latch on to that and can latch on to information, can latch on to hey, give me, you know, a couple of tools, a couple of paths to grow, and here are some competencies Like here's how we, how do we get from what we know is leadership, this kind of nebulous thing to something that says like oh, I'm a more strategic leader, more visionary leader, I'm more relational and we can put kind of some definition around it. Man, folks really sprout or thrive in that category of leadership.
Angie Colee:I like that. I find that fascinating because I do agree that a lot of quote unquote leadership is super nebulous and undefined and for me at least and I don't know how accurate this is for everybody else's interpretation of leadership but it always called to mind this image of somebody in a suit, you know, very buttoned down, maybe in front of a podium, just kind of like we're leading, we're setting the vision, we are telling people how we're, and then it doesn't have much more like oomph behind it. But I like when you said that there's a strategic leader, there's a visionary leader, there's different types and there's different competencies and there's different strengths. I think one of the most fascinating things for me as I've gotten deeper into the brainworks and psychology and those aspects which I think is super important to be familiar with as a leader, as an entrepreneur, is that there's different intelligence, there's different skill sets that a lot of us are innately born with.
Angie Colee:One could be interpersonal. One could be interpersonal, being able to go inside and figure out the inner workings of how your brain works. There's musical intelligence my sister and I have, like can play things by ear, can repeat things back by ear. There's mathematical intelligence, there's kinesthetic, there's spatial intelligence, so there's a lot of different intelligences that you can use to fuel and develop your own brand of leadership. Would you say that that's accurate?
Jen Hope:Absolutely, and what I find from folks too, is that a lot of this lives in that unconscious competence, where we don't have a sense that that's something that we're so great at, because it feels at times, I think, for some folks effortless, where if we're using our strengths, we don't see them as really the gifts and talents that they are, and sometimes when we can collect that feedback, we get enough data for our brain to be like oh, that objective is a fact.
Jen Hope:or is information that I can take and say like, okay, there's enough inputs that say this is something that I'm great at, gifted at, is a superpower to your point earlier, and then we can live with it and embrace it and grant ourselves that kind of opportunity to hold it closer and say, oh yeah, this is now something that I can reflect to myself and even coach myself about when things are challenging or if I start to get feel like I'm drifting off the planet sometimes.
Angie Colee:This untethered floating off into space. I feel like my brain does that a couple times a day. We get there, I get it right. We got to, like, pull that rope back down, I get it. I'm so.
Angie Colee:I'm so glad that you talked about that in terms of our strengths and our capabilities and how, like, we're so close to it, my friend Chris. Of course he talks about you can't see the label when you're stuck inside the bottle and, yes, that applies to kind of business circumstances, when you're in the weeds, when you're overwhelmed. But it also applies to being able to objectively acknowledge your own skill set and the value that you bring to the table. And if you're not skilled with pulling yourself outside of your own head to look at your skill set and positioning in the marketplace right, or if you don't have people that can reflect accurately your awesomeness back at you, I call that looking in the loving mirror right, because often the mirror that we've got in front of us is a little bit warped, it's a little bit distorted, it's bent out of shape, because we're super hard on ourselves in a way that we are not hard on other people around us, like we're understanding and compassionate with the people in our lives with our friends, family, our employees, our colleagues, our bosses. To a certain extent, maybe we're not all understanding with the entitled people out there throwing fits, but we're really compassionate and understanding with the people that we have relationships with, and then we're super, super hard on ourselves and don't see our own strengths.
Angie Colee:This one came to light with me I know I've told this story before when somebody had me help her edit an email and she accused me of witchcraft. Jokingly she was like what kind of sorcery did? I just watched you make two edits to an email I have been laboring over intensely for two weeks and somehow your two edits changed the entire meaning of this and I don't understand what kind of magic this was. And that was literally, and that's almost 10 years into my career when that happened. And that was the click that made me realize like, oh, this is easy to me and it's not easy for everybody and that is valuable.
Angie Colee:He is not a word person, I am a word nerd. So there's a lot of even though it took me five minutes of reviewing this in two changes. That's 10 years of paid experience and skill development Plus it's the innate talent on top of that that allowed that to be possible and that is valuable. Just because it came easy to me does not mean that it is less valuable, and I think that is the root of a lot of the overcomplication and the wheel spinning that we do in business, like we feel it has to be hard or that we have to work super hard at this. And I'm not saying don't work hard, right, but I'm also saying you've probably worked really hard to get your skills to where they're at too, and that counts for something.
