Diversify the Image of Corporate Leadership to Include Asian American Women

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Asian American Women LeadersIf more Asian American women are to reach leadership positions, Corporate America needs to integrate a wider and more inclusive image of what leadership looks and feels like.

Nearly 40% of Asian American women identify as entrepreneurs. According to the 2019 State of Women-Owned Business Report, Asian American women-owned businesses represent 9% of all women-owned businesses.

Between 2014 to 2019, the average revenue for women-of-color-owned businesses shrank, according to the report, with the exception of Asian women-owned businesses. The average earned revenue for these firms indexes 33% above all women-owned businesses and represent the highest number for any racial/ethnic group, though Asian American businesses have been been disproportionately devastated by the virus of racism since the pandemic began.

Asian American women know how to lead and the results of their businesses prove they lead well. Last week, theglasshammer talked about the insidious harm of stereotypes, mythology and microaggressions when it comes to obstacles to reaching corporate leadership for Asian American women.

Now let’s question a definition of leadership that closes the gates to women that are compelled to lead – especially East Asian women.

The Over-Valuation of Assertiveness

Asian American women leaders are far from a monolith and are not represented equally in leadership either. Another factor at play in inhibiting East Asian women, in particular, in attaining executive leadership roles is a status quo of narrow leadership norms that close the gates to a diversity of leadership qualities and approaches.

A report on diversity among Fortune 500 CEOs from 2000 to 2020 indicates that 35 Asian-Americans were CEOs Of Fortune 500 companies during this period: 13 were East Asians and 22 were South Asians. Only six were women.

Among Standard & Poor’s 500 companies between 2010 and 2017, there were 1.92 white CEOs per million in the U.S population, 2.82 South Asian CEOS per million in the population, and only .59 East Asian CEOS per million in the population.

Recently released research from MIT Sloan associate professor Jackson Lu explored why East Asians, but not South Asians, are uniquely underrepresented in leadership in U.S. business, concluding that this inequality is “an issue of cultural fit — a mismatch between East Asian norms of communication and American norms of leadership.”

While non-Asian Americans exhibited greater “prejudice” against South Asians than East Asians, this did not correspond with the leadership gap. “Motivation” was also equal between the groups. What the researchers posit is that the over-evaluation of “assertiveness” in U.S. leadership, which East Asians consistently scored lower on, is why East Asians are less likely to attain leadership positions.

Whereas South Asian cultures often encourage assertiveness and debate, East Asian cultures often emphasize humility and conformity, but this is not indicative of the lack of confidence nor motivation that it can be perceived as through a Western lens.

“Importantly, assertive leaders are not necessarily the most effective ones. American organizations need to diversify the prototype of what a leader should look like,” states Wu. An overly assertion-based leadership ideal not only has a cultural and gender bias but an inclination towards more toxic shadow traits of leadership.

Diversifying The Leadership Norm

Part of valuing and respecting Asian American women leaders involves changing the cultural norm and implicit prototype of what we value in leadership.

A September 2020 paper from Russell Reynolds Associates suggests that companies “reconsider internal definitions of who is qualified to lead”—pointing out that a too narrow definition of good leaders is what inhibits the wider objectivity needed to promote the best leaders in their own authentic leadership style.

“Past efforts to fill this leadership gap have mainly focused on how Asian Americans should individually moderate their leadership styles to adapt to the dominant culture. Yet this approach opens the possibility that they will be criticized for another reason: failing to match American expectations of stereotypical Asian American behavior,” writes the authors. “We consider this a ‘double-edged sword,’ with neither path allowing them to be recognized and rewarded for their authentic leadership styles, wherever they fall on the spectrum of cultural expectations.”

“In our experience, the leadership gap is not a reflection of how well Asian Americans can lead,” the authors continue, “but rather how narrowly companies define what a successful leader looks like and how he or she should behave.”

“While many organizations value assertiveness and self-confidence in their leaders,” says Deborah Ancona, professor of leadership at MIT Sloan and founder of the MIT Leadership Center, “it is important to note that there are many different leadership capabilities that organizations also need to foster and reward.”

A qualitative LEAP Asian American Executive Leadership report revealed that among successful C-Suite Asian American executives, the non-visible values of continuous learning, collectivism and humility were at the root of their successful leadership.

Along with recommendations for individuals that would frankly apply to any aspiring leader (self-reflect, observe others, push (your own) boundaries and be open), the LEAP authors recommend, in their words, that organizations take three actions:

  • Redefine leadership – reconsider the definition of leadership combining the uniqueness of Asian Americans and, organizational, and societal needs
  • Create spaces – offer programs that embrace leadership styles, mindsets and values that develop and align to Asian American leaders
  • Reach out – include Asian Americans’ diverse perspectives and mindsets when navigating change and uncertainty

The cultural and personal influences that characterize the leadership of any given individual will be unique—the point is for more varied expressions to be invited in, to reveal their own strengths and benefits.

Our definition of leadership is dated and limiting the range of talent that gets in and leadership approaches. In order to create more diversity in leadership, we need to diversify the way we think about leadership, to begin with.

By Aimee Hansen

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Why Asian American Women In Business Need You To Not Be Passive

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Asian American WomenIt’s been well-documented that Asian American women in business are often the professional but too rarely the executive.

As written in Forbes, Asian American women are the demographic group most likely to have graduate degrees but least likely to hold positions within three reporting levels of the CEO or to have line or supervisory responsibilities. Asian women outnumber Asian men among associates at U.S. law firms, but Asian men are nearly twice as likely as Asian women to be promoted to partner (64% vs. 36%).

Recently, in a national outcry against anti-Asian racism, micro-assaults, commercial discrimination and hate crimes that have risen across the pandemic, culminating in the March Atlanta shootings of eight people (six of which were women of Asian descent), nearly 1000 Asian-American business leaders have pledged $10 million to support Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities.

The Danger of the “Model Minority” Mythology

Asian American often women encounter a convoluted web of cultural myths that create a plateau in their career path. In one study of Asian American women who experienced discrimination, 34% reported that others assumed they were passive while 14% felt others viewed them as incapable of leadership.

The discrimination and bias faced by Asian Americans is often invalidated and made “invisible” due to being labeled as the model minority (due to having the highest educational achievements, highest median income, and one of the lowest crime rates) while actually being held back from the success of leadership and promotion. Not to mention blinding us to the reality that Asian-American women have been the hardest hit by Covid-19 job loss, with 44% out of work for six months or more.

The insidious impact of the harmful “model minority” mythology upon the Asian American community is that it’s both gaslighting and obscuring of the myriad discrimination and anti-Asian racism that very different groups of Asian American women actually face. Not only that, but it squeezes out room for the voices and diverse experiences of Asian Americans to be heard.

Aspects of the bamboo ceiling Asian American women confront include cultural ignorance and lack of ethnic discernment; the presumption of the perpetual foreigner; both imposed cultural stereotypes, as well as real cultural values and communication styles, that are at odds with Western masculine stereotypes of leadership; perceptions of hard working, discipline, intelligence and self-sacrificing that perpetuate an expectation of (quietly) carrying disproportionate quantities of work at a high performance standard; and racialized sexism/sexualized racism.

