Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Denise Simpson, a master life and leadership coach who helps women step into their authentic and feminine power. So they can lead like visionaries influence with grace and create a, a legacy of contribution and service. You'll hear about real leadership clients with real problems, navigating their success in life, business, [00:00:30] and career. If you are ready to become a masterful leader, then this podcast was made for you. So let's get started.
Speaker 1: My friend, welcome back. The mood is high. My spirit is high. My heart is full. My husband, my beloved beloved husband and lover, Michael is [00:01:00] back from a Poland. He went off to help the Ukrainian refugees by providing medical support because he is an emergency medicine physician and he took off the second. Well, it felt like the second that Russia invaded Ukraine and he and I had a five minute convers that he needed to go and support them and needed my support to make that final decision. And of course I said, [00:01:30] yes, and it was literally a five minute conversation between he and I, and he had been gone for over a month. And so I had been feeling a whole lot of things. And if you've been listening to the podcast, you know, that the last few episodes I've shared how I, uh, really needed to adjust my perspective around safety.
Speaker 1: My nervous system was triggered. There was so much going on in my head. My brain was creating these interesting stories and I was [00:02:00] in full panic at, in, at moments, not all, not throughout the entire month that he was gone, but different moments in time, where if I would sit still long enough, my brain would create a very interesting story about his safety. So a lot went on and I won't, I won't bore you with the rest, but know that he is back and I am feeling so, so good. And [00:02:30] I just wanna share that energy with you today because it's a great day to have this beautiful man back in my arms and doing great work here in the us. So he didn't have to leave the country to do that, but he was compelled. And when you are compelled and your soul is calling you to a higher purpose, elevating you to a higher purpose, who am I?
Speaker 1: Who am I to stop my husband from doing that? Because I know he wouldn't stop me. [00:03:00] So it was a wonderful team effort and team decision. It was fantastic, but he's back now. And we're enjoying ourselves and spending great time together. And it just really feeling so grateful that he is back and that we have such an incredible marriage. So, but that's not what I wanna talk to you about today. I wanna talk about what women leaders want. That's the subject [00:03:30] that's, what's important for us to discuss today? What do women leaders want? Want notice? I said, want not need, listen, we need our rest. We need a retreat. We need to Reju rejuvenate. We need so many things, right? We need it. We need it for our bodies, our brains, our hearts, our nervous systems. We need a lot of things, but I wanna talk about what you really, [00:04:00] really want a woman leader.
Speaker 1: Like you now think about that. You're a woman. You have probably a lot of duties outside of the organization or outside of your business. You probably are a mother. You are probably part of the PTA. You are probably part of a nonprofit. You probably sit on a nonprofit board. You probably volunteer with all of these organizations and, and community. You [00:04:30] know, campaigns. I get it. You have a lot of responsibilities. So you are a woman you're nurturing. Youre are compassionate. You are faithful to your family. And to God, you are someone who's also very resourceful. You are a woman leading, leading your life and leading others. You are a woman leader. You, my friend is who I serve. You [00:05:00] are, who I support you are the person that I curate these episodes for you are the person I write to every, every few, few, few times a week.
Speaker 1: I write all my content. I publish all of my programs. I create these programs for you, the woman leader, and in all the years that I have been supporting women in leadership roles, we talk most definitely about the needs. What's [00:05:30] necessary to do your job. Is it coaching? Is it more training? Is it a master's degree? Is it a PhD, perhaps? Is it another certification we talk, talk about what's necessary, what you are lacking, right? And we look at what you can do to then gain the advantage, right? So that you can leverage your role as a leader. So we look at the gap between where you are now and where you wanna be. So there's, there are needs [00:06:00] that need to be met and needs can also look like getting enough rest needing to put your nutrition, making that a priority, putting your body first and foremost, right? Your brain, how to rest and, and really you to realize the potential of that gorgeous brain of yours, right? These are needs. These are necessities. These are things that we need to do to leverage our status and to leverage our, our roles as leaders. [00:06:30] But I wanna talk about what you want, what you really, really want and what I have found to be true.
Speaker 1: I have found to be true that women just want to feel confident. We just want to walk into a room, feel confident and therefore be respected by others. Because when we feel confident, everyone else feels it in the room. Our energy speaks [00:07:00] for itself. We just, we want the respect. We want to feel like we belong in the room. We want to feel like we belong at the table. We want to feel like we are in the right place at the right time. We wanna also feel certain certain about our resourcefulness, certain about our abilities to lead and to impact the organization. These are just a few things that we women want. [00:07:30] We want to again, belong. We want to feel confident. We want to be respected. We want to feel certainty in our abilities to lead. These are just a few things that we want.
