The Real Reason You Feel Unhappy at Work — and Why Quitting Won’t Fix It

What if you could transform your work experience without changing your job? You know the feeling. You're capable, hardworking and committed. But there's something missing. Maybe it's a micromanaging boss, the endless meetings, or watching your colleagues coast by while you carry the load. You need the job, but you want more fulfillment, growth and control over your daily experience. Meet Elizabeth Letardo. She's the best selling author of Leading Yourself and one of the world's leading experts in workplace empowerment from from within. She's an executive consultant who works with senior leaders at Companies like Salesforce, DraftKings, Hilton and numerous Berkshire Hathaway organizations, helping them to create purpose driven work experiences. Elizabeth writes for Harvard Business Review and her work has been featured in the Wall street journal and on NPR. And her LinkedIn learning course has reached over 1 million learners who have discovered that self leadership is the key to professional development. In this episode, you'll discover how to manage difficult conversations without compromising your reputation, the mindset shifts that turn mundane tasks into meaningful opportunities and specific strategies to build influence and growth in your current role. Whether you're feeling stuck in your position dealing with challenging leadership or simply want to create more joy and purpose in your work, this conversation gives you actionable tools to to take control of your experience. Starting today, if you're ready to stop waiting for the perfect job and start creating fulfillment in the one that you have, you're in for a treat. And without further ado, let's jump into the interview. All right, we talk about vulnerability on the podcast. This is my opportunity to be vulnerable, but I'll do it in a playful way. Let's guise it as a negotiation. So let's negotiate something right now. It's not a business deal or any kind of high stakes standoff. It's just a simple agreement between us and you. So if you've been with negotiate anything for a while now, you've been on an incredible journey nine years long. We've sat down with world class negotiators, gold medal winning Olympians, storytellers, CEOs, psychologists, FBI agents, professors, and all of this for one purpose. To help you become more powerful in your conversations and in your career and in your life. We've published over 1600 episodes and we were part of the LinkedIn Podcast Network, an amazing partnership that helped us grow. But unfortunately now LinkedIn is winding down the network and many of the shows that were on the LinkedIn podcast network had to shut down because the money wasn't there anymore. But not us. We are still here and we are just getting started and now we want to bring you even more bigger guests, deeper stories, and more value than ever. So here's the deal. If this show has ever helped you, if it made you think differently, negotiate better, or feel more confident, we're asking for one thing in return. Just leave us a review. On Apple, podcasts, on Spotify, wherever you listen. Because now we're going to be negotiating our own sponsorship deals. This is a matter of survival for us. And when sponsors look and they can see that we have a lot of reviews and our fans really love us and they get value, that gives us the opportunity to negotiate better deals. And when we're able to do that, that allows us to continue to do what it is that we're doing here. So that's your side of the deal. It could take less than 10 seconds to just leave us a review. And what do you get in return? Our side of the deal is this. We will continue to commit to bringing you the best guests on earth and to continue to raise the bar on the quality of this show week after week. So let's build this next chapter together. Let's make a deal. Let's start it off this way, framing it for the person who's listening. So if they listen to this episode and they take the wisdom that you're going to distill for us and put it into action in their life, what changes for them?

What I hope for each listener is that after this episode you have some practical strategies to make your job better. You feel more empowered in the seat you're in, even if that is the role of individual contributor, and you feel more optimistic about what lies ahead of you. It's tall order, but we can do it.

Yes, it is doable and I'm familiar with your work, so I know we can do it. And I love the fact that we have a practical and an emotional component because sometimes people can understand what they want emotionally, but they don't understand understand how to practically drive toward it. Sometimes they have the practical drive, but then they don't have the clarity of purpose and so then they never get that emotional satisfaction. And I love the fact that we're going to be able to marry both of them after this interview too.

Well said. Much has been talked about with like, oh, our hard skills. Most important are people skills. Most important. And the reality is they are both important. You need to have the emotional intelligence and the self awareness piece. And you also need to know how to execute you.

