Solving Difficult Leadership Issues Through Your Own Growth

Hello. Welcome to the podcast. I'm Kris Plachy. Welcome, welcome to Leadership Is Feminine. So glad that you're here. Last week, I said that I was going to start talking a little bit about different topics related to disrupting leadership. And I want to kind of stay in that lane.

And I want to talk with you as a, a listener who I know has been listening for some time about why leadership is such a indicator. It's a barometer, right? It's a barometer, right. The barometer tells us what's going on with the weather to gauge. It's an evaluative opportunity. It's a place in our world where we can see things. I think that leadership is an opportunity for diagnostics, if that makes sense. I was doing a lot of reflecting because I just met with a videographer this week to produce a video to go on my website.

And, you know, what I had to do is figure out what to say about what I do, which is always hard for me. I think some people do this really well. I know. I watch a lot of people on instagram. They're like, 'This is what I do. I'm this, and this is what I do. And I've done this and I've done this and I do this, and I know I could get better at it. And it's just always been a thing.

I feel like it's because whoever I talk to, I'm like, what? Like, I feel almost like, what do you need? Which is not. It's not good, but regardless, we're gonna laugh that off. But it does give me pause, gives me a lot of things to think about, because the truth is that I think that leadership isn't a skill. I think we've talked about this before. I don't think leadership is a thing per se. I think it is an outcome. I think that you demonstrate leadership, which is a collection of behaviors and collection of abilities, and it's all a part of human behavior. And what makes you be someone that other people will follow can vary because we are watching and always watch the varying degrees to which people are inspired by, motivated by, tune into and follow different people.

From my perspective, I don't really feel like I teach you how to lead. What I do is I help you reveal to yourself why you struggle with elements of leading. Holding people accountable, building systems that are repeatable, setting clear expectations, addressing poor results, having difficult conversations, knowing when to be encouraging and motivating. Knowing the difference between mentoring and coaching. Knowing the difference between coaching and managing. Understanding your role as a visionary versus a operator. You know, there's just so many elements involved in running a business. You are sitting at the front if you're the leader, if you're the visionary, saying, 'let's go this way'. But that doesn't mean you're actually demonstrating leadership.

I think all of us know that example that we have. Those people that we know, they're just not very good at leadership. And that's hard to put your thumb on. But what I do know is that watching and witnessing how people lead others, communicate with others, connect with others, collaborate with others, cooperate or don't with others, coordinate with others, enlist the support and minds and thoughts of others, all of those things, that coalescing other people's abilities and minds and hearts to get work done. Watching and witnessing all of that is very diagnostic to me because what I find is that the women who start working with us and doing the work, they usually start at one place, and they know there's a gap. So they're over here and they have built a business, they're making money, they have people on the team, and they know it's not right. They know it's not the way it's supposed to be, but they don't really know why. And I know I've said this for years to you all, but it's usually quite simple to diagnose where the gaps are, right? Why is it that you have these people on the team, but you're not getting a result? Why is it that you have people on the team, but there keeps being these behavior issues or these frustrations that you're dealing with? Why do you have all these people that you're paying money to, but you're still doing most of the work? So what I like to do when I meet a new client is just really tune into what is.

What is going on. I want all the diagnostics. I listen to what you believe about your business. I listen to what they say to you about your business. I listen to what you dismiss as unimportant. I listen to what you say about yourself as maybe you're not good at something or you are tired and frustrated of doing something over and over again. I just listen to all of the things that are going on. So you're leading-

Your ability to lead is a diagnostic tool, but it isn't necessarily diagnostic on whether or not we can get you into smooth leadership. It's diagnostic of what you believe about yourself and what you believe about the world. And all leadership problems are human problems. And all leadership problems can be solved by working with the humans, the way that you think, the way that you feel and the way that you act.So you have gaps. You have parts of your business that you just are so frustrated you're not getting the results that you want. But that is coming from a gap or a pattern that has already been something, you know, you've already dealt with. And if I were to be talking to you right now and you said to me, 'I just don't know what to do, I have this person on my team, and she's kind of entitled.

She expects me to accommodate her schedule even though she agreed to a different schedule. She expects me to give her a raise even though she knows she's not supposed to get one for at least a year. She is blaming me for not knowing what she's supposed to know. She isn't doing the job she's supposed to do. She keeps finding reasons not to do it.' Right. These are just some examples of things that people say. So I would listen to that.

