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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 legacy of contribution and service. You'll hear about real leadership clients with real problems, navigating their success in life, business, and career. If you're ready to become a masterful leader, then this podcast was made for you. So let's get started.
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Hey, welcome back. Let's talk about I introversion. Listen, I am an introverted leader. I really am. I'm not extroverted. I am not that person. I am not someone who is going to have a 10 hour day and then go seek refuge among friends to fuel me up with energy or to carry on my day with all of this energy. I'm sorry. That is not who I am. I am very much an introvert and I tease that I'm a double introvert, meaning I just need some extra time than the average introvert to really fully recuperate. Now, before you go, wait a minute, I thought this had everything to do with charisma. I'm extroverted. I'm on the life of the party. Know my friend, this has everything to do with your energy and how you recharge as a leader. I want for you to think about this as a level of fuel, like you are running on a full tank of gas at work, right?
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You come prepared, you're ready to roll. You have a presentation to give you have, you know, employee appraisals to give. You've got, you know, challenging conversations, difficult conversations with your employees to give. I don't know. Maybe you're meeting with some stakeholders, board of directors, maybe you're meeting with your CEO. I don't know. But here you are with a full tank of gas going into the office. You're ready. My friend, you're ready. You have the emotional and the mental state to go and lead your people. Okay. So you're on a full tank of gas. And by the end of the day, Ooh, the field tank light turned on. You're like, okay, um, I'm running on a little empty here. So instead of you going to the five o'clock or six o'clock happy hour with your girlfriends or your friends, no, you're going home to recharge to recuperate because the tank of gas is empty and you sh wanna get home safe and sound right?
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You wanna get there? You know, you're gonna fill up the tank overnight so that tomorrow you're back at it and you need time to rejuvenate, to recharge, to replenish. That's what I mean by the fuel, the energy that is introversion and extroversion. I mean, how many of you know an extrovert friend I'm not talking about her charisma. I'm not talking about she being the life of the party. No, she's the one who will go to work. She has these projects to present or presentations to give, and she's ready at like five 30 to go have dinner and drinks. She's ready. She doesn't need time to replenish because she just has plenty of energy. I think that's fantastic. And a lot of our leaders are like this. We've programmed ourselves to just go, go, go until we burn the fuck out. And then what? And then you're like, oh, I think, I think I need to do this differently.
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Okay, good. And if you're that person right now, who's go, go, go. And you've reached a saturation point. Then let's, let's talk about what we can do, because it's really about the energy you bring to the role of a leader and what you need to do. What's your responsibility to do is replenish yourself at the end of the day, right? Cuz it is a daily rejuvenation. It is a daily recharge. This isn't I'll wait until I get a vacation break once a year. I'll replenish then and then get back on it. No we don't. We don't wait for vacations. This is a daily ritual that we need to put really at the forefront of our minds. This needs to be a priority. And so why I say I'm a double introvert is because I do need a little extra time. I do need a little extra something during the day.
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I do need to put into my calendar breaks. Yes. Breaks. I break my friend. And so should you leader, there is no shame and you should have no guilt in putting that on your calendar. And if you're a damn good leader, you do the same with your followers. You would tell them to do the same thing, a nature break, right? We call, we call the bio breaks, you know, during workshops and trainings. I'm like, no, go take a nature break and a bio break and come back in 20. Right? Do it all. Take a break, get your brain to rejuvenate. It's just like fueling the car. That's all you're doing. Listen, I still have a gas car. I don't have an electric car. I don't know if I, if I will ever own one, but listen, I, if you think of you fueling your tank during the day, that's all that is.
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You're pulling up to the gas pump. You're taking a 20 minute break. You're putting more fuel into your engine and you're, you're just rejuvenating, recharging and replenishing while you're there. And you get to do that as many times as you need throughout the day. And that's what makes me a double introvert. This is something that I made a priority. Even when we started meetings, I knew that they were tense. They were anxious. They were, they were ready to hear some interesting news. They didn't know if it was gonna be good or bad, but it was gonna be interesting. So they, my employees would come in with a lot of anxious energy and I would tell them, you know what, let's just go take a quick walk outside and we're gonna come right back in. Let's get some sun and you know, on our skin, get some warmth on our faces and then come right back into the building, refreshed and rejuvenated and clear minded.
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And so usually movement allows us to do that. And so I would have all my employees go out there with me and people would look at us like, are y'all leaving? What's going on? Like, no, we're just taking a short break. That's all we're doing. And we would come back into the board room and we would have such an exciting creative, innovative meeting. People were open-minded. People were easily receptive to any information I shared with them because they took that switch. It was a, it was a tiny switch in their neurology, but it allowed them to go and recharge and replenish and really get all that anxious energy out of them. You can also incorporate mandatory breaks. How many of you know an employee, one of your followers who will not leave her desk or he will not leave his cubicle. He's stuck on there.
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He's rolling. He's in the zone. This is how he works. Fantastic. But what you can do is set a culture of recharge and it's really a culture of resiliency. That's what we're doing. We're just recharging them so that they can bounce back. If there's any setbacks, if there's any stress or any anxiety in the workplace, they have that ability to recharge ly, right? If you have the capability or the power to do that, do it, they will thank you for it in the long run. But listen, I know everybody has different energy levels. You have your own. And if this is something you need to do individually for yourself as a leader, then do it. You don't have to force employees to do any of this, but start recognizing the employees that do take longer breaks in the restroom, right? They wander off and say, I, I do.
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I forgot something in my car. I, I need to go get that. And it's like, okay, she needs a break. Okay. She does this every day. or she takes a little longer at lunch. Hmm. She only had an, I gave her an hour, but she came back in an hour and 20, I wonder what's going on