Ep #96: When You Have a Bad Manager

Get Six Figure Job You Love | Bad Manager

 

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Have you ever had one of those managers who you just can’t seem to get it right with? You’re always trying your best, you think you’re doing what they want, and you’re getting good results, but they just don’t see it? Yeah, me too. So, how do we deal with these situations?

 

When we have a bad manager, our default is to believe that because we’re not getting their verbal approval, it must be because they’re right and we could be doing more. We think we need to fix ourselves in order to please this manager because we respect their opinion. However, it’s time to get out of this default because your bad manager is never going to change, but you can change the mindset you’re showing up with.

 

I know this is a problem so many of you listening struggle with, so tune in this week to discover how to stop torturing yourself over getting validation from your bad manager. I’m sharing stories from my own life as well as my clients’ lives of how we’ve overcome the frustration of seeking approval from someone who doesn’t want to give it, and how you can do the same.

 

 

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What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

 

  • Why we crave the approval of our managers at work, no matter how bad of a manager we perceive them to be.
  • How to put your bad manager’s approval (or lack of approval) into perspective.
  • Why your bad manager’s actions are, more than likely, coming from a place of insecurity.
  • How trying to fulfill your bad manager’s unrealistic expectations will leave you miserable.
  • The growth and compassion that is available to you in these uncomfortable situations.
  • Some stories from my clients about how they stopped attaching their worth to their bad manager’s opinion.
  • What you can start doing right now to make sure you’re not tying your self-worth to the approval of your manager.

 

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DOWNLOAD  TRANSCRIPT

 