Jen Hope:Absolutely, absolutely. I've had similar experiences in roles that I've had where the idea is like not necessarily a marketing organization, but somebody who needs marketing and to be able to take something from ideation all the way through to like quick messaging and a campaign and some of these ideas where folks are like you had two hours, how did we get to like a sign up form and handing somebody kind of a one sheet. I was like how did that, how does that, even where does that come? What lock box did I have that in my brain that we went from this kind of like you said like there's just it's muscle memory. Like you, you're getting back on a bike or getting back on a snowboard and if you have that muscle memory leaning in feels like oh, that takes so much less effort than we think it could or should or would.
Angie Colee:This is a abrupt segue. Are you familiar with the Clifton strengths? Yeah, I know straight. Yeah, Okay, awesome. I don't know if you're a facilitator or if you are familiar with that.
Angie Colee:No that's something I have been geeking out with recently, because I met a colleague, another person in the leadership space, who said you should really take that. I think that that will be illuminating for you, and I actually wrote a post about it on LinkedIn just yesterday. That so in my top five are. My top two actually are activator and strategic. And then that's related to what you just said about being able to take this from concept to like inside two hours. We've got a thing built. That's what activators do.
Angie Colee:Activators can take an idea to reality.
Angie Colee:They know all of the steps for translating that nebulous idea into concrete steps, and that was something that I didn't realize was a skill or a strength that I had either. As soon as somebody's telling me an idea, I'm like I can see it, almost like you know those exploded diagrams and technical manuals that show you what all the parts are or check Ikea. That's what an idea looks like to me. When somebody is saying it out loud, like I see all of the steps happening in front of me and I go okay, no, that one later, this one first, pull this one forward, and then I can set it out step by step and, similar to you can have the thing built inside a day, as long as the vision is clear. I love knowing that about myself, and so I think that anytime that you can work with a facilitator, take an assessment and gain that additional knowledge that gives you the perspective to the value that you bring to the equation. It's only a good thing, guys Like yes, pump yourself up, learn your strengths.
Jen Hope:And it is like I think it is one of those areas where it's vulnerable, right Like we feel fairly exposed when we open ourselves up to that conversation.
Angie Colee:Oh we can.
Jen Hope:I hear a lot of folks say I would like to do this reflective work. I'd love to be the leader who's asking my team regularly what can I be doing to be a better boss for you, be a better manager for you? And that that question, at the same time, can feel a bit exposed right, where we're opening ourselves up to say, okay, like I really could get the feedback that I want and need. And it can come as a bit of a thing, or, as my kid says, when we give a high five, it can come with a little sting and at the same time, that is the information so often that can really help us make. And I'm not talking like deep shifts, I'm not talking pivoting from the person you are, but like those tweaks right. That day to day stuff, though and I mean more like week to week, month to month, year to year that really helps us be the leader that I think we're setting out to be.
Jen Hope:And it's often in that small stuff, in that regular asking, in those small questions, that feel so vulnerable, that we're hesitant and a little bit of resistance I think is okay. That's actually encouraged because we're on the path right. If we're hitting resistance like let's welcome some of it because it's normal, right, it's normal for us to, before we make that shift, that we're gonna feel a little bit of resistance. And so A like welcome it, and then B like how can we continue to take steps to say I'm willing to look at it, it's so brave, like it's so courageous, if it's both like exciting and scary. I love that moment and I feel, for folks too, of like what it feels like right, like just so exposed.
Angie Colee:Well, like resistance is a signal, much like anxiety is a signal and stress is a signal and burnout is a signal.
Angie Colee:And I think we can get our wires crossed sometimes and think that, like, especially resistance, that that must mean that there's something wrong here or I need to pivot. Not necessarily Because resistance can be a great source of strength and I mean that both literally and figuratively right, because resistance is exactly what is working about strength training. In the gym, when you're trying to build muscle, it's you pushing or pulling against some form of resistance to literally tear muscle fibers so that they can grow together stronger and increase your overall strength, right? So some instances of struggle, of resistance in the business are necessary for growth, they're necessary to build your resilience, necessary to make you stronger. And I don't say necessary in that, like you deserve losing a large clients or anything like that. It's not about deserve, right, but it's about building those muscles, tearing those fibers. I'm not a big believer in like tear them down to build them up, so that's not what I'm talking about here. But like pushing through can show you a strength reserve that you didn't even know was possible, right, it's crazy.
Jen Hope:I would add to that, just to that coaching that we can give ourselves that something doesn't feel good here, like, oh, I get that. Like, hey, this is you know. Sometimes I don't know if you've experienced this and I certainly worked with folks that have done this myself where we think like if we push down the beach ball might like push down the feelings underwater, they're not gonna like blow back in our face, which is total garbage. Almost 100% of the time, the more that we try to push them down, they're coming back right sideways and so. But I think for folks like if we say like, oh, this shouldn't be so hard, right, like, oh, I shouldn't have resistance to this.
