Ask Me Anything .... It's Your Space for Coaching and Advice

Are you ready to create riches in your work and life? It's time for Shedding the Bitch Radio and TV, where you can discuss, debate, and get advice on how to discover and shed the bitches of fear, insecurity, self-doubt, and negativity so you can realize your dreams and life purpose and create and accelerate the riches in life you deserve. So let's welcome your ball of fire host, Bernadette Boas.

Good day, good day, good day everyone! How are you on this glorious, glorious day? It is Ask Me Anything, our episode which is the first Tuesday of every month where I provide you a space to get advice, suggestions, recommendations, sometimes tough love. So regardless of where you might be listening or watching, you can post your question or situation in the comment section out on BlogTalkRadio, out on where we're streaming, which is Facebook, YouTube, and I will keep an eye out for those questions or comments and give you the help and support that you need. What this is really all about is just providing you a platform to get on, you know, one Tuesday of every month to get your questions answered from an expert coach, whether it has to do with your career, maybe you own a business, or maybe there's something going on in your life. And if I can't support you, then I'll be sure to find a resource for you and even connect the two of you. But Shedding the Bits Radio and TV is really for those busy professionals who are high potential, who have great goals and ambitions and yet might be struggling in one way or the other to be the powerhouse leader that they are meant to be. And so we bring you guests each and every week— other than the first Tuesday of every month, I should say— to really provide you kind of almost an opportunity to relate to other situations, relate to what it is that they're seeing out there in the business world. When it comes to trying to be a powerhouse leader. So you'll hear more and more in regards to our guests and our upcoming episodes. And so be sure to follow, like, subscribe, rate, comment. And, uh, we want to bring you the best topics and the best guests that we, um, that we can find that you need and you'll want to hear from. All right, let me give you an idea of the questions that we have this week so far. But again, If you happen to stop in, whether you're listening or watching, and you want some support on something, I'm going to be going between our platforms so I can just keep an eye out. Deborah's not with me today, but I can keep an eye out for any comments or any, any situations that you might be posting about. All right, so here are the questions that we're going to talk about. What are the top traits of a leader? So this is an individual who is kind of in a middle stage of their career, but now they're taking on more and more responsibilities, and they really want to be proactive in what is it that they need to do to grow as a leader. The other one is going to be, how do I get my manager to openly receive feedback from their employees and/or their vendors without getting defensive. And then lastly, we're going to talk about my boss asks for input but then doesn't use it. So who can relate to any one of those three situations? I know I certainly could at some point in my, in my career and even in my entrepreneurial experience. And as an executive leadership coach, I see all the dynamics. Of interpersonal relationships, because that's what it's all about. Everything that we do in life, that you actually do in life, really has to do with the interpersonal relationship, the communications, the ability or lack of to connect, to really collaborate, to engage, to be genuinely interested in, you know, other people's needs and wants and desires. And so I, you know, I'll see and you'll experience, you know, a great many of these situations at home or even at work. So let's get to the first one, which is all about what are the traits of a leader? And this is one of those big questions that can go into a lot of different directions, and I'm going to try to keep us all focused here. So first off, I definitely want to express that One, just because one has people reporting to them doesn't necessarily default them as a leader because without certain traits and qualities and even skills, one may fall very, very short of being a true leader. At the same time, someone who's a leader doesn't even have to have anybody reporting to them. You know, the core, core, core thing, though it won't be one of my top 3 that we'll talk about, but my core, core, you know, a core, core thing is one's ability to influence determines if one's a leader. So influencing means that whether you have people directly reporting to you, or even if it's a team environment, but maybe you're an individual contributor that then has a lot of dotted lines to other people, your ability to influence getting them to actually take your lead is going to determine whether or not you're successful and they're successful. So it doesn't matter if hierarchically you have people reporting to you. You could be an individual contributor and still be a leader. So that said, you can Google anywhere what, you know, what are the top traits of a leader, and you're going to come across things, you know, everything from, well, the skills of it. Communication, delegation, negotiation, influence, prioritization, decision-making. You're going to get to some more of qualities and traits of individuals like integrity, compassion, empathy. So you're going to come