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Welcome back to the Get a Six Figure Job You Love Podcast. This is episode 96, When You Have a Bad Manager. Stay tuned.
Hey there. Welcome to the Get a Six Figure Job You Love Podcast. I’m your host, Natalie Fisher. I’m a certified career mindset coach who also happens to want to skip all the BS and get to what it really takes to create real results for you and your career. On this podcast, you will create real mindset shifts that will lead to big results and big changes in your career and your income. No fluff here. If you want to get a six figure job you love and create real concrete results in your industry and make a real impact, you’re in the right place. Are you ready? Let’s go.
Well, hello. I’m very glad you are here today. So I actually can’t believe I haven’t done a podcast on this before, because it comes up so frequently and it’s been coming up more and more inside the Six Figure Curriculum Coaching Program, where we’ve been working through some things with some of my clients and some of their managers. And I’ve had the situation too. And I’m going to give you lots of examples today. So for those of you who tell me that you like love hearing about specific client examples, got a lot of those today, so stay tuned.
So I want to preface this by saying, when you have a bad manager, our default… Or let me define bad manager for the purposes of this podcast, is a manager who you feel like you can never get it right with. You’re always trying your best. You think you’re doing what they want, you’re working well, like maybe you’re probably even getting really good results, but they just don’t seem to see that ever. No matter what you do, it never seems good enough.
And so our default is to believe them, is to on some level believe that because we’re not getting their validation, because we’re not getting their approval, that somehow they must be right. That we could be doing better. We could do more. Right? And that’s our default is what I find. And for me, if you’ve been listening to me and you know my history with my past 10 year relationship, that’s what it felt like too. It was like, I can’t do anything right. No matter what I do. If I then do what you said, then you change it. You’re still not happy. It was never going to be enough ever for this person. Right. And my default was too like, oh, I am not enough. I need to fix this. I need to fix that.
But then after doing it for so long, I’m like, that’s never going to work. Is it? You’re never going to actually see how amazing I am. Are you? And the answer was no. So when we are talking about managers, it’s very similar. Like managers, partners, anybody who we respect their opinion, not even because we want to put that much weight on their opinion, but just because we do. So whenever you’re in a situation like this, where you’re on default and just watch yourself, how badly do you need their approval? Or how badly do you want their approval? A good way to screen this question out is to say, if I got their approval, what would I then give myself permission to feel? And the answer’s probably going to be valued, validated, like I’m enough. And so the purpose of this podcast is to show you that you get to feel that anyway, because they’re not changing.
So spoiler alert, they are not changing. Or at least we have to go with that because we don’t have evidence and it’s not our responsibility to change them. I heard something funny the other day was a quote on Facebook. And it said, “The only time you can change someone is when they are in diapers.” And it’s not our job. We can’t go around changing people. So that being the thing, we’re going to proceed from that fact. So why do we do this? Why do we always seek the approval? Why is it so important to us that we get that approval? And it’s because that’s how we’re wired. When we grow up, we’re looking for approval from our parents. We’re craving approval. We’re craving love. We’re craving validation. And we feel like that validation or love that we crave is power over us.
And it gives us like… Because it’s like, well, if you don’t get their approval, you could get in trouble with your parents. Or if we don’t get their approval, we could get a bad review. They could sabotage us. So
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there’s lots of reasons why we crave the approval, but it’s out of fear basically. It’s like, I’m scared. If I don’t get your approval, something’s going to be wrong. Something bad’s going to happen to me. I’m going to get a bad reference. My career’s going to be doomed. If you’re a kid, I’m going to be grounded if I don’t get your approval, if I don’t do things “right.” It’s a fear thing. And then also we’re just human. And we just crave that all of us. We want validation. We want to be approved of. We want people to like us because that’s a human thing and that’s okay too.
That’s not going anywhere either, but I’m going to show you how to manage it so that you’re not torturing yourself over it when it’s not necessary. Okay. And I’ll share my story too and how I did it. So what we do is we do one or two things. We try to keep seeking the approval. So we try to keep getting better, keep doing what they say, keep changing it. So for example, in my relationship, he said to me one time, “You don’t contribute or you don’t clean up or you don’t do anything.” So I was like, “Okay, I will do everything.” I’ll do the exact opposite of what you’re saying. Because in my head I’m like, oh my God, but I am, I am, I do clean up and I do contribute. And I do. But obviously for him, that wasn’t enough.
So I was like, okay, I will make it impossible for you to say that. I will do everything and I will contribute everything. And then because he was very insecure person and I want you to keep in mind, your manager’s probably very insecure as well. After I started doing everything, paying for extra things, pulling more than half my weight or more than half of the expenses and cleaning all the time and making sure everything was clean, making it my job. He was like, “Well, now there’s nothing for me to do. And I don’t feel valuable because there’s nothing for me to contribute.” But when he was doing everything, then he was doing it resentfully and mad and angry. So it’s literally like a no win. You cannot win a situation like that.
