Author Spotlight

Women’s History Month is a time when we celebrate women’s contributions to history and to life. At Seasons Leadership, we believe that everyone is a leader to someone – they inspire someone to do something they wouldn’t otherwise do. While women leaders are everywhere they still take up a much smaller percentage of formal leadership roles.

The feeling of being overwhelmed can happen to any of us. It doesn’t matter what your “job” or role is, or what “level” you are in an organization. You can find yourself feeling overwhelmed and helpless to do anything about it. Leaders can feel especially overwhelmed because they often have added demands on their time from bosses, peers and employees.

I often work with leaders with a win-lose mindset. They feel they must win, or they lose and someone else wins. This win-lose scenario is a scarcity mindset. With a scarcity mindset it’s difficult to see opportunities.

I hear from clients all the time that they want to solve a problem, but they resist potential new approaches because they have “tried that on other projects and it didn’t work.” A solution to this dilemma is rethinking our approach to “favorite things.”

Promises made – promises kept is a core value of mine. However, this value is a challenging one to keep. Have you ever made a commitment or a promise to do something, and then not done it? What do you think was the effect of you not keeping your commitment? You may think that it doesn’t really matter, no one will notice, or you may not even think about it at all.

Sometimes, we get so busy that we forget to celebrate what we’ve accomplished. Instead, we just look to the next hill we need to climb or task we need to finish. However, taking the time to reflect on what we have achieved can help us recognize and repeat the things that created success, and note places we can improve for future efforts.

Leaders often tell me that they are overwhelmed and that there is so much to do that they could never possibly do it all. My clients talk about higher expectations and more demands being made on them. These feelings are increasing their stress levels. But you can take control; by reframing stress and cultivating resilience we all have the power to lead better lives and be better leaders.

Being armed with the knowledge about what part of the day you are most productive is helpful because it enables you to schedule tasks that require brainpower for your preferred time of the day, when your brain is fired up and ready to perform.

We never know when we will get positive affirmation from others and there is no guarantee that it will come along when we need it most. This means that we benefit from having a method for self-affirmation that keeps us motivated.