Yet when Asian American women do break prescriptive stereotypes to show assertiveness, they can be perceived as threatening and penalized in likability. Meanwhile, Hollywood has been no ally in challenging the stereotypes and simplistic tropes that Asian-American women are cast into, but rather reinforces them.

Speaking Up About Microaggressions

“In a workplace culture, racist acts usually play out as microaggressions—those small verbal or nonverbal slights, snubs, or insults. For example, being asked where you’re really from or being told that your English is really good assumes if you’re Asian, you’re foreign, and not a “real” American,” states Serena Fong, Vice President, Strategic Engagement, at Catalyst.

“Experiences of being invisible and forgotten surface through assumptions that because Asians are smart, quiet, and hardworking, they don’t experience racism at all,” Fong continues. “However, research shows that Asian Americans are the least likely group to be promoted to management positions, and Asian women hold the smallest share of total management positions in the US. Think about what’s conveyed when you say to an Asian colleague, particularly an Asian woman, you should “speak up more”, or “you’re so quiet”. Is that true or based on stereotypes?”

Microaggressions lower implicit self-esteem among Asian-Americans and induce stress, and when related to the “model minority” stereotype or perceived foreignness, are correlated with higher odds of poorer self-rated health. As part of AAPI Heritage month, the Los Angeles Times is currently polling to know strategies for countering microaggressions.

Fong advises, in her words, what not to do when you witness a microaggression:

  • Don’t act like you didn’t hear or see it. Racism is not going to go away if we ignore it. In fact, ignoring it can be seen as tacit agreement—and this failure to address it can add insult to injury.
  • Don’t make excuses. Explaining that somebody didn’t mean to be racist doesn’t make the remark or action any less hurtful or less racist. When somebody asks, “Where are you really from?” and isn’t challenged, their question reinforces stereotypes and perpetuates inaccurate information.
  • Don’t become immobilized. This happens more often than not; you witness something but are at a loss for what to say or do—and end up doing nothing.

Instead, Fong recommends:

  • Address the microaggression by responding with a non-judgmental observation or asking a thoughtful question. Doing so signals support for your colleagues and models inclusive behavior and courage to others. It may not be easy, but it’s worth it.
  • Talk to those involved. Doing so can break down stereotypes and provide comfort and support to the targets, particularly during such a scary time in the world. Check in with your colleagues to signal that you’re open to listening without putting the burden on them. If they don’t want to talk, be okay with that.

When it comes to disrupting the conscious or unconscious, not-so-small and harmful expressions of discrimination, we are all responsible. We do not need Asian American women to learn how to “speak up more.” We all need to be brave enough to speak up and out, more.

By: Aimee Hansen

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Why a Women’s Retreat Is Not Really About Getting Away

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women's retreatWhile it might seem strange to say this as a women’s retreat creator and facilitator, no woman ever needs a retreat. A retreat is not an endpoint. What every single woman absolutely needs is herself. A retreat is just one way a woman sets her own feet on a path back to herself.

While a week away offers a break, in my experience a woman rarely goes on retreat just to step away from her life. Instead, the underlying motivation is often the opposite—a restless desire to step into her voice, and into her own life, more fully.

What a woman often yearns for is a big, wide open space away from the status quo routine and constant noise to listen inwards and reconnect to her inner truth, to catalyze the internal momentum to clarify and heed what she hears, and perhaps to surround herself in an atmosphere of support that will validate and even magnify her voice.

Cyclical Time and Cyclical Rebirth

In the day-in, day-out focus on “doing” in life, it can be easy to move through the motions, stay close with the inertia of our current trajectory and just keep going. But from the physiology of our bodies to the seasons of nature—with the continuous cycle of birth, bloom, death and rebirth—a feminine sense of time is not linear, but cyclical time.

So that moment arrives, yet again, when what once created personal meaning or fulfillment no longer animates us. Or perhaps a key role or circumstance is stripped away, and the sense of value and safety we derived disappears with it. Or perhaps we just sense our “stuckedness” and discontent, though we can’t put a finger on what needs to change. We are asked to meet ourselves all over again.

We repeatedly come to a kind of crossroads with self, and we are supposed to. We ache to shed a skin, to break out of the limitations of a fixed identity, to evolve into our next adventure or creation—even if we cannot yet know what that looks like or how it will show up or take form.

The openness to listen to our own voice and allow ourselves the life-giving force of staying true to our inner truth — to move with it as it shifts—is part of the ever-unfolding path of personal evolution, and reflects feminine integrity, even if at times it renders us somewhat unrecognizable to our former self.

Whether we will be asked to make changes inside or outside, and often both, we come to realize the deadening feeling of ignoring our own voice is far more dangerous to our well-being than avoiding the fear of change. We are nudged towards the necessary discomfort, and often uncertainty, that comes with growth, like metaphorical labor pains in the cycle of our own rebirth.

Catalysts For A Crossroads Moment

In her best-selling book Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live, Dr. Martha Beck speaks to three kinds of catalytic events that can cause a re-evaluation of life and transform your self-definition:

  • Shock—A sudden external event that rattles your way of life to the core. Not all shocks are “negative”, but they are a sudden and fundamental change. We have been inside of the collective sustained shock of the pandemic for over a year now. I know few women that have not also faced big questions in her personal sphere amidst the collective spin.
  • Opportunity—An external “lucky break” comes in some way that offers the opportunity to take a big leap towards an adventure that your “essential self” wants to live out. Because it’s an opportunity, not forced, it brings up the dilemma of whether you’re willing to leap.
  • Transition—When the desire for change arises purely from within, a slow brew of dissonance with your currently reality becomes eventually intolerable. An internal transition requires feeling your “negative” feelings rather than numbing or running away from them, as well as acknowledging and validating your thoughts, preferences and desires too.

Transitions require a willingness to give credence to your inner voice. Transitions can only be self-validated, which necessitates emotional courage, as others may not understand your changes or decisions, and sometimes, until you get through it, you may even struggle to explain them to yourself.

Reconnecting With Your Voice

“We’re often blind to what creates our limits and blocks,” writes Nicki Gilmour, CEO and Founder, Evolved People (theglasshammer.com). “We all have goals, but we need to surface our subconscious gremlins, who are trying to thwart are best-laid plans for change by creating hidden competing agendas.”

When we seek to reconnect with our voice, we often find that unconscious limiting beliefs and self-sabotaging patterns are holding more sway in our lives than we realized, even if we have visited them before. Unexamined, they will run us in a circle of repetitive limited experience so that even as the characters and stages change, the familiar plot wears itself out in our interactions and relationships.

Just as time is not only linear, emotional and spiritual growth also does not happen in a straight line, however. The growth of becoming conscious of limiting beliefs and patterns often feels like a spiral outwards, returning to familiar themes in new iterations with a little more distance from the red-hot center of pain. We begin to hold increased perspective, as both experiencer and witness, and a greater ability to respond rather than be highjacked by emotional reactivity.