And then I would ask him, “Well, what do you think is fair? What would you like me to do then? How would you like this to be?” And he didn’t know. And he would just get angry because he didn’t know, he just wanted be angry. So when you are in a situation like that, you’re either going to do what I did and try to exceed expectations so that nobody can say that you’re not doing enough. And you might do that for a while. Or the second thing is you’re going to start to just feel angry and resentful and you’re going to start to become more difficult and you’re going to start to become more negative because of the way that you’re thinking. And I don’t blame you, anyone in a situation like that, they have total reason to feel negative. It’s a good reason. Be like, well, no matter what I do, it’s never enough. So I might as well… Then you might start to be like, well, whatever, I won’t even try then.
Who cares? Because they’re just going to tell me I’m not doing enough anyway. Or they’re just going to have another thing. They’re just going to be nitpicking at something else that I did. So one or two things. You’re going to either keep trying to gain the approval desperately, work harder, do better, exceed expectations for them or for the sake of approval or you’re going to go the opposite way and start to feel resentful, angry, and negative. And you’re going to become a more difficult person to work with. And you’re not going to like the person that you’re becoming. And I find it’s actually both of these things in a lot of situations because it’s like once you do more than anyone could ever expect and that’s still not enough. And you’re like, oh my God, that’s going to wear you down. And you’re going to be like, “Ah, well, you know what? Doesn’t matter anyway.”
So it doesn’t lead to anywhere good. So that’s what people normally do. And I know because I did both of those things. So let me share some examples. I had one client who, her manager, she thought she was a little off and like her head was off. She’s like, “Well, it really doesn’t make sense. It’s like she tells me to go north. And then we get to the meeting and she’s like, ‘What are you doing all over there? I told you, we were meeting in the west.'” And this is a metaphor she used. But basically she was trying to say,
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she’ll tell me one thing and then I’ll be completely off base when we meet again. And she’ll be like, “What are you even doing? Why are you even doing that? That’s not what I asked.”
And so my clients started to question her own sanity. She’s like, “Well, am I going crazy? Or did she really say this?” And so, it’s normal. It’s like, well, if that happens repeatedly, then you got to start looking at it and asking, and then being like, okay, well maybe I’ll clarify with her. I’ll check in with her a few times. But sometimes people are like, well, I don’t have time for this. Just meet me at the meeting and do what I said. And then it’ll be opposite. But this is a good example of a situation where you’re not in control of what the person’s going to say. You’re only in control of what you do. And so I helped her with some tactics to kind of keep her on track so that she could control what she was responsible for. So taking the notes, showing the manager, getting her to agree.
And then if the manager changed it saying, “Hey, remember at our meeting, you said these things.” Making it very difficult for the manager to be like, no, I didn’t say that. So there’s a few things that you can do. But then at that point she has to be certain in her own self and say, “Well, I did what you said, this is what we discussed. So if you want it different now that’s fine, but you’ll have to reexplain it or explain what your thought process is there because that’s not what we talked about before.” So if you break it down very simple and there’s no emotion in it, then that’s how the conversation would go. And I can understand that someone would get frustrated working in an environment like that over and over, which is mostly why my clients come and they’re in this situation, which it’s a great learning lesson, no matter where you are.
But their goal is to get to another situation where they’ve learned this is what I really don’t want, and this is what I do want. So now we’re heading towards what I do want. And then, that’s how they get out of it. But there’s a lot of growth in the situation itself. And while you’re there, you might as well make the most of it, even when it’s temporary, because why not? You don’t want to be miserable every day when you don’t have to be. So that was one example. The second example was the manager kept nitpicking at her. So she was she’s doing great. And in all these situations, my clients are doing well. They’re getting great work done. They’ve got praise from their other coworkers. Other coworkers frequently understand the struggle with the manager because they know this person and the person’s known to be difficult.
So they’re doing great. They are great employees and they have achieved great results. They continue to achieve great results. They work well with mostly everyone else. And they’re just having a clash with this manager because this manager is known to have some interesting antics when it comes to managing people. So the other example was that her manager kept nitpicking at her for everything. So she would finish a meeting and immediately the manager would be like, “Well, have you updated your tasks yet?” And it was like literally a minute after the meeting. And my client’s like, “Well, no, I’m going to, but like give me a second.” And she just felt like she was being harped on all the time and watched all the time and bugged all the time. So that’s difficult for someone to work under those conditions too. And I just always imagine like when you’re a kid, if these are the messages you’re receiving, how is your brain going to develop?