up with a whole, whole list that you're going to find of what individuals deem to be an effective leader, a true leader. And all of them are right. At the same time, in my 14 years of working, uh, with both entrepreneurial and corporate middle managers to senior executives, is that if they are challenged— if you are challenged in any way, shape, or form like this individual, actually, and, um, he wasn't even challenged, he just wanted proactively to get ahead of the fact that he is definitely elevating his position, his influence within his organization and even in his industry. And he just wanted to get ahead of the curve as to, you know, how— what should I be focused on? What should I be prioritizing? What should I ensure that I'm leveraging in developing myself and turning myself into a real leader? So whether you're struggling or you want to get ahead of the curve, I would prefer you to focus on really 3. Now I mentioned influence is core, and it is, but even before you might find yourself to be influential to other individuals, there are some 3, in my opinion, Bernadette Boas's opinion, 3 things that if you could work on as you are going out in the world or as you're even, you know, engaging within your life at home or with your friends in the community, whatever the case might be, if you can master and kind of instill, you know, these 3 traits of a leader, it's going to kind of take care of a lot of the other qualities and traits and skills that people talk about when it comes to leadership. And those 3 are— and then I'll dig into each one of them— are trust, empathy, and self-awareness. And I'm going to hit self-awareness last, although it really all starts there, but I'll get to that in just a second. So when it comes to trust, this is, this is the foundation. If you have ever, and maybe, you know, you can tell me in the comment section if you've ever read The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni, he will tell you that, you know, trust is one of those functions or dysfunctions that is the foundation of everything else. And it is the foundation of any relationship— siblings, uh, parent to child, friend, colleague, uh, lover. It doesn't matter. If you don't have trust as the starting point, then everything else breaks down. And so you as a leader have to ensure that you're instilling trust in those around you. They need to know that you have their back. They need to know that you'll, you know, that as much as they'll walk through fire for you, you'll walk through fire for them. Because they won't walk until you've shown them and you've proved to them that you are to be trusted. So working on the trust factor from the very beginning. So let's talk through some scenarios of where it breaks down. So if your boss, you know, if you're the employee and you have a boss, and, and again, this employee is rising up and therefore taking on his own leadership or her leadership responsibilities, but if your boss and those around you if you don't trust them, if you don't feel that they have your back, if they all of a sudden, you know, are taking credit for your ideas or your, for your input, if they're not even accepting, which we're going to talk about next, but if they're not even accepting your input or opinions or viewpoints or ideas, if they are not necessarily helping you and guiding you to develop whatever opportunities or whatever areas of development are needed, and they're not giving you that, that constructive feedback. And then the next thing you know, you walk into a review or a year-end or an assessment, and you're finding, finding out things that no one's ever mentioned to you before. All right, all of those aspects— and there's tons of others— but all of those aspects is a breakdown of trust. If you can't trust your, your boss or those around you, then it's going to be a really difficult road to hoe when it comes to you being successful. So therefore, you need to then, you know, kind of say to yourself, all right, then, you know, how do I instill trust? What is it about me that either is screaming you can trust me and I have your back. Or there might be some wavering from those around you. Or in, you know, there's cases where if I do have clients do an assessment, have an assessment done, especially a 360 assessment. And what a 360 assessment is, is pretty much everyone within your circle of influence is asked to assess you and your performance. And your behavior. So it could be your bosses, so it could be up, it could be your peers across, and it could be your employees or teammates or others that have a lot of interaction with you. And so in those, you know, assessments, the feedback could be that they absolutely don't trust you. So it could go from very trustworthy, wavering, you know, not quite sure, and total distrust in you. And so you need to kind of figure out, like, right up front, proactively, like my one client, and you need to figure out what am I doing to either be developing all this trust from people or, you know, severely lacking the trust, and then work on it. Because again, trust is the foundation, and therefore, if you don't have trust you don't have relationships, let alone leadership, right? That only makes sense that they all go hand in hand. Okay, all right, the next one is empathy. And I happen to love dialogue around empathy, and the way I look at it is we're not robots. I say that a lot to those I work with, those I hang out with, those that work with me as a coach and client, but we're not robots. I come from the old school of