Yeah, absolutely. And, and of course I, I want to make sure that the, the person listening knows we. You have a book that just came out, Leading Yourself, and that's going to be the, the foil for this conversation. So when we think about how self leadership applies to driving practically toward these emotional goals in a practical, tangible way, can you kind of encapsulate what you personally mean when you're talking about leading yourself?

What I mean when I talk about leading yourself is taking full ownership of your work experience. You are the common denominator in every job you are ever going to have. Yes, you may have bosses, some of them will be good, some of them won't be. Yes, you may work for companies with opportunities. You will also work for some who don't have any. But your ability to set direction, to manage your energy, to be resilient, that is what determines your outcome.

Yes. And let's talk about this concept of ownership. Because listeners, we were vibing before this conversation started and I said, wait, we have to save some of this energy for the actual podcast because I really love your approach to ownership and accountability. So let's break down what you mean when you're discussing those terms, and then we'll talk about how it applies not just here in the workplace, but just to everybody in their everyday lives.

So to let listeners in on behind the scenes, what happened before Record was pressed, I was saying that last week. Someone told me that I was like the extreme ownership guy, but nice. I bring the same message of personal responsibility, but with more optimism and less yelling. And it is my view that personal responsibility is not a harsh thing. It is freeing. It is putting yourself proactively in the driver's seat and believing that you have the capabilities and the skills to make change. And from that vantage point, it becomes less about yelling to do pushups and making your bed and more about looking inward and being inspired about where you can go.

I love this. And it's so important for us to hammer this home because it's something that's very simple in articulation but difficult to put into practice. And I think today we're in a time where there are a lot of societal forces pushing us to think the opposite, forcing us to think like victims or we don't have the agency to take control over certain elements of our lives. And this is not to say that there aren't some structures, forces and other things and real difficult circumstances. We're not minimizing that. But what we want to do is focus on the things that are within our control. So then we could actually drive toward freedom on our own terms. Because otherwise, then whether or not we are happy or sad, successful or not, as successful as we want to be, is completely outside of our own hands. And that is ultimately very disempowering and unhelpful.

Well, your sentiment, the data backs this up. And I'll talk about what drove me to write Leading yourself now. In 2017, I made a LinkedIn learning course. I'm an instructor, just like you, called leading Yourself. And it was very early days, LinkedIn learning, it was back in, like, Lynda.com days. And what I wanted to do with that course was offer something in the leadership library for people who didn't have direct reports, who were only in charge of themselves. And what I saw during the pandemic in 2020 was that course exploded. And I think the reason for that is in 2020, it became really obvious that we couldn't count on the certainty we once thought was there. Our manager was not going to be next to us holding our hand for all of these things, and we were in charge of what was going to happen to us. And I tracked the data behind that course against public events and the discord socially around who's in charge of who. And it's such an interesting story. That was followed by the great resignation and now even more employment uncertainty. And this platform of it's on you has been steadily building since 2020. And I think that context is an important piece because now there's no shortage of people who will offer to lead you. Right? Your boss, some LinkedIn guru, the two of us on a podcast. There's no certainty for what lies ahead. And from an organizational perspective, organizations are getting wider. Your manager is overwhelmed. They don't have the bandwidth to support you in the way that they probably want. So all of those arrows point to it's on you to lead yourself. Yeah.

So essentially, whether or not you want to lead yourself, you need to.

You already are. The question is, are you doing a good job?

Oof. That hits hard. That hits hard. And now you've worked with brands across the spectrum, all sorts of different industries, and when you think about the mindset that's required in order to put this into action, what deep down inside of people is the biggest inhibitor to shifting toward this type of mindset? Hello, my friends. Before we get back to today's episode, I want to ask you a question. Have you ever wondered how to elevate your team's negotiation game and how you can help the folks on your team have better, difficult conversations at the American Negotiation Institute? We offer transformative keynotes and workshops tailored to empower professionals with top tier negotiation and conflict resolution skills. Whether it's a keynote for your next event or hands on training for your team, we've got you covered. Don't just negotiate. Master the art with the American Negotiation Institute. Click the link in the description to find out more. Elevate, negotiate, and succeed.

That's a good question. The biggest inhibitor that I've seen and that has certainly played out for me is the risk of saying, okay, if this is my responsibility and I'm in charge of it and it doesn't go well, then that means it's my fault.

