120: Emotional Courage: Becoming an “I’ve Got This” Leader

Welcome to the Time to Level Up Podcast. I'm your host, Andrea Liebross. Each week, I focus on the systems, strategy, and big thinking you need to CEO your business and life to the next level. Are you ready? Let's go.

Hello, my friends and welcome back to the podcast. I continue my journey through my house finding different rooms to record in. Today it happens to be from the kitchen table. It's not such a bad spot. I get to look out through some windows, lots and lots and lots of windows. It's kind of gray outside. It's sort of typical for a February day when I'm recording this, but today's topic is really one that I think is fundamental to 99.9% of the work I do with my clients.

I toyed with thinking about this as mental toughness. But I think a better way to put it is emotional courage. I think it is one of the things that is required in order for us to be successful in life and in business. In my work as a coach inside I've Got This and Runway to Freedom, I've seen that the vast majority of the, I'll call it leadership, leading yourself or others, or business challenges that my clients are facing are actually a lot of times not really business-related or professional in nature at all. They're just disguised as that. What they really are are challenges that are emotional or internal.

I see this as well in my own world and my own kids. I'll give you an example. My daughter took a leadership role amongst her friends and decided that she was going to be in charge of selling some basketball tickets. She gathered up the information about the tickets from her five friends. They had five different accounts. She posted them on StubHub. This StubHub transaction kind of went awry because they were student tickets, etc, etc.

She ended up having to clean up the mess and the aftermath. If you want any information about selling student tickets on StubHub, I'm your girl, but she was kind of upset that her friends didn't see the angst that she was having, didn't acknowledge that she was actually doing something for them, that she was the one that took the initiative. she was pissed. She's kind of pissed at them.

I pointed out to her, “Okay, although I can empathize with you being pissed at them and their lack of empathy, what really was going on here was that you were having an emotional, an internal struggle.” This was really more about her inside and thinking about how to handle this situation than anyone else. Would it have been nice if they said, “Oh, Rebecca, thanks so much for handling this,” would have been great? But she really couldn't manage their feelings at all. She couldn't tell them what to feel or say. She couldn't change them.

The only thing she could change was herself and that was kind of the emotional courage aspect of it. As it relates to my clients, leaders, business owners, CEOs, entrepreneurs, they all have a plethora, a myriad of struggles in how they are working, leading, and managing. Most often, these struggles really stem from a reluctance or inability, an apprehension to feel fully and deeply and to allow themselves to experience true vulnerability.

My daughter did recognize that maybe she should be a little vulnerable and tell her roommate how she was feeling. Some people, adults, recognize this, but what you don't necessarily recognize is the impact it's having on your business and on you. The result is that you're failing to process your feelings in effective ways.

How this shows up and what it looks like is that these unprocessed emotions lead you to just forge ahead, just forge ahead. Just like, “I just gotta get through it,” and in the process kind of make what I call faulty decisions, and sometimes burn bridges because you're not taking a strategic pause and examining what you're feeling, and in the process, you're losing your needed supporters because you're not being vulnerable and expressing what you're feeling.

What failing to process your feelings looks like is it looks like you just forging ahead saying, “Oh, this is just the season of life, making decisions that aren't necessarily sound, sometimes burning some bridges and maybe losing a few people along the way.”

I've been exploring this concept of emotional courage in female leaders. In my research, we'll call it, I found the work of a guy named Peter Bregman, and Bregman, I discovered, is a best-selling author and really a trusted adviser to top CEOs and management teams. He himself has a business called Bregman Partners. But he's also the author of two books, 18 Minutes, and then his newer book is called Leading With Emotional Courage.

I really liked what he had to say and according to him, emotional courage is the willingness to feel. It's the driving force behind anything important that we want to accomplish. I know this to be true, since how we feel really drives all of our actions, inactions, or reactions. His theory that emotional courage is the driving force behind anything we want to accomplish, I am all in on that.

Now here is an example. I want you to think about a difficult conversation that you want to have with someone but you haven't followed through on. Now consider why haven't you followed through on it. I'm betting you know what you want to say in that you're skilled enough to have the conversation and I imagine you've had or could have created opportunities to have the conversation. Why haven't you followed through? This occurred with a client the other day, so I coached two colleagues, one wanted to have a conversation with the other and sent an email, “Hey, when can we chat about this?”