Sometimes, as explored in Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal The Heart by Tara Bennet Goldman, entire schemas or lenses of skewed perception are at play which require the piercing light of our conscious awareness, if only to open up the 1/4 second opportunity of choice in what we do with how we feel.

We can also question and rewrite the narratives through which we tell the stories about ourselves, those around us and our lives. We come to find that we all have deep stories through which we shape our stories and through which we write our lives, but they do not need to be set in stone.

If we are open and fundamentally teachable as a student to life, we will keep unfolding ourselves to reveal more of who we are. Life opens up relative to how receptive to our own tender being, with all her feelings and all her contradictions and all her needs, we are willing to be.

Ultimately, stepping into our voice comes down to self-allowance and not trying to constantly earn our value through the endless outcome-focused “doing” of the patriarchal paradigm, but rather claiming our inherent self-worth.

We surround ourselves with others who can remind us should we forget, because unlike the mythical solo journey, a tenet of the “heroine’s journey” is to recognize support is available from soulful allies along the road.

Walking Back Towards Yourself

When you come again to a crossroads of self; when you reach a moment where you can no longer distract, ignore,  or downplay your feelings, needs or intuition; when you can neither watch yourself hustle for approval nor conspire against your own deeper desires; when you will no longer believe in a culturally-defined success if it isn’t also aligned with your own truth—then, you step through a new doorway.

What you find is more of who you are waiting there, if only you are willing to receive her, if only you are ready to follow her wherever she may take you. When our value is self-possessed, we are free to be and move and create, from the inside-out.

To me, a women’s retreat is never about that one week you stepped away from your life. It’s not really about getting away, but getting in. It’s about walking back towards yourself and stepping further into the truth of who you are.

In addition to lead writer for theglasshammer, Aimee Hansen is the Creator of Storyteller Within Retreats, Lonely Planet Wellness Escapes recommended women’s self-exploration retreats focused on connecting with your embodied inner voice, through writing, yoga, movement and more, to animate your unique expression. Her next luxury retreat event on Lake Atitlan, Guatemala takes place July 31st – August 9th, 2021 with 12 spaces available.

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How To Disrupt Gender Bias in the Virtual Workplace

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Gender BiasWhat can leaders, managers, allies and women themselves do to minimize and challenge gender bias in the virtual workplace?

Last week, theglasshammer.com explored the impact of the virtual office in either neutralizing or amplifying pre-existing dynamics of gender bias.

Ultimately, the gender bias present in our cultural paradigm is also present in our offices, and this week we explore how to address it.

How Leaders Can Diffuse Gender Bias in the Virtual Office

An article in the World Economic Forum asserts that when it comes to bias in virtual meetings as in any context, “changing the environment in the room – rather than changing women’s behavior – should be the goal.“

“If we build a world in which women’s voices are valued and listened to,” says Jessica Preece, associate professor in political science at Brigham Young University, “they will speak up without having to be told to.”

“Smart companies create inclusive work cultures so that all employees actively support each other, particularly marginalized groups. Allyship and curiosity should be at the heart of a manager’s leadership, regardless of gender, to create a more inclusive, welcoming workplace,” says Serena Fong, Vice President, Strategic Engagement for Catalyst.

As leaders, meeting chairs can set the tone and expectations upfront, including implementing ground rules for discussions that mitigate some of the communication challenges and gender imbalances, such as a no interruption rule in Zoom calls.

As written in Forbes, reducing interruption requires the self-reflection of questions such as “Is this person making a point I need to add onto?” and “Am I listening equally to everyone in the room?”

Calling out when gender imbalances occur is another approach to being an ally on Zoom, as exemplified by an associate professor who let the men dominating the virtual conversation know that she was happy to hear their input, but also wanted to hear from the women.

Introducing positive interjections, such as “that’s a really valuable point” to validate, amplify and give pause of consideration to women’s voices is another strategy for leveling the field.

Putting workflow systems in place that ensure communication flow, project tracking and clear administrative responsibilities will also help reduce the amount of extra work picked up by women.

According to Fong at Catalyst, leaders should embrace these five key strategies to disrupt gender imbalances and build a more flexible, equitable and inclusive workplace for all:

  • Lead inclusively through crisis: keep inclusion front and center as you navigate the shifts in how we’re working currently and how we’ll be working in the future.
  • Tackle inequities, large and small: face biases and stereotypes head on through workplace policies and opportunities such as re-skilling your workforce, examining talent management, recruiting, and advancement practices for biases, and setting DEI targets and goals.
  • Connect with empathy: put yourself in your colleagues’ shoes and imagine what they might be experiencing vs. your experiences.
  • Trust your team: don’t micromanage projects and processes, and be transparent about when, how and who is involved when decisions are made.
  • Work remotely and flexibly: the pandemic dispelled many myths and assumptions about working remotely and flexibly. Take the lessons learned and incorporate it into the “new normal”.
How Women Can Ally Together in the Virtual Office

While not responsible for correcting gender imbalance, women can still be allies to one another in subverting gender imbalances of the virtual workplace.

“If you see a colleague being ignored or is trying to speak, say something. If you learn about an act of bias, think about how you can address it,” says Fong. “It may not seem like much, but it is infinitely better than ignoring it.”

Carol Vernon, founder and principal of Communication Matters, recommends for women to set the stage early for speaking up in a virtual meeting rather than waiting to have the perfect compelling thing to say, and to take the lead in introducing non-verbal expression to the meeting.

Another way of subverting bias is by actively reinforcing ideas that another woman has brought to the table and then re-accrediting the idea as hers, as While House staffers did during the Obama administration.

Women leaders have also told theglasshammer.com about actively inviting female colleagues who hold valuable insight on a topic to share their viewpoint, as well as instant messaging with coworkers during meetings to enhance solidarity and encourage each other to speak.

Nicki Gilmour, Leadership Coach, Organizational development specialist and founder of theglasshammer.com adds, “Creating psychological safety as the leader in the virtual room matters also, as who you authorize to not only speak but to demonstrate expertise matters. People will take their cues from you in person or otherwise about who is truly authorized to speak up. Asking for different people’s viewpoints from their perspective will not only add value but level the playing field for the quieter, more hesitant people on the call.”

Virtual gender bias is really just the same dynamics at play in a new space, but perhaps the playing field also allows for new disruptions.

By Aimee Hansen

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Is Gender Bias Amplified in the Virtual Workplace?

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Virtual workplaceWhile remote working is a key element to creating more gender equality, the coexistence of the virtual workplace alongside virtual schooling has exacerbated the disproportional hours women spend on caregiving and domestic work, driving women to exit the workforce or consider downshifting their careers.

The dissolution of physical boundaries between home and office and classroom very rarely affords a woman with children “a room of her own” in which to conduct her professional life, unlike her male counterparts.

And now the remote workplace itself—the virtual meeting room and Zoom office—is introducing a mixed bag of gender-related impacts, neutralizing some imbalances while magnifying others.

