Feeling Seen

What lights you up about what you do? As trailblazing, empathetic leader and professionals, we help people in various ways. But is being seen and acknowledged important to you? Do you swing between not wanted to be thanked and also needing acknowledgement?

In this episode, Emotion & Positive Psychology Coach & Mentor Andrea Urquhart is inviting you to explore that blend of emotions that helping professionals experience about feeling seen, genuinely finding fulfilment in "just doing my job", and also benefiting from the acknowledgement of others.

As always, this episode invites listeners to reflect on their own inner story and relationship with the topic. Get ready to think about your relationship with feeling seen and appreciated for what you do!

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Transcript

Welcome to the Strengthen Live Podcast! I'm your host, Andrea Urquhart. This is the place for trailblazing, empathetic leaders who are also recovering people pleasers! If you have a big heart and your passion is supporting others to change their lives for the better, find home and belonging here.

How important is it to you that the people you support, and lead appreciate you? I’m not trying to poke arrogance in you or to shame anyone into being humble. It’s simply a really important question. Do you feel seen or when do you feel seen – and does this matter to you?

Today, we’re looking at gratitude and appreciation alongside that helping heart that trailblazing, empathetic leaders are motivated by. Because we have a tendency to be givers. We give our skills, our time, our knowledge and our energy. 

According to Jess Baker & Rod Vincent in their informative survival guide for compassionate people which they've called The Super-Helper Syndrome, we empathetic super helper types offer help in four different ways to varying degrees: We offer resources, we give information, we use our expertise and we give support. 

One of the topics they nudge us on in the book is reciprocity – the idea that there is payback in some way or many ways for the help that we give others. Today, I want to talk about gratitude. It’s a big Positive Psychology topic and it’s also the most powerful wellbeing tool that’s inbuilt within us.

We’re used to talking about practising gratitude personally, but today, I’m inviting you to think about our relationship with receiving gratitude and appreciation alongside how important to you it is to be seen and appreciated for what you do.

If I were to ask most empathetic, trailblazing leaders what motivates them, I’d get a huge variety of responses. I’m not really a fan of the “What’s your big why?” question, because I think most of us have a few “Whys” blended together that brought us to where we are now as a leader or wellbeing professional. So, here’s my alternative question:

“What lights you up about what you do?”

I’d really like to know! And I think it’s worth considering, because it’s those moments when we feel lit, when we’re flooded with all those chemicals and emotions in a full-on sensory way that make us feel: It’s all worth it! This is why I do what I do!

It’s all worth it. Why did I use that phrase? Because serving others, in whatever kind of leadership or helping profession comes at a cost. Well, many costs usually. We all have our unique set of life circumstances and personal relationship situations, the cost and time we’ve put into our training, and for many, there is a sacrificial element to what we do in that we’ve chosen not to do some things so that we can do what we do.

Psychologists and researchers view helping others as transactional. As humans, we’re told, there is a sense of reciprocity, and give and take in helping and supporting people – even if what we’re doing is “altruistic”. If we’re altruistic, that means that our concern for others’ welfare is selfless.

But is it really? As people who help others, we gain fulfilment and a sense of purpose from being able to help others. That feeling of being lit up by what we do. 

On an emotional level, we help, we see others grow or their life improve, and we feel content with that. It’s not uncommon to hear successful, empathetic leaders and professionals say that they feel privileged to be able to help people, that others trust them to support or train them, and privileged that seeing those people move forward is rewarding for them in terms of that sense of fulfilment.

Perhaps you feel like that too?

That’s a kind of gratitude and appreciation for finding oneself in that giving, helping position.

But what about if we’re taken for granted? How does that actually feel?

It’s okay to feel both altruistic when we play some small or significant part in somebody else’s growth or success, and also feel resentful at other times and overlooked by people that we are serving.

Does that duality of emotions mean that we’re not really altruistic and selfless after all? I say "No!". That duality of emotions is normal and part of our humanity. But does being altruistic really matter anyway? 