Well, the person that needs the emotional courage wrote back, “Well, I'm only available three weeks from now at three o'clock,” or something to that effect, which really isn't necessarily the case. That person is kind of avoiding the situation, why? This is where emotional courage comes in.

There's something in there that she or you, if you're thinking about your own conversation that you haven't had, that you don't want to feel in, maybe it's the possibility of conflict, or the other person's defensiveness, their anger, or your own anger or defensiveness, I'm not sure what it is that you might have to feel but the risk of feeling it stops you. It's going to stop all of us. That's why emotional courage is so important to following through on what we care about the most.

I caught myself this weekend, we have to have a difficult conversation with our builder. I said to my husband, “You call him,” and my husband said, “No. I think you should call him. You have a better grasp of this particular situation and the ins and outs,” and I said, “No, you call him.”

Why did I want my husband to call him? Because it was going to involve probably a lot of emotional courage on my part and I didn't want to do it. Emotional courage really stops us. But yet, it's so important on following through and what we care about most if we are willing to feel everything, then we can do anything.

When I create business plans, and we look at [win] your goals, those can happen if you're willing to feel everything because if you're willing to feel everything, then you can do anything. But what's interesting is that emotions are so often taboo in business. I dug a little deeper into Peter Bregman’s work and I saw what he said.

Bregman believes that we should be emotional in our professional lives. Even though it's kind of taboo, he does believe that we should be emotional and we should be emotional at work with clients, with colleagues. Now that does not mean that we should express all of our emotions, but what it does not mean is that we should be a drama king or that you should be a drama queen. What it means is that you should be willing to feel all of your emotions.

Here's the truth: it doesn't matter whether you want to be emotional, you simply are emotional. It is part of being human. It's part of being the human experience. It's impossible not to have hundreds of emotions pass through us in a regular workday. I want you to try to spend just three minutes today and not have an emotion.

At any moment, we may feel happy, frustrated, angry, jealous, scared, excited, bored, or inspired. That's what it really means to be human. There is no time during the day when you cannot feel an emotion. You are always always, always feeling emotions, because you are emotional. But you often try to stuff those emotions down. That's when we become unreliable and unpredictable.

In my example of these two colleagues who had to have the conversation and the one who responded, “Oh, I can meet three weeks from now at three o'clock,” she was showing up then to her colleague as unreliable and kind of unpredictable. That was very out of her character.

These emotions that she didn't want to feel were the ones that were getting in her way. They were getting in her way of being who she really was. The emotions that she was having were kind of leaking out in passive-aggressive ways. When we try to stuff emotions down, it's when we become unreliable and unpredictable, and the emotions that we don't want to feel are the ones that get in our way because they leak out, often in passive-aggressive, insidious ways.

Yes, Bregman is suggesting that we feel, watch, and pay attention to our emotions, but feeling angry and expressing our anger or feeling mad and expressing being mad are two different things. So yes, you should feel the anger and the mad. But then you need to be strategic and intentional about what you express and how you express it so that you can achieve the outcome that you want.

This outcome of her colleague, the colleague that requested the meeting, thinking that the other one was unreliable and unpredictable, that's not what we want. You've got to be strategic and intentional about what you express and how you express it to create the outcome you want.

My daughter expressed to her roommate her disappointment in this group of friends. What she was looking for there was just someone to say, “Okay, I hear you,” and she got that. She didn't get big apologies or hugs, no, but she got someone to just say, “I hear you.” Oftentimes, that's all we're really looking for.

What I also loved about Bregman's perspective was what he calls the three critical elements for powerful leadership. Great leaders are confident in themselves. They usually are great at connecting with others, and they are committed to a larger purpose all at the same time. They're confident in themselves, they're connected with others, and they're committed to a larger purpose all at the same time.

Isn't that what a great leader is? Yes. This term leadership, he uses it broadly as do I. When I say I coach leaders, I am not simply talking about people who are leaders in large organizations or people who lead teams. Anyone who wants to move forward in their life, who wants to achieve something they care about, which clearly is all of you, would benefit from developing their capacity in these three elements.

Then, of course, the fourth element is emotional courage. Think about this. You can be a leader, a leader in my mind is anyone who wants to achieve something they care about. A leader does not have to lead other people, they can just be leading themselves but they definitely need these three to four things. They need to be confident.

