EP 251 From Performance Plans to Work Theft: Reframing Career Challenges

Hello. Hello. Welcome to the Get a Six Figure Job You Love and Thrive Podcast. This is Natalie Fisher. I am back and I want to discuss something with you today. So I have been coaching a lot of clients one-on-one. I've been going back to my roots as a one-on-one coach and I have been loving it. There's just something about one-on-one. It's like very, like I got my own one-on-one coach recently and I was just like, there's just nothing like it. It's just, So good, and I love group as well, but they each have their advantages. So yeah, I just I get really inspired after I get on a call with a one-on-one client, and and so I wanted to come on and share about the session that I had today, and I won't reveal any of her details or anything for privacy purposes. But this the the themes and the stories and everything that she had brought to the table, I think is really relevant to probably almost everyone at some point. So that's what we're gonna dive into today. Hey there, I'm Natalie Fisher. I'm a 6-figure business builder, a mom of a 2-year-old, the recoverer of a 10-year narcissistic relationship, and now in a super healthy one. And most of all, I'm a human who's figuring this out with you. This podcast is about how to use your mind to thrive in your career and create the subconscious breakthroughs that you need to get there. The subconscious blocks that you don't even know you have to achieving your highest levels of earning in your best zone of genius. Genius moments and days in the flow. That is my goal for you. Let's dive into the episode. And before we dive into today's episode, I want to remind you that I'm the coach who is always going to point you back in the direction of your own wisdom. And so before we get started, I want to remind you, listen to your own wisdom first. This means listen to yourself first and me second, and anyone else for that matter. Take what resonates and throw away what doesn't unapologetically. I won't be mad. I won't be offended. In fact, I will be proud of you for doing so, because I know from a lot of personal experience that anything is only as effective as the amount of resonance that it has within your uniquely built brain. And something is only going to work if it feels right to you and if you believe in it, or if you want to do the work to believe in it. And that's what I'm here to help you do. Your inner wisdom is infinitely more valuable than mine when it comes to getting your outcomes and for what you are here to do on this planet. So I'm here to help you steer that wisdom In the most powerful way possible. I'm so happy you're here. I'm so glad you're here, part of this. I'm so glad we're here on the planet at the same time. Let's dive into today's episode. Okay, so the problem she was having. Now this is actually something that has come up many times before with many of my clients, and that is someone stealing your work. So someone steals. Your work or they want to take credit for it, or they do take credit for it and they blatantly cross out your name and put their own name on it and you're the one who did the work, right? Stuff like that. I've had people take a post that I did and copy paste it word for word and post it on their own LinkedIn profile with a link to their thing, right? It's just, here's what happened. So I got coaching on this because I was really upset about it. Your initial response is going to be anger, probably, right? Like, or maybe confusion at first. Maybe then you walk yourself into anger really quickly. And that makes sense, of course, right? Like, you'd feel mad that someone took what you did, what you wrote, and like ripped it off, right? And so here's where I wanted to take it with her, because while I don't think this is right, while I don't condone it, obviously it's not good. Really, it's bad karma for the person who's taking it more than anything. Like, they really needed it because they felt depleted of their own creativity. They felt incapable in their own mind. They felt enable in some way. Like, they were lacking so much that they had to take from you, right? And it's like if somebody were to break into your car and take the things in your car. Like, it feels like— I understand how that feels. It feels like it's such a violation of, like, like, your stuff. It's your stuff. Like, we're attached to this stuff. But it's like, they, they're the ones engaging in the behavior that, that That morally bankrupts them, right? Like they're the ones who are bankrupted and lacking and feeling all these things, and like they're the ones they have a way bigger problem than you do, right? Is what I'm going to try to say. Even though it doesn't feel that way, it doesn't feel that way at the time when it happens. And so I had this I have this colleague Angela Snyder on on LinkedIn, and I've been friends with her for a while. We've done some collaborations. She's come on my podcast, and she posted about it. She's like somebody took this. Person's content and they're taking these people's content. She was so mad about it. And I realized that I was like, my response to it was like, yeah, when you write really good content, that just happens. Like it was, my response was like calm and like almost expect it now. And it's just like, yeah, when you write really good shit, people want to take it. And it was just like, that was my reaction