Yeah.

And that can be scary, can be terrifying.

Wow, that's deep. That is deep. You know, I, I'm wondering if there's a nexus between this, this idea and what you're talking about. And Simone gracefully edited this out. If it doesn't work. Okay. So I remember when I was studying for the bar exam as a lawyer, I was really intrigued to hear that from one of my professors, one of the reasons why people fail. And she said that a lot of times people don't do the work that they know they need to do because they want an exc at the end of the day. So if they don't fail, they can say, I, there was this thing in front of me, I didn't put forth my efforts, so I truly didn't fail. The circumstances kind of failed me. And it seems like there's a similar mentality that's happening here too. Because if I accept full ownership and accountability for my behavior, my mentality, the actions that I take and the strategies that I use, then that means I have to take full ownership and accountability of the outcome. And then I can't hide, I can't escape whether I succeed or buy more. A little bit scarier is if I fail, then I am a failure. And I don't want to risk that.

That is a great example. And I would say more likely if you fail the bar exam, I've seen those stats. But what you've hit on is a really important undertone of the self leadership conversation, which is if I am willing to step in and take full responsibility for my work experience, that doesn't mean there aren't things outside of my control. Doesn't mean everything is going to go perfect. I own my seat, then if my seat's not working out, whose fault is that? And that can be an uncomfortable truth to sit with. But I would argue that the long term outcome of feeling like a victim of your circumstances is a lot more uncomfortable.

Ooh, that's powerful. So from the outside looking in, somebody could read the book and try to just skim it, right? And say, okay, well Elizabeth's probably going to tell me to use this strategy. Then they might be surprised that it's not so much about the strategy as it is the mindset. And then they might be even more surprised that there is an is something that gets in the way of utilizing the mindset, which is my fear. And I think we, a lot of times we end up trying to solve for the wrong problem. So we don't like where we are in our career. So we, our solution is to blame somebody else. Okay, no, that didn't work. Well then I'm going to use a different strategy. Okay, well that didn't work. It's mindset. But we, but then we reverse engineer it even further and we recognize it's fear. So I think for a lot of people listening, they might struggle or they might have struggled to solve these career challenges if they did not realize that the roots of those challenges come from fear.

I think there's a lot of truth in that. And there's that old saying. I think it's even a book title. Everywhere you go, there you are. And we saw an, an interesting proof point in this in the Great Resignation and from like an organizational psychologist perspect. I was gripped to my seat during the Great Resignation because it was the ultimate proof point of what drives talent retention and engagement. And do circumstances really change that? Which was the crux of my research. Do circumstances truly change employee engagement? Spoiler. The answer is no. But what we saw in the Great Resignation was a huge percentage of people, unlike any time in modern history, left their jobs in search of meaning and purpose and more emotional fulfillment and they didn't find it. Two years later there was a big study that spanned over 350 organizations Surveying people who had quit their job during the Great resignation. And almost 2/3 of them said they regretted it. Over 50% said they tried to get their old job back and engagement in that time fell. It did not improve despite everyone seeking more emotional fulfillment at work. So this was on a global scale, the exact proof I needed to confirm that circumstances don't determine engagement nearly as much as our own mindset and self leadership skills. And of course there are, you know, nuances in there. Toxic leaders, of course they derail engagement. But generally speaking, we are the biggest predictor of whether work feels meaningful, joyful and full of opportunities or it doesn't Incredible.

Wow. That really. It's even making me pause to reflect. And this is really fascinating because let's dig into this. It's a perfect time to what are the things that we need to do or don't understand currently that hold us back from feeling as engaged as we want to feel at work?