To be confident in yourself does not mean to be arrogant. Confidence is really about being grounded. It's about knowing yourself and being willing to be different from others if that's who you really are. Confident people don't usually get thrown by criticism or negative feedback.

When you're confident, you can not know things and it doesn't threaten your self-concept. Confident people are usually curious and open and steady. I think my daughter was expressing or exuding some confidence in this situation. She was willing to step up and say, “I'll figure out how to sell the tickets.” She was willing to be different from her friends. It didn't go so well. She was willing, she didn't really get thrown by the fact that it didn't go so well.

She was okay with not knowing. She kind of didn't know how it all worked and she was okay with that. It really wasn't threatening her self-concept. She was kind of curious and open about how to do this next time. You need to be confident.

Number two: to be connected with others means that you're trusting and trustworthy. You can be relied on and you're willing to rely on others. You listen, and you truly care about the people around you, and others know that and would say that you care about them, even when they disagree with you. That's a super important skill.

Being confident, being connected, then the third thing is being committed. I have whole podcast episodes about being committed. One of my very first episodes is about being committed. I actually have a lot of episodes about being confident too but to be committed as a leader is really to be committed to a larger purpose.

Being committed to a larger purpose means that there's something that you're working towards that's bigger than you and bigger than the people with whom you're working, something that you care about that is not simply self-aggrandizing like making you bigger or pleasing to others. It's something that all of you, or you can get a group, all of you can rally behind and work towards together. Your purpose is your focus and you must be willing to say no to distractions in order to achieve your purpose.

Part of the business planning I do with my clients, one of the sections that we go through is determining what their core focus is. What that core focus is, is really what is your purpose and what is your niche? Who do you want to work with? By knowing that purpose and niche, those two things comprise your core focus, and you need to look at that core focus so that you don't get distracted with all the other people, things, or purposes you could be serving.

When someone says, “I can work with anyone, I can help anyone,” totally true, but what's your core focus, you need to use that as a filtering mechanism to understand who you really do want to work with, who you're committed to working with.

Here's what's important. Great leaders are all three of these elements at the same time. Confidence in yourself, without connecting with others, means that you're self-involved. You'll lose the loyalty and support of those around you. If you do not connect with others, then that means you're too self-involved, and you're going to lose the loyalty and support of those around you, which goes to connection.

Connection with others, without confidence in yourself, means you'll do anything to please others and that's a recipe for burnout and powerlessness. But committing to a purpose without confidence in yourself and connection to others means you'll lose yourself and everyone around you in the process.

Confidence, connection, and commitment are very much intertwined. A great leader has all of those three things at the same time. They can't have confidence without connecting. They can't have connection without confidence. You can't commit to a purpose without confidence in yourself or connection to others. To be confident, connected, and committed simultaneously, here's the kicker, requires emotional courage.

Those three elements plus emotional courage is the key and really, those four elements are the ingredients for outstanding leadership. How do we do this? How do we develop confidence in ourselves? Well, Bregman says what is interesting about developing confidence in yourself is that you need to start with some confidence in order to build more, it’s like success breeds success.

Here's a good thing: no matter how much you feel like you lack confidence, there are some areas, my friends, where you already have confidence. Your first step, your homework here is to recognize where you already feel independent and strong. In what situations, with which people do you feel grounded? Is it in the parenting realm? Things don't bother you like they bother others. Is it playing a sport maybe you feel confident in playing pickleball? Are you better than everyone else?

Maybe it's in decorating or interior design? Do you just seem to have a knack for it? One way to recognize that place is to identify where you're comfortable being different than the people around you. Perhaps a place where you are already okay standing out and being big. It may be something that's insignificant to you, like you eat differently than other people.

Maybe you're vegetarian or maybe you don't eat cheese and you're comfortable holding the line in the restaurant when the waitress comes over and you saying, “Hey, I'm vegetarian. I don't eat cheese. Can you help me?” That's a place where you have confidence. Think about those situations and feel what it feels like to stand in your own certainty in your willingness to be with people and to be different from them. Feel that sense of self, that's the place where you can experience confidence.

As you notice that place in your body, you can then begin to apply it to other areas of life, like connection with others. I loved Bregman's suggestion on this one. He said that one of his favorite ways of connecting with others is by telling them how much he appreciates them.

