Are you ready to Accelerate You?

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” 

Mary Oliver

The world of work is changing. But do you have the power to change with it?

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, and against a backdrop of global events with very real local impacts, the continuous need to navigate through uncertainty can leave you feeling depleted, lost, and, ultimately, powerless.

Do you often feel powerless?

In addition to external obstacles, there is an internal battle. Many people – women in particular – are experiencing a gap in their personal power. They want to make changes in their lives, careers, and businesses to create more meaning and purpose – but they lack the clarity, confidence, and certainty required to make those changes. Why is that?

In 2023 I reached out to women considering boosting their leadership capabilities or making a career change.  The majority of the women I surveyed indicated that they were experiencing one of the five personal power gaps that prevent women from reaching their goals.

Power gaps exist when a person recognizes that something is missing in their lives, career, or business that keeps them from experiencing the success, rewards, impact, or satisfaction they deserve, and they lose connection with their strengths, confidence, and personal power to overcome internal or external obstacles in their way to success and fulfillment. 

The five damaging power gaps are:

1.      Not recognizing your strengths (accomplishments, ambitions, abilities, attitudes, assertiveness, and authority) and your sense of your value and impact.

2.      Letting your fear hold you back from acting or communicating with strength.

3.      Failing to back yourself or to ask for what you require or deserve.

4.      Being uncomfortable making decisions, problem solving, setting goals, or using or developing your resources.

5.      Disconnecting from your strengths or isolating from influential support as you develop yourself and lead others in the change you are creating.

How you see yourself and your personal power is a result of many things, including the culture you grow up in.  Generally speaking, women have grown up facing widespread inequities that shape their sense of their potential. Culture can affect how you develop your unique leadership capabilities and how you learn to leverage your personal power for good.

Messages that shape women are everywhere – in nursery stories, children’s toys, video games, social media, advertising, and throughout society. Girls and women of all ages and stages learn, and are shaped by, the traditionally limited view of their roles, capabilities, and contributions. 

Does your work culture explain the power gap that you are experiencing?

Too many organizational structures and cultures do not support diversity, equality, and inclusion. The majority culture, made up by those with the most power and privilege, impacts women, and particularly women of colour. Many workplace cultures create a context that inevitably limits women’s beliefs about themselves and their capabilities and leads to personal power gaps.  If you work in a culture where you are in a minority, this work setting may be affecting your assumptions, perceptions, motivations, and behaviors and in many cases can explain a power gap that you might be experiencing.

These personal power gaps emerge for you over time, starting with childhood experiences, and relate to the intergenerational beliefs, emotions, attitudes, behaviors, and influences from the family, school, and leaders who have raised and shaped you. These gaps come from the ways of being that you take on to feel safe and accepted.

Girls are taught to be perfect, to please, and often to over-perform to ‘fit in’. This extends to adulthood, where women are pressured to act a certain way to maintain relationships, protect the status quo, and progress in their lives, careers, and businesses. Women often don’t feel safe to stand out, express themselves, or ask for what they need. Many young women are encouraged to adhere to gender stereotypes that limit their aspirations, ambitions, and assertiveness. While girls and women achieve more and more, they are also filled with more and more self-doubt and anxiety – caring too much what others think of them. 

This can lead to a feeling of powerlessness, which comes from judging yourself harshly, or unconsciously adopting harmful patterns of thinking and acting that derail your success and diminish your personal power. In trying to be perfect, to please others, to over-perform, and feeling the pressures around you to conform, you lose a sense of what is important. You lose a sense of yourself, and you adopt strategies that are less than authentic and that are not aligned with your personal truths or values. Unconsciously, you don a mask, play a role, and give up pieces of yourself. 

As women, it all feels exhausting and unfair – like the deck is stacked against us, creating a vicious cycle that erodes our clarity, confidence, and courage. It is time we identify and name what is holding us back and take steps to break this vicious cycle. We need to distinguish between barriers we build within ourselves, and those barriers built by social and organizational culture designed by and for men. While the outside world plays a role in shaping you starting from your childhood, you can become conscious of your personal power gaps, and you can increase your connection to the personal power that you may have lost or given away.

Let me paint a picture for you. In many workplace situations, you may be confident and high performing, but there are moments when you are confronted with a triggering event or person and your reaction pulls you out of your personal power. For example, a new role, task, project, boss, teammate, or stakeholder can throw you off your game. You may have a tricky presentation or proposal to deliver. You may have been employed for most of your career and now you are the founder of a start-up, making you the employer and not the employee. 

In these moments of self-doubt, anxiety, and frustration, the context has changed, and suddenly and unexpectedly you are outside of your comfort zone. Momentarily, you are triggered, drained of your energy and internal resources to respond to the situation, and you may feel you’ve lost your clarity, confidence, and courage. You suddenly feel powerless. In these instances, you are temporarily out of your power zone and on a learning curve. You eventually level up and feel back in balance or more like yourself, but it’s only a matter of time before you’re knocked off your feet again. 

Or perhaps it’s more sinister than that. Perhaps you’re working in a toxic culture or with toxic leaders where you may be dealing with discrimination, microaggression, bullying, unhealthy competition, isolation, gaslighting, a lack of mentorship or sponsorship, unfair treatment, or a lack of access to opportunities. These situations can be particularly triggering for those who have been traditionally marginalized, including people of colour, immigrants, or women in male-dominated workplaces. How you and other women adapt to these cultures should be examined individually and collectively. 

In these triggering situations, it is common for women to unconsciously choose strategies that they think will make them safe. Are you chronically overpreparing, overworking, or overperforming to fit in or to feel safe, secure, or successful? Are you keeping yourself small to avoid rocking the boat? These behaviours are coping strategies that are forms of self-sabotage that drain your personal power. These strategies are not sustainable and will not get you where you want to go in the long run.

Do you want to accelerate toward your goals faster, with more consistently?

If you wish you could find the success you desire and create the change that accelerates you to reach your goals, Accelerate You! will give you the insights and tools to power up your leadership, life, career, and business, including:

• 5 power gaps limiting your success.
• 5 mindsets you can use to increase your sense of personal power and close your power gaps.
• 5 steps or power pivots that will accelerate you toward the future you desire.
• Much more!

Accelerate You! is packed with researched-based strategies, tips, and hacks that will help you create your own playbook to power up your leadership and achieve your goals in life, career, and business.

The ultimate guide for women, Accelerate You! will help you find your clarity, confidence, courage, creativity, and the capability to embrace and lead the change you want for yourself and the world.

If you want to take charge of your success and move past what is blocking you, Accelerate You! is must-read.  Find it on Amazon.com.au now.

Jeri Childers, PhD, is the founder of Accelerating You! which provides coaching, leadership, and business development services for leaders, entrepreneurs, and business builders.  Dr Childers is the author of the book, Accelerate You! The power pivots, mindsets, and steps to power up your leadership.  Jeri works with business accelerators and organizations that want a coach or business catalyst to commercialize their ideas, enabling them to startup, scaleup, and lead high impact change.  Dr Childers offers leadership development services, particularly for women and the organizations that seek to advance them.  For top-level career and leadership growth resources, training, and coaching, visit JeriChilders.com.  #AccelerateYou! #Success #Leadershipdevelopment #bettercareer #FemaleLeaders #FemaleFounders #ClaimYourPower