Jen Hope:Like I should want this, this is what a great manager does we get like this kind of like shoulda, what a kind of thing that we do ourselves or judge the fact that we're resistant, versus turning a little bit toward ourselves and saying like, oh honey, buddy, right, like this is tough, this is tough, there's something here that doesn't feel good, and the more we can like buddy up to that discomfort, the more we can buddy up to the fact that like, oh, there's something here that doesn't feel good and that's okay, right.
Jen Hope:Like even that, that, like a little bit of hey, let's walk this path of like, let me go with you, like I love you, buddy, like we got this. I think that can go a long way, I think, from you know, that's a. I've seen it. I've never seen it in myself, I've seen it in the clients that I work with, where, when we kind of link arms and say like, hey, we're gonna figure this out together, that really helps us move through with a little bit, you know, less judgment A and like, more ease, right, a little bit of that validation that creates the opening for some of the ease.
Angie Colee:Oh yeah, that's, I think, genius. What you said about being able to self coach, right, I do, obviously and I've talked about it many times on the show place a lot of value in getting outside coaching, because that's the person that can see the label from the outside. Another analogy that I've used cause I'm a writer and I'm very fond of analogies and metaphors is you know, you can't steer the ship if you're down in the engine room, right? Somebody needs to be watching where we're going, otherwise, we're going to crash into things. We're gonna wind up so far off course that we don't know where we are. We're gonna sail into a storm. Like, there's different times to be down in the weeds, right, sometimes we do have to be down there and talking with stuff, helping people out, but somebody still needs to be up there watching the ship or the ship is going, whether it's you, whether it's a coach, a trusted advisor, a best friend, your advisory board, whatever, like, visibility into the big picture is crucial, and I love that you mentioned pushing feelings down, cause I do think that that is a message that we get in capitalist society before, and I've you know as somebody who is a reformed hothead and still prone to angry outbursts from time to time when the frustration is high, but like, aware of it and actively working on it, don't push the feelings down. I mean there's a certain merit to okay, I'm going to take a pause and I'm going to deal with this later, but that is different from, nope, not going to deal with that. Don't like that feeling. We're just not going to think about it, we're not going to go there.
Angie Colee:The feelings that's like standing on a beach trying to hold back the ocean with your arms. Eventually, a wave is going to come along and knock you on your ass, because that is just the nature of the ocean. That is the nature of feelings. You're going to pop up and demand to be dealt with at some point, usually at the most inconvenient possible time, when everything else is on the line and this feels like super critical. And then those feelings pop up and go hey, remember that thing that you said you weren't going to think about. Let's make about it right now, and nothing will proceed until this gets dealt with.
Angie Colee:Don't pretend like you can hold the ocean back in your arms. You get knocked down. Go with it, because the waves are going to push you back to shore and this is what really helped me that metaphor understand the concept of like mind. Like water, and letting the feelings flow through you instead of resisting them. Like don't hold the wave back, it's going to knock you down. Sit down and let the wave push you back to shore and you will have a much easier time of processing this, because you are not resisting, you are. That's the negative form of resistance, I would say. You are just letting that push you back to a place where you can deal with it. I don't know where I was going with that thought, but I love that metaphor.
Jen Hope:Yeah, I do too. I do too. I love that and I think about. There's a book called Burnout where we talk about, like, closing the stress cycle and the idea here is that in a day we are experiencing stressors and that they add up over time and we need to be closing this loop on stress right Through movement, through, even, like you know, regulating our system with breathing, and they have a whole bunch of like scientifically proven ways that we are closing that stress cycle. And I think about that because when we talk about this idea of pushing down, it's almost this idea that we're not even keeping track or getting, oh, building awareness around, oh, you know, that was a really stressful meeting and I may need to now, at some point today, take a lap around my block or do some exercise.
Jen Hope:You know, take a breathing exercise and pause, or, you know, hug my partner or sit with my dog or right, like any of these things that we know where we're, we're actually moving through, versus just kind of like building a backpack full of garbage and stress and all of these things.
Jen Hope:You know, because you know that is heavy and we're like Santa Claus by the end of the day and you know it's kind of taking that with us, and so it's really this sense too, that a not only is this happening, but there I will need some tools.