How the Virtual Meeting Room Could Neutralize Gender Bias

As of February, researchers in Forbes reported that sentiments towards moral, motivation and collaboration related to the virtual workplace have been dropping into negative territory since November among executive leaders. Yet women leaders remained more positive than men—especially in relation to impact of the virtual workplace on productivity, decision-making and communication. Women leaders were more positive about the chairing of online meetings and that it sets the space that ‘ensures all team members can contribute to meetings’.

While men are socialized to establish dominance and position in team communications, women are inclined to establish relationships and build trust. Some research has indicated that virtual media, with a lack of non-verbal cues and three-dimensional richness, can led to greater misunderstanding in communication, but also diffuses the ability for men to dominate team interaction.

“With completely remote-meetings, the physical and social dynamics of in-person conversations unhinge the norms of hierarchy,” speculates UX researcher Allison Yu. “In Zoom, everyone is literally on an equal grid.”

Yu points out that when the active speaker is everyone’s primary focus on a Zoom screen, the act of cutting someone else off simply becomes more blunt. The virtual office also mitigates height bias, which favors men.

Whereas access to senior leaders is generally lower for women and women of color especially, Yu argues access becomes more equalized in a virtual workplace where some of the more exclusionary casual networking meet-ups, cultivated through affinity bias, aren’t as frequent or prevalent.

How the Virtual Meeting Room Is Proliferating Gender Bias

On the other hand, the virtual meeting room is also playing out to magnify pre-existing gender dynamics—such as male executives winning competency points for speaking longer while women lose them, passion expressed by women leaders being perceived as overemotional by male counterparts, men being 33% more likely to interrupt their female than male colleagues (manterruption), women speaking up 25% less than men in the meeting environment, and live reverbalizaton and appropriation by men of ideas previously introduced by a female colleague.

According to Catalyst research, 1 in 5 women has felt ignored and overlooked by coworkers using video calls. 45% of women business leaders say it’s difficult for women to speak in virtual meetings and 42% of male business leaders agree. Additionally, 31% of women and queer/non-binary respondents reported “getting talked over, interrupted, or ignored more frequently during virtual meetings than those held in person” in a July 2020 survey by the Society of Women Engineers.

In September, University of Iowa Grad student Claire McDonnell shared a video call recording on TikTok entitled “live footage of being a woman in STEM” that went viral within 48 hours. The clip shows her repeatedly being interrupted by fellow male students when pitching project ideas and having her own ideas appropriated and re-presented by her peers, though she was the only with with actual work experience with the topic.

As written in the New York Times, Georgetown University professor Deborah Tannen asserts that the remote workplace amplifies pre-existing conversational imbalances in who gets heard. Whereas men will tend to be argumentative and speak longer to convey authority, women will often be succinct, self-deprecating or speak in more indirect ways to not take up more space than necessary and be likable.

“Women are systematically seen as less authoritative,” said Jessica Preece, associate professor in political science at Brigham Young University. “And their influence is systematically lower. And they’re speaking less. And when they’re speaking up, they’re not being listened to as much, and they are being interrupted more.”

As put forth in Fast Company, women also have weaker informal relationships at work and office politics are still at play as “the official virtual meeting represents only a fraction of interactions, and real power dynamics will move backstage, excluding women as needed.”

Research also shows more women (46%) are struggling with group work than men (37%), often picking up more of the undefined, collaborative-based tasks and carrying the load of remote office housework. Also, “when faced with poor visibility or communication on what their colleagues are doing, many women compensate by working more,” an impulse which can be amplified by lack of co-presence in the remote working office.

How to Diffuse and Disrupt Virtual Bias?

While the flexibility of the remote workplace is generally supportive to gender equality, and virtual meeting rooms could counter or neutralize aspects of gender bias, the last year has revealed that entrenched cultural gender dynamics will reveal themselves, sometimes more so in altered circumstances. If gender inequality is inherent within our culture, it’s frankly alive and well in our virtual offices.

Next week, we will explore how leaders, managers, allies and women colleagues can play a role in addressing and mitigating the dynamics of virtual bias.

By Aimee Hansen

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OP-Ed: Why Female Leaders Experience More Burnout and What to Do About It

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Jessica ThiefelsWhile COVID took a toll on all of us, women in the workplace are feeling the burnout effects at higher rates than their male counterparts. Data from a 2020 McKinsey poll found that:

  • 53 percent of women reported feeling job-related stress, compared to 46 percent of men
  • 37 percent of women felt exhaustion, compared to 31 percent of men
  • 32 percent of women felt burnout, compared to 28 percent of men

The disparity is even more obvious at the senior level. For example, 54 percent of senior-level female leaders felt exhausted compared to just 41 percent for men, and 39 percent experienced burnout with only 29 percent of male leaders reporting the same.

To counteract widespread burnout as a female leader, it’s important to understand the root causes of your work-related stress and find actionable ways to avoid it. Here are some strategies you can use as a female leader in the workplace fighting burnout during COVID and otherwise.

Understand the Relationship Between Mental Health and Burnout

Burnout is due to chronic stress, fatigue, cynicism, and lack of accomplishment, according to a study from Frontiers in Psychology. What’s more, the research indicates that burnout often shares commonalities with depression and anxiety.

With stress at the root of burnout, it’s vital that you not only be aware of how stress levels can impact your mental health but your physical health as well. You may not notice the stress if you’re used to it, but you might notice these physical stress indicators:

  • Tense muscles
  • Blood pressure increase
  • Increase in heart rate
  • Hyperventilating
  • Off-balanced digestion

In “How to Free Yourself From Stress”, HealthMarkets explains that the real trouble starts when this stress becomes chronic. They explain, “The constant physiological response wears us down, affecting several major biological systems. Our stores of energy drain. Our bodies produce fewer infection-fighting T-cells, so our immune systems become weak, making it easy for illnesses and diseases to push their way into our lives.”

Fight burnout: Use an app like Symple to track your daily mental and physical health. It’s easy to ignore stress when it’s become the norm for you. This small step will force you to focus on your overall health each day, which can point you to burnout before it becomes a problem.

Fight Back Against Social Media Fatigue

Female leaders are expected to write sharp industry articles on LinkedIn and promote themselves as the face of a brand on Twitter. Not to mention, it’s often a component of our personal lives. Yet, excess social media consumption can also lead to burnout.

The problem is that too much social media exposure is dangerous to mental health, especially for female leaders. Recent research has found that social media fatigue is a legitimate condition that can lead to anxiety and exhaustion.

As a modern successful woman, you’re constantly taking in the highlight reel of your peers and colleagues. To make it even worse, instances of “mom-shaming” for working mothers are on the rise since the start of COVID-19.

Fight burnout: How often do you mindless scroll on social media? Probably more than you think. Set social media boundaries so you can still show up where you need to, but walk away when you don’t. For example, you set a rule that you can’t look at social media until 10 am and then you put it away for the night after dinner. If you can’t stop yourself, let your phone do the work with an app like Offtime.

Untangle the Excessive Demands on Female Leaders

Based on the same McKinsey data, COVID-19 workplace shifts caused unequal challenges for female leaders, especially when compared to men. The pressures of household responsibilities, fear of suffering job performance, and lack of flexibility/work-life balance forced many women to scale down their careers or leave their job. One in three working mothers faced this decision due to limited childcare options.