So I'll share with you the subtitles of my book. And there are two it's leading yourself find more meaning, joy and opportunities in the job you already have. And then below that it says despite imperfect bosses, weird economies, lethargic coworkers, annoying systems and too many deliverables. And what I found in the research and what many of us have lived experience to back this up, myself included, is that those annoying undertone categories, we often make the mistake of believing that fixing those will give us the thing at the top. Fixing those will give us meeting, joy and opportunities. If only those things got out of the way. But what the research tells us is that's not true. Those things are present in almost every single organization. Even these best place to work. And the people who engage in spite of those do so almost everywhere they go. So it is not the natural human tendency to remove that annoyance. It is the ability to upskill yourself enough to operate in the face of it because we know they're not going away. They permeate every single organization to some degree. So when you look at your own ability to confront an imperfect boss, and I know you talked to my friend Melody Wilding about this, that is a more realistic picture than having a perfect boss. When you look at your ability to operate in the face of annoying systems and to find opportunities to reset your brain, that is more likely than not facing annoying systems. So what I did in my book was I broke down these things that supposedly we feel get in the way of our ability to engage and offer some mental models, some brain hacks, some talk tracks to get out in front of those and put yourself in the power position. Position.

Let's talk about them because now we can make this real and tangible. When you, when you think about the work that you've done and the, the, the what you've provided in this incredible book as well, what would you say is the single most powerful thing, tool, mental model that somebody could use or adopt that would help them get the biggest return on investment when it comes to living the life that they want to live and having the work opportunities and the work life that they want.

To have, I'll tell you the one that made the biggest difference for me. And it's four words, this is my chance. And this is a brain hack I first learned in a Parenthood webinar on dealing with unexpected toddler circumstances. But it applies and works so well. So let me walk you through a couple of examples. If I am met with an email first thing Monday morning from my boss and the basic sentiment of all the work I did last week is now useless because they saw a TikTok that said we should do something else. It's easy to feel like a victim in that moment and to attribute a lot of ill will to the person who sent me that email. But what's important to recognize is I'm the one that pays the price for that emotionally, not them. But let's use this, this phraseology of this is my chance in that moment. This is my chance to respectfully push back. This is my chance to learn something new. This is my chance to pivot. This is my chance to dig beneath the surface and understand why my leader is not confident in the direction we're going. And suddenly this thing that happened to me, this annoying email, has become an opportunity for me to show up in the way I want and to make progress that aligns with the vision that I have. And that that forced brain hack of where is the opportunity in this for me is so emblematic, simple and profound of self leadership and how it changes the way you feel at work. And we know that when you change the way you feel, you change what you do and you change the results you drive.

Absolutely. And Elizabeth, this is great for self leadership at work, but this is great for life in general.

Like I said, I learned it in a Parenthood webinar from someone named Tessa Romero. What I found myself experiencing in Parenthood when I applied this was a level of empowerment, which is crazy to say. And you and I yapped a little bit before the podcast about how toddlers make grown adults feel so powerless, but I felt so empowered. I felt better to better able to meet changing circumstances. I felt more authentic in my responses. I was showing up in a way I wanted to, in a way that wasn't reactive. I was like, man, like I could use some of this at work. And then when I started applying that same principle of okay, you know, rough email from a client, this is my chance to what? I gotta find it in here. My mental frame completely changed.

This is great. And for me, I, in, in, in my first book, I talk about opportunity based thinking. This is so much better because it's, it's a pure lead in, right? And it's Utilizing language that most people would use.

Right.

This is my chance. Right? This is great. And for any of who grew up in, you know, the, the 90s and early thousands, it's. It's almost reminiscent of Eminem's song, you.

Know, you got one shot mom spaghetti like it is. So that, that's the. But you feel hype after that song and you feel the same after forcing your brain to find the opportunity.

Yes. And then for me, it's, it's. Life's kind of become a game, right? Where it's like, okay, cool. I, I recognize that difficulty is happening and I also recognize there's always an opportunity. So where's divinity? This is my chance to what? And so you be you. Now put yourself in a non narcissistic way. Make yourself the main character of your story, where you are presented with a challenge. And now you can say, okay, now this is the chance to overcome an obstacle. Right. Or solve a problem, set a boundary. This is so empowering. And again, it goes back to what we said at the beginning. It's ownership. Life isn't happening to you as much as you are happening to life now with this new mentality.

Absolutely. And I'll be first to admit some of my. This is my chances are an eye roll. Like I'm sarcastic to myself. I gotta force myself to do this thing because I, so naturally, as every human does, fall into victimhood. But it still works, even if you're rolling your eyes through it.