Speaker 1: Some of us want peace of mind, that when we do feel like we belong, when we do feel confident when we are respected, when we do feel certainty, we have peace of my, [00:08:00] we have this feeling of freedom to be who we are, where we don't have to contort ourselves into a pretzel, to be respected, to be, to be admired, to be taken seriously. We want that freedom. We want to have the status and by status, I mean your formal title, the role of leader, you [00:08:30] want that status you got here because you set your mind to getting to this place in time. Now, if you're an emerging or an aspiring leader, that's, that's where you're headed. Your sites are set on. Status. Status is important to us. This is how we influence. This is how we are able to impact our followers, our communities, our families.
Speaker 1: We, we treasure the role of leader. [00:09:00] We don't take that for granted one bit. So status is important to us, but that's not all that we want. We want to feel safe to fulfill these roles of leader. We want the safety and the status. And when we don't feel safe, we contort ourselves into these pretzels. We sacrifice our souls for a seat at the table. We turn [00:09:30] into former leaders that we're probably the worst leaders that had ever experienced. We turn into them. We revert to what we know and what we have seen and what has been modeled. And a lot of us have had male leaders. And so we turn into these masculine, I call 'em the raging masculine leader. They're just so full of masculinity. And it's not, it's not [00:10:00] assertiveness like a female leader portrays it's aggression. It's anger, it's rage. It's ego.
Speaker 1: It's. This is who I am. And you will respect me. It's this energy of you will bow down to me. Now, how many female leader do you know that Carrie, that energy, she stands out above the rest because she's toxic. She stands out above the rest because she is feared. [00:10:30] She is the person that you, you don't feel safe with because she has issues with her, her idea of safety being herself. Instead, she's reverted to what she knows and what she knows is how to lead like a man and, and not all men. And maybe be very careful with that statement. I'm I try not to generalize. I really do. I'm very, very careful in that. And I always, I always say a disclaimer, [00:11:00] I always have a caveat. And in this case, that is true. I have had some extraordinary male leaders who know that there's a difference between how men and women lead and, and what men want and what women want.
Speaker 1: I have had some extraordinary experiences with male leaders. So not all of them are like this, but I guarantee you something though, that female leader who is displaying all of those behaviors, [00:11:30] all of those moods and that personality of a very aggressive and angry person stems from she not feeling free or safe to be who she is, her natural state of being. And this always leads me to the conversation and the differences between men and women and how we lead. I have academics who say to me, we should never, [00:12:00] we should never campaign for that. We should never market that. We should never even have that discussion. We should all be leading the same. Well, I wish that was, uh, I wish that was possible. And here's why it's not because women are socialized as women. So we lead differently. Look at your biology, look at how you were nurtured, the nurture and nature.
Speaker 1: Part of leadership. You are not [00:12:30] a man. You're not, or you should not lead like such, but we do, because this is how we're socialized. If you're gonna be a woman in leadership, you will have to act accordingly. And to act accordingly means you will lead like a man. Do you understand what I'm saying? And this is what I fight for every day is so the, that you can feel safe, safe in your skin, safe in your body, safe in your soul. [00:13:00] So you never have to sacrifice your soul again for a seat at the corporate table. This is what I fight for every day. We are women and we lead differently and in society needs to catch up with that concept. Society needs to catch up with how we practically lead like women. You know, that's, that's what I fight for every day. And so what do women want overall [00:13:30] is to feel safe in the roles that they play as leaders.
Speaker 1: It is so difficult for a woman to fully embrace the identity of a leader because she doesn't feel safety. And I'm talking about psychological safety because when the brain is alerted to, to fear is alerted to threat, right? The brain goes, oh, oh, oh, okay. We're gonna act accordingly because we can't be any different outside of the cave. [00:14:00] Because if we do, we're gonna get eaten by a tiger. And, and we don't want that. So we gotta stay safe. So you just act like the group, you assimilate accordingly, you hide and play sight. This is where you belong. You made it this far, and we wanna keep going. So we're gonna have to play safe. Please hear me. When I say that, you don't have to keep living this way. You have the right to take center stage [00:14:30] of this leadership role that you play this identity of a leader.
Speaker 1: You can do it your way. You can feel safe and maintain your status. And I can show you how to do that. And we do that through coaching because your status is important to me. Status is why you, you are named a leader, right? This isn't, this isn't anything negative. This is not abuse of power. This is who you are. You're a leader. That's status. Okay? You have status. [00:15:00] But now how safe do you feel in this role of leader? And what women want is to feel safe and maintain the role of lead. They want to feel confident in their bodies. They want to walk into a room and extend that energy of confidence among her people. All she wants is to be respected and she can be respected. When she is confident in her own skin, [00:15:30] in her own ability to lead, she wants to feel like she belongs in any room.
Speaker 1: The boardroom, the courtroom, the surgery room, the whatever room, the bathroom she wants to feel like she belongs wherever she, she sets her sight on and she wants to belong at that table. And if that table is not accepting [00:16:00] new people, there's not enough chairs at that table. She goes and builds her own damn table. That's the feeling of confidence. She's confident that she belongs in that room. She's confident that she's resourceful to build a brand new boardroom table where she's the head of that table. And she's making chairs. She's making them from scratch. And she's bringing in allies to support her, to sit with her at the table. She belongs wherever she [00:16:30] says she belongs. And she is certain certain that she can impact the culture of the organization. She's certain that she can influence her followers. She's certain of her resourcefulness as a leader.