It’s even tougher is when you’re the solitary female in your position. The report explains, “Senior-level women are also nearly twice as likely as women overall to be ‘Onlys’—the only or one of the only women in the room at work.” This circumstance sets the stage for microaggressions, criticisms, dismissals, and high-performance stakes, all of which contribute to female leaders experiencing burnout 1.5 times more than male leaders.

If you add childcare into the equation (working mothers currently spend 15 more hours on domestic labor per week than men), it becomes an impossible situation.

This is when it becomes important for organizations to play a role in helping women mitigate their burnout.

How Organizations Can Help Female Leaders Combat Burnout

You’re likely not the only woman dealing with this burnout in your organization—and in some cases, it takes the organization to make changes for you to be able to better manage the stresses put on women in the workplace.

Consider using these strategies to recognize and counteract burnout for women company-wide:

  • Promote mental health awareness: Ensure transparency surrounding mental health benefits, I.E. therapy and other available resources. If your benefits plan is lacking, Eric Freedman, founder and CEO of eSkill, suggests circumventing financial barriers by exploring options such as telehealth counseling sessions or access to mobile wellness subscriptions. Companies can also provide mental health support with group meditation classes. Organizations including Nike, Google, and Sony have built this into their company culture.
  • Support working mothers: Assist working mothers in finding solutions for childcare or allow for more flexible hours for those who also home-school their children due to COVID. Don’t just to send an email or memo, but make changes that help women make these changes in their workday. What’s more, female leaders can lead by example by setting boundaries, like being offline at certain times, so their direct reports know that it’s acceptable to do the same. Check out this Fast Company piece, which highlights how other companies provide for the “patchwork of childcare needs” of their employees.
  • Get real: It’s important that company leaders don’t just talk about these things, but they take real action. This will look different for each organization, starting with getting serious about allowing for greater flexible schedules, getting realistic about workloads and where support is needed, updating paid leave policies, and even discussing whether female leaders’ pay is equivalent to the work they’re doing.
Female Leaders: Support Yourself and Others

Whether you manage women in leadership positions, shape your HR policies or workplace culture, or are a female executive, you’re likely experiencing burnout in some way. The first step to solving this issue is understanding where the root causes are and then taking real action to provide solutions. It’s time to put sustainable policies and processes into place so female leaders can do their job without an impossible burden on their shoulders.

Jessica Thiefels is the author of 10 Questions That Answer Life’s Biggest Questions, podcast host of Mindset Reset Radio, CEO of Jessica Thiefels Consulting and founder of the Femxcutive Personal Brand Coaching Program. She’s been writing for more than 10 years and has been featured in top publications including Forbes and Entrepreneur. She also contributes to Fast Company, The Ladders, and more. Follow her on Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.

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Remote Working Hacks: From And For Executive Moms

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When interviewing female executives for her first book, Pulitzer-winning career columnist for The Wall Street Journal, Joann Lublin, became intrigued by the strong representation of executive moms.

“I was surprised to observe that more than 80 percent of the women, irrespective of where they had landed in their jobs, had kids,” she recalls. “And when I looked at those who had become public company CEOs, the percentage was even higher.”

With a career focus on leadership and executive women, Lublin interviewed 86 prominent executive mothers for her recent book, Power Moms: How Executive Mothers Navigate Work and Life, to gain insight into juggling both managerial roles and families.

We spoke with her to glean insightful hacks from successful executives for managing the remote workplace, as it exists in 2021.

Not the Remote Office We Anticipated

While remote work is part of the solution towards gender equality, forced remote working in the COVID-19 context has been a curveball of mixed gendered impacts.

“I don’t think any working mother in America expected that the multiple roles that we were already playing—the first shift, the second shift, and what I call “the third shift,” the mental load—would all be exacerbated by the fact that now the kids would be stuck at home,” says Lublin, “and because we have gendered role expectations, mom would be seen as the primary teacher, caregiver, parent and all of the above.”

Lublin points out that mothers with children under 12 were nearly three times as likely as fathers to have left their jobs between February and August of 2020. As of November, research by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis reported that when it came to parents with children under five, “while nearly all fathers returned to the labor force, mothers regained virtually none of their lost ground”.

“The solutions have to be both personal and societal. On one hand, women have to stand up and insist that parenting is not a solo art. To the extent there are two parents in the home and they’re both working, this has to be a co-parenting arrangement,” says Lublin. “By the same token, they need to speak up and make their needs known to their employers, who in turn not only must trust their employees to get the work done while showing maximum flexibility, but also need to be checking in frequently with their employees.”

Here are six hacks for managing the 2021 remote working office:

 

Set Your Availability

Whether company or individual-driven, Lublin observes the trend and importance of setting hours when you are unreachable.

One Gen-X executive, who has been working remote for years, agreed 7-11 am as her protected hours with her company, reserved for her yoga, exercise and morning routine with her children.

This executive also began scheduling outside interruptions to her day (eg. home maintenance) only during the fringe hours when she would normally be on her commute.

Coordinate Your Co-Parenting

One executive and her husband were each starting their own companies, now both at home with their four and six year old children.

“They initially winged it. It all happened pretty suddenly and you think, we’ll just sort of take one day at a time,” says Lublin. “That was not working.”

The solution the two former Nike executives turned entrepreneurs found for successful co-parenting was to create a  spreadsheet each Sunday night, where they blocked off work engagements and agreed three-hour shifts of rotating parenting responsibilities for the week. While they also learned to allow for flexibility within a plan, this helped them to both dedicate time to family and their work endeavors.

Another way to manage the overall household, says Lublin, is to involve older children. One executive rewarded her teenage daughter for supporting her six year old in doing her schoolwork from home.

Embrace “Work-Life Sway”

Lublin addressed the elusive idea that is “work-life balance” in a chapter called “Manager Moms are not Acrobats” in her first book, Earning It: Hard-Won Lessons from Trailblazing Women at the Top of the Business World.

“That quote came from an executive who strongly believed that this idea of work-life balance was an impossible ideal,” recalls Lublin, “that we could no more achieve work-life balance than we could stand on one leg for that wonderful yoga pose for 24/7.”

Early in her recent research, she came across work-life sway, an approach which encourages ebb and flow between life and work, immersing in whichever you are in right now.

“The idea of work-life sway is that when we have to be a 110% in the moment for work, we will give our all and then some,” says Lublin. “But if life invades or intrudes, if the water heater overflows or the toddler comes running and dumps the contents of her diaper on your lap, you won’t get flustered or totally fall apart or give yourself a guilt trip. You will sway to being present in the other part of your life. The whole concept here is to go with the flow.”

She cites an executive who left her office immediately when she received a video from her nanny of her daughter taking her first steps, and was then home in time to witness the second and third steps.

Release The Guilt

Lublin notes that Melanie Healy, now a Board Member, Investor and Strategic Advisor to many organizations, not only inspired the chapter title mentioned above, but also encouraged her to focus on ditching working mother guilt as “a complete and fruitless waste of our energy.”