Now there's a gap, right. Because what you're doing is sitting on this side of the problem thinking, what? How do I fix it? How do I make her be different? How do I deal with her? How do I talk to her? What do I say? Right? So if any of those things might be true for you, and I said to you, okay, well, let's just talk about it like, so. So what? So she, she's blaming you for not knowing what she's supposed to know. Why is that a problem for you? She blames you. So she thinks that she should make more money. Okay, I do too. I think I should make a lot more money, don't we all? Why is that a problem for you? So she thinks that she should have a different schedule because she wants one.

Okay. Why is that a problem? So she thinks anything. Right? Or she's not meeting her goals. Okay, what's the problem? So whatever your answer is to that, I want you to be honest with yourself. So if I said to you, you know, well, so much, she's blaming you because she thinks you should have made sure she knew things that she doesn't know. Okay. Why is that a problem? I want you to think about your life and your lived experience and where that has shown up before. Does that have something to do with you not trusting the process that you have in place? Does that have something to do with that? Maybe you don't have the process in place to help make sure people are onboarded.

Well, is that because maybe you have a tendency to abdicate? And if so, why do you do that? There's always a reason and you know it. We all know it. We all know why we run into familiar frustrations, difficulties with people. People, right, I know you've all probably heard this. We sort of meet the same person, different body, different face, different name, but we meet a lot of the same people over and over again until we finally figure it out. So I find that a lot of women initially hire me because they need to figure out what to do with these people on their team.

They're not meeting expectations. They're not doing this. And usually that gap, it's not that they, like, don't know what to do because they probably do. It's that they don't want to. It's that they don't trust themselves. It's that they've done it before and it didn't work. It's that they think that they're incompetent. It's that they don't want to do it again.

So we have to be honest about what is the gap? Because if somebody on my team just said to me today, hey, I need a new schedule and I'm going to start working it and I want to make more money. So you need to fix that for me. No, I mean, I totally, I totally understand why you need to schedule and we can talk about why we're not in a position to do that right now. And absolutely, I can understand you wanting to make more money, but that we haven't hit your first year yet. There's no raises until you've completed the first year in this organization. I'm not going to be bothered by it. Like, it's fine. I can tell you no, but there's other people who can't say no.

Or they get so mad that somebody asked, right? I was just, I just Voxed with somebody today. She'll know who she's talking, who I'm talking about, right. There's an employee that's on her team that keeps making the same mistake. And so she told her, you have to stop making this mistake. And here's what will happen if you make the mistake again, which is, listen, great news. That was exactly what we need to do. This is the expectation, if it happens again, here's what's going to happen. Then she took it one step further and she said, but then the response of the employee was, okay, I'll do my best.

And then my client's like furious because she said, she, right, okay, I'll try. And so my client's like, I'm going to tell her that she can't say that. She can't say, 'I'll try'. And I replied and said she could say whatever she wants.
What we want to do on the other end is realize, why does that bother you? And remember, all you have to do is hold her accountable. Okay, try! Be excited for you. But it doesn't change how I respond because all I'm going to do is look at the facts. Did you or didn't you? Right? So you all present if you come into work with me and my team with this issue. And the issue is so revealing.

And I don't mean that negatively because I feel, I feel joy when I meet someone who's like, this is a mess. And I'm like, no, no, this is solvable. Totally solvable. But guess where the work is not over here. And trying to make her a bit different. How's that working for you? Right? Like Doctor Bill would say, it doesn't. But guess what? Guess where we can do the work. We can understand why we have these expectations of other people, why we're so disappointed when people don't meet them, why we're so frustrated when people say the things that they say or don't say the things that they say, when people have expectations of us that we're not going to meet, like, why are we so upset? Why do we get so upset? And it's because we haven't learned how to have a response that feels aligned with our values but also doesn't feel emotional reactive.

Because I think most of my clients, most of you listening, are mature, successful people. So you know that you don't want to be like, angry at someone or yell at them or frustrated or passive aggressive. I know you know that. I don't, I don't think, I think most people know they don't want to do that. But when you haven't learned how to negotiate those moments with people on your team, that's when you want them so desperately to be different so that you don't have to figure out how do I deal with this frustration and anger and resentment that I have and still have to talk to you about it. But here's the miracle to me of working with women in the realm of leadership is we get this figured out. We understand why is she so triggering for you? Why is that so upsetting for you? Who cares? I mean, at the end of the day, it's such a drag if you hire someone and they don't do their job. So I'm not trying to be like, super dismissive but really, okay, bummer.

