S01 Episode 11: Emotional Entrepreneurs

Your emotions are your superpower, not your curse. Let's talk about it.

Hey. Hey. Welcome to the Leadership is Feminine podcast. I'm Chris Plecki, and you're here. Let's talk about emotions. I have that song, Whitney Houston, who you may not know, is somebody who I loved and adored and still do. And so a lot of my life has, like, Whitney Houston soundtrack. And so when I say to you, let's talk about emotions, I have her song. I get so emotional, baby. Right? Do you guys remember that? I don't know if I've ever sung on this podcast before.

I'm getting punchy. All right. Brilliant woman. So this whole season has been about reinvention, right? And we're touching on all the things and all the pieces and parts. And here's what I can tell you.

I'm going through it myself, man alive. So much stuff that touches my life and my business right now needs, like, a look. Do you feel like that? Like, I'm noticing even as we're currently open for registration for how to CEO, we're hearing a lot of, like, bandwidth. I don't. I don't know if I have the time. I don't. I can't take on anything else. Right. Which I find really, really interesting, because the how to CEO program is really supposed to subtract things from your life, not add them. I know it sounds like a thing you're supposed to do, but of course it isn't. It's a place you come to resolve the things that you have to do, which, you know, I know that can be a hard maybe, thing to get if you haven't experienced it. So we're doing a bunch of open calls this week. I am to help people kind of experience what. What it's like to work together. I hope it helps people see that. But my point being, reinvention is in the order of the day, week, month, year. I remember at this time, we were all like, thank God 2020 is almost over. And we all had all this promise for 2021. And I don't know about y', all, but listen to me. I think 2021 went disappeared. Did anybody feel like it just disappeared? It's like we were so ready for 2021 to come that we speed raced through it. I don't know. That's a. Well, that's what it feels like to me. But I want to talk about emotions, so, you know, leadership is feminine. Let's talk about that, and let's just talk about what. I mean, like, I sat and Wrote this whole thing over the weekend about what are really my principles when I think about leadership as feminine. And what am I saying to you? And I'm going to keep evolving and. Or I shouldn't say evolving. I'll keep sharing this with you as I go forward. But these are big words that stand out, right? Grace, clarity, consistency, vision, collaboration, performance, empathy, facts, fun, honoring the individual, magic. And I think, well, I know that.

One of the elements that's the most challenging for women who lead is to believe herself. I'm listening to a really good book right now that was a recommendation by Eleanor Beaton, a former client of mine and colleague who I talk to regularly, and she recommended I read it. And I'm listening to it. It's so good. It's called the Dance of the Dissonant Daughter by Sue Monk. Oh, I just messed that up, Sue. I'm gonna tell you before the end of the podcast. Anyway, it's really, really good, and it has a lot of really powerful wisdom for women. I think it's Suman kid, but I. I'm not sure about that. So one of the things that I'm really sort of leaning into is how women are very insidiously taught that they are too emotional, they're too touchy, they're too sensitive, they don't have a mind for business. They just need to be good little girls and keep your voice down and don't be so aggressive. People think you're a bitch. You know, don't want to write, like, all this kind of lies. There's a reason why women have been on such a journey and why we keep hitting walls in that journey. Not frankly, even just. I mean, I think there's a lot of movement around positioning women and men against each other. And I just don't buy into that. I don't. I don't think that's a solution. I think that men have been taught the same thing as women about women, just as we have been taught the same thing about men as men and other women. Right. Like, one of the biggest things that women say to me, who come into my program and then really do the work with me, right? They really show up and they come to Hawaii, they do the work, is there's a real isolation in leading.

Which compounds our problem, because then we don't feel validated. We don't know how to be heard and seen and loved and as we are. And a lot of women still believe they have to put on face to be good leaders. And a lot of that face looks like Men.

Or again, examples of other women who were really just modeling men. And so it doesn't surprise me that there's so many women who are so uncomfortable in their role as founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, whatever you call yourself, principals. So emotions. So we're. We're taught that our emotions, we're emotional. And then the other thing that we all are taught is that I ams I. The way that we express emotions. I am sad. I. I am lonely. I am hurtful. I am rude. I am hurt. I am worried. I am angry. I am frustrated. Right. I'm so frustrated. So it's. It's an I am statement, which means it's a defi. The way that we say this. This is semantics, but it matters. The way that we say this, we internalize it. That that's who we are. I am sad. I am frustrated. I am helpless. I am powerless. I am overwhelmed. I am hurt. I'm confused. And so now, instead of my name being Chris, I'm saying I am sad. I am not Chris. I am sad. I am not Chris. I am confused. I am not Chris. I am overwhelmed. I am something. But you aren't something. You aren't an emotion. You aren't one. You feel one, but you aren't one. But because people have been labeled as their emotions, both by themselves and by others. Oh, yeah, she's so negative. Oh, yeah, he's so hurtful. Oh, yeah, right. No. So then we've labeled people with emotional words, but people aren't emotions. People are nouns.

So what I like to teach my clients is to say, I am feeling sad. I am feeling overwhelmed. I am feeling tired. I am feeling worried. I am feeling helpless. I am feeling scared. I am feeling inadequate. Not I am inadequate. I am scared. Do you see the difference? You have to feel your feelings, love.

You have to. You're a human. And as a leader, it's not about not feeling. It's about feeling, but not embodying, not becoming an emotion. We have to understand the distinction between saying that you are something and saying, oh, I'm feeling inadequate, and then asking ourselves, why?