 This is a really tricky place of to tackle and make personal peace with for many empathetic leaders and wellbeing professionals:

We don’t just like helping others, we’re passionate about it and find a deep sense of fulfilment in it – we’re all able to acknowledge that. 

But how comfortable are you with your relationship with being seen and appreciated as someone who helps others?

That question raises a whole lot of cultural, familial and, if you have any kind of faith background, religious threads in our inner story. 

Questions like: 

Is it arrogant to want appreciation and acknowledgement? 

Am I a better person if I brush off people’s compliments and thanks? 

Am I a bad person if I crave their positive feedback? 

Is there something wrong with me if want to be seen or appreciated?

And is there something wrong with me if I resent someone not thanking me?

These are those push and pull questions that I know leaders do struggle with. That humility brushing alongside the normal human desire and need to be seen and validated.

Just because you help others and you may even be altruistic about that, it’s still okay to appreciate gratitude and being seen in that. How about you? Do you sometimes struggle with this?

Maybe you’re one of those people who is happy to just get that satisfaction of doing your job but does feel that it’s still nice to be thanked and acknowledged.

Maybe you feel differently according to the amount of give and take involved in that transaction of helping others. When you’ve been giving above and beyond, does your need for acknowledgement heighten – or is the result you see in others for your effort enough? Enough acknowledgement in itself?

All these questions are not meant to incite any sense of shame at all, simply to get us thinking about our relationship with being seen and appreciated.

Then, of course, there is also the idea of helping people know how they should be or could be appreciating us. Sometimes this is about educating others, or quite simply, ensuring clarity – like setting your pricing and when you will or won’t offer help for free.

This again, is a huge hurdle for many empathetic leaders and wellbeing professionals who find talking about money a really icky thing to do. 

Sometimes, they’re people who readily pay for the help of others because they appreciate the effort and expertise in that, so can’t always understand why people approach them for free support. Other times they realise that until they are the one offering services, they have happily taken help and professional support for free from others without actually considering the effort and cost in that. 

And yet still for others, it’s about paying it forward and they’ve experienced generosity in the past, so they pay generosity forward. But again, at what cost?

It's easy to see someone simply as they are: The helper or professional in the moment of when they are helping.  We’re seen as resources. A resource to tap, a well to go to and drink from, an expert to guide next steps. The point is, we see them as the expert they are to us in that moment. In our moment of need.

We see that they are full of what we need or want. We may not see the need or lack in their life, the sacrifices they have made to be where they are today or that they continue to make in order to do what they do and be available. Just because someone has, doesn’t mean that they don’t need.

Sometimes that’s appreciation and affirmation – and yes, that’s perfectly okay to need that. Appreciation and affirmation are positive and motivating, they build us up and can help us to keep going when things are tough. 

But it’s not just words of appreciation and affirmation that are important. For people whose work is helping others, our relationship with financial appreciation, as I said earlier, can be tricky. Yet it’s one that’s important to work on. I don’t necessarily think of this as "money mindset". 

I think this goes deeper in some people and is connected with this push and pull between the idea of altruism and actual practical appreciation. So that inner, cultural or religious thinking that makes us believe that being altruism and that selflessness is better as we improve the wellbing of others is better is actually pushing and pulling with our physical need for payment or gratitude of some kind.

Gratitude isn’t just something that we practice in terms of what’s going on in our own life, it’s also something that we gift and that we receive.

Gifting gratitude is very powerful. When we receive gratitude – that means actually accepting it – it’s also a holistic boost to our wellbeing. That same perspective broadening and deepening that us practising personal gratitude for what’s going on in our lives has, also happens when we gift and receive gratitude.

Organisations and relationships with a culture of gratitude, where appreciation freely flows in an authentic way, experience a greater wellbeing, a sense of safety. That sweet spot of not assuming and taking from others by right in a simply transactional way, but of appreciating the strengths and effort that others bring to the work and relationship.

I invite you to notice how you appreciate others over the next week – and whether you express that appreciation in any way.

Do you notice if they give you any opportunity to appreciate them?

Do you give opportunity for the people you serve to appreciate you, or is this an area you need to be clearer on so that they know what you need?