So with the first client, if you’re a kid and you keep getting told mixed information, you’re going to be messed up. You’re going to be all over the place. When you grow up, if you think, oh, this is how people interact, they give you one thing and then they expect another thing, like how am I supposed to win this game of life? Or if your parents are always harping on you and being like, you have to do that immediately, you have to do that immediately, they’re going to be on guard all the time. Oh my God, who’s going to be watching me now. And they’re kind of going to expect the rest of the world to be like that because our brain wants to be very smart and efficient and it thinks, well, if this is how it is, then it’s probably going to be like this in future situations.
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It likes to predict based on patterns. But what the brain doesn’t know instinctually is we get to change those patterns if we want to. So that’s another example. And then another example is if you’re afraid that your manager’s going to give you a negative review. So even though you’ve produced great results. You have a lot to show for yourself in whatever project you worked on. So say this was an example of one of my other clients. She worked on a project. She was very successful. She saved the company a lot of money. She was great at what she did. And her manager gave her a negative review. Even though it was not warranted, it wasn’t justified. It wasn’t fair. But that happened. So these things happen. And the one thing I want you to know is that these things are not about you.
I know it’s really hard and you think, but it is about me. Of course, it’s personal, but it’s not. I don’t care what anyone says. It’s not. Have you ever heard the expression hurt people hurt people. Misery loves company. It’s one person who feels the need to do these things to another person, it’s because they are hurt inside somehow. They’ve been treated unfairly somehow. Their parents mess them up somehow. And so now they are doing that to other people. And maybe they know it. Maybe they don’t. Maybe they don’t care. They’re in a position of power. They’ve been there forever. It’s happening. So I don’t care what anyone says. It really is not about you. And the proof of that is if we took one of those clients and we put them in an environment where the manager was supportive, the manager said thank you. The manager was on the same page. They worked well with the manager. They are going to thrive. Right?
So imagine an overachieving kid who keeps getting harped on and barked at to do better. Imagine that you put him or her in an environment where they’re encouraged, they’re praised. They get to have fun. They work hard, but they also get to play hard and they’re in a more healthy environment. They’re going to soar even more. And I think there’s a study on that. There’s several. But this is essentially what it is with you. So if you have a bad manager or if you’re in a bad relationship, it is not about you. The only thing that is about you is the fact that you attracted in the first place and that you’ve stayed there if you stayed there for a certain amount of time. Because that indicates that you either were not aware of your own value yet, or you didn’t have the courage to say no to something.
Maybe you did see a red flag, but you dismissed it. Or you knew that there were red flags, but you decided you were going to handle them. So this is kind of like if you’re going to go into a relationship and you know the person gets really mad at the waiter or something and you decide, well, he’s being really nice to me, so it’ll be fine. Or when you went into a job interview and they said something and you’re like, ah, that doesn’t feel quite right. And you said, “It’ll be fine. They’re offering me the job. We’ll figure it out.” But really you kind of ignored that little signal. Well, this is kind of your lesson so that you can move on and never have this happen again to you. So that’s kind of what I want you to take away is you get to learn from this experience in so many ways that’s going to make your life so much richer and so much better. And so much freer of your own internal struggle because the internal struggle is only created by you.
So let’s imagine that a super, super confident person goes into this role and they are nitpicked or harped on. Or they are given a negative review or they are told one thing, and then the thing has changed completely. It’s on the other side. And how are they going to react to the situation differently? They’re not going to try to keep doing better and try to win approval and try to keep going because they already know they’re valuable. They already know they’re solid in their own worth and their own decision making abilities and their own ability to get results. They already know this. Say they’re like a consultant who’s brought in from, I don’t know, some other part of the world. And they cost a lot of money and they come in and they start being treated like this.
Imagine how they might respond. So I’ll tell you, they’re not going to put up with it. They’re going to be like these people, I’m not available for this. They’re going to be like, “I am not available for this.” If it
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happens more than once, like they might try to communicate really well. And they might say, “Hey, you know what? This is what we agreed. This is what I did. I’m sorry this is not what you understood.” They probably wouldn’t immediately be like, “Okay, fine. I’m out. They would communicate it.” But if kept repeatedly happening, eventually they would see that this is stunting their own progress and their own growth and their own ability to get results. And they would be like, “You know what? Essentially, I’m too good for you.” And they would reject the company and they would be like, “You know what? I’ve got other people who need me. And I’ve got other people who are going to respect me and give me the leeway that I deserve and that’s not you. And that’s okay, but I’m out.”