Speaker 1: This is what women leaders want. And when we have all those things, we feel connected. We feel respect. We feel like we are free to be ourselves. [00:17:00] We're sovereign women, we're sovereign leaders. And this is probably one of the most important leadership principles that I, I love to talk about. It's this idea of these two variables, status and safety, and when a woman has status to higher her status. So if she is going from manager to director to a VP, to then in the C-suite, you see how that is a trajectory [00:17:30] going up. So her status is increasing, right? Her responsibilities, her sat has in has increased, but the point here is with this variable we want for when status rises for her psychological safety to rise to the more, the more, the more status, the more safe she feels, but that my friend is not the case.
Speaker 1: And this is why I do what [00:18:00] I do because the higher she grows on that hierarchy, the higher she gets to the top of that mountain, her psych psychological safety diminishes. This is what I know to be true. The more she becomes this exclusive almost anomaly of a, of a leader, female leader in, in the Csuite her psychological safety decreases, cuz she is not per paired. [00:18:30] Mentally. Her identity of a, of a C sweeter is not fully there. Of course it will happen. It'll take time. Confidence will grow. Her certainty will increase. She will feel free, but it takes time to get there. It's not an overnight practice. And so if you are an emerging leader and you're feeling that your safety is decreasing, meaning that you [00:19:00] can, you don't feel free to be who you are. You have to contort yourself. You've sacrificed your soul for this position.
Speaker 1: For this career. You've sacrificed so much to be where you're at today. That at because your safety has diminished. Two variables, very important for women in leadership, status and safety. The idea, and hopefully after we coach together is that status is, is increased and maintained, right? Cause [00:19:30] some of you may not wanna be CEO. You just may wanna be in the C-suite. You may wanna be executive VPs. You may not wanna go any further than that, right? We wanna maintain that status, but we also wanna build up your psychological safety so that you are sovereign. You are free to be who you want to be as a leader. You no longer have to sacrifice your soul for this, for a seat of the table. You don't have to act like a man to get respect, to feel like you belong. [00:20:00] You don't have to do those things anymore.
Speaker 1: Hear me very clearly. I'm so passionate about this topic because I've been there and I've done that. I have contorted myself into a pretzel. I, I didn't know who I was anymore. I didn't recognize the woman in the mirror anymore. I really truly have suffered greatly for my career. I have suffered so much for the sake of my status. [00:20:30] And let me tell you, it is a cruel, cruel thing, and I don't want for you to suffer. And so if you are on this trajectory of leadership, I want you to have the status and the safety to lead the way you deserve to lead, which is authentically, which is genuinely you, which is a sovereign leader. And so I wanna support you through this. So what I would like for you to do is take some time to [00:21:00] ask yourself what you want as a leader, not what you need.
Speaker 1: We get it. You need a lot of stuff, right? It's necessary. These are necessities that we have to, we have to comply with so that we can leverage our brains, leverage our bodies. I get it. There are necessities, right? Food, water, shelter, those are necessary. But what do you want? My friend, what do you want as a woman in leadership? You tell you what you want, because all I want [00:21:30] is to support you. I wanna support you. I wanna be here for you. I want to make you feel like you belong in any room that you wanna enter at any table that you wanna sit at. I want to connect with you and remind you at your wants and desires are your priority and should have always been a priority. You know, it's something about society. It's something about these organizational bubbles that [00:22:00] we, that we live in that change the way we look at ourselves.
Speaker 1: You know, we start telling ourselves that we don't deserve certain things that we need to play by the rules, their rules. There's so much that goes on in our brains when we assimilate into this organizational culture. But I don't want for you to get lost in plain sight. That's what I want for women leaders, DME, over on IG, let me know what you want. I wanna hear from you. And in the meantime, my [00:22:30] friend, you stay close to my email in your email inbox. I send an email a few times a week. If you're not part of my email list, you have to be go into my show notes or stay until the end of the podcast. And you'll learn how you can get on my email list. So you don't wanna miss all this valuable information, tips, strategies, mindset, uh, tools that you can use as a, as a woman leader. So make sure you get on my email list. All right, my friend [00:23:00] have a fantastic week and I will catch you on the next episode. Take good care. Bye for now. Hey, before you go, I have the special gift to share with you. It is my exclusive guide on the 15 values of a masterful leader. That's right. These values are what drive. Every decision you make, they motivate every action you take as a leader. So don't lead this to chance. You gotta know what 15 values masterful leaders use to develop their influence [00:23:30] their followers and impact their organizations. So head over to my show notes, grab this exclusive guide as AP it'll be delivered in your email box as soon as possible. I'll see you inside.