corporate where they did expect you to kind of leave your emotions at the door, leave your social, your family, everything else that's happening in 60% of your life, you need to leave that at the door. This is business. This is business. I even recently had a client tell me that, No, I, I really try to leave my relationships, you know, purely to business, not to personal. Well, that sounds like that could be a safeguard and could be a good idea, and you don't want to, you know, bring in a lot of potential baggage or emotions, you know, to where you might think it's going to jeopardize your ability to do your job. But again, We're not robots, and therefore we can't ignore, and as a leader you can't ignore, that when people walk in through the door, whether that's online or literally, you can't expect that they're all of a sudden wiping their head and their heart, you know, blank of any emotion, good, bad, or indifferent. You have to recognize and you have to be empathetic to the fact that those people that you're interacting with, stranger or teammate, they, you know, they have hearts and minds that can get easily disrupted. And therefore, you have to be empathetic and really kind of try to walk in their shoes and understand where they're coming from. Okay. Now, both trust and empathy, if you think about, okay, so how do I build all of that? So it's not only in the way you behave, but then it is bringing in, okay, it is the way I communicate, it is the way I influence, it is the way I connect and collaborate. So now you could start seeing all the different other traits and qualities and skills outside of the trust so far and empathy that we're talking about that really play into what it takes to be a powerhouse leader, as I call them in my world. So trust and empathy. And then lastly is self-awareness. And this is probably, if I had put them in order of priority, I would have started here. And the reason why is not that trust isn't the most important, because I just said that it was the most important, but more so, if you're not self-aware of your own behaviors, beliefs, actions, words, emotions. If you're not aware of how you're coming across to others, keep in mind one's perception is one's reality. It's not going to be your reality. So if you're telling yourself, oh, I'm a great leader and I'm so trustworthy and I'm very empathetic and I'm a great listener, and yet you're getting feedback— like I had mentioned that, you know, I do a lot of different types of assessments with my clients and all of a sudden a good 8 out of 10 of them will be very surprised at some of the feedback, and they won't have self-identified themselves with that feedback, and yet that is someone else's reality because perception is reality. Now I'll often, you know, get pushback, and I'll be, you know, I'll hear someone say, well, they never liked me to begin with, so I don't necessarily trust their feedback. Well, and I'm not, you know, I will never tell them that they can 100% guarantee that the feedback is pure, is truthful, is authentic, because, you know, I'm sure there's times when if you don't have a good relationship with someone and all of a sudden you're being asked to assess them, I get this opportunity to smack this individual, not physically, but at least, you know, at least in words on paper. So you want to really, you know, kind of ensure that if there's one thing you're working on every day that will help with trust and empathy and influence and communication and compassion and being a true leader, leader. It is working on you becoming self-aware. I, um, often in my practice, um, I, you know, I kind of preach, let alone speak and coach, on the fact that life and individuals are 80% mindset, 20% their skill set, whether that's at home or in the workplace. You know, they need to spend 80% of their days working on what's going on inside, you know, in between their two ears. Why are they feeling the way they're feeling? Why are they using the words that they're using? Why are they behaving the way that they're behaving? They really need to look in the mirror. You need to look in the mirror and you need to have a very realistic self-assessment of yourself to understand whether or not you're being an effective leader or not. And this gentleman who came to me, who wanted to kind of proactively, you know, kind of look at all the different facets of leadership and areas that he would want to work on. It was awesome that he was self-identifying, very self-aware of areas of definite strength, but also areas of weakness. So those would be the 3 core ones I would want anyone to focus on: trust, empathy, and self-awareness. All right, okay, I'm just going to take a glance around. Now keep in mind, you can always reach out to me at ballafirecoaching.com, and if you have any, any needs or any questions, you can always, um, kind of ping me there. Or most of the questions and situations I get and the coaching requests that I get is through LinkedIn, so please also be sure that you're linking in. And again, subscribe, follow, rate, you know, us on Shedding the Bitch TV on YouTube, Shedding the Bitch on Facebook and Twitter, and then of course Shedding the Bitch Radio on any one of your podcast streaming services. All right, let me just take one last look over here, and I want to make sure I do as well because Last week, sadly, unfortunately, we had someone call in and I was having, um, we were having audio issues, uh, trying to get her onto the, onto the, um, onto the program. All right, so that was our