Or is this an area you need to be clearer on so that they know what you need?

This could be having a donation link – I do that, and I found it really humbling to set up. I struggled with doing it and sharing it. Yet, I know that for some people it was a relief to have a way to say thank you for pro bono support that I was happily giving and continue to give without any concern for financial appreciation from them.

It could be simply having feedback links or forms. Most people make these way too complicated, and all about improving service. They simply need to have maximum three questions and the top one is: Has today, or this service, been of value to you? With space to explain how. 

Maybe it’s a cultural tone that you haven’t yet set in your organisation or relationship with your clients. 

Do you encourage them personally? Do you thank them and tell them that you appreciate them and what you appreciate in them? I’m not talking about gushing all the time, but do your people feel seen and appreciated by you? 

If not, that may be why they don’t feel the need to reciprocate. If you treat them as “clients” or team members and not individuals, they will treat you as the leader or the service provider and not as the individual that they're grateful or thankful for – simply transactional to each other. So, think on that too. 

Showing appreciation to your people doesn’t need to look like expensive gifts, words can be enough or that extra bit of flexibility. Creativity goes a long way too. When people see you make the effort to appreciate them, they're more inspired to make an effort to reciprocate – give and take at work again.

And finally, being clearer on the appreciation you need from those you serve will, of course, mean your relationship with what and how you charge people. Because payment, at its most basic level is not just transactional, it’s an appreciation of value. 

We pay what something is worth. I have to honestly say that I really get a bit twitchy when people say: “I know I need to charge my worth”. I actually really dislike that phrase because I don’t find it helpful. People who say that bring the issue right back round to tying pricing back to their personal sense of confidence and of value. 

Whilst I appreciate that confidence is a big hurdle in setting pricing, charging is actually connected with the value of the service we are offering. It’s not personal in an internalised way to you. 

Yes, your qualifications, your skill, your expertise all come into the value of the service, but again, that’s what makes the service valuable. It’s not personal about whether you’re worth it. It’s about whether what you’re offering is worth it.

Unfortunately, many empathetic leaders and service providers find this distinction really, really hard to make. This is particularly so, I think, because we work a lot with people on their “being” and growth rather than simply selling physical products. It's much easier to put a price on a physical product. 

Putting a value on personal growth isn’t always easy – and very much depends on the person receiving that help.

And if you’re selling to empathetic service providers, it can also be tough too, because of their own relationship with pricing. But truth be told, most people put value on a service that is valuable and reasonably well priced.

We started today’s podcast by asking: How important is it to you that the people you support and lead appreciate you?

I’ve nudged you to think about it being okay to have conflicting emotions about this, and that in some situations you may not care at all if you feel seen or appreciated, whilst in others, that need may be quite present in you. It's all okay.

Have a think about what you notice about those different types of situations:

What’s going on in them? 

Are you more burnt out in one than another? 

Is there something about the situation of the people you’re helping that makes a difference? 

Or maybe their attitude? 

Or possibly even our own?

Think about how you show appreciation to your people:

What’s your personal culture of seeing and appreciating others? 

Do you carry that with you everwhere you go? 

Could you be inspirational to those you are working with you and those who are watching you?

Is there any way in your practice and policies that you may need to guide people to appreciate the value of what you do and offer rather than internalising your worry about whether they think you are “worth” paying?

Gratitude encompasses so many different parts of our lives. Sometimes, that simple, polite expression is more than enough. But know this, my empathetic, trailblazing friend, it’s okay to want more and to want and need to be appreciated and feel seen.

If you’d like to work one to one with me, join my mastermind or hear news of upcoming events and retreats, pop to strengthenlive.com, complete an application form or sign up for my email list.

For now, have a great week, and do that appreciation challenge for yourself.

 Notice how you’re relating to others and make peace with what you yourself need in terms of being seen and appreciated.

Thank you so much for joining me and I look forward to welcoming you again next time.

Don't forget that if you haven't heard the other episodes you can subscribe where you're listening and you can maybe even go and have a binge listen to the other topics that we've been talking about!