My clients, especially women, say this to me a lot. It comes from a deeply embedded cultural value that work is good, and non-work is non-good.  If you’re running from dawn to midnight, you must matter. If you’re well-rested, then you must be expendable.

Many of us take better care of our cars than we do of ourselves.  We understand that it’s necessary and advisable to get the car checked regularly, because routine maintenance may prevent us from getting stranded at the worst possible time. We know we shouldn’t wait till the car’s broken down to change the oil. We don’t see the car as somehow flawed because it requires regular care.  But when it comes to ourselves, this is EXACTLY how we tend to think – that we can only afford to attend to ourselves when we’re completely spent or hair-on-fire stressed out. We tend to view cultivating our ‘rest life’ as something we do only when the outside world has stopped making demands of us.  As if.  

I firmly believe that personal renewal is foundational to our effectiveness. I know the territory of burnout, and it’s very hard to come back from. I now understand that a rest life – in the form of quiet, solitude, reflection and engaging in the things that feed us – is essential, especially if we want to be effective in our work, family and community lives. Yet everything around us is calling us away from rest, toward overwork and its accompanying stress.

I’ve come to see stress as an addiction, as potentially dangerous as any other.   So does Patrick Lencioni, author of an excellent article on executives’ addiction to adrenaline. http://www.leadershipreview.org/2005winter/LencioniArticle.pdf   Stress is addictive for several reasons.  First, the chemicals that our bodies generate in response to stress produce an emotional and physiological “high.”  For better and for worse, stress is kind of a rush. If we go into stress mode more often and for longer times, our adrenal glands pump out those high-inducing hormones around the clock. This makes you restless 24/7, which can make time-outs very uncomfortable.  So you keep trucking, even though that’s drawing down your body’s reserves.

Stress is addictive also because our culture values heroics. We get kudos for pulling off that monster proposal, for solving that problem that no one else could solve, for being the first one to arrive at work and the last one to leave. Women have also internalized an expectation that they should ‘do it all’ and ‘have it all.’ But even if we could reach that standard (and that’s debatable), it doesn’t mean we should. 

You’re in luck.  April is National Stress Awareness Month. It’s a nationally-mandated excuse to become more aware of the stress in your life and its effects on you. With this awareness, you’re equipped to take action toward more balance and resilience. It’s a great excuse to move your ‘rest life’ further up the list of priorities, and watch how that affects the other parts of your life for the better.

Questions to guide your inquiry

On a scale of 1 – 10 (10 being best), how well do you currently attend to your rest life?
What are the pros and cons of attending to your personal care and renewal at that level?  How does your current level of care benefit you?  What is it costing you?
What rating would you like to be able to give yourself?
What would that make possible for yourself and for others?
What two concrete, doable steps can you take in April to move toward that level of self-care?

And yet…

Gloria was starting to experience the limitations of her style. When she was forceful, the world often responded to her with force, which took its toll on her. The more others relied on her courage, the more she enabled them to avoid their own. After years of experiencing the gifts of grit, Gloria started to experience the perils of over investing that style.  She came to me for coaching, and we worked to help her integrate more grace into her native grit style.

Now, it is often when she calls upon her ‘grace’ side that Gloria is most powerful as a leader. I recently observed her in a community forum, where the discussion was heating up, yet going nowhere. I could see people giving her ‘the look,’ their silent visual request for her to challenge what was happening. And, as she so often does, she stepped up. But this time, her challenge came in the form of vulnerability. Rather than calling people out, Gloria just stood up and quietly told her own truth. “As the conversation is going on,” she said, “I am finding myself more and more exhausted.” In that instant of speaking from the heart, Gloria changed the room. Simply by describing her own personal experience, she seemed to give voice to that of the whole group, and people visibly relaxed in recognition.  Soon thereafter, someone spoke up and said, “That’s how I feel, too. I don’t think this is getting us where we want to go. Let’s change the focus and the structure of the conversation.” From that moment on, the group adjusted into a much more productive mode.

For Gloria, it was a much greater risk to be vulnerable than to challenge others; it was a much more personal move. And yet, from where I sat, it was the most potent and effective action she could have taken. Had she stood up and done her normal ‘grit thing,’ she probably would have just amped up the unproductive intensity in the room. But by honestly reporting on her own internal experience, she caused a profoundly effective shift.

When we think about leadership, we tend to think about its more assertive and forceful aspects. But vulnerability has every bit as much power as force to transform. Maybe more.

What about you?

How do you related to the concept of vulnerability as a form of power?  Do you embrace it?  Resist it?  Both?
How do you think others relate to your vulnerability?  What impact does that have on your willingness to make yourself vulnerable to others – especially when you are leading or influencing others?
Can you think of a recent or important situation in which being forceful worked against your effectiveness?
What might a more vulnerable response have looked like in that situation?
Where might you want to be more vulnerable in your work life or personal life?  What steps can you take to do that?