And so there’s a very big difference in how a very confident person would handle it. And even if they had to stay there, they wouldn’t be making it about them. So why it doesn’t work when we either feed the energy or we resist it is we are essentially giving the manager what they want. We’re giving the manager the satisfaction to be like, oh, I’m getting to her. Oh, she’s trying harder. Aha. That’s nice. But she’s never going to get it because I’m in control and I have power. So you’re basically feeding their power or you are giving them what they want and proving them right that you are not a good employee, that now you’re slacking off. You’re resentful. You’re angry. You’re negative essentially. And then they’re like, oh see, I knew she was now good. I knew he was doing this. I’m going to give him a bad review and I’m totally justified in it and it’s right.
And you essentially allowed them to create that reality so that they can then do that. So neither of those things is actually going to work. And so what ends up being created is your confidence goes down. You end up maybe being labeled as someone who’s negative or defensive or maybe you’re the one who becomes difficult even though you weren’t and it just fuels and stirs a bunch of bad feelings, you for yourself. Probably still blame yourself and think I wasn’t good enough. I didn’t do enough. And then you’re also angry at the manager thinking they were not fair to me. The situation was not fair. And you put yourself in victim mode there because you’re like, well, I can control it. It wasn’t my fault. It was their fault. And you blame them. And yeah, essentially you are not being the person that you want to be.
So this is how it goes when it goes unmanaged, when it goes unchecked. But I can tell you, I lived in a relationship where I was treated really emotionally badly I would say in how I described in the beginning. And I learned this lesson of how I was able to show up the way I wanted to show up and then leave being very proud of myself and not having any anger or any resentment. So the alternative solution is first you accept your manager for who they are. That is who they are. They are not changing.
They have insecurities of their own. They have trauma of their own. They have a reason why they’re being the way that they’re being. And the first step is to seek compassion for them. Not for them, but for you. Because when you can feel compassionate towards somebody, instead of feeling angry, resentful, and rage towards them, then you get to feel better. Because what feels better? Compassion, like genuine compassion. Not like, I feel sorry for you, but like genuinely I get that you probably had some really hard things happen to you. Or does it feel better to be angry and revengeful? So that’s where I essentially started. And that’s where I was for a large part of the relationship probably too long where I was like, yeah, he’s had a really rough childhood. His dad beat him. He broke his jaw one time.
He’s had it. Very tough. People have been very, very tough on him. So he’s been very, very tough on himself. And now he’s being very, very tough on me and those around him. His behavior was very sporadic. It was like one minute he was super happy and the next minute he was raging and changing everything around. I’m like, he must have grown up with that. That’s what he experienced. That’s what he thinks is the right way to be in the world. That’s what he doesn’t know. And that compassion calmed me down a bit when I could totally see it from a different point of view. I’m like, okay, that sucks for him. And then I tried to offer him that compassion and open up some new ways for him to think about things. And I tried to talk to him about it.
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I tried to create dialogue, create closeness. And he was not open to that. But me feeling the compassion for him was up to me. I got to do that myself. I didn’t need him for that. I could just be like, you know what? I get that he must have been through some really hard things, and then stop trying to change him. And this is not what I suggest you do with your manager. Maybe you could suggest some leadership trainings or something, but they’re very unlikely to be like, oh yeah, I’d love to go and improve my management skills. Very unlikely for that to happen. And it’s because people don’t want to. If they want to, they would. I’m very big on if they wanted to, they would. But normally they don’t. So accepting that that’s who he is without trying to change him and then seeing how they could be the greatest teacher for you.
So who do you want to be in this relationship? Who do you want to be with this manager? At the end of the day, say this is your test. This is your curriculum for learning how to deal with the difficult manager, learning how to live with this situation and not suffer, not be angry, not be resentful. That’s your scorecard, say you get to have a better experience. If you get to improve your own experience without them changing, then you have scored a high score. If you are allowing them to control your experience and therefore you feel angry, resentful, bad, like you’re not enough, like you’re struggling to be enough, like you’re constantly trying to get approval, that’s a low grade on this test, on this particular test. A high grade on this test is you’re chill. You’re calm. You’re confident. You’re certain of yourself.
And that doesn’t wane. Your belief in yourself doesn’t stop being true. Your value doesn’t stop from being there because of them. And then your final exam is going to be to leave and that’s going to be leaving without resentment, leaving just by being done. Being like, you know what? I’m not angry. I’m not upset. I’m grateful I have this opportunity to learn and find the things you’re grateful about in that situation. And then you get to leave. And that’s your final exam is to leave without anger and resentment. It should not be a fuck you, I’m out. It should be a I’m done. Thanks for all the fish.