after doing a lot of coaching on it. Right? Like after being coached on it, cause it had happened to me after seeing a lot of other really successful colleagues. Have the same issue because you see someone, you know, crushing it online, or you see someone, you read something and you're like, oh, this is so good. Yeah, it makes sense why someone wants to take it, right? And so here's the thing: my client was going to that place of like kind of like victimhood, like well, I can't control it, like there's nothing I could do about it, and she was like tearing up and crying and getting really upset. And that made sense, right? That's the reaction. It's either going to be that or it's going to be anger or it's going to be something that comes out that way, right? And then here's what I showed her. I was like, you are so good at what you do that someone wanted to take your work, right? If you did shitty work or blah work or even just neutral work, nobody would care. Nobody would want to take it. Nobody would pay attention to it. Like, it just wouldn't work, right? Like, you would have a different problem. You would probably have the problem of like, oh, nobody's noticing me, right? Nobody's doing— I'm not getting this. Or like, you would have a different problem because your work wasn't as high quality, right? And then she kind of had a lightbulb moment go off and she's like, she's like, yeah, I did have that problem in the past. She's like, at my previous job, I had a a performance issue, and I had to, I had to turn it around. And so I, I really picked up my ability to do high-quality work, and now I do such high-quality work that people want to steal it, right? So this is like me kind of shining a mirror back in her direction saying, hey, look, you've grown so much that you have this higher-quality problem now. And again, Not saying it's right. Not saying people should do that. Not not saying that it's in any way like okay. But we can't control that people do that, right? Like and yes, she set boundaries and she said no and she did. Like we we went through that whole thing too. Like so that there's lots of ways to like kind of out people and get them to see that you know they're not going to get away with that. Like question them in a way where they can't really go through with stealing the work. It won't work. Kind of like lots of that stuff was. Was said, and and we went through that on the call as well. So don't worry if that's what you're thinking. Yes, but the the more the internal shift is you walking around thinking, yeah, of course people wanted to steal my shit because it's really good because I have worked hard and I have put in the time and the work and the boring hours to get to the point where I am that good, right? Of course people want to steal my shit. Forgive me for the swearing. So that's something that can be applied in many areas of your life, right? Like you have a problem right now, you're facing it, you think it's the biggest problem in the world. Like, oh my God, you've— maybe you feel angry or you feel sad or you feel whatever it is about it. And the problem you had a few years ago, that was like, that was the problem that someone else is now having. And they're looking at you and your problem and they're being like, oh my God, I just, I only wish I could be dealing with what she's dealing with. Like I would I would give my left pinky to have her problem right now. Right? But see, the problems that you have are going to ascend at every level. You're going to have a bigger problem at the next level, but you're going to be equipped to solve it, right? Or you're going to be equipped to get the support you need to solve it, right? So your problems are going to be of higher caliber than they were a few years ago, and that there's going to be more problems at the next level. that you go to as well, because your career can only advance to the level of problems that you are able and willing to take on. And it's not that we just all of a sudden get free of the problems. We get better at solving and handling and working our way through them in a way that they strengthen us. So another thing I said to my client was, because I was put on a performance improvement plan as well, A couple different times in my career that happened, and and then I also like there's like there's the two sides of of everybody, right? There's the sides of us where we were not doing that great, right? Where I was put on a performance improvement plan. I was fired one time. Actually, probably I was fired twice. I was put on a performance improvement plan twice, and then I also went from being a receptionist to being an HR manager in a company, right? So it's like you can like everybody has the good and the bad, right? It's not all one or the other. So. My client, she was saying, yeah, she's like, I was put on that performance improvement plan and I turned that around, right? And that's not something everybody can do, right? So some people are put on performance improvement plans and they get so stressed out. They're like spinning their wheels. They're, they don't know how to manage their mind or their self-talk. So they don't get better. Maybe they avoid the problems that they have to tackle head on. They don't share open. They don't share openly. They're not transparent when things are happening. Like when I was on my performance improvement plan, actually, I should. I feel like I should