This client was giving voice to a common discomfort with the notion of power in our culture.  Women seem especially wary of it, as if power is something that we shouldn’t claim or own. I think the reason we resist owning – or even talking about – power is because of how we define it. Most of us think of power as an oppressive and constraining force, a tool of domination. And unfortunately, our past and present are riddled with examples of power used in this way.  So these are legitimate concerns.

But because we resist this ‘brute force’ aspect of power, we tend to send the whole topic underground, burying with it all of power’s positive potential.  As we dissociate from the more coercive aspects of power, we also disown our ability to unite and mobilize others for productive and compassionate ends. This positive, connective force is what Joe Weston, author of Respectful Confrontation, calls “true power.” Weston contends that true power is supported by four pillars of internal capacity: grounding, strength, focus, and flexibility.

Pillar 1: Grounding. Our personal power is not unlike electrical current. Ground it, and it’s productive and safe. But when ungrounded, it has the potential to do real harm, so true power has to begin there. It’s the establishment of a strong physical, spiritual, mental and emotional foundation from which to encounter life.  Grounding keeps us rooted in our bodies, beliefs and principles, and thus stable in the face of challenge.  According to Weston, “Grounding…leads to an unwavering self-confidence and conviction in what you do and believe.”

Pillar 2: Focus. According to Weston, there are two aspects to focus: “finding stillness in the chaos” and “giving direction to one’s efforts.”  Focus brings a calm, clear quality to your power.  It enables you to sort through all that’s happening in and around you, and make a clear choice about what to bring forward.  Focus concentrates your energy, enabling you to act and speak with intent and precision.  To focus is to take a definite shape, something that can be uncomfortable for women.  To help us move into that discomfort, we need the next pillar: strength.

Pillar 3: Strength. This is the aspect we usually associate with power, and without the other pillars, it can turn into the kind of brute force that we rightly resist. Here’s how Joe Weston describes strength: “The innate force of strength is expressed in two ways.  The first is the courage to move out of your safe space and into the unknown, and the second is the physical force to accomplish your goals.” Strength is often a real skill of grit-based leaders.  But when strength is not accompanied by grounding or flexibility, it can turn a woman from bold to bitchy.

Pillar 4: Flexibility. Weston believes that flexibility is the most elusive, challenging, yet potent of all the pillars.  He sums it up in a Taoist saying: “In a heavy monsoon, the mighty oak will snap like a twig, but the blade of grass will survive.”  Flexibility is the key to versatility, creativity and compassion.  This is often a strong pillar for grace-based leaders, yet they will tell you that flexibility without the support of other pillars can result in weakness.  A leader who is grounded, clear and strong – while also able to adapt and adjust – is a force to be reckoned with.

What about you?

Each of these four pillars is essential to ‘true power,’ but the real potential lies in achieving balance in all four.  Which of these pillars are most developed in you?  What do those strengths make possible for you and others?  What happens when you overuse those pillars to the neglect of the others?

Which of these pillars is least developed in you?  What impact does that have in your ability to express ‘true power?’  How will strengthening that pillar help you to accomplish something that really matters to you?

What one or two steps can you take right now to get started?

To find out more about Joe Weston’s work, go to http://www.respectfulconfrontation.com/

There’s no doubt that organizations tolerate more forcefulness from men than from women, so women often have to operate in a much narrower stylistic swath.  At the same time, something has nagged at me about these clients’  stories.  In each of their organizations, I can name other women leaders who are successful and influential who have escaped the “aggressive” label.  And many of the women that I’ve coached do, indeed, have quite a sharp edge.  So while I fully acknowledge that organizations are often intolerant of strength in women, I don’t believe that it’s impossible for a woman to be both strong and avoid the Scarlet B tattoo.

The issue is not whether you’re coming across with strength – it’s rather the kind of strength you’re coming across with. There is an important distinction between assertiveness and aggression.  The word “assertive” has its roots in the Latin word for “to join,”  while “aggressive” has its roots in the Latin word for “to attack.”  Assertion stands its ground, like a mountain or tree.  It has a full and present quality that is based on your intention to make real contact with yourself and others.  Aggressiveness, on the other hand, has a forward-leaning, ‘coming at’ quality, and often reflects a loss of interrelatedness.  In women, there can be a sharpness or shrillness to the voice that often belies an underlying energy of anger, frustration, powerlessness or fear.  If left unmanaged or ungrounded, those emotions can give our communication a spear-like quality.