But if you have all sorts of thoughts like, 'I don't want to do this again, I am so sick of hiring people are impossible. I'm never going to find a good person. I'm really bad at this. I don't know how to hire. I shouldn't be trusted with this job. I should just sell this company. Maybe I should just quit tomorrow.' Like, if you have all this baggage that you're bringing into this one relationship with this one employee, you can understand why you may never actually lead them, because you're so frustrated with yourself for feeling so frustrated or angry with them that you don't communicate well.

And 90% of leadership solutions is through communication. So any one of these challenges that you are sitting with someone who's not doing their job, somebody who's bothering other people, that they work with, somebody who's bothering you, it's all just indicative of a gap. And the gap is a skill that we have to figure out. Is it a communication issue? Is it a understanding someone issue? Is it a listening issue, which is still communication? Is it a trigger, something that has been bothersome for you for years? Is it this belief about yourself that you've just never really explored so that we can get past it?And once we do that, once we reveal, like, 'oh, the reason this is so hard for me is because I have a lot of beliefs around needing to stay in control. And as soon as I don't feel like I have control, I feel scared, I feel exposed, I feel vulnerable. And in that moment when that employee is asking me for more money and asking me to change their shift, I feel threatened.' But you're not threatened. You're the boss.

You can say no, but then we have to unpack that. What does it mean when a woman says no? I can tell you that there's not one woman listening to this podcast who doesn't know. But there's a consequence when a woman says no. And there is a lot of consequences and varying extremes, two varying extremes of when a woman says no. And so all of that is what you're coming to me with. When you say, I don't know how to deal with Rhonda in accounting, you're not looking for a five step solve, because I know that you could google it right now. Google it right now. How do I deal with a difficult employee? How do I deal with somebody who asked for a raise and they're not due for one? How do I deal with somebody who wants me to change their schedule? How do I deal with someone who is not meeting their expectations in their 1st 90 days and blaming me for it.

Put it in chat GPT chat chapt will tell you what to say. That's not what you need. You need to solve for the gap, and the gap is your development. And that's okay because we all have our own development that we have to do. We all have our own growth. I'll leave you with that, because that just happened to me. I've been teaching and doing this forever. I am a self proclaimed empath.

I have strong people pleasing tendencies. I have a lot of sixes in my chart, which means I'm very heart centered and heart focused, which means I am of service and like to make people happy. I am an only child. I did not have siblings and so I don't know how to deal with conflict very well. I have siblings. I think that's the best thing about siblings, is y'all learn how to fight. Like I never learned how to do that. But one of the things that I know is true, and has been true for me since I was very young, is I see truths very quickly because I see facts very quickly.

It's the way my brain works. And then I see a truth and I believe that things should be better. So the other day I experienced something I knew should be better because it was dangerous and there were a lot of elements that could change to make it better. So I said something. I didn't say something about a person. I didn't say something about anybody in particular. It was more about just in general, a circumstance. But there was a person who read what I said.

I got very thin and I fell to the floor in terms of my own psyche. I felt terrible, I felt embarrassed, I felt wrong. I took it back and then I cried all the rest of the day because I knew that I allowed that difficulty, that moment of difficulty for me, which is to stand in my truth. Even when pushed back on it, I knew I had compromised myself. And I knew that for all the progress I've made, I still have more to do. And there were some complicating factors around this issue, and I give myself grace for that. But I just say this to you because I want you to understand. I understand.

I'm very sympathetic and empathetic to the things that we've had to work through as individuals and also as women, because I was a woman in this instance who pointed out very obviously wrongs, facts, and I was immediately attacked for having done it. And I had to make a decision in the moment was it worth it in this instance to stand in it or not? And I chose not to. But it doesn't mean it didn't remind me yet again of my own gap and also of the perpetuating insidiousness of what happens to a woman when she says no. And I'm not done. I will regroup and I will find another way. And I will continue to hold this space for all of you. Because until we can all hold our voice and have our own agency and say what needs to be said and then support each other, none of us have it. So if you are in a leadership role and you know you have gaps, the one person you owe it to to develop that and move through it and get stronger is you.

So that all this other stuff that's happening in your business and in your life on the regular is so much less charged. Let's let it go. Let's learn how to navigate and let's learn how to advocate for what we really, really want. That is my invitation to you, my love. If you want to know more, I would really love to invite you to check out what we just released. It's really cool, it's really affordable and it's for you. It's called lead lessons. And all you have to do is go to the visionary doc CEO next step and you'll learn everything you need to learn.

Talk to you soon.

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Go to thevisionary.ceo/catalyst. Get yourself registered. Grab the podcast link. Super easy, and please share it with women that you know that are leading in the world, because I'd love to be able to impact 20 million women. I know that when women feel more confident in who they are as leaders. It changes who they are in their lives.

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