do a whole episode on that. Like how to turn around a performance improvement plan because that's not something that everybody does. Some people will be put on the plan and they won't. They won't recover. And then some people will be put on the plan and they will bounce back even stronger. Right? And that's a concept of. post-traumatic growth versus post-traumatic stress. Because you can use those circumstances to actually strengthen you. And you can be the person who just knows that you can do that. Or you can be the person who crumbles under the stress and isn't able to handle it. Right. And either way, you have the capability to do, to do either of those things. But sometimes we just don't know what we don't know. Don't have the guidance. Don't have the, like the fact that I was put on the plan in the first place just showed that I didn't have the knowledge that I needed to succeed in the role, right? So it was kind of a performance improvement plan is kind of a jolt to say, hey, you better step this up, right? You better figure out how to step it up, right? And if you can't, then you're out, right? And so that's fair enough, right? So with my client, she was like, yeah, I did that. I did turn it around. I was able to get better and now I do really good work and, and now people want to take it. Now people want to take credit for it and now people are taking advantage of me and now this is happening, right? And it's like, Yeah. And that's part of your growth. And this is how you solve it. And this is how you get stronger from this situation, right? This is how you, you feel into all those resources that you have inside of you that in some cases you may have already proven to yourself. And in some cases you might need to do for the first time. And you might have to have that self-belief, that self-confidence that you can do these things for the first time, right? And that's where, you know, the help from a coach is very, very helpful to kind of remind you of all the ways that you can do it and of the attitude that you can take to it. But anyway, so she looked at it that way and then she was kind of instantly turned in, like light bulb turned off, on, right? The light bulb was like, oh yeah, okay, I do know how to do, how to handle this. I do know how to handle situations like this and I can, Make the let this situation make me stronger versus what it has been doing, which is making me feel weaker and like a victim and like I have no control and like people are taking advantage of me. It's like no, I can actually allow this situation to make me stronger and better for the next for the next challenge that I'm going to take on in my career because there's going to be more challenges and let's bring them because that's okay, right? And that's what. Being somebody who's successful does. They're like, bring on the challenge. Bring it. Like, this challenge is here. I'm I need to deal with it. Who better than me to deal with it? Like, what is it here to teach me? What is it that I need to learn from this? What is it that I need to become at the end of this? Who do I want to be going through this? Like, it's like a class that you've been given by the universe. Like, one of my mentors used to say she used to say that is the exact curriculum that you need right now. That is what you need to be studying. That is how you need to go through. That is what you need to learn to go through right now, right? And while I might have hated that, and I might have been like, oh no, I don't want to, like, just get me out of this situation, the sooner I could say, okay, I accept it, I take it on, let's go, the better I was at moving ascending levels faster. Right? So you're given a challenge. The first thing you got to do is start thinking of is like accept the challenge, even if it's like a crappy challenge, right? Like some challenges we just get given and some challenges we choose, right? So the sooner you can accept, come to terms with like, okay, this is what I'm dealing with. Let's go forward. So my client, she just hired me. So that was her saying, you know, I believe I can handle this. I believe I can handle these challenges and get to where I want to go. And like, that was her first Her first turnaround in doing so, right? And so what most people will do is they just won't understand the capability that they have inside them. They won't—they won't take the really good look at what they've done before to see if there's anything there that could be useful to how they handle this situation. They will just get stuck in the victim mentality. They won't really know if they like—they won't really know that the way they're thinking isn't factual. Like The victim mentality isn't done on purpose. Like nobody says, oh poor me, I'm a victim. I can't do anything. Help me. I'm helpless. Like nobody thinks like that on purpose, right? So it's it's like unconscious victimhood, right? Like my client was in unconscious victimhood. She didn't know she was victimizing herself, right? And so she wasn't equipped. To handle the situations as best she could, right? Because she's kind of showing up as somebody who's a victim, showing up as somebody who people take advantage of. She's just kind of being this way in the world, just like, oh yeah, I do good work, but whatever people take it. I don't know. Like she was showing up like that, right? Instead of like, and it's not her fault. She couldn't see