Unfortunately, because organizations tolerate more spears from men than from women, women need to take extra care that their communications are balanced and effective.  The bad news is that women carry an extra burden to be skillful in their communication.  But the good news is that that forces us into a style that research has proven to be most effective for leaders in general, regardless of gender.

What about you?

Recall an interaction in which someone told you that you came across as aggressive or “too strong.”   What were the circumstances surrounding that interaction?

What message were you trying to get across?  What qualities did your communication have?  (If you were watching yourself on videotape in that interaction, what do you think you would have observed about yourself?)

Now recall the emotions you were feeling in that interaction.  What were they?  Defensive, scared, angry…?  Were you aware of them at the time?  How did those emotions shape what you said and how you said it? Were there spear-like qualities to it?

Where was your attention when you were speaking?  Was it more on connecting to yourself and the other person?  Or was it more on getting your point across or being heard?

Now imagine yourself as a mountain, or as some other image that is both solid in itself and open to its surroundings.   How would that mountain (or other image that works for you) communicate that same message you were trying to convey?

What’s different about how the mountain would express itself from how you actually communicated in the situation?

What’s your sense of how others would perceive the two messages with respect to assertiveness vs. aggression?

What new awareness or understanding do you have as a result of this exercise?  What actions might you take as a result of these insights?

Big mistake.  An old family friend once confided in me.  ”Leslie, your parents always said that you weren’t the girl they wished you’d become. They always thought you were too tough and forthright.”  But they had neglected to give me any input on how to succeed in their eyes as a girl.  I had given up a lot of myself (maybe the best of myself) to conform to a male image of success, and it backfired.  A long, hard slog to nowhere. Sound familiar?

The dynamic that existed in my family continues to exist in organizations today. In the absence of skilled and explicit feedback, women still model their behavior after men in order to succeed.  And it continues to backfire: not because women can’t do male behavior, but because it’s not what organizations want or expect from women.  Like it or not.

One of the current truisms in corporate life is that women are paid less than men because they don’t negotiate as well as men.  So the follow-on conclusion is that women need to negotiate more aggressively for promotions and pay increases, because that’s what works (for men).

God bless research. Catalyst, one of the premier research organizations on women in the workplace, has found that, in fact, women DO ask and negotiate for what they want – and that it has little positive effect on their careers.  In their recent book, The Myth of the Ideal Worker: Does Doing All the Right Things Really Get Women Ahead? Catalyst discovered that men tend to be rewarded for perceived potential (just as my brother – and probably your brother – was). So men’s career success comes from changing organizations often and negotiating hard at each move. What seems to get women ahead is proven performance. So the key to women’s success (using promotion and pay as metrics) seems to be staying with an employer, accumulating achievements, and letting those achievements be known.  Proactive negotiation had very little positive impact on women’s success, just as the broadcasting of achievements had little impact on men’s success.

Myth by busted myth, we continue to learn that women’s path to success is different from men’s.  We can rail against it or we can embrace it.  Does it make me mad that the rules are different for men and women?  Yes.  Do I fear that ‘different’ expectations can too easily equate to lower expectations?  Yes.  But I think there is also tremendous hope in these findings.  They invite women to shed a male model of success and claim their own path.  At the same time, these findings also invite organizations to examine their different ways of relating to men and women and to root out conscious and unconscious inequities.

If you’re like a lot of us, there’s something about resolutions that can cause us to channel our inner schoolmarm: heavy, grim, and headed for certain disappointment. And I don’t know about you, but I tend to work harder to rebel against that mean old bag than to obey her.

So this year, I’m firing New Year’s resolutions and looking instead for New Year’s inspiration. Rather than resolving to do or be something (which requires a sort of turning against myself), I’m looking for what’s inspiring me, what’s calling me forward. Inspiration can create as much vision and momentum as resolution, but without the internal friction or shoulds. Yes, there’s still effort – and sometimes pain – involved in making change. But working toward something, vs. against ourselves, usually supplies more motivation, energy and odds of success.

What about you?

You might be much better than most of us at resolutions, able to create ones that work for you and don’t feel oppressive.  In that case, let the change begin!

But if you’ve created resolutions that evoke any sense of ‘should-ing’ on yourself, you might want to question whether you truly believe that real change comes about as a result of a good swift internal kick in the pants.  If your resolutions have a stale or bearing-down quality to you, try switching gears.  Take a moment to put all striving aside.  Drop into your heart, into your body, and relax.  Sit with these questions and allow the answers to arise from the silence:

• To what do I feel inspired this coming year?
• What is calling me forth?  Ready to be born?  Interesting, appealing?
• Is there some shift that feels like it’s pulling me to it, the way the moon pulls the tides?
• Is there something that I’m ready to release, the way the snake sheds its skin?

However you choose to move into the New Year, may 2012 be your best year ever.