first question. Now our second question, um, and actually I addressed this if you, um, if you're an avid Shedding the Bitch radio and TV viewer, that's awesome, and continue to do so every Tuesday at noon, or when— once they are streamed and they are across any one of your podcast streaming services as well as on YouTube. But at the same time, every Thursday at 1:00 PM, I also go live on LinkedIn and we have a coaching— power hour coaching session. So you also have an opportunity to reach out to me there if you have any need for support or you just need some advice or some on something, or you, you know, want to talk over an opportunity and, and get some insights as to what to do next. So I say that because this question, as often as it comes up, this situation with this individual, as often as it comes up, we did address it on our Power Hour coaching last week. However, it's. Come up since, and I just thought I would, I would bring it here onto Shedding the Bitch Radio and TV for all of you. All right, so this actually came out from a session that I had last week or the week before, and it's a— and a term that she used was awesome to me, and I definitely wanted to share that with all of you. But the situation is not uncommon. Okay, so it is, "How do I get my managers to openly receive feedback from their employees or their vendors without getting defensive?" And I certainly know the vendor situation as much as I know the employee situation, but I, you know, having a lot of vendors in my business for the last 12 years, but also in corporate, we would have to hear, I would have to hear some hard feedback. But this is, you know, this is more common than people think because a lot of a lot of you are thinking, well, I'm not necessarily concerned about giving feedback to my boss, but I don't like getting feedback from my boss, like during reviews or during assessments, or I don't even like getting feedback from my peers and, and even friends and loved ones. So that's what really intrigued me and what I really was interested in bringing to you is this, this situation that some fall into, and more often than not, where they are observing or they're in the midst of being confronted or dealing with a situation coming from their boss that they are not happy with, they don't accept, and/or they want to point out for them because, one, maybe not, not the way that they should be treating their employees, or two, that it's just overall something they may not be aware of, and it's hurting them being that effective leader we were just talking about, and they need to just kind of, you know, have someone give them that observation or feedback. And yet, you know, in this case, but in many, many cases, you know, a lot of managers/bosses, not leaders, because leaders are empathetic, are compassionate, do listen, But many managers/bosses have this attitude like, "Well, wait a minute, I'm the boss. I tell you what's right or wrong. You don't tell me." And that's the situation that most individuals come to me to talk about. In this conversation, we were talking about it as coaching up was the term that she used. And I absolutely loved it. And it is a skill, but it's also a situation. That as much as we train peers and even the bosses/leaders, you know, to be able to give feedback to others and do it in such a way that they don't get defensive or they don't get, you know, feel like they're getting beat up, it's really important that we talk about, okay, so what does an employee do if they have to give feedback up, and how do they do that in a constructive way to where the individual won't get defensive or abrupt with them. And yet at the same time, we also need to work on the, the manager that is getting defensive because it's really their problem. So that's the first thing I want to, want to say is recognize that if you have been disrespected, if you have been mistreated, or if you simply want to give feedback that could help your boss and you're sensing that, you know, it's not going to be well received. Well, I would tell you to still continue to do it. Push through the, you know, being uncomfortable, push through the fear, push through the anxiety, and just make sure your voice is heard. You always want to ensure you are making sure your voice is heard because it's even though it should be your, your manager/boss's desire to want you to be heard, they're not going to necessarily come to you and pull it out of you. So you have to be willing to step up, lean in, whatever term you want to use, be courageous to walk into that type of situation and And then what I would want you to do is be very prepared for whatever might happen. So you might be sitting there going, well, Bernadette, how do I do that? Well, uh, you know, it's a lesson I learned in, you know, in sales decades ago, um, but it's, you know, write down handling objections. And this could be— this could be used for anything that you're about to do. It could be this type of difficult conversation. It could be the fact that you are going to get your own feedback. It could be that you want to go and make a request. Maybe you want to ask for a promotion or, you know, to start a new business or ask for money. And you really want to look at all the things that could happen in a great way and all the things that could just make the whole thing implode and fall apart. And then what you want to do is you don't want to just look at them and go, oh yeah, if that works, that's terrific, but if the man— if this doesn't work, then I'm screwed. That's not, that's