that there was another choice. She was seeing like, yeah, my work is so good that of course people want to take it. And that's why I need to learn the skills. To speak up for myself and to make it so that it's impossible for people to do that because I know the right questions to ask. I know the right things to ask for. I know how to say things so that it's so obvious that that was my work that that'll just that just won't happen, right? Like I need to learn that skill now. Like the fact that I have gotten so good at what I do has pushed me to the point where now I need to learn this skill of of advocating for my work. Right? That's that's the new skill that's required with the level that I've reached, right? And that is a new curriculum, a new thing that you got to do, right? And then it's the people who are like, oh, I don't want to do that. It's like, yes, your brain is always going to want to conserve energy, want to be lazy, want to do as little as possible. But the part of you that wants to be successful is the part of you that's like. Yeah, I don't want to do it, but I'm going to have to do it anyway. I'm going to do it. I'm going to— if I'm going to do it anyway, I might as well do it with a good attitude. I'm going to accept it. Let's go. Right. I was using weightlifting as an example a lot because I've been doing weightlifting now for 2 years. And I've been working on a health journey myself. And I had a, I had a disease that I had to cure with diet and exercise. And I have since made a huge amount of progress in the last year. And That's not something that you can always see happening, but it's it is through the boring work that I've done it right, and I might expand on that in a later episode. But what was happening here with my client was she was doing that right. She was doing all the boring work. She was doing the work to get really good, and then the additional skill that was basically being called upon by like the universe was saying, "Okay, great! You've gotten to that point. Now you got to learn how to advocate for your work, right? That's your new lesson. That's your new class." She wasn't seeing it as a class that she could. Sign up for. She was seeing it as something that was making her small and feel like giving up and feel weak and feel, you know, like she had no control, right? And that's a choice. That's an option, right? So I just, I wanted to share this. I think it's so important that whenever we have a challenge, we can see that challenge in 2 different ways. We can see it as the class that we've been given And that it's like a mandatory class, right? Like in school, you have mandatory classes. You have to take them to graduate to the next level, right? To do the next level of schooling. We are given mandatory classes in our life, and the longer we put off taking them, the longer we are miserable because they might not be fun to take. They might be challenging. We might have to do— we might not want to do them. We might just— they might not even be challenging. We might just feel like they're tedious and we just don't want to, right? The longer we put off doing them, the longer we prolong the next level of our learning and our growth and our success and our and our results. Right? So you have a challenge in front of you right now. What is that challenge? And are you in any way avoiding it? Are you in any way putting off decisions that involve you that involve you moving to it? Are you in any way not thinking about it? Are you Are you avoiding it any in any way? Do you have a lot of negative thoughts around this challenge? And is it a challenge that you're going to have to take anyway one way or another, right? If it's if it's one of those, then moving to acceptance really quickly and just being like okay, let's just get really good at it. Let's just get right into it. Let's just one of my coaches said she's like yeah. She's like one of the reasons why you succeed really fast is because. You see your growth and you move straight to it. And if someone's like, I'm usually paying someone to guide me in this direction. So I'm like, okay, yeah, tell me where my growth is. I'm going to go to it. It's going to be uncomfortable. I know that's okay. Let's just go. So the sooner I get it done, the sooner the better. Right. And I'm just thinking I should do another episode on that whole challenge, which was leaving my 10-year relationship and everything that happened there and how that was a lot. That was a lot of just like, okay, you got to do this. This is really hard. Just go do it. You got to do this. This is really hard. Go do it. And how this, this series of events just led me to the results so quickly, like within 6 months, right? But if I hadn't done that, if I hadn't gone down that path, I would have just gotten right back into the same pattern again, doing the same things with like— maybe with— maybe I would have left a relationship and ended up with someone exactly like him and repeated the same patterns, right? So it's like the guidance was just like this This—it was kind of like this. I don't know how to describe it. It's like I would have been going off way in the wrong direction, and my coach kind of took my shoulders and pointed me into the other direction and said, "Okay, it's your choice. You either walk down that path," and that path looked a lot more—you know—it looked like it had a bunch of prickly bushes, and it was like not fun