Lynne Levy calls the voice of self-doubt during stressful decisions the "stress gremlin." She links her own stage-3 cancer to a toxic product role, then offers two fixes: quiet your mind with movement and affirmation, then ask "What does great look like?" and "What are the facts versus what story am I making up?" to separate real problems from assumptions.
Chapters
Hi everybody, it's Lynne Levy from The Inspired Product Leader. I think I'm gonna start to call these videos Have a Minute. Let's just do some quick tips in the world of product management about leveling up and moving into leadership. So I talk to product managers and leaders every day who are just, who are managing stress, anxiety, and just overwhelm. So the challenge is before you can get unstuck, in the, in the world of product and start moving up, we need to help manage and reduce that stress and anxiety. So let's walk through a couple tools of how you can do that. First, let's talk about the reality of being in product management. It's a career with a huge amount of responsibility, and it's also very emotional. Sales gets emotional when a feature isn't available. The C-suite starts to micromanage when there's a board meeting, and engineers get frustrated when the roadmap shifts. And then if you add on top of that, if you're unhappy at work or you're dealing with a toxic manager, the stress and anxiety just increases. And what happens is we start to think to ourselves, play it safe. We'll just deal with having a terrible boss. I'm going to lose my job. My gosh, I've got to work 60 hours to prove myself. Just deal with the stress because at least you have a job. Don't even think about changing jobs. We are in the middle of a recession. I call this voice the stress gremlin. It's that voice of doubt in the back of our mind, and it tends to creep up when we're confronted with stressful decision, a stressful situation at work when we have a significant challenge or a critical decision to make. And the challenges, the anxiety and stress can hold us back from stepping into our brilliant self. It keeps us stuck in a job where we're both unhappy and/or dealing with a toxic situation. And it also impacts our health and our relationships. How many of you are dealing with health problems because of the stress at work? For me, I was convinced one of the reasons I ended up with stage 3 cancer was working in a toxic work environment in the world of product. But we'll talk about that more in a separate Facebook Live. So let's talk about solutions of how to get out of this mode. First thing is I want you to do something that gets your energy up while quieting the mind. Basically, I want you to refocus and feel good. So for me, some of the, some of the tools I use is I have great playlists. I call it my playlist of awesome. Sometimes I'll go outside for a fast-paced walk or move your body, just do something. Stand up, go for a walk, do a quick dance jam to, for me it's '80s rock. I want you to do something that gets the positive energy flowing. Then I want you to say to yourself in a loud voice, I've got this. And yes, I want you to repeat it. Yes, I've got this. So this will help get you out of that gremlin mode. And the back of your mind will quiet down because the reality is you still have to deal with the issue that is sitting in front of you, but you're in a much better mindset to go into problem-solving mode. So now that your voice is— the voice in your head is quiet, I want you to ask yourself a few questions. And the first one comes from one of the thought leaders out there, Sy Wakeman. And she says to ask yourself, what does great look like? With this question, you're actually stepping into your brilliant product leader self. I also like to think about an inspired leader who I had in the past. For me, it was Jim Mitchell. So what would Jim Mitchell do in this particular situation? The second question I want you to ask yourself is, what are the facts? And what is the story I'm making up? This is really such a powerful tool that will help you get rid of the assumptions and the ridiculous thoughts that pass through our mind. So for example, if your boss is micromanaging you, the story could be, oh my gosh, I'm about to get fired. He or she doesn't trust me. I must not be doing something correctly. The reality is the only fact you know is your boss is micromanaging you. There could be 100 reasons why. For example, there's a board meeting tomorrow, there's pressure from sales. But what I have found the most likely scenario is their boss is micromanaging them. So they now need to get into the details. So asking questions, once we're out of that stress gremlin mindset, is key to figure out how to tackle the issues in front of you. And the thing is, when you're working in a toxic work environment, when you feel like you're ready for a promotion, when you are just frustrated, we've got— we have to quiet that gremlin down so that we can figure out steps to help you level up and move into leadership. So if you're tired of being anxious and stressed, if you're tired of not getting that promotion you want, Reach out and let's have a conversation. And what we can do is we'll start to build a strategy to help you reclaim your life and your product career. And my mission is to help product managers level up into leadership and love what they do. I want you to be fired up and happy to go to work every single day. So again, feel free to reach out. Again, this is Lynne Levy from The Inspired Product Leader.