If you sit down to eat dinner at 7pm with your children because the day was full until then, as an example, then celebrate that you’re sitting together for dinner rather than guilt yourself about the time.

Unlike many boomer moms, Healy did not hide the personal importance of her work, and instead involved her children in work decisions. She would share with them why a work trip was important to her as much as why their school and extracurricular events were important to her.

Another executive mother with young kids gave her children the power to invoke family time in the evening on demand.

Take Self-Care Time

“The book points out is that self-care is not selfish care,” says Lublin. “If we don’t take care of ourselves, we’re going to burn out.”

From taking two hours to herself on a Sunday when the other parent has the kids to taking a sabbatical, executives found time for personal regeneration to prove essential, even when they resisted doing it.

After a sabbatical, one executive mother decided no longer to be CEO of her company, and instead became Chief Visionary Officer to reduce the amount of operational work she was involved in.

Leverage Job-Share or Reduced Schedule

Turning to personal experience, the first time she proposed a four-day work week with a 20% cut in pay and benefits at WSJ, Lublin was declined.

At that point, she had one child under four years old and was just back from maternity leave with her second. But later that year, WSJ published a front-page story about moms returning to work after maternity leave only to throw in the towel. Norman Pearlstine, Managing Editor at the time, reached out to her.

“I could really relate to that,” she told him. “You know, I’ve got two kids under four. I’m working full-time and I’m dying. I really can’t do it. It’s just too much.”

He invited her to re-propose her reduced schedule and not only did she receive the four-day week work, she also kept full pay and benefits—with the condition she could not work on Friday at all or the deal was off.

Not only did the reduced hours not diminish her productivity, as her bosses had trusted, but she was promoted to management a few years in. Her reduced schedule helped her effectiveness and set a newsroom precedent that allowed other women to job-share.

Lublin advocates that women consider job-sharing as a strategy for advancing in management.

Recognize that Parenting Builds Your Leadership

Lublin feels that parents learn delegation, multitasking and other skills that help them become better leaders. “I think women in particular are able to hone certain skills that make them more effective bosses,” she observes, “particularly, they learn the importance of being an empathetic listener.”

She reflects that being a highly successful reporter did not prepare her to be a successful boss, but parenting was complementary and did help.

“Having children before I moved into management taught me how important and how good it is to be a great mentor,” Lublin concludes. “To be a good human being is to give back and pay it forward.”

By Aimee Hansen

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Four Steps to Making Professional and Personal Life Change in 2021

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Nicki GilmourOur lives changed one year ago this week, in ways we could not have predicted. Most professional women lost the office, the commute and socialization with clients, coworkers and friends in New York City, London or wherever we live and work around the country and the world.

Cities emptied as many relocated to the countryside or the suburbs. Mothers took on 15+ more hours a week of domestic work and childcare, and some left work due to the strain. Others experienced a workforce reduction that cut across every sector in one way or another.

In an unprecedented year, many of us have felt shock, pain, loss and grief in different ways for different reasons. As most changes to our world endure, this brings another level of internal processing and feelings.

In a time where the external context has felt both uncertain and unfamiliar, many of us have felt more compelled towards reconnection with our center, our internal compass and our animating purpose—What do I value? What do I want to envision and create? Where do I want to focus my energy and attention?

These questions matters, now as much or more than ever. Here are four steps to support in the process of re-evaluation:

Step 1: Feel the feels.

Let yourself feel everything, but know that you are not your emotions, rather that you experience these emotions.

“Emotional Agility” is important. Being able to recognize and name how you feel and know that you can see it objectively, and not only experience it subjectively, means understanding that you are not the emotion.

Emotions are data that can help you understand what next steps are right for you. The amazing Dr. Susan David at Harvard has worked extensively on helping people understand that if we put our emotions to one side to embrace false positivity, we lose our capacity to deal with the world as it is, instead of as we wish it to be.

In her TedX talk, she recounts that over the years, when people say they don’t want to try something or they prefer to avoid disappointment or they want fear and shame to just go away, her humorous response is: “I understand, but you have dead people’s goals.”

David offers a free quiz to begin the journey of becoming more astute about your emotions, and her bestselling book is a great way to start getting in touch with your emotions as your guides.

“Normal, natural emotions are now seen as good or bad,” she states. “Being positive has become a new form of moral correctness. It’s unkind and ineffective.”

Ignore the societal call for relentless positivity and keep it real, so you can be honest with yourself about how you feel. You will be happier for it and more guided towards genuine contentment and joy, because you listened to yourself.

Step 2: Take Care of Inner Business.

“Wherever you go, there you are” is the saying.

Who are you? Do you behaviors line up with what you say matters to you? Or, what are you committing to, instead? How do you show up for yourself?

In her excellent book Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader and in her body of work on transitions, including during Covid (quick read here), Herminia Ibarra suggests that in the messy business of getting to where we want to go, we should consider not only our current selves but our future possible selves also.

“Possible selves are the ideas we all have about who we might want to become. Some are concrete and well-informed by experience; others are vague and fuzzy, nascent and untested,” writes Ibarra. “Some are realistic; others are pure fantasy. And, naturally, some appeal more to us than others.”

List your skills, your values and who you want to be. To self-assess your driving inner forces around recognition, fairness, and autonomy, for example, take the SCARF free quiz to see where you fall on the spectrum of these behavioral motivators.

Harvard’s longest running study on adult development suggests that while we say we want money and success, those who live the healthiest, happiest and longest actually share one essential experience —having deep human connection. That includes with ourselves.

Why not use the shake-up of this liminal time to shine an investigate light in the places where you have been on auto-pilot and check-in if you are still living in alignment with yourself, now?

Step 3: Commit to the Changes You Want to Make.

In this blurry time, I invite you to take stock as professional women to review what is working for you and what needs to simply change—in both your inner story and your outer physical world.

Change is hard and neuroscience and psychology shows us that we tend to stick with what we know through routines, even if the habits aren’t that useful to us anymore. Trying to live like we did before is pretty impossible, but being resilient and adaptable amidst whatever this new decade brings in our world is key.

It is the mental or even professional pivot, not the hanging on, that will empower you. Pivoting is something that we are all doing, whether it is small adjustments to how we work or a big transition into a new career altogether. Ibarra has always argued that we are all in transition at work, but we just don’t know it yet.

Businesses who have pivoted during the pandemic have seen the best results when they protect their core, while innovating slightly to meet needs of a changing customer. Company culture and brand purpose matters the most—who are you and what do you stand for?

If businesses are taking stock of these questions, take the same permission slip: Who are you, now? What do you value, now? Where do you wish to set your vision and put your energy, from now onwards?

Step 4: Elevate Your Development With a Coach.

I know this is going to sound strange, but as an executive and leadership coach, I effectively spend four to eight hours per day inside other people’s heads. Like in the movie Being John Malkovich, I become privy to the inner voices that we all have, and it is fascinating to witness the “truths” that we all tell ourselves.

We all have a bunch of constructs, albeit different ones, that make up our default operating system. Your brain, mostly your unconscious, is running the show and is building data models day and night via associative process. This comprises your worldview or mental model, literally the lens through which you experience your life—unless seen, challenged, disrupted and revisioned.