And I don’t actually remember what that means, but somebody wrote that on our wall when we moved out. They wrote, “See ya, thanks for all the fish.” When I moved out, one of the offices. Anyways, so that’s essentially how we need to approach it differently for you. It’s not for them at all. I mean probably, it’ll piss them off even more when you’re not angry and you don’t react to them. It’s like the best revenge is not being affected because really you are feeding into it if you’re not. So it ends up giving you you’re the bigger person taking the high road. You get to feel good about that. But also you just get to feel better and you don’t have to be destroyed by this experience. You don’t have to let this experience destroy you. You can actually let this experience build you up, get you more clear, be the best thing that ever happened to you.
I mean, I think that that was for me. I really believe like that 10 year relationship was the best thing that ever happened to me. It was literally like a 10 year degree in our relationship. And it was a really, really hard degree. And I say, yeah, that was my relationship university degree. And my final exam was to pass without being mad or angry or resentful and doing it amicably and I passed and I feel very, very proud of that degree. So I would love for you to look at it the same way, because you don’t have to feel like, oh, this sucks. And you don’t have to go and talk to people about it in such a mean way and just work yourself up over and over, which I see a lot of people doing. You get to be calm and certain and ready for what’s next.
And that’s exciting. So why this works so much better is because you can control how much you decide to value yourself even when others around you are not valuing you. So in my relationship, for example, if I made a mistake and I apologized for the mistake and he was really, really, really angry about the mistake, I got to choose to say, you know what? I’ve apologized and I can see the error of my ways, but I’m choosing now to forgive myself and move on. And if you don’t want to, you don’t have to. You can be mad. That’s fine. Be mad as for as long as you want. But I have forgiven myself. I’m done with this.
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Honestly, not resentfully, not like passive aggressively or anything like that, just seriously, that’s it. And he was the kind of person who needed to be angry and he needed to do his thing.
And I just knew that already, because I’d been with him for 10 years. So I knew he was going to be angry, but it’s really hard for him when I’m just like, “That’s fine. You do you. Be angry if you need. I get it.” And it really irritated him that I was able to forgive myself before he was able to forgive me. And they were really silly little things like a miscommunication or something. I forgot to text him something. It was something he didn’t even really care about anyway. And I forgot to text him. And then he got really, really mad and I’m like, “You know what? I’ve decided. I’m not going to do the thing where I am mad at myself for four days because you can’t forgive me for four days. I’m going to be done now.”
And that was being in the relationship still. And so that’s an example of a way that you have control. And it took work getting there. It was still really uncomfortable to be around him while he was having these angry feelings. But I kept telling myself, you know what? It’s not fair to me. I haven’t done anything that terrible. I would totally forgive him. He does worse all the time. I never make a big deal. This is just not me. I don’t want to be angry about it. I don’t want to be affected by it. I don’t want to have this wear me down. So that’s an example you can control. And it’s like, how do you want to show up in the situation? And you get to answer that. And then you get to go to work to do that and be that.
So what’s needed to navigate the situation in the alternative way is awareness. You need to be aware of what you’re doing now. So what are your main feelings right now? Are you feeling angry? Are you feeling resentful? Are you feeling negative? Are you feeling like you’re not enough? Are you feeling like you’re constantly beating yourself up because they keep beating you up? Is there a place where you would ever feel like you were enough? So I want to bring you back to that question I asked in the beginning, if they gave you all the approval you needed, what would you give yourself permission to feel? Would it be validation? Would it be love? Would it be approval? Would it be calmness? Would it be pride for the work you’ve done? Would it be accomplished?
What would you give yourself permission to feel if you could just separate them from the equation for a minute and just look at your contribution, the work that you’ve done? What would you allow yourself to feel for that? And then it takes a decision, a decision to be like, you know what? I don’t want to suffer anymore. I don’t want to resent this person. I don’t want to be negative. I don’t want to turn into this negative person. I don’t want to turn into someone like them. I don’t want to give them the satisfaction of seeing me trying and failing all the time, quote unquote, because you’re not failing. They just decided that you were no matter what. And this is just not what I want.
I’m not available for this anymore. So how do I want to be? And then you get to decide that and then you get to go to work to do it and that’ll take daily reprogramming. So whenever they come and they’re like, “Hey, why haven’t you done this task calendar yet? I told you we needed this done.” Instead of being like, “Oh, my God. Yes, yes, yes. I’ll do it.” Or, “Ugh, you’re so unfair. I had no time to do it.” And making excuses, you can say, “Yeah, no worries. I’m going to get it done. Chill. It’s all good.”
Or if they say, “What are you doing? I said we were doing this and now you’re doing this. What are you even doing? Are you crazy?” You can say, “Oh, well, we discussed in the meeting that this is what we were doing. And this is what I did. If you feel differently now, please go ahead and please explain why you changed it.” So the demeanor comes from you not being immediately reactive to somebody attacking you because you know that you don’t have to also attack yourself. So when someone attacks you, they come at us, it’s our natural response to be defensive or to try to gain approval. So it’s like, what is it? Fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.