Jen Hope:Right, I can get so practical in this way about, like the tools and but it is one of the ways that I move where, like, okay, if I'm looking at my day or kind of reflecting on my day, how am I going to insert some tools where I have now taken some action to move this physically through my body? Yes, sit with the emotions. Yes, I think that's a good cry, totally agree with me. And some of these, like you know, scientific ways that we have to know this will actually close that stress cycle and help me move through that in my body as well. That comes to my mind too, like, how do we start to build this, build a mechanism to turn through at the end of the day or beginning of the day, or you know, preventative, proactive, reactive, whatever it needs to be.
Angie Colee:Oh yeah, I've, I've heard. I can't remember where I hear it, because I like to credit people with brilliant ideas. Uh, if I, if I remember, I will put it in the show notes. But I remember learning about where the feeling appears in your body, what it feels like physically, because most of the time when we're feeling a super strong emotion, it manifests somewhere. And I'm not talking about manifest in like the Woo sense of like I imagine it and it and it happens for me. I'm talking about it literally physically taking hold of you.
Angie Colee:And some examples from my own personal experience include when I'm feeling deep anxiety, I've got this twinge, like right behind my right shoulder blade that pops up, um, I feel some tension at the base of my skull, at the top of my neck. It makes it really hard to kind of get the full range of motion. When I'm turning my head Right, if I'm feeling nervous, like excitement nervous or worried that I'm putting myself out there in a risky way, it'll feel like this butterfly gurgly in the stomach, sensation right, little bit floaty, a little bit top of the roller coaster, like we're about to go down Crazy right. Um, and the reason recognizing those symptoms symptoms, that's probably not the right word. Those sensations, there we go, uh is important is because that's an anchor, at least for me. Going, okay, I feel this, what's happening? Okay, that's that anxiety. I've been here before. I have felt this exact same feeling and here are the steps that we took to get out of that and I think it's the steps you take out of it.
Angie Colee:You talked about processing it in your body and you started to touch on the different ways that we can process. I know I went through that with my own coach, talking about what can you do to get past this, to feel the feelings and let them go so that they don't keep coming up, and you may have to let them go a couple of times. I'm not saying that if you let it run through your body once, it's just like one and done. That's not the nature of brains or feelings or humans. Really, let's go very easily. But if you can let it flow through you and not resist that feeling, it's, it's much more freeing. It gives you your brain space back, it allows you to stop shooting on yourself, which I think is the worst s word to talk about, because when you put should at the forefront, I should be doing this. They should be doing that. We're loading this with expectations, and expectations may or may not be accurate. Feelings may or may not be accurate. Feelings aren't facts. That's one of my favorite phrases. So processing and building in space to process the tools, exactly like you talked about taking a walk, for me it's.
Angie Colee:I do love a good movie cry. Most people may not know this about me, but I've got like a rotation of movies that will make me snot, bubble tears every single time and if I've been feeling a lot of tense emotions, we're going to put them on because I get to cry. But it's like a happy tears kind of thing and by the end I'm like, yes, the world is an amazing place, that I love humanity and it's all going to be good. It's life. Car singing for me is also another one. Like get in the car, go for a drive, turn on music and sing at the top of my lungs. Then by the end the feelings just don't feel as intense as all encompassing as they did before. I can start to think again instead of just cycling on the same loop. It's another one where I don't know where I was going with, but it felt like a good rant.
Jen Hope:Can I add dance parties to that?
Angie Colee:too, yes.
Jen Hope:That's like one of my loud music dance party, even a dance class. That's about. Those are top of my list for best way to move literally through. Yeah, I want to make a list.
Angie Colee:Yeah, it's so important to process this too, because another thing that those feelings will do is make this feel super urgent. Right, we don't like those feelings. We don't like sitting with those feelings, and so a lot of us are specifically speaking to me that I feel better when I'm taking action on something. I don't like to let things sit and it feels like it's festering if it sits with me. But I really had to train myself that it is a rare situation where somebody needs a response right away and I'm going to go ahead and double down on that sentiment. When the feelings are high or something that was said or done triggered me in some sort of way. That is not the time for me to respond, because I'm just going to throw gasoline on that fire my old hothead self and we're going to burn it all down because that feels good in the moment when the emotions are high, and then later on, when I'm looking at this pile of ashes going, I didn't really want to do that. How did that get so bad so fast? I started to realize. Oh, that was because I reacted. I didn't give myself time and space to process this shit, let it pass through and then come back from this or come back to this from a more grounded.