We’re often blind to what creates our limits and blocks. We all have goals, but we need to surface our subconscious gremlins, who are trying to thwart are best-laid plans for change by creating hidden competing agendas.

A great model for approaching this internal work by yourself is available in the book Immunity to Change, which really is a life-altering read that I have discussed at length here on the site. Imposter syndrome runs rampant with successful overachievers, and I have not met one client yet who doesn’t have some deep fear of failure, wobbly sense of worthiness, or hidden insecurity or shame.

But you don’t have to be beholden to these gremlins anymore, and you don’t have to overcome them alone, either.

You can do so much to clear the debris and make real change uninterrupted by your subconscious fears. Neuroscience research has now caught up with what social psychologists have been hypothesizing on for decades: The brain is high elastic or plastic and even the most entrenched behaviors can be modified.

Ibarra and others suggest that coaches are key to the process of making the changes you most hunger for: Firstly, in talking it all out. Secondly, in helping you make real and actionable plans. Thirdly, in acting as an accountability partner and advocate to be in your corner as you navigate the course to new territory.

Are you ready?

If you would like to work with Nicki Gilmour as your executive coach, she has some (daytime only) spots left or we have a cadre of vetted professional coaches available (some have evenings available). Please click here for an exploratory call.

Packages start at $799 for 2 sessions, 5 sessions for $1999 and ten sessions for $3,899.

by Nicki Gilmour, CEO and Founder, Evolved People (theglasshammer.com)

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Check-In: Let’s Put Self-Love On the Conversation Table.

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self loveWhile it’s now normalized to talk about self-care and self-worth in the discussion of our professional lives, it’s rare that we dare to talk about “self-love”.

Yet self-love is an internal orientation from which to envision and navigate our lives—be it personal or professional, and it is what fosters self-worth, self-respect and self-care.

So as we near Valentine’s Day, let’s invite self-love to join this conversation.

Is Self-Care Enough?

According to Psych Central, “self-care is any activity that we do deliberately in order to take care of our mental, emotional and physical health.”

But we often talk about self-care as a momentary respite from a hectic life in order to restore our energy, or a set practice we do before the day runs away from us.

“Self-care should not be something we resort to because we are so absolutely exhausted that we need some reprieve from our own relentless internal pressure,” writes Brianna West writes in Thought Catalog.

“Self-compassion is regarding yourself compassionately. Self-care, by contrast, is treating yourself compassionately,” writes Charlie Gilkey, “…Self-care without self-compassion discharges a debt, usually with suffering somewhere else.”

Self-care spa dates alone are no proxy for cultivating a state of self-love as your foundation for experiencing yourself and the world. Without self-love, superficial self-care can be the coping mechanism or distraction from living a reality that is painfully out of alignment with your needs, desires, meaning fulfillment or growth.

Self-Love Means Self-Valuation

“Self-love means finding peace within ourselves — resting comfortably within the depths of our being. We might find temporary respite by doing something to nurture ourselves,” writes John Amadeo, Ph.D. in Psychology Today, “But a deeper inner peace requires cultivating a certain way of being with ourselves — a warm and nurturing attitude toward what we experience inside.”

Self-love is by definition an ability to meet ourselves where we are, loving and accepting of this moment of “me” right now, right here. It asks us to create expansive change from a place of love and respect, rather than shame or fear.

“Self-love is not simply a state of feeling good. It is a state of appreciation for oneself that grows from actions that support our physical, psychological and spiritual growth,” writes Deborah Khoshaba Psy.D. “Self-love is dynamic; it grows through actions that mature us.

“When we act in ways that expand self-love in us,” Khoshaba continues, “we begin to accept much better our weaknesses as well as our strengths, have less need to explain away our short-comings, have compassion for ourselves as human beings struggling to find personal meaning, are more centered in our life purpose and values, and expect living fulfillment through our own efforts.”

As “actions that mature us,” self-care can include listening within with radical self-honesty. It can mean making the sometimes difficult, heart-aligned, self-discerned choices and changes that create a more integrated life.

“Self-care is often a very unbeautiful thing,” West writes, pointing out that self-care often means doing the thing you least want to do — whether it’s figuring out your accounts or leaving the position or relationship or forgoing the immediacy of a compulsive habit to self-parent yourself into making the choices that nurture your growth.

“Self-love means having a high regard for your own well-being and happiness. Self-love means taking care of your own needs and not sacrificing your well-being to please others,” writes Jeffrey Borenstein, M.D., President & CEO of the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation. “Self-love means not settling for less than you deserve.”

Increasing Heart and Mind Alignment

According to HeartMath Institute, which studies the effect of heart activity on brain function, the mind and the heart (which has its own neural network) are constantly in two-way communication.

The heart actually actually sends more signals to the brain, influencing both emotional processing and higher cognitive faculties, than the brain sends to the heart. Your brain is constantly responding to your heart.

A big part of self-love is coming into that place of acceptance and self-validation where your mind and heart are more aligned more often, and you create from this space.

When you’re out of alignment with the core pulse of your inner being, you may feel life is hard and that you’re stuck. You may feel disconnected with yourself and sense that something is generally off, no matter what you do.

You may often feel foggy and lack energy or animus or vision, like your personal meaning has drained of color. You may feel like you’re living an external reality that does not match, or no longer matches, who you feel you are inside, and your self-care is your attempt to cope.

Sometimes, you can be in a moment in life where your meaning-maker is in cyclical change: where what used to fulfill you no longer nourishes you the same and perhaps your personal evolution calls for something more.

However, when you are deeply honest with yourself, deeply accepting of yourself, and honoring and validating your needs while acting from personal alignment, you begin to feel less stress and more vitality. You do not block any emotion because emotions can provide data and feedback.

You feel a greater sense of wholeness and peace within yourself and connection to yourself, to others and to the world. You are more curious and more creative. You feel mentally and physically more solid and have greater resilience for accepting yourself even in your struggles.

Questions To Check-In With Your Heart:

– How open are you to feeling all of your emotional experience? Do you block, disallow, distract or escape from experiencing certain emotions? Can you accept yourself in both uncertainty and vulnerability? Do you practice bringing awareness to your emotions as information?

– Do you trust in yourself — and at least as much as you trust others? Do you listen to your own voice as the authority in your life? Are there areas in your life where you could gently build up more self-trust and inner accountability? Are you able to forgive yourself?

– Do you create the space to intentionally check-in with your heart? Do you slow down and get still enough to discern the signals of your own truth from the collective noise, or do you keep the wheels spinning so you can’t? What would you hear if you did?

– Do you self-validate your experience and your own needs? Are you compassionately aware of your needs and willing to take responsibility for them and clearly communicate them? Or do you invalidate, dismiss or disown them? Are you willing also to own and validate your inspirations and curiosities and desires for expression?

– Are you willing to listen to and even act upon the wisdom of your gut and heart? Or are you dismissive of internal callings or yearnings if they fall outside of your mental framework of what’s rational or realistic?