Yes, I think. But Elizabeth, I think that's important. I think that's important because sometimes people can look at folks like us, hear us on the podcast, check out your LinkedIn learning course, or read the book. And I could never be like Elizabeth. I think it's important for us to sprinkle in a little bit of our own humanity and recognize that it's tough for us too. So we're not telling you to do something that just comes easily for us. It takes a lot of work, but the more you start to do it, the more it becomes a mental habit. And then we understand, through the psychology and science of neuroplasticity, we are shaping the brain every time we try to adopt new forms of thinking and new behaviors. So it does slowly become easier, relatively speaking, but still very difficult to do. But you need to start building that mental habit.

So there's a saying in publishing that I think will resonate with you based on how you opened your book with your own struggles. I did the same. Which is if you want to know what an author Struggles with look at the title of their book, because that is what they had to learn and break down and what didn't come naturally. And I opened my book with the story of hating one of my early jobs in advertising and thinking that was everybody else's fault but mine.

Wow, that's incredible. That is incredible. And now let's actually tell this story now to the listeners. Yeah, tell us about that.

Sure. So I graduated college, I went to BU from my undergrad. I got what I thought was my dream job as an account manager at an ad agency. And within six months or so I was really burned out and upset because I was selling Google AdWords at the time, which is really transactional. And I found myself in so many conversations arguing about a fraction of a cent on keywords for car dealerships. And I was like, I was supposed to have this like, really cool, creative job and this sucks. And I thought that was because I picked the wrong job. I thought it was because my boss at the time was great but wasn't inspiring enough. I thought it was because the place I worked with was too small. Our customers were really transactional. Like, I found every single avenue to blame for why my experience sucked and never did I look at my part in it until later in my life when I realized, oh, actually a lot of that was my fault. But what I found through career pivots and growth and going back to school and studying industrial and organizational psychology is that the mindsets that sit beneath all of these circumstances are so much more powerful than the circumstances themselves. And in hindsight, I see so many, like poor 22 year old Elizabeth, like, bless her heart, she was so earnest and so aspirational and felt so powerless. And what I wish I could tell her is you have so much more power than you think. Even though this job isn't perfect and even though some things are kind of annoying, like there are so many levels at your levers, at your control, and it's easy to see in hindsight. And I think all of us have had those experiences 100%.

And I appreciate your vulnerability in sharing that too, because I can even think about some of my early times. But again, I was putting a lot of blame on the circumstances and not taking ownership. And I think as we pivot a little bit, I think there are a lot of leaders and managers listening to this episode, terrified, like, well, what do I do? If it's, if it's all within the power of the other person, then do I. What, what now is my role? And so as, as we Kind of shift the focus to the folks who are leading in these organizations. This message that you're bringing, what does this mean to them?

I'm so glad you asked that question because when I first launched this book, I did not get that message right and I did not answer that question. And this was perceived as quite threatening to middle management. Like self leadership is a replacement to middle management. But what I found as I dove into conversations and started implementing training on this and consulting on it was that the ability for someone to self lead is freeing to their manager because it cuts out so much of the managerial BS and enables the manager to step into a role that is more powerful, not less. Instead of culling through all the potential growth opportunities for this person, they're coming to you and you get to open the door for that growth opportunity. Instead of putting out all of these micro fires that they don't feel empowered to solve themselves, you get to use your time to talk about their career, to talk about strategic ways they could contribute to the organization. So someone's ability to self lead should not in any way erode their relationship with their manager. If anything, it should improve it and both parties should get more value from it.

Incredible that. That's very empowering. And so the managers need to buy this book for their teams.

You know, maybe I should have picked a different title because so many managers are like, wow, I want to buy this for my team, but I don't want to to feel insulting. Like the undertone of it is leave me alone. And that's not the case at all. To give someone this book is to say, I believe in you, you have it within you to drive your career and I'm here to cheer you on.