not where you want to end. You still want to keep going, and you want to say, awesome, what do I do if things, things go great? What do I say? Because believe it or not, and we won't get too far off track of this, believe it or not, if people receive what it is that they want, they often don't know how to respond. They all of a sudden get very quiet or humble or they actually get insecure, almost like imposter syndrome. Like, oh my gosh, do I, do I deserve it? Oh my gosh, they said yes! Oh my gosh, like, what now? Let you know. And so there— so you want to prepare and, and plan all of that. At the same time, you definitely want to look at all the, all of the objections, all the situations, all the different ways that that conversation or request could be taken in a negative way. So after you've kind of decided, yes, I'm going to push through my fear, I'm going to push through the being uncomfortable, and I'm going to, you know, kind of give this feedback up to my, to my boss, to my manager, I, you know, then you want to say, okay, so here I know all the good things and I know my responses to that. Here are all the different scenarios of, you know, what could go wrong. And here's how I'm going to handle them. Handle objections. Here's how I'm going to handle them. If they get defensive, I'm going to do X, Y, and Z. If they get, you know, abrupt or rude, uh, you know, I'm going to do 1, 2, or 3. If they say this or ask me a question, you know, like, you know, if all of a sudden they're like, well, you know, um, give me a— give me an example because that's not what— that's not how I behave, or that's not what I said, or you misunderstood. You really want to walk through every different type of response or, or reaction that you might receive and come up with how you're going to respond to it and what you're literally going to say or do. Now, I don't want you to walk in there with this script. Now, you could have it, you know, notes down on your notepad, and, you know, you could, you know, kind of look at it as you're going. And at the same time, uh, not necessarily on a phone, um, having a journal and a pen is always a good way in any type of situation. It's a good way to kind of calm yourself down, take a deep breath, slow the pace for everyone around you, including yourself. Because you could just be, you know, you could just be acting as if you're taking notes, or you're reading, or you're, you know, trying to, you know, identify that next question or, or, or piece of information that you have. So a journal and a pen are some great tools to help guide you through something that you might find uncomfortable. So, this coaching up, you know, requires you to push through your fear, plan, plan and prepare. At the same time, what I also want you to do is recognize the fact that, and this is where if you were, you know, were listening or watching for our the first question around the traits of a leader. You're a leader too. Every individual on this planet are, you know, are a leader. They just need to behave and act that way. So what you also want to do is you want to recognize that this person, even though you're— it's your boss, this person is a person. They're not a robot, and therefore they do have their own junk as much as they do have their own beauty about them. So, you know, you definitely want to kind of get empathetic, compassionate, put yourself in their shoes. You know, are they acting out, or are they saying things, or are they behaving in such a way because of something going on in their life, in their world, that you need to be empathetic and compassionate about? Okay. And at the same time, the next thing I would tell you to do is, if you know their motivations, if you know their goals, if you know their agenda— and this is another sales you know, coming from the sales world, not only how to handle objections, but if you know what motivates your boss and what, you know, what their goals are and aspirations and needs, wants, and desires are, you can also use that as a way to position this discussion that you want to give them feedback of something that, you know, they may, they may be doing that's really kind of you don't accept and/or that is not making them look good. And so you can use their motivations and their goals and aspirations as a way to be able to say, hey, you know, Joe, I, you know, you want to preface it by saying, you know, I really respect you and appreciate you as the boss and you're always X, Y, and Z and I'm grateful for that. However, I have some observations or I have some feedback for you and, you know, and I know you— and this is where the goal and the aspirations and desires come— and I know you are looking to, you know, get that next promotion or I know you're looking to take on more responsibilities. I know you're looking to take over a whole new region. Whatever the case might be, you can use their goals and aspirations, desires, wants, and needs to position this conversation you're going to have. Because then it, then it's genuinely you're saying, look, I'm looking out for you, so I have to give you this feedback. I'm looking out for you, but I'm also looking out for myself because I don't appreciate, or I don't, you know, I won't be disrespected. Whatever the situation and scenario is that you might go through where you have to give feedback up or coach up, as Ann stated, you want to be sure that you also are not only looking at how to handle any pushback or objection, but also, you know, how can you position it in such a way that motivates