Angie Colee:Ok, here's the realistic part of that reaction. Here is the blown way out of proportion part of that reaction, maybe, and that self-coaching comes into play, maybe. Leave that overblown part out. Let's address the facts part of this. Let's figure out a way forward. That's you and me versus the problem instead of me versus you fighting. It's so important I cannot stress this enough to like don't. Nothing requires an instant reaction. Most of us, most of you listening to the show right now, are not in a life or death Business. All of my love and respect to first responders, firefighters, doctors, everybody that they are literally nurses. You are saving lives, but I'm not saving lives as a copywriter, as a coach, as a podcaster. So, yeah, it's never as urgent as it feels.
Jen Hope:I think what we've both been talking about too is this idea of like emotion, regulation and the sense that we're going to do most things better, just like a statement, better working from a place of like regulation being regulated. How do we stay regulated day to day and how do we we're talking about all these ways that we get ourselves kind of back to a baseline and that, you know, if we've hit that point where you know we're beyond the tolerance of what we can handle in a day, in a moment, in a week, in a month, that we're going to have to start taking things off our plate, right, I mean, I've had this conversation so many times with myself and others that says, like hey, y'all, it's too full. This is, we have put too many things that feel too urgent on this plate and we are going to have to pair back. I've been listening to a great podcast from Martha Beck about doing less and this idea that, like, in this sense, she was talking about the, you know, the spoons concept and that we only have so many spoons and what are we doing with a limited number of spoons which, to some degree you know, with all respect to folks who are dealing with chronic illness. We all have a certain number of spoons right and like where are we starting from day to day? And how much are we giving to things that really, to our point, like to your point, that are spinning us up and that are taking our energy?
Jen Hope:And, at the end of the day, if we only have a limited amount of energy that we have to give, what are we spending it on?
Jen Hope:And we're getting to a point where, okay, this plate is too full, it is unrealistic and we're going to have to pair it down. And this is, you know, I hear this so much in folks landing and coaching who are either saying like I'm overwhelmed, I am burnt out, like there, there is just too much. And I'm not talking about the, you know the folks, I'm talking about most people, right, I'm not talking about the folks that, the fringes, I'm talking about most of us, most people who land in, you know, in my practice and in our working and organization, saying, dude, I'm overwhelmed, like at a baseline, the expectations of what I am trying to do in the time that I have, with the resources that I have, it's just not realistic. And so you know, I have this conversation daily with at least one multiple people that says, okay, what are we taking off the plate? Right, we are not going to get this all done. Let's start now deciding what we'll get done and what really we don't have the capacity for.
Angie Colee:Okay, everything that you just said. I am mentally circling it, highlighting it, triple, underlining that exclamation point. Everybody listen to that and I like to work forward content that's a bit evergreen, that's not timely, but I'm going to make this timely because right now, september 13th, is when we're recording this in 2023. And literally, it was like within the past 24 hours that there's a complete doofus and I don't usually like to turn it into a personal attack, but there's a complete doofus of a dude who is so out of touch with the state of overwhelm that most people are in. But he was out there at some sort of conference talking about how we need to increase employment or unemployment and make people feel stressed out so that they feel grateful for the job that they've been given, that they show up and they work hard and they're even more productive. And I'm like, do you hear yourself, and you truly think that this is accurate, you who are rich enough to be able to buy back your time, so to speak, to have a lot of people who are doing the work for you, and you see them needing to appreciate you versus you needing to appreciate them? They are the mountain that you're standing on, friends, so, like if you subscribe to his line of thinking. I don't know more power to you. You're probably rich as fucking super out of touch. But for people who are in a growth stage like me I'm not sure where you're at, jen, but I'm sure you've been through that growth stage before but people are the most important part of your business. They subscribe to your vision. They support you in hitting your goals right. What can you do to take things off their plate if they're feeling? Have you made it easy for them to tell you when they're overwhelmed? Are you acknowledging your own overwhelm?
Angie Colee:I know that there was a project that I worked on a couple years ago where I was coming in to lead a marketing promotion and I had to have a frank conversation with the owner of that business and say you do realize that you are coming in to Slack and telling people people, what are you doing? It's seven o'clock, you shouldn't be working. But they see you signing into Slack at seven o'clock with your little green active dot on, and so there's a tacit message that doesn't match what you're saying. The unspoken message says well, I'm here working, this is okay, and this is almost what's expected too. I told her girl it's okay. If you want to come in and work late, turn that notification dot off. Don't let people see you working late. Don't set that tacit expectation that they have to come work late too.
Angie Colee:And I'm going to challenge you to take it a step further. If you can't disconnect from work, that's the thing to do. Make it less visible. I'm going to challenge you to take your own medicine here and get yourself offline by seven o'clock. If you don't want other people working, model the behavior that you want to see. And if you can't get yourself off by seven that sounded really wrong. Sorry, 13-year-old Andy just peaked up Then we're going to push her back down.