Yeah, I love that. I love that. And now let's stay on managers for a little bit too, because when you are working with people, it's one of the things that people don't fully understand. A lot of times when they're looking up at their own leadership is how difficult leadership is and how infrequently they might be thinking about you in particular. Not in a like I don't care type of way, but in an I as a human being have a limited cognitive capacity and I've got so much of my own stuff to deal with. I cannot focus on you as much as you think I am, am or possibly should be. And it can be really difficult. When you look at somebody on your team, you might see them performing well, but they still might be disengaged, which comes with other problems. So how can you tell? Tell the difference between somebody who is quietly disengaged and masking it with confidence and competence versus somebody who is actually fully engaged and wholeheartedly enjoying the work that they do?

Ooh, deep question. And I think there's a couple of assumptions that sit beneath that that get us in trouble. Number one, satisfaction and engagement are often lumped together in this workplace culture narrative, and those are two really different things. Satisfaction is passive. It's I like my job over here. I'm judging it. It's okay, yeah, sure, I'll stay. Engagement is active. I am in my job. I am putting forth discretionary effort. I am innovating. And instead of the bar being I like my job, the bars, I will give more to it. And oftentimes, passive satisfaction is perceived from a managerial level as active engagement. And we assume that because someone isn't stomping their feet around and threatening to leave and they're hitting their milestones, that surely they're engaged. Right? And the Gallup survey, which I will spare you my rant on, perpetuates this. So, as a manager, how do you tell the difference between someone who is satisfied and someone who is engaged? Satisfaction is a feeling to me. Engagement is a behavior. So looking beneath how you think they feel about this job to what are they doing? Are they coming up with new ideas? Are they fighting uphill for things that they believe in? Are they putting forth that discretionary effort? Are they excited about potential opportunities for them? Are they looking beyond their role? Those behaviors are a better indicator than, hey, do you like this job?

That's so good. This is one of those situations, Elizabeth, where I have to remember, hey, Kwame, you're here as a podcast host, not a client getting coaching.

Oh, I have to then remind myself the same. I had so many questions for you after reading your book, but it. It's tricky. And the other flip side of it is, and I think this is related to the question of how you tell the difference, whether someone is actively engaged versus just like passing massively satisfied is as people. We have never expected more of our leader than we do right now. LinkedIn is filled with all the ways that your leader should be a servant driven leader to you. They should be inspiring, they should be resilient, they should be excellent at decision making. Right? These are people, right? With their own bosses to please and their own imperfect childhoods that inform all of their stuff today. And the challenge we get into is the manager feels like they're letting everybody down, and the employee feels like they're being let down when, realistically, the expectations were just so insane to begin with. No one should feel that way. So back to the manager conversation of, like, how do I tell if someone is actively engaged versus passively satisfied? Do employees feel empowered enough to be their own source of inspiration, to not rely on you 100% of the time to make decisions in your absence? I think that can be a powerful indicator versus everything on the shoulder of the frontline manager.

Yes. I love this. This is. First of all, I love it because I'm biased as a leader. That sounds great. And second of all, I love it because it's realistic. Now we actually can identify what it is that we need to look for and then how we need to solve for it. Now, another thing that comes up a lot is effective boundary setting. And we go back to, this is my chance. This could be your chance to effectively set a boundary and start to reset a relationship that might have been going in the wrong direction. Now, how do we do that effectively at work, especially if we are now just coming into the realization that it is okay and appropriate to set boundaries?

So I think what gets in the way of effectively setting boundaries and not attributing a moral failing to people who bump up against them, even though we failed to set them for a decade plus, is assuming that if I had this realization right, that I need to set boundaries, maybe it was a health crisis that made me reevaluate my relationship with work. Maybe it was a conversation with a mentor that said, you're gonna get burnt out if you don't do this. I've had some experience, right, that has prompted me to take a different set of actions. The rest of the world did not have that experience, and they're going to treat you the same way they did yesterday. So the boundary setting conversation is more effective when you honor the fact that you hadn't before instead of making a change and expecting everyone to notice and follow suit. So if your manager calls you at 9:00pm, right, and you take that call every week for three years, and then suddenly you don't, and they think, why is this person not taking my call? They've always taken my call. And you think, how dare they bump up against this boundary that I have only recently set? How dare they not recognize that both sides of that are going to walk away really frustrated? So to be up front about the boundary setting and the fact that you're doing it instead of just quietly setting it and hoping people notice can make a big difference in whether it's Respected and how people feel about it.

