🤸 Managing willpower energy, emotional proofreading, & an IRL leadership dinner

Hey — it’s Cristina & Jenni.

Each week, we share leadership reflections, resources, and laughs to help you excel in your role (+ have fun along the way).

As two tech leaders, we’re here to “lead in public” by sharing what we’re learning in our day-to-day roles, encouraging others to do the same, and learning and growing as leaders together.

Enjoy!

Quick plug for our workshop next week 🎉 

In last week’s newsletter, we announced that we’re running a virtual workshop. On Wednesday, August 16th at 12pm EST / 5pm BST, we’ll be walking you through 4 essential items that’ll help you keep your team aligned and firing on all cylinders (including templates because we love tangible things that can be put to use).

You can register here - can’t wait to see you there! Feel free to share the event with anyone that you think may benefit from creating a more positive, structured environment for their team.

Now, let’s dive into this week’s newsletter ✨

What we’re reflecting on this week

Cristina and I hosted a women’s leadership dinner this week (see photo at the bottom!), and the topic of conscious leadership - specifically “leading above the line” - from last week’s newsletter came up.

We talked about how consistently leading above the line - with curiosity, openness, and empathy - requires not only self-awareness, but also mindfulness, high EQ, and conscious effort to avoid being reactive when challenging or triggering situations are inevitably thrown our way.

In short, leading above the line isn’t always easy to accomplish.

And it’s also impacted by whatever headspace we happen to be in that day or that moment… which can be related to what’s going on at work or at home.

This got me thinking about an article I recently read about “willpower energy.”

And a big part of leading above the line?

Using our willpower to intentionally control how we react, how we communicate, and how we show up for our team members.

The strange thing is that, even though we probably know this at some level, we still act as though we can power through the day and be effective despite this very real neurochemical situation playing out in our bodies.

We might be feeling a little cranky or impatient, but instead of checking our willpower energy and taking a moment to breathe, our actions often say “I’ll take another 3 back-to-back Zoom meetings, thank you very much!” (which, as the image below shows, might not be the best way to go).

So… what should we do about this? How can we extend ourselves a bit of generosity and also restore some of that willpower that’s so necessary for conscious leadership?

Here are 5 strategies to manage your willpower energy, recharge the batteries, and better equip yourself to lead above the line:

• Do a quick biological reset from where you’re seated: Feeling escalated but don’t have much time on your hands? It only takes a few moments to calm your nervous system by doing the 4-7-8 breathing technique, listening to a 5-minute meditation on YouTube, or trying some light stretches.

• Get active: Turns out our bodies don’t love sitting down inside all day! If you have 10-15 minutes to spare, taking a walk (in nature, if you can swing it - maybe even during a 1:1) or doing your favorite type of exercise can improve your mood and reduce the negative impacts of stress.

• Free up mental space: If you’re feeling overwhelmed or like your brain is at capacity, take 5 minutes to grab a journal and do a brain dump to release some of that tension. There are many psychological impacts of writing down your thoughts, including reducing anxiety and regulating emotions.

• Get another perspective: Sometimes when you’re dealing with a lot, it can be difficult to get out of our own head and see things through a more constructive lens. Talking with a friend or trusted peer - whether to get things off your chest or to find a solution - can move you out of an emotional funk and into a more productive and relaxed frame of mind.

• Proactively carve out time: You might’ve noticed that the 4 strategies above are all reactive: they allow us to get back to baseline if things go awry. But what about a proactive approach, since we know for certain that we’ll inevitably get thrown off by something? This could look like:

  • Blocking time on your calendar for lunch every day and actually closing your laptop during that time.

  • Creating a recurring event to get out for a walk or hit the gym.

  • Scheduling a weekly touchpoint with a peer to chat about what’s going on that week.

  Whatever feels right for you, the point is that you’re setting yourself up for better conscious leadership by making space during your workday to recharge. If you don’t control your time, it’ll be controlled for you!

→ Which of these strategies resonate most with you? Which are you eager to try? How can you bake some regular moments of zen into your calendar next week?

What we’re learning this week

• 👀 TEDx video: How to stay calm when you know you'll be stressed – In this relatable talk, Daniel Levitin walks through what’s going on in the brain when we’re stressed and what we can do about it to stay calm, including a proactive strategy called a “pre-mortem.”

• 🖼️ Flowchart: W.A.I.T. until talking – We love this concise, slightly cheeky flowchart that guides us on when to speak up in a meeting or conversation vs. when to keep quiet and listen. Use it for yourself or perhaps share it with a verbose friend 😉

• ✍️ LI post: Single stressful email – Ever received a slack message or email that lacked full context and sent you into an emotional tailspin, only to find out later that it was totally benign or unimportant? Liz Fosslien suggests that we, as leaders, can prevent this type of situation for our direct reports by doing an “emotional proofread” before hitting send.

What we’re enjoying this week

We’ve been experimenting with some IRL hangouts with other leaders across various industries. Such a treat to get quality face-time and good food with a group of growth mindset leaders!

That’s it for this week — thanks for reading.

See you next Thursday! 🤸‍♀️