them, that gets their attention, because they do have goals and aspirations. So you want to get this all kind of planned out, um, you know, to ensure that you have an effective conversation with someone. Okay, now the next thing too is you certainly want to go into this type of situation calm, cool, and collected. And if you can, you also want to go into ensuring that both of you are in a neutral place. And what I mean by that is, you know, you don't want to necessarily go in to coach up or even to just have a difficult conversation of any kind. If they're initiating with you or you're initiating with them, you want to be cognizant and proactively plan to find a neutral— don't go into their office and sit across the desk where they're in a superior position to you. You know, take, you know, go for a walk, suggest going to lunch, go down to the cafeteria, get on a Zoom call, whatever the case might be. But you definitely want to find a neutral place to where you're on kind of equal level ground. Okay, and then as you get into the conversation, like I said, you want to express respect and appreciation for their authority and the fact that they're your boss. At the same time, you're working in their goals and aspirations. But one key point of all of your conversation with them is going to be specifics. You need to give details. You need to give I said it, specifics. It can't be generalizations. They need to be able to put themselves back to whatever that situation or experience or event was. They need to, you know, see themselves in that situation, hopefully in the role or the behavior that you're now, you know, talking to them about. And the only way to do that is make sure you have all the details and specifics of the situation while you're also expressing the impact that it had on you and possibly the impact it had on other people around you as well as the impact on them. So the situation might be, you know, Joe, excuse me, the other day in our meeting, you know, I brought up this idea and you shut it down and, you know, kind of talked right through me as if I wasn't in the room. And that really made me feel invisible and that you didn't appreciate me and that you didn't want my contribution and that I'm really not kind of a team, a team member. And I know because of your, you know, your goal to X, Y, and Z, or your desire to continue to move up in the company, I know that that's not what you mean to do, but I just want to express of how it's coming across. Not only for myself but for others around you. And therefore, I just want to see what we can do to kind of improve how we engage and how we interact. Um, so you definitely just want to kind of frame the whole thing. After you've broken through your fear and being uncomfortable, after you've planned and prepared and handled those objections, you want to now kind of just be very holistic in how you approach the conversation. And then what you also want to do is be sure that before you end that conversation, you know, you gain an understanding. Now, that doesn't mean you agree with each other. You can agree to disagree, but at the same time, you voiced it, you've heard them, you kind of come to an, you know, an understanding, not necessarily an agreement. If it is an agreement, like if you had do say to them, well, you know, if there's any way we can do 1, 2, and 3 to really improve how we interact and relate to one another, that, you know, that's an agreement. And get that person to acknowledge that, yes, you're right, yes, I'll, you know, I'll try, you know, different things, I'll, you know, try to work harder on that. Well, that's that agreement. But you might not always get to agreement. You might agree, to disagree. And be— and you want to get to a point of, you know, what is that desired outcome for this conversation? Well, as long as I get them to understand and, and listen and realize what this has done to me, even if I just get that and I don't get them to acknowledge and agree that yes, that's how they treated me and this is what they're going to do about it, as long as you're satisfied with that with that outcome, then you're good. But don't leave that situation, don't leave that conversation until you've met your desired outcome for it. Because too often I'll get calls, I have 911 calls with my clients, and I'll get calls and it'll be like, you know, I had this conversation, uh, this is what happened, uh, this is how it ended. And I'll ask, you know, how do you feel about it? It's okay, but as I dig, dig, dig, I, you know, all of a sudden it's like, well, I, I really wish they blah, or I wish I did X, or whatever the case might be. This is where the planning comes in. You want to make sure that, you know, you know from the very beginning what it is you're going to talk about, all those details and specifics, how you're going to handle those objections, what is your desired outcome, what is their goals and agenda and aspirations, so you can leverage that. And then, you know, but so when you leave that conversation, you feel satisfied. Even if nothing changes, you still feel satisfied. Okay, that's the most important part, because we don't always get what we want. At the same time, it doesn't mean that we're miserable or unhappy about it. It just means We want to be heard. True leaders— going back to the first question about traits of a leader— true leaders want, want their people to know that they're heard. Again, they're not necessarily going to agree with them, but they want them to know that they've been