This is the kind of perspective shift that I think a lot of people need to hear. Because a lot of times when we are in these conversations where we're advocating for ourselves, setting boundaries, whatever it happens to be, we fault the other side for having a very, very human response. And so if you have inappropriately set expectations that are not in your favor and you've been acting in accordance with those expectations for years, and then you change the game in their mind, something is, is off with you because of the discrepancy between expectations and reality and the shifting expectations as well. And so by recognizing that and owning that kind of. Of pulling this through line as we go through the conversation, we can say, okay, now this kind of changes the way that I navigate the conversation because I do believe having that humble disclaimer at the beginning of the conversation does wonders. And it kind of serves as a preemptive strike to a very predictable response from the other side too. And so I think taking ownership for not sending that boundary in the past and then explaining why you're setting it now, that is incredibly powerful as you start to reset these relationships.

What I found is when I can proactively say it was on me for taking all those phone calls and I didn't realize the price I was paying for that until now, and I'm changing my behavior, the other person goes through the train of thought that you did in a sped up way, and they can more accurately meet you where you are. What happens when you don't do it is you don't set the boundary. You don't set the boundary. You become annoyed and then you become resentful and then you set it in rage and the person pushes against it the way they have just a little bit for the last three years, and it explodes out of you that they don't respect your boundary, that they want you to feel, you know, taken advantage of, that they expect a certain way. Of course they expect a certain way. That's how you've been acting. So just getting out in front of it saves both sides so much heartache. And back to self leadership, it is on you. You can do that with your boss even though you're not in charge.

Yes. Oh, this is great. Okay. I think this is a good opportunity for our listener dilemma. Hi, Elizabeth. I'm in my early 30s and have.

Been in the same role for a few years now.

I used to love it, but lately I've been feeling stuck. Like I'm just going through the motions. I don't think I'm ready to leave the company, but I also don't know.

How to find that spark again. I'm not even sure what I'm aiming for anymore. How do I rediscover a sense of purpose without blowing everything up?

Thanks, Jess.

Oh, I love that question. And that is the crux of finding meaning, joy, and opportunities in the job you already have. So let's go through those three categories, meaning joy and opportunities, because we know the sum of that or the absence of all of those is what makes someone feel stuck. Even though they don't hate it, they're just kind of. Yeah, we'll start with meaning. If you've been in the role for a long time, the meaning has probably escaped you just because of how frequently it happens. And what I mean by that is if you let's say you're an accounting, right? You solve people's accounting woes every day for you. Normal day in the office, I solve someone's accounting problem and we lose sight of and that enabled this person to sleep at night and that enabled this business to make a more strategic investment and that kept the this person out of jail. The ripple effect escapes our inbox and for a normal day, it means nothing when for our customers, our colleagues, the communities we serve, it means everything. So tapping back into that ripple effect, tracing your emails and the impact that they have, letting others tell you, like reading customer testimonials that can fuel back up your sense of meaning for something that has become transactional over time.

Wow.

Joy is in short supply these days, first of all, but your ability to find it inside of your work experience is predictive of your energy levels. So paying attention to where you are feeling that ping of engagement, if it's not frequent, can give you a clue into what you need more of. Is it more customer conversations? Is it more time for deep work? Is it more mentoring and like networking and that human side of work that fills your cup up, paying special attention to your energy levels and then optimizing for that. And then lastly, opportunities. If you've been in your role for a long time and you feel stuck, identifying what a growth opportunity would be for you and spelling that out and asking for it from your manager. Not necessarily changing jobs, but hey, I'd like to work on the stretch project because I want to up my skills in this area or I'd like to lead this initiative because I'm trying to be more visible in our organization. Putting your hat in the ring for things without quitting your job is empowering and very rarely do those opportunities come to you. You usually have to raise your hand and seek them out and make them.