Angie Colee:If you can't make it to where you can quit working by seven o'clock, if you can be offline by seven o'clock, then now is the time to take a look at your workload and that what is on your plate. Is it overflowing? I love we're just going to be on metaphors today Overflowing plate. I love just the idea of going to the buffet and filling it so full that you're trying to carefully walk over to the table without losing everything. You can take multiple trips, you can have multiple plates. You can visit multiple times. We don't need to eat all of the food in one sitting to get the most joy ever.
Jen Hope:I find too that metaphor helps folks even just to say we're not putting anything else on here either. That says, hey, I have already been on this merry-go-round and we're, for the moment unless it is absolutely required and in some of those cases I'm talking eat, sleep, hydrate we're on a pause and we're going to have to really pare down this list. And how do we go through the act of not just prioritization but true removal to get back to a realistic baseline? Yeah, pause, stop, this is my plate and I am currently not open for business. Yeah, which is that was go ahead.
Jen Hope:Privilege also, can we also say for so many folks, is an act of boundaries that maybe has not been exercised. It is so much work to even say and to do the reflection that says my house is on fire. That is not easy. We can almost have conversation about it and I really want to acknowledge that for some folks, this is really painful. It is painful, it is hurtful. We are in a position where our stress level and the expectations in the sense that we're disappointing folks, like all of that, is really I don't want to talk about it without saying like an honoring the even act of courage it is to say this plate is too full, my house is on fire and I don't really know what to do next. Like so brave.
Angie Colee:Oh my gosh.
Jen Hope:And so, with us having this conversation, I don't want to pause without saying like, hey, that's a really brave step for you to take. It's a really important thing to say to folks who are experiencing it that honor how difficult it is and not just say we can move through it and we can say pause and we can say I'm not taking any more. That's a position of privilege to say I'm going to start taking things off of this plate and I want to honor that. That is not very many people's experience. There's a limited number of folks to your point that have this position to be able to say I'm going to hand some of these things off, I'm going to delegate, I'm going to take this position.
Jen Hope:And for the rest of us it's like how do I take care of myself? How do I then carve out space to eat, sleep, drink the bare minimum, take a walk and find a way to get through a lot of the stuff that is truly required and honor that too, because I think we talk about this in a way like it's solvable, in such a useful way, and I think that's worth it and I really do. I think it's a long-term process of either setting boundaries for ourselves, sometimes it's finding a new role, sometimes it's changing expectations, sometimes it's changing our business, and those are big, huge, life-altering things that don't start in a simple way tomorrow and that don't start as soon as you click the end of this podcast right.
Angie Colee:Oh yeah, I'm so glad that you mentioned that, because that's kind of like what we talk about in a fitness journey and any other kind of journey that is going to take some time. I see this kind of change as a lifelong practice. It's a lifestyle change and it's going to be deeply uncomfortable and it's going to be super easy some days and it's going to be like next to impossible other days. I remember going through a similar moment and speaking to my life coach, brian McCarthy. He's a super brilliant man, but I remember one day being super stressed out because I finally had a day. I didn't have any calls. I had this big vision. I had this huge task, list of things to get done for my own business, for growing the podcast, and I told him I didn't get anything done today that I wanted to, and I just started beating up on myself, piling on and talking about what a jerk I was for not getting anything done that day. And he goes OK, ok, yeah, that sounds like it's really rough, but I walked me through. What did you do today, like when you got up and you had some coffee, and then what next? And so I proceeded to walk him through my day and realized that I had four or five things that I had done toward the growth of the business that I had completely locked out of my mind, like when I got to that point where I was spiraling downward and going, I didn't do anything on my business. I didn't do any work on my business today that I wanted to get done, and I am such a loser and I am spiraling out of control. I had a whole bunch of unacknowledged work that I had done and maybe I didn't do everything on my list, but I had done some work toward it and that started us down this path of exploring different capabilities.
Angie Colee:And I was actually a guest on a podcast recently about leadership where she threw a curveball at me with the last minute question that she hadn't given me time to prepare for and when I answered off the cuff I was like, ooh, there's something delicious about this, there's something looky there that I love. She asked what I'm trying to remember where the question was. It was something about what other people get wrong about leadership and I said I really don't subscribe to the notion of leadership that talks about how to get the most out of your people, how to make them more productive, how to get them more involved, anything like that. I don't want the most out of my people. I want the best and the best changes on a day-to-day basis, like that day that I felt like I showed up and I didn't do anything on my business, but I gave the best that I could in that context and that started an exploration with my coach where I was like, ok, if I have a low energy day, which I'm going to just like you talked about with the spoon theory, there are people that are working with chronic illnesses that are going to have different energy levels on different days.