So obviously fight is put up your fists and be like, okay, I’m ready to fight this out with you. Flight means avoid, runaway. Freeze means freezing and be like, ah, I don’t know what to do. And then fawn means please them. Do whatever they want so that you won’t get in trouble because you’re scared. So what’s
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your go to out of those? Are you more likely to fight them? Are you more likely to avoid them, avoid the problem, not want to talk to them? Or are you likely to freeze and kind of panic, not know what to do next? Or are you more likely to fawn, which means try to come to your knees and be like, “I’m so sorry. I’ll do whatever you want.” Not so exaggerated, but you know what I mean? And decide that you don’t want either of those and you don’t want any of those and that you want to make the decision to stand powerfully in your own value. And what would that look like?
Some helpful questions are, if that really famous, amazing consultant came in from who knows where, and he or she was being paid a bunch of money to come in and fix this problem that you’re working on, what might they do? How might they respond? Secondly, if you totally knew that you were doing everything right, and you had made the decisions and you felt proud of your decisions, how would you respond? And what would you give yourself permission to feel if this really wasn’t a personal attack and you saw this person who was attacking, you saw them as like a little kid who was suffering, who had issues as a kid, how would you feel differently towards this person then? So I want you to take that information and then ultimately ask who do I want to be in the world in this situation? In this hard situation, how do I want to show up?
And then the results that you’re going to create are a better experience for yourself. And more than anything, you’re going to be standing up to a very challenging test that you now know how to pass. And most people don’t. So most people, they’ll get out of the situation. They might go into another situation. They might still have the same problem, maybe not. But a lot of the times people do, if they don’t assess how I got here, why am I staying here? It leads into the value that you have for yourself. Because if you don’t have value for yourself, then you’re going to be in this situation. And you’re going to do the things that I talked about on this podcast. And I went through the same journey. So I know exactly. So who do you want to be? And how do you want to experience the situation?
What are the things you are in direct control of and how can you do your best with what you have in order to show up like the person you want to be? And at the end of the day, your manager will never see your amazingness. And it’s not because it’s not there. It’s because your manager doesn’t have the capacity to see that. And it’s not your fault. He or she just doesn’t have the capacity to see it. And that’s not your fault. So you get to go home. You get to be proud of yourself. You don’t have to feel defeated. You get to feel whatever you want to feel and it’ll make you less likely to run into something else just to get out of this because a lot of people are like, I have to get out of here now. This manager’s driving me nuts. And then they might accept the first thing that comes along when really that isn’t the perfect fit for them.
It’s not their premium offer. And then they end up having to leave or they end up with a worst manager or they end up with a different problem that is equally challenging. So this is a problem that is a great learning. It’s a great curriculum. It’s a great lesson for you to have. And if you take everything that I said here on the podcast and go through the steps, you can really improve the quality of your relationships moving forward with your managers and with your partners. And it really just comes down to how much do you value yourself? How much do you value your own opinion and how much do you value your own decisions and how much do you value how you’re showing up in the world. And do you really want that to be at the effect of somebody who really struggles and who clearly doesn’t manage the way that you would?
Do you really want to be at the effect of this person or do you really want to be in control and be able to walk away from that situation saying, this is who this person was. This is what they did, but I’m really proud of how I handled that and how I walked out of the situation. And that’s what I have for you this week. That was a deep episode. I hope you enjoyed it. And I know that it resonates with a lot of people because it’s just what we’ve been coaching on for… Yeah. I’ve been coaching on it for a long, long time.
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So don’t let them… It’s like a bully. Don’t let the bully win. Okay. The bully has issues. The bully is troubled. You don’t have to be. Okay. All right, my friends, I will talk to you next week. Have a good one.
I felt like there was a huge shift. I came into interviews from a completely different mindset. I was just more curious in what they had to offer, knowing that where my value could be. I now find myself in a role of instructional designer, which is a part of a learning and development industry.
If I were to sum it up, I would say the most common thing people come to me with is I’m going on interview after interview after interview and I’m not getting the offer. What am I doing wrong? So I’ve put together a freebie where you can get this download completely free. It has the eight reasons that this is happening and I break down each reason very specifically and how to fix it. So grab that download. The link is in the show notes. You can click on that link. You just have to enter your information. It’s called the Eight Reasons You’re Not Getting Hired and I will help you figure that out. I will see you in the freebie. Okay, talk to you soon.

 

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