heard. Okay, so that's the most important part of all of that. Okay, let's get to the last question. And again, if you should have a question while we're live or post broadcast, feel free to continue to post your comments on wherever you're listening or viewing this broadcast, and I will get to it, or Deborah will, will see it and get it to me on it, and I will get with you directly. All right, so I'm watching the studio, I'm watching the, the portals, so just let, you know, let me know that you have something going on. All right, so this last question is, my boss asks for input but doesn't then use it. So this goes to almost— it's like a segue of each of these questions, but some of those elements we just talked about in that previous situation tie nicely into this. So First off, what I would want you to do— self-awareness, that's what life is all about— is understand for yourself. Ask yourself the question, why do I not like when my boss asks me for input and doesn't use it? What, what is it about that? Is it the fact that, well, I just feel insecure, or I feel, um, like imposter syndrome, like I don't even belong You know, I deserve to be there, and yet, and he's proving it, or she's proving it time and time again because I'm giving input of which they're not using. So you first want to understand what is it about that situation that you're not even comfortable with, or maybe you are. So you, but you want to tap into and be very self-aware of why this situation, especially if you bring it to a coach like myself, that's going to be the first question I ask you is why. Why is, why is this important? What is, what are you feeling? What's coming up as a result of this situation? All right, now the segue from the last question is the fact that there's a good, good amount of times where a superior might ask their, their employees, their teammates for input, for ideas, for insights. For— did I say opinions? And they're doing it for no other reason than confirming or validating what they've already decided. Now 99% of the employees walk away going, well, they already had their mind made up, why did they even bother? However, from putting yourself in, in this case, in your boss's shoes, they might just be wanting to validate what it is that they've already come up with. Because if all of a sudden they do have this new idea or this new policy or this new plan or strategy or whatever the case might be, and all of a sudden, you know, you and others are giving them totally contrary or very different input, well, then they might be like, okay, I have to do some reconsideration. But at the same time, in a lot of cases, especially if they know you and they know the business and they know the team and how things operate. They just simply might be asking you for input because of confirmation or validation of what they've already decided on. So don't necessarily walk away all pissed or angst that you, you know, aren't happy with it. Okay, now some, some is— are asking you for their input because they are placating. They are kind of saying, hey, you know, I want your input. But you know what, I'm not really going to take it, that type of thing. So, you know, there are situations where there are bosses that are being told that they have to listen to their employees, and yet they're just like, yeah, no, I don't care, but I'll do it just to kind of make it look as if I care, that type of thing. And then, of course, there's situations where he or she do— does want you to be heard. Does want to give you a platform for being heard. Again, doesn't mean they're going to take your input, use your input, but they want you to be heard. So he's either— he or she are confirming or validating, um, they want you to be heard, or they're just placating you. In whatever, you know, in any of those scenarios, you determine, does that make me happy? Does that stress me out? And if it stresses you out, go have a conversation with them. And use all the tips that I just provided you in that first— or I'm sorry, in that second question and situation that we discussed. All right, so that's our Ask Me Anything episode, and give you tips and advice. And we're not going anywhere, you know, don't listen to that, uh, back backdrop. I'm not sure actually why it's, um, playing, but, um, we're not going anywhere until we wrap up. But if you do have questions or you do have situations that you need some coaching advice and tips on, then just feel free to reach out, leave your comments, and, um, I will be sure to reach— get to you directly. And then, and then we're going to bring them all through the month. I collect them actually, and, and then I bring them right here on the first Tuesday of every month, uh, for our Ask Me Anything episode. Okay, so I'm Bernadette Boas of Ball of Fire Coaching. I'm thrilled that you are here this week. And I'll look forward to having you right back here for a great guest that we'll have next Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Take care everybody, have a great week.

Thank you for taking part in Shedding the Bitch Radio and TV with Bernadette Boas. We would love to know what your biggest takeaway was. Go to Shedding the Bitch on Facebook or YouTube and leave a comment. You can also subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts and YouTube so you don't miss a single episode of the show. And with your input, we can help other powerhouse women just like you find the show and decide if it's right for them. Learn more about Bernadette at balloffirecoaching.com. See you next week.