Angie Colee:There are parents who are going to have different energy levels on different days, especially if they're dealing with multiple kids and maybe stomach bug running through the house. There are things that are going to impact the quality of your work on a day-to-day basis and it's going to change. And so if I can do one thing on low energy days, I call it a win and that allows me to free up that energy that I would spend beating myself up for being a failure, for not producing up here. When the energy is down here, just make the most of what you've got on any particular day. I love that respect too right.
Jen Hope:That comes when you're able to. I think about meditation teachers I've had where they talk about sitting with a position of self-respect. Like what does it do? I feel like I can sit here in a position of self-respect on a day that I am not feeling my best and be so human and say, hey, this is not my best moment. This is very human and, given my circumstance, given x and y and z that is making this a not my best moment day, I can still sit with that posture, physically, sitting up a little bit taller, to say I can still sit with the self-respect of being not my best self and that is absolutely a part of the human experience. And, ok, realistic and yeah, I love that. I love the idea of respecting the low energy days, respecting difficult moments, right, like all of these pieces. Yeah.
Angie Colee:I always see it as an inside out journey because if I can start to build that understanding within myself, I can translate that understanding to other people a lot easier. At least that's my particular experience and opinion. And so if I can learn to respect those low energy days and produce what I can and then wake up again to try again tomorrow and maybe I have a couple shitty days in a row, that doesn't mean that all of the rest of the days are going to be shitty. It's just a day by day basis getting up and trying again, trying to get that rest, trying to take care of myself right. If I understand that in myself, that makes it much easier for me to understand somebody that reports to me, a colleague, a client coming to me and being yeah, I know that we had that big meeting today and it was just a hard day in our household and I didn't get to it and I go. Well, that sucks, but I hope that you're OK.
Angie Colee:First and foremost, like the deadline, here's my big spoiler alert for everybody listening we made it all up. We made up everything. We made up money. We made up the concept of time. We made up the way things work and the rules. We made it all up. You don't have to subscribe to anything that has been made up. You can forge your own path. You can build different systems for people and, yeah, it's just based on peopling.
Jen Hope:Can we add things that are bullshit, like hustle, culture, productivity, like all of?
Angie Colee:these things Bullshit, bullshit yeah.
Jen Hope:And you know, like, what really needs to get done, like, really what needs to get done, like that's a real question and when we sit down and we look at it, you know, without the lens of what somebody else is telling us, that needs to get done. Or you know all of these books that have told us how to make the most of four hours and, by the way, all those authors walking that back and saying that that creates disease and it creates mental health issues and all right. So, like, let's remember where productivity started and how all of these folks are walking back, the strategies that you know that we were taught about being a leader and corporate, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, let's walk this all back and call some of it at BS and say, okay, I can, at least for myself in my small world, peel back some of these layers and say I, like you're saying, like, I am going to unsubscribe and, to the best of my ability, I will participate and I will see how little I can do to be my most effective.
Jen Hope:I mean, it's like pretty wise, right. Like, let's do the thing that really matters, let's. I don't know what that is for you, for me it's like be outside, spend time with my loved ones, experience live music, like as much of that as we can, that you know, dance and be alive and be in our bodies and like that. That, I know, is kind of really counter to what a lot of folks are saying. And as a coach like oof, I think it's so important that that we're holding that like how do we get to consciousness and how do we get to some of those things that instead of like a check a box that said I did on the things this week, yeah, yes, how do you?
Angie Colee:build a life. How do you live a life instead of that was something that travel changed for me and helped to make clear, because it took me until what? What was I 36, 37, when I started the digital nomad journey? So it took me that long better part of four decades to figure out that the life that I was living fit in around the work, which meant that when the work took over my life, I didn't have a life. I literally worked around the clock, and it wasn't until I started realizing the life is the thing.
Angie Colee:It's the thing that I've got one of. I've got multiple jobs, I've got multiple businesses. I've got like, everything else can be built again, can be torn down, can be burned down, can be built up from scratch. I've only got one life and, at the end of the day, I can't take any of this with me. I don't know what happens after this and I don't have any particular view that I subscribe to, but whatever you believe happens after this, this particular life is the only one that you've got here and now, and I'm going to live it for here and now, because I don't know what happens next when I get there. I'll figure that part out, but like, yeah, we can't take all the money, I can't take all of that time.