to go down that path. She's like, "You have to get through that," and then on the other side, it's going to be great. Or you could take the easy path, which was like the highway path that was easy to walk, the paved path with very least resistance. And she's like, you can go down that path again, but that's the path you've been down and we already know where that goes. So you take the prickly path and you'll get to somewhere more beautiful. Would you rather do that? Like go through exploring in the woods? And so I chose, yeah, I, whenever she pointed me, I would go. Right? So getting back on topic here, the— I'll just do a quick recap because I've kind of lost myself a little bit. So the problem, the problem is that you have a problem in front of you right now and that you don't recognize the caliber of that problem. That problem is a lot higher quality of a problem than you had several years ago. And you're not recognizing how far you've come. You're not recognizing the good about this problem. You're not recognizing the fact that a lot of people would give their left pinky to have your problem and trade places with you, right? So what most people will do when they're in that space is that they will cry about the problem, be really upset about it, and maybe ruminate in it, maybe like spin their wheels about it, maybe just really not be in top problem-solving mode, just not do a really good job of it and not seek out necessarily help to solve it. Just kind of think maybe it'll resolve itself, maybe it'll be fine, and just not do very much so that they're not really actively solving. They're just kind of maybe on defense, avoiding doing what they have to do. Right. And then if they are going to try to actively solve it, they either don't have the tools to solve it right now, and they might try some things, they might not work, and then they might just stop trying to solve it. Kind of like my client had done. She had been like, okay, I tried to speak up for my work, but they didn't, they didn't acknowledge it. They kind of just ignored me and brushed me off. So I didn't do anything. I didn't do anything beyond that. Right. And then she would go back to just being Upset and you know crying about the situation, and then the results that came from that were her being very miserable to go into work, her being her feeling very unempowered if that's a word, her feeling bad about herself, her feeling you know all these feelings that were not necessary or required. And the real thing, the real the real actual problem was that she wasn't recognizing this as a curriculum to advocate for herself. And she was missing all the different things that needed to happen, that she needed to learn to activate, advocate for herself. And the other problem is that she wasn't really energetically taking that on, right? Like she was being, behaving like somebody who is taken advantage of, like somebody who just gets their work taken and doesn't really do anything about it because they feel like they're powerless, right? And so that was resulting in people thinking they could just do it all the time and do it more. Right? And so the actual solution for her is to first recognize that awareness, be like, okay, this is something that I need to learn. It's not going away. I'm going to need to learn to advocate for my work. And I need to recognize that when my work is that good, people are going to want to take it. And this is something that is worth learning and I need to learn it. And so what that does is it, it creates strength within her. Instead of weakness, it allows her to focus on something that's going to give her a lot of benefit in her life and her career moving forward. It's going to allow her to ascend into new levels of leadership. It's going to allow her to become the best that she can be in her industry and contribute more and have everything be the way that you know honestly should be where she gets credit for her work, right? And Why this works better is because she's not avoiding it anymore. She sees it; she's growing; she's understood it. Even though it's uncomfortable, she's she's all in on going for it, right? And then the results that she's going to create from this is that she's going to become somebody who rises to the challenge, and that's now been confirmed again. And in order to create the identity that you want to create within yourself, you have to confirm the identity over and over and over again. So she already had confirmed it once, but then she forgot about it, like when she was on the performance improvement plan and she took. Took the feedback, turned it around, and then got way better. Then she became somebody who was, who was able to turn it around and become stronger from a performance improvement plan, right? She had forgotten about that. So it's bringing in that awareness of like, okay, that is already who I am in a sense. I already have some evidence of it. Let's bring that in. Let's use that. Um, and then, and then rise it up again and be like, okay, this is my next curriculum. This is my mandatory class. How am I going to turn this around? And how am I going to be in this situation? And how am I— how do I want to be? And how do I want to grow? Right? So the results that then she can create from there are the person who is strong in their work. And I have a lot of methods for this. Like, if someone is stealing your work, okay, if someone is taking credit