I think for me, what's so powerful about this response is that you've taken some terms meaning joy. I think opportunities have been more concrete, but meaning and joy and turned them into something tangible and actionable. We can understand where the meaning comes from. And I feel like that's an exercise we should all go through on a weekly or monthly basis to make sure we're not losing sight of it. I think it's very easy to lose sight of the impact downstream of our actions positively, and that's what gives us meaning. And then again with joy. This is helpful for me again in real life as well, because our energy and following that energy and paying attention to our energy levels, a lot of times we can acknowledge it, we understand it, but we don't mind, create that intentional, explicit connection to joy. And I love how clear this is because now somebody can actually go through this process and put this into action in a way that makes a real difference.

The ripple effect to me is the most powerful version of self leadership. And I start the book with these mindsets around purpose and acting in the face of fear and things that we know we need to do. But the how is kind of muddy. Tried to make that more tangible. And the ripple Effect exercise is built on something that I've been doing for a long time with consulting and training clients, which is something called an impact map, where you take your role at the center of this piece of paper, and you're going to list out all the normal activities, day in the office stuff you do, and then you're going to trace it as far as you can to see where that lands. And the ability to contextualize all the things you do and see their meaning fuels you in a way caffeine or even adrenaline cannot sustain.

This is amazing. I know you know this, but this is great. This is really, really good. I appreciate it.

Well, back at you, friend. I've learned so much from your podcast and your book as someone who is chronically avoidant of difficult conversations, ironically.

Well, thank you. Well, you see by the title, I was, too.

Yeah. Hey, that publishing expression landed with you. You. You learned to find confidence in conflict, and I learned to lead myself.

Amazing. And now we're helping other people do the same. That's wild. That is so cool. Well, Elizabeth, I really appreciate this, and I know we obviously have the book, but I want to give you an opportunity to, again, before you go, just let the listeners know about you, the work that you do, and how they can connect.

So my book is everywhere. Books are ebook, hardcover, audible, wherever you consume. I also, like you have a lot of LinkedIn learning courses, one of which is on self leadership. But I also cover leading without formal authority, Find your purpose at work and igniting emotional engagement in your team. So that's a great resource if you're not into books. And I post all kinds of clicky content on LinkedIn most days.

Amazing. Elizabeth, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it.

Thanks for having me.

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So, Simone, good on you for filling them.

Yes. So I've been working with Kwame for maybe I five years now, and he has always given me the opportunity to lead myself. Always. I just know the goals I have to accomplish. So Kwame, maybe four or five years ago, he told me, okay, you know where we want to go, right? You know where I want to be? Yes. Okay. Help me, please. Let's go. So as long as we have the same purpose, I think is the necessary thing that we need. So I don't know if you in the future are planning on creating a version of this book for managers, because it is exactly what managers need, don't you think?

Yes, I do think, and I would say that if most bosses operated the way Kwami did, I wouldn't have a job. So you are lucky in that sense. But there's a lot of truth in your question. What I found through implementing leading yourself training is there has to be a managerial piece to it. Because if the manager isn't ready, if they don't have the trust in the individual, the confidence they hired, right, the failure tolerance to know there's going to be some missteps, then it's not going to work. Work. So the root of your question of this is kind of for managers. Yes, it is. And so often managers say that they want their team to feel empowered, they don't want to be looped into every single decision, and then they demonstrate behaviors that do the opposite of that. So there's certainly a complimentary yin yang to a self leading individual contributor and a boss who empowers that.

So it's almost. So there's, there's a little bit of. Especially from the leader's perspective as well. There's a lot that goes into this. We talk about the ownership portion and everything, but it also talks about making sure that you have the right people on the team too, who have the capacity for leading themselves.

I feel like so much of a leader's inability to embrace self leadership comes to a previous experience where they were really let down by their team's either inability to step into their role, they were surprised by something gnarly. And that leaks out as micromanagement and disempowerment in ways that hurt everybody's feelings, including the person doing it.

Yes. Nobody.

Nobody.

Nobody wants to micromanage. Nobody wants to be micromanaged. Nobody wants to micromanage.

It's a trauma response. You can ask Melody about that next time you talk to her.

Exactly.