Angie Colee:Nobody sits on their deathbed. We're going to go there. We're getting super into it right now. You don't sit on your deathbed and go. Man, if only I had been more productive during that one launch week, could it eat out an extra million? No, you go. I should have written that book, I should have jumped off that bridge. I should have spent more time. I should have asked that person to marry me. Like, it's always the people things, the life things that matter at the end. So live your life now, Dammit.
Jen Hope:And find joy. I think that too, like what is this joyful? And it's not all going to be right. There's like we have to pay our mortgage and our taxes and you know, like there's a bunch of like, really real shit, that like, yes, we all have to do but and not but. And how do we incorporate joy? How do we find moments of joy? How do we experience the fulfillment? What are we doing? That is even layering that on right, because what we're told is like check so many boxes. And we get to a point where we're like, okay, I'm not going to check the boxes anymore, but now I'm not really sure what to do next. Right, like, okay, I'm on subscribe Jen. Great, now I've done that.
Jen Hope:I think I see they start to see you with some of the lens and I take off the glasses. That says like go, go, go. Well, then, what now? And that is where I like what gives you joy, what would give? What do you have? And for some folks, we don't even know. And a lot of times, you know, there's enough studies that tell us like we don't actually know. But there's a couple of punches, right, like where are your people? And even if it's two or one, or is it your animals, and is it the trees, and is it you know what? What is it for you? Is it your ass on a beach somewhere?
Jen Hope:Like do that and and or like let's make some guesses and go experiment and figure it out, that is the conversation I have with folks, so often Like I don't even know where to start and I think I'm going to screw it up if I do it. X, y, z, y, like, take a painting class, just do it.
Jen Hope:If that's your job and if it sucks, it sucks like that's okay, you didn't have to, you know you don't have to knit for the rest of your life, right, like, let's go, let's go one class, let's go one scarf, and that that idea of experimentation to figure out like where we've experienced, where we could add in more joy is, is this, like that's the practical side where I, you know, I hope, if anybody takes something away from today like can, can the thing you take away like a sprinkling of joy, a sprinkling of calling BS on some of the things that we've been told, particularly folks kind of around what I would call, like you know, our age, our generation like peel back some of those layers.
Jen Hope:Can we all agree that we're going to just sprinkle in a little bit more joy?
Angie Colee:Yeah, and joy is something that can happen if you just let yourself be open to it, and it's something that you seek out in a lot of ways too. You make room for it, you invite it into your life, right? I have had an unfortunate conversation with people that I have coached who have said something along the lines of I don't have time for that, and that breaks my heart, for everybody that says that they don't have time for joy, or joy is like fourth or fifth priority on the list, after all of the responsibilities and obligations and I understand again, taking care of aging parents, taking care of kids we do have responsibilities and obligations and also, if we don't take care of ourselves, we can't take care of those obligations. Act in the spoon theory, right?
Angie Colee:So if you think that joy is beyond your reach, I invite you to get the book Mansearch for Meeting by Victor Frankel, because that is a book from a Holocaust survivor who talks about finding joy and finding meaning and finding purpose in arguably the worst human situation ever, where one would think that there is absolutely no joy or happiness to be found. They found joy in that horrible situation and I don't know, I mean there are folks that I'm sure would react strongly negatively to reading that, because it's a horrible thing. But that inspired me to think that somebody went through basically the worst thing ever and still retained their sense of self. Because nobody gets to tell you how to react to anything, not even with a gun to your head. That's the only thing you control in this life how you react to things, how you're going to proceed from here, and to me that is the ultimate power.
Angie Colee:Wow, we didn't cover anything that I thought we were going to cover today, but it's a wonderful conversation. We got the ransom, we got the joy. Why are you feeling about this much?
Jen Hope:I loved it, Per usual. I think you know we'll talk about it another time. We'll come back and we'll talk about what we meant to talk about the other. I loved this conversation, yes.
Angie Colee:Thank you. Part three we're just going to go ahead and say it. Now, part three has to happen, so in the meantime, tell us more about your business where we can learn about working with you.
Jen Hope:All the details, yeah, so to find out more about working with me. Folks can find me at heygenhopecom. I am also on LinkedIn there having conversations about leadership, and I'd love to chat with you.
Angie Colee:Awesome. I'll make sure that they've got clickable links in the show notes and I have a feeling this one's going to be a repeater. People are going to listen to it again and again. I know I will Thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you, that's all for now. If you want to keep that kick-ass energy high, please take a minute to share this episode with someone that might need a high-octane dose of you can do it. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the Permission to Kick-Ass podcast on Apple Podcasts, spotify and wherever you stream your podcasts. I'm your host, angie Coley, and I'm here rooting for you. Thanks for listening and let's go kick some ass.