for your work, there's a lot of ways to professionally question them in a way that will kind of walk them into a corner where they can't really— it's like a mic drop kind of thing, right? You ask them questions, they can't really deny it, they can't really continue to do it. They have to kind of adjust their behavior, they have to adjust what they were doing, right? And it can be all very professional on the surface, but either way, that's not okay, right? And that's a very big part of you owning your value, knowing your value, right? Because if you don't You might say you do, but then you're like, oh, I have no choice. Like they're just doing it. I can't control it. Like, no, you can control it. There's always something you can do. You can like, and I don't mean like walking away, cuz I guess that's what people get scared of, right? They're like, oh, well I'm afraid they're gonna push me out or whatever. But here's the thing. There's always gonna be a thought process that creates the results that you want to create. And so with that, it's gonna lead you to actions and taking actions. That result in people not getting away with stealing your work, right? So that's ultimately what that would lead to, is like her mastering the skill of advocating for herself, of questioning, of setting things up so that her work is no longer work that gets stolen or other people take credit for. That's just not something that happens in her reality because that is just not who she is. So hope that all made sense and that you followed me through the whole thing. I wrapped it up at the end there. And I look forward to talking to you next week. So one more thing: if you haven't taken the quiz, it's called the Value Vision Quiz, and this quiz is going to give you a very clear sense of whether or not you are valuing yourself or not. Right? And a lot of people tell me they're like, "Oh, I do value myself. I know how to value myself. I know I have a lot of value. I know I have great stories, but I'm not able to convince other people of it, or I'm just not getting the offers, or I'm not getting the interviews, or my boss isn't seeing it, or this is happening, or that is happening." It's it's 100 percent. A mirror of how you actually value yourself internally, of your actual blocks that are there that you're not seeing yet. And that's okay. They can all be like— they can be shot— a light can be shone on them. And then once you become aware and you witness them in a non-judgmental way, they can dissolve. Okay? And it's going to be witnessed. Like, they will need to be seen. You'll need to become aware of them first. And that's why they're called blind spots, because you probably can't see them right now, or you'd You'd have done something about them, right? So it's just something we got to work on. A lot of us have to work— like, we just have to kind of un— like, it's like, uh, uncover, like, like fossils. If we're like digging for bones or whatever, we have to uncover and, and find things little by little until we can actually unearth the whole thing and see what it looks like and be like, okay, I see what it is now. I see it. It is what it is. Now I can change it, right? And that's something that we, like so many of us, need to work on. And it's totally doable. It's not necessarily always easy, but it's totally doable. So do the quiz that will give you a good baseline on whether or not you're valuing yourself accurately, what you need to do. And I give you some step-by-steps for what to do next. And, and after that, if it makes sense, then we can get on a call together and we can talk about how, how you might move forward from that and what might be getting in your way specifically and how we can create some magic for you. So let me know, let me know if you have any feedback on this episode. If you'd like me to cover topics on other episodes, do the quiz and I will see you or talk to you in the next one. And here's the biggest blind spot I see with the people that I work with. Often they will think they know their value. They will think that they are presenting their value accurately and smartly. However, there are things they can't see which is why the results they're getting don't reflect that. So you can't reflect your value accurately outwardly if you don't know what it is internally. And so I've developed quite a few different ways to do that, and the first place to start is by doing an assessment of how accurately you know your own value. So with that said, you can go to the link in the show notes and download the Value All you have to do is score yourself. There's 14 questions. It'll probably take no more than 5 minutes to do the quiz. You add up your points at the end and you give yourself a score. And when you get your score, you'll be given a step-by-step of what to do next for where you are. You'll know exactly whether or not you're valuing yourself accurately or not and what to do next. And you can get that quiz right away. You can download it immediately and get your results within the next few minutes. And then email me and let me know what they were. And if it makes sense, if you feel like you would love some extra support with this and you really want to uplevel the way that you value yourself and the way that you show up in the world and the way that you instruct others to value yourself, then book a complimentary consult with me and let's see if we can make some magic happen.