Hello, corporate badasses. Welcome to our first episode of 2023 of Women Changing Leadership. I am your host, Stacy Mayer, and absolutely thrilled to be here with you again this week.

So full transparency. I'm actually recording this episode at the end of 2022, but I think it is incredibly relevant to what I'm about to talk about in today's episode.

So something that has happened for me for a long time as like many, many, many years, is I have actually sort of got into the New Year's spirit back in November. It usually happens for me towards the end of November, like right around Thanksgiving. I really start looking forward to 2023, setting goals, taking big bold action towards those goals really early on. And I always saw this as something that was different and outside of the mold of what everybody else was doing.

So while the rest of the world is kind of winding down and getting ready for their two weeks off or their one week off or their three days off at the end of the year, here. I am actually setting new goals into motion and actually taking action towards those goals. So this year, at the end of 2022, I actually started to make a commitment again to getting healthier in 2023.

So one of the things that I started doing right around Thanksgiving was intermittent fasting, which sounds really funny. Because over the holidays, aren't you going to eat more? But in my mind, this is the perfect opportunity to double down on what my long-term goals are and really set myself up to be successful over those holiday binge eating experiences.

And I just think of nothing better than starting early. So this is something that I have just done very naturally. And I don't come out and speak about it a lot because I always just think it's different. I think people really like to set New Year's resolutions and just say: Hey, it's a new year. What are we going to do? And for me, that New Year has already begun a couple of months already. I'm already into the New Year in my mind.

So I offer that to you as a perspective as we start to dive into what we're going to talk about in today's episode, which is the difference between hard work and working hard.

I think for a lot of women, the desire to avoid burnout, to not get into a position that is going to cause a ton of stress in their lives, that is going to force them to give up other priorities in their lives, forces them to do the opposite, which is not to go for those bigger, more audacious goals that we set for ourselves. And I think that is a real problem. And as women, we are so incredibly strong, incredibly capable. And so what ends up happening is when we do go for those big goals in what could be considered a hustle, we sort of weigh in a working hard sort of way.

Then, because we are so adept at doing it all ourselves, we are the ones who suffer at the end of the day. And so we know that about ourselves. We've been burned before. We have have hit burnout. We have stressed ourselves out to the max. We have climbed the corporate ladder, only to find ourselves being miserable once we got there. Everybody who's listening to this podcast has a desire to do better, to do something different.

And for me, personally, I feel that exact same way. I started my own business to be happy. I didn't start it to be miserable. And sometimes when I find myself overworking in the sense that feels a lot like stress, hard work, I have to do this, I have to do that. Then I don't like it. I'm like sort of questioning...Why? Why set these big goals for myself? Because it's only forcing me into misery. I know that sounds dramatic, but that's how it feels sometimes.

Like: why did I even want to become a CFO if this is what my life was going to look like? Why did I want to become a senior director if I was just going to be working around the clock. It's not worth it. We want other things in life. And so in this effort to avoid working really hard, we tend to avoid hard work.

And I am 100% speaking from personal experience. So what that looks like for me is: I will get a little bit lazier in the sense that I'll be like: Well, you know, I'm just going to chill out. I'm going to enjoy time with my family. I'm not going to check my emails, I'm not going to get back to this person. I'm not going to do that project. I'm not going to sign up for this event because I want to avoid working hard I don't want to feel burned out. I don't want to feel overextended. And so, what I end up doing inadvertently is saying saying no to things that actually make me feel joyful.

So this past year, I actually was on a health journey. I had made the declaration that I wanted to lose £20 by the end of 2022. That was something I really committed to and I actually joined a coaching program as part of how to learn how to do that.

And here we are now at the end of 2022 and I have yet to lose any weight. The coaching program was focused 150% on feeling good in our bodies. And so basically, what the coaching program was pointing to was this desire to avoid burnout, the desire to avoid binging, the desire to use losing weight as a measurement of success. So it was literally like pushing against all of those things so that when we do lose weight, we love ourselves, right? That we keep the weight off, that it feels manageable, that it feels like something that we can keep doing over and over and over again.

And as I was doing this program, I always felt like something was missing. And I think for me, I have been working on myself for a long time, obviously, for 20 plus years. But in the last couple of years in particular, I have elevated my leadership to a point where I do really understand the signs of burnout. I don't actually push myself to those extreme limits where I'm literally causing stress and harm to my body.

And for many of you listening, you have figured that out as well. You have had a certain amount of success in your career that you have learned to say yes to opportunities that serve you and say no to opportunities that don't serve you.

So I didn't really need, necessarily, to join a program that taught me how to love myself. Like, I actually very much love myself. I didn't need it. And I'm not saying that that's what this program was doing, but I didn't need a program to teach me how to overcome imposter syndrome. That was not something that I needed to work on in my life.