– How honest can you be with yourself? Are you attached to any concept or identity of yourself that inhibits your ability to know yourself more deeply and possibly, openly? What questions are you unwilling to ask yourself?

– Are you willing to say “no” from love? Have you created boundaries as a healthy container for honoring your values, your energy and your time? Are you willing to choose yourself?

– Do you know what you value? Are you willing to act in alignment from your values, even when it’s difficult? Do you live with intention and are able to make the choices that nurture your center and further your growth?

– Is what you are committing to, through where your energy and action goes, the same as what you want? Can you bring your habitual commitments into closer alignment with your desires?

– Are you still hustling to earn your sense of worth and value from others or do you claim it for yourself? Are you able to embrace growth opportunities or do you shrink at criticism? What is one area of your life where you might need to claim your worth and value?

We are all on a journey of cultivating self-love, and that journey impacts everything about not only how we show up in the world — in every facet of our lives — but also how we experience ourselves as we do so.

When it comes to enjoying that ride, cultivating self-love is probably the richest, most valuable, rewarding work we will ever do.

By Aimee Hansen

(Our “Heart” Coach)

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Your Negative Emotions Can Guide You to Value-Based Actions

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negative emotionsWhen we ignore, invalidate or suppress our negative emotions because we don’t want to feel them, or feel they are unacceptable, they do not go away.

“Effective leaders are mindful of their inner experiences but not caught in them. They know how to free up their internal resources and commit to actions that align with their values,” writes Dr. Susan David and Christina Congleton in Harvard Business Review. 

You Can’t Negate Negative Emotions

David, Harvard Medical School psychologist and author of the award-winning book, Emotional Agility, shares in her TED Talk that a third of us either judge ourselves for having “bad emotions” like sadness or anger or grief, or try to push these feelings down.

“Research on emotional suppression shows that when emotions are pushed aside or ignored, they get stronger,” says David. “Psychologists call this amplification.”

Indeed, research indicates that fighting against thoughts on addiction only magnifies them, restraining thoughts can create more stress and suppressing negative emotions spawns more emotional eating than admitting the emotions are there. 

David and Congleton have found that executives and leaders can get “hooked by” negative emotions— buying into them, avoiding situations that evoke those feelings and limiting themselves. Or, by denying the negative thoughts and rationalizing them away, even pushing themselves into situations that aren’t aligned with their values. 

Ultimately, suppressing or “fixing” negative emotions often ends up in cycling through the same reoccurring trigger areas of challenge for years. 

The Benefits of Feeling What You Don’t Want to Feel

“The conventional view of emotions as good or bad, positive or negative, is rigid. And rigidity in the face of complexity is toxic,” says David. “We need greater levels of emotional agility for true resilience and thriving.“

Positive emotions are simply those we tend to “find pleasurable to experience”—such as joy, satisfaction, love, serenity, interest or amusement. Whereas negative emotions are simply those we don’t find pleasurable to experience—such as fear, anger, disgust, sadness, rage, loneliness and annoyance. Neither of these definitions imply the effect of having the emotion is entirely positive or negative within us, just that we judge experiencing it as so.

Apparently, a 3:1 positive/negative emotional experience ratio is necessary for a sense of flourishing, but the balance plays a part.

“One idea in the study of emotion and its impact on psychological health is overdue for retirement: that negative emotions (like sadness or fear) are inherently bad or maladaptive for our psychological well-being, and positive emotions (like happiness or joy) are inherently good or adaptive,” writes June Gruber.

So-called negative emotions have an inherent value. Negative emotions can foster detailed and analytical thinking and less stereotypical thoughts. Feelings like sadness can increase focus and help us to learn from mistakes and assess social situations better.

Negative emotions can facilitate us to go deeper into self-understanding and empathy. Being willing to experience them can build emotional resilience. They help us to evaluate our experience and detect when an area of life feels off and needs our attention.

Experiencing and accepting emotions like anger and sadness are important to our mental health. Mindfulness training has been helpful in overcoming anxiety disorders, not because it eradicated negative feelings but it trained participants to accept them. 

Research has shown the ability to hold mixed emotions together at once precedes improvements in well-being, even if it’s unpleasant or difficult. Across a study of ten years, frequent experiences of mixed emotions were strongly associated with relatively good physical health and that increases in them weakened age-related health declines.

“We find that psychological well-being is not entirely determined by the presence of one type or kind of an emotion,” writes Gerber, “but rather an ability to experience a rich diversity of both positive and negative emotions.”

From Emotional Data to Values-Aligned Action

David urges us to realize that emotions are data that “contain flashing lights to things that we care about”—when we get clear on precisely what we are feeling and can respond by taking steps that are value-aligned.

“Emotions are data, they are not directives,” she caveats. “We can show up to and mine our emotions for their values without needing to listen to them.” Rather, we pay attention to how they point to what we value. 

David and Congleton suggest four practices derived from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), originally created by Dr. Steven C. Hayes.

Recognize You Are Stuck.

Recognize your own patterns. Where are you caught in rigid, repeating mental loops—your thoughts like a broken record inside that is insistent on replaying? Does the loop feel familiar from the past, like situations you’ve felt before that triggered and created similar contraction? These loops only deplete your mental resources. Notice if you often feel undervalued, for example.

Identify Thoughts and Feelings. 

Label your thoughts and emotions distinctively to create emotional distance and clarity of the emotional data. If you feel you have to be available all the time for work, then you can get perspective by stating “I’m having the thought that I have to be available all the time for work.” Then you can look at what you feel and want to do.

Rather than saying “I’m sad” and being drowned by the emotion, you can say “I’m noticing that I’m feeling sad,” and create enough space to look at the data. This is a mindfulness practice that can improve behavior, well-being and promote beneficial changes in the brain. 

Dr. Marsha Linehan, creator of dialectal behavior therapy, emphasizes that validating emotions requires accurate—observing and describing the event, thoughts and emotions, perhaps how it feels in your body—not interpretation or assumptions, which can invalidate and cause distrust in your internal experience.

“When he interrupted me for the second time, I felt anger and felt tightness and heat in my chest” is an observation. “I shouldn’t be so sensitive” is not.

Accept and Observe.

Rather than suppress or try to control your thoughts or emotions, even if you can’t rationally justify them or they don’t match how you think of yourself, allow them to be present. Breath ten deep breaths to check in. Rather than making them feel better, this is about making room for your raw emotions to reveal. What is going on internally and externally, and what is the energetic quality of your feelings? 

If you can get underneath the emotion, are they giving you a clear signal of something that matters, for which you could respond differently? 

Act in Alignment With Values. 

“You don’t get to have a meaningful career or raise a family or leave the world a better place without stress and discomfort,” says David. “Discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life.”

When you can treat your emotions as data, you can create choices of how you respond to them to act in a way that aligns with your values. 

Rather than be absorbed by or pulled into reaction by your emotions, you can be guided by your values, which is a primary focus of executive coaching. You can consider what actions will bring you closer to and further from them.

“When you take values-based actions, you will eventually arrive at a choice point,” tweets David. “Will you move toward your values and act like the person you wish to be, or will you move away from your values and act against them?”

By Aimee Hansen

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