Because if you just believe you're inadequate, you don't question that, but instead, I'm feeling sort of inadequate right now. I'm feeling sort of anxious right now. I'm feeling sort of worried right now. Why?

Oh, because I'm telling myself I don't know what I'm doing. Oh, because I'm telling myself I'm not going to be able to figure this out. Oh, because I'm telling myself I am not qualified for this job that I created for myself. You are allowed an emotion or 7 or 12 or actually 67 during the day. We feel so much. Our bodies are just barometers for what's happening in our brain or energetically. So take it back. Like, I want you to channel your powerful emotions. Your emotions are the most powerful indicator of what you are saying to yourself when you're not paying attention. And what we know about you, lovely entrepreneur, is when you're directed, when you are conscious.

When you are supervising your thinking and you are being strategic instead of reactive, you can do anything.

So your emotions are your superpower. And I want to say something else about that. Years ago, back when I was very formal corporate person, I did corporate training, and I learned about emotional intelligence. And one of the things that we learned in emotional intelligence is that we actually do feel one another's emotions, right? That there's this energetic field and in some cases comes off people's hearts, and you can feel it 100ft away. Like, there's real, legit things that are happening energetically between all of us that we just don't understand. And that the masculine, not men, but masculine leadership style doesn't acknowledge that, but the feminine does. Because you feel it. You've just been told to ignore it. You've just been told that if that's. You're just sensitive or you're just overly reactive or you're just emotional.

No, you legit feel it.

Now, this is what I teach in the empathic CEO program that I go through, right? Like, yeah, tell the truth. Like, the room is a nightmare. What's happening in here? Does everybody hate me? Like, you can tell, right? When you walk in to a room. Maybe that's just me. I'm the only one who's ever been in a room where people hate me. I think every other people. You know what I'm talking about, right? You could feel someone's sorrow. You can feel someone's anger, you can feel someone's confusion. You can feel someone's helplessness.

So if that's true.

It'S a superpower. If you can do that, if you can connect and feel other people's emotions and you can know what's happening, that is a superpower. That doesn't mean you're out of control. And that's the key. That's how it becomes a superpower, right? Like, whenever you've watched these superhero movies and the superheroes, like, start learning that they have superhero talent, right? They do. Like Spider Man. I'm thinking about right when his web sling things would go everywhere and he would. And then he was practicing like climbing walls and flying and he was just blown away by what he could do. Yeah. Soaring. And that's what I think we need to do. Like you need to remember, I want you to come back to this source that you have of power and influence and success and competence that you ignore because the world has told you, oh, no, no, no, no, no. We don't. We don't lead from that. You absolutely use that. You just use it constructively. That's all. That's my advice to you. So we got to be able to learn if someone does have a very strong feeling presence and you have to have a hard conversation with them today.

And you're the boss. We gotta not crumble in that meeting. But you can do that and still be you. But I think it's leaning into who you are. Not out, not hiding from it, not burying yourself from it, not putting up a wall. It's acknowledging it and tapping into it and using it. That's so much I feel like of what I help my clients do. That's very hard for me to explain when I'm talking about, you know, how to hire and fire and on the other things that we do. But you know, it's really about having this magic power that you have had all along. You gotta use those emotions, love. They're your superpower. So we have to make the distinction of that. You are not your emotion no more. I ams. Right. I am feeling, and I am feeling this way because I am thinking this way or I'm experiencing this energetically in the room. Regardless, what do I want to do about it? Do I want to keep believing? I don't know what I'm doing? Debatable. Is it useful for me to think that maybe I could think something else about myself right now and that would help me not feel so. Quite so incompetent? 90 plus percent of my clients sort of self identify as empathic. They know that they feel what other people feel. Good news, it's a superpower. Bad news is when you don't know what to do with it and you're misfiring. You're taking things personally. You think their emotions are yours. You don't know how to turn yourself around in that moment. Those are all things you can learn. But I just mostly wanted you to hear me today to know, be you love. Use those emotions. Connect with your emotions. Don't be afraid of your emotions.

I think I've probably said this before, but when I was a new manager, I had to fire a woman who worked for me who was much older than I and she had a seven year old son. And I was young, I didn't have any kids yet. And so I was very unhappy. I was, you know, it's always disappointing. You hope people will rally. And she just didn't rally. And I worked for a woman who was sort of like, fire, fire, fire, fire. So anyway, I had to let her go. And after the conversation I completely fell apart. I was bawling my eyes out. And you know, this woman's life was, it was a big deal. She's a mom, single mom with a young kid and my boss, who while being a woman was all male energy, no leadership is feminine mixed in there. And she kind of gave me a hard time and said, you can't act like that, you can't do that. That's unprofessional. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I said, you know, I agree that I don't want to ball my eyes out, but more so because it's not comfortable for anybody. But secondly, if I ever get to the point that I don't feel.

I'm out because I need to feel to be good as a leader. If I don't feel, then I'm no good to anybody, including myself. And I knew that I was young, I was like 25, 6, 7 years old and I already knew like, no, you're not going to beat that out of me. I'm keeping it agreed that I don't want to ball, but that's really more just because it's awkward.

Not because I didn't want to feel.

So I hope this gives you some space and grace. Please be who you are. Use all of it. You're brilliant, you. Thanks for tuning in. Talk to you next time.