And for a lot of you, you've joined women's groups or leadership programs where the focus is so heavily on feeling better and understanding your value and knowing that you're worth it and loving yourself and all of those things that are so incredibly important. And we need to do that work. We lose sight of what I want to call hard work. We stop doing the hard work, we actually push the hard work aside.

And for me, hard work and loving myself are equal partners. They go hand in hand. And when I find myself too much to one side, I actually feel completely imbalanced. And so as I was coming up on the end of the year, I realized what I needed to do. What I really needed to do, honestly, was kick my butt. I needed to go on an intermittent fast. I needed to actually do the hard work. I needed to do the hard thing in order to start to lose weight.

So then the question became for myself: How can I do this and still love myself? How can I do this and not beat myself up? Well, the good news is it was pretty frickin easy, right? Because I've done the work of overcoming imposter syndrome of loving myself, of understanding my own inherent value as a human being, as a leader, as a woman who can do really hard things. And so the reason for today's episode is I really want you to start to look at what are the ways that you are avoiding the hard work of getting to that next level of leadership.

I want you to start to embrace in 2023 that it requires hard work to get to that next level of executive leadership. And that's okay. It's okay that what I'm teaching you inside of Executive Ahead of Time is that you're going to have 15-Minute Ally Meetings that make you feel uncomfortable. They don't always feel easy. They're going to be pushing a part of your brain that says: no, I shouldn't have this meeting or: no, this shouldn't be so hard. You're going to have to ask for a promotion and then you're going to have to be careful because you're going to get exactly what you wish for.

I just had this conversation inside The Leadership Table, my one on one coaching program, and I was talking to this woman and she was like: Oh my God, I'm about to be offered my dream job and I don't even know if I want it. She's scared because: be careful what you wish for, right? She made the statement that she wanted what she wanted in her next level job, and she's actually getting it.

And so then I had to remind her that the old way that if she got this promotion, she was going to have to work her butt off into brnout is not actually the case anymore. Because the way that she has set up this next level role, because we've been working together for over a year, is that she is going to do it on her terms. And every single human being that she's becoming in contact with understands that as well. The expectation is not that she goes into this role and kills herself. The expectation is, yes, that she does the hard work. She understands the amount of work that it's going to take to be successful in that role. But she's not going to be working hard. Working hard feels terrible. It feels like something we have to do. It feels like something we get stuck in.

But when we do the hard work to set ourselves up to be successful, we feel like a million dollars. We've earned it. Every single woman who has come in to Executive Ahead of Time is a hard worker. They understand and they value hard work. But they also value their health. They value their time with their families. They're willing to say: Look, I can do the hard things. But not at the expense of my health. That is the leadership table I want to create, but it requires a certain amount of hard work.

And so today's episode is really just a friendly reminder or a straight shooting reminder or a tough-love reminder that we have to do the hard work in order to set ourselves up for that next level of success.

Now, the next piece of things is when we get into those higher level leadership. Positions than we actually can find in the certain circumstances, that it is less work. And what that means is that if we're not getting the promotion based on having all the answers, doing it all ourselves, proving ourselves because of our deliverables. Then once we get that promotion, we're going to be getting it based on our leadership based on the way that we think about things, based on our ideas, based on our problem solving-abilities.

All of those things are high value leadership traits. Those are the traits when you start to get paid for. Your ideas and not the hours that you put in at work. And when we feel like we're working so hard, it's usually one to prove ourselves, but it's because we're in a position where we're literally getting paid for our hours. We're required to attend meeting after meeting after meeting. Even if we don't bring any value to the conversation, we're constantly being told what to do.

Rather on the reverse, when we create a leadership role for ourselves, where we are in control, where we're calling the shots. Then we're creating an opportunity for ourselves to lead through our ideas, to lead through our valuable contribution.

Now, here's the really fun part. The people at your organization who get paid the most are not the hourly workers. By hourly worker, you could be a CTO and still be considered an hourly worker, right? So this is not necessarily the entry level positions. But the entry level positions the hourly workers are the people who do not get paid as much money. The people who get paid the big bucks are the ones who bring that valuable contribution to the leadership table, who have those big ideas, who are able to make the difficult choices needed for the organization.

And that doesn't always require working hard. It doesn't require us losing that time with our families. Saying no to work life-balance. It just might require us to do a little bit of hard work to get there. It might require us to do a little bit of hard work once we get there.

But from my point of view, and I think for many of you listening, that hard work is worth it. It feels good. It feels good to do something, accomplish something, and have a result happen as a result. We want that.

So as you enter into 2023, I really want to encourage you to ask yourself: where am I avoiding hard work in an effort to save myself from working hard?

I'll repeat that again. Where am I avoiding hard work in an effort to save myself from working hard? That working hard, that ugly place that none of us want to be in ever, ever again. Once you can figure that out, then you can start to lean into the hard work.

You can enjoy the hard work. You can set boundaries around the hard work. And you can create and accomplish things in your life that you never, ever, ever thought were possible five years earlier.

Thank you so much for listening. And I'll see you next week. Bye!