Yesterday my fiancé challenged me on something I did, and I came face to face with a weakness of mine.
I’d shared an email exchange with someone where they’d failed to answer a direct question I’d asked and I was going to let it go and move on.
I interpreted their choice to respond to the other parts of my email but ignore my question as information enough. To me, that was a response! So I was completely ready to delete the email thread, and move on with my day.
Frustrated, Philip challenged me, ‘Why won’t you fight for yourself??’
Phew. I felt so sure my read on the situation was accurate.
But, he went on to point out how rude it actually was to just ignore someone’s direct question, and how I’d never do that to a prospective client…
He was right.
One of my superpowers is a resilience and self responsibility that makes it easy for me to put things down and move on when it looks like the environment around me can’t deliver what I want or need.
This gift has served me very well in business and professional sport. It’s allowed me to be brave, not take things too personally and get along with a wide variety of people.
And, like with so many of our gifts, this has come from a wound.
A reflexive and clever adaptation that actually comes from an underlying story that there’s no point in fighting for myself.
So, how cool – I’m resilient, don’t take things personally and don’t sweat the small stuff, and am highly adaptable.
And, on the other side of the coin; there are parts of me that don’t believe I can have my wants and needs met through relationships with other humans.
Heads. Tails.
Superpower. Kryptonite.
Because I have great awareness around this and have done a lot of work to heal and integrate these parts of myself, when Philip pointed to this yesterday I could pause, see the truth of it and let it in.
I was totally backing away from something when I didn’t need to.
This kind of stuff plays out with my clients all the time.
It’s the accommodating business owner who’s staff member asks her for leave with almost no notice, and she reflexively says yes because she’s scared of losing the team member and the hassle of re-hiring.
It’s the productive leader who’s unafraid to be bold and directive in her feedback but finds her staff members on the back foot, and hasn’t yet realised that because she’s disconnected from her heart she comes across as harsh and insensitive.
It’s the more empathetic leader who gets nervous before providing constructive feedback and ends up watering down her message, confusing her team or client and not getting the outcomes she wants.
It’s the driven, efficient woman who dismisses her husband or child’s bid for attention with irritation because she’s got so many things to do, and hasn’t yet learned how to clearly feel and communicate her needs.
We all have these places. Where our gifts and our challenges collide and create mediocre outcomes.
But when you’re aware of your kryptonite and your superpower, you can work with them in ways that are super constructive, integrate them and become a more well rounded and effective leader.
I’m still proud to be wonderfully resilient and self responsible, but I’m much more in tune with my deeper needs now and way more able to advocate for them in relationships. And I know I’ll also continue to grow in these areas, because this is part of the fabric of who I am, and these things take time.
This goes beyond just learning great communication skills so you can manage your staff effectively or have a great marriage, this is about understanding the root cause of why you reflexively people please or close down when you feel threatened.
This understanding gives you access to the empathy and compassion for yourself you need to be able to show up for yourself differently in challenging moments, and start getting different results.