If you want to get started, try this. If you want to get started in this connection category, try this: list three people, one personal, one business, and one more distant acquaintance and identify one thing you appreciate about each of them. Think of a specific example you can articulate and then out of the blue, let them know. You can do it in person, on the phone, in an email, or in a written letter.

Don't ask for anything in return and don't do it as part of a larger conversation that might include some feedback. Just reach out to them and let them know you appreciate them and explain why and then thank them. Usually in November, the 30 days of November, I try to write 30 letters and put them in the mail to 30 people that I appreciate. It's hard.

Some days by day 14, I want to say this is ridiculous. But do that. There's an idea for you. Could you write 30 letters to 30 people you appreciate, send them off, and not expect anything in return? That's a way to help you grow connection.

Lastly, let's talk about commitment to purpose and its importance. How do you get better at that? The first step in committing to purpose is having a clear sense of what you care about most. What is the most important outcome that you want to achieve in 2023? That's what Bregman calls the big arrow. Your big arrow could be part of a grand lifelong strategy, but it doesn't have to be.

Consider what small number of things would make the biggest difference in moving forward on what you care about most. Once you know that big arrow, you can make smart choices about where to spend your time, and perhaps more importantly, where not to spend your time.

Your big arrow is also critically important as guidance for those around you, those whom you want to inspire to drive the big arrow forward, and those from whom you want support. I did a Reel yesterday about expectations and this big arrow concept is tied to it. Do others know what your expectations are or what your big arrow is? What do you care about most? What do you want? If they don't know, then they can't support you in the process. They can't.

Sometimes I hear my clients say, “Well, I mean, my family, they're supportive. They're never not supportive, but really, I don't think they realize how much effort this is going to take to grow this business.” If your big arrow is growing a business that creates multiple six figures, then they need to know about it and they need to know what you think it's going to require.

I'm writing a book. You can say that's one of my big arrows for right now. I had to tell my husband, “Listen, this is going to mean that every weekend for half of one day, I am locked away writing a chapter.” He doesn't have the expectation of us doing something else together. He knows that that's my expectation, and that's part of my big arrow and he's okay with it, but I had to really declare that and tell him.

Since emotional courage coming full circle underlies all of these three elements, how do you actually develop emotional courage? You have to do things, my friends. You have to do more than talk. You need to do things specifically if they feel risky to you. Remember, risky is one of the Rs in SMARTER goal setting. Emotional courage is really built when you take risks, which make you feel things. When that happens, when you feel things, go really slowly and feel everything you feel and then act while you're feeling those things.

Most people try to stop feeling scared before doing something scary. But that doesn't build your emotional courage. I want to remind you that feeling scared is absolutely fine. It's perfectly natural. If you can act boldly while feeling scared, then you'll be unstoppable. I think that’s so true. If you can act boldly while feeling scared, you'll be unstoppable.

I've got a client right now who's contemplating upgrading from I've Got This to Runway to Freedom Mastermind and it feels very scary. It's a bigger financial commitment. It's really her committing to herself that she is going to make her business grow. It feels very scary and she's trying to stop feeling scared about it before she does it and I told her, “That's not the case. That's not going to happen. This is your way to build your emotional courage and feeling scared about it is fine. It's natural.”

If you can upgrade yourself while feeling scared, then you're going to be unstoppable and you're definitely going to get what you want. Okay, my friends. How are you working on your emotional courage? Do you recognize that growing your confidence, being connected, and committed to a larger purpose, are three elements that are part of or fuel emotional courage are the things that fuel the emotional courage? You've got plenty of opportunities even today to do it.

Alright, who else needs this message? Go share it with them. Go share this podcast with just one person. I would be honored if you did that. That would actually be an act of connection. It's a perfect way to connect by sharing something that's important to you with someone else. It's an element, it includes confidence because you're telling them, “Hey, I like this, I think you would like it too,” and you're not worried about what they're going to think. Go do it.

Until next week. Remember, it's always time to level up. This is a great way to level up and I'm here to support you along the way. Head over to andreaslinks.com and take the quiz. Take the productivity archetype quiz. Take the business freedom quiz. Figure out what you need to work on, then let's chat. See you next time.

Hey, listening to podcasts is great. But you also have to do something to kick your business up a notch. You need to take some action, right? So go to andreaslinks.com and take the quiz. I guarantee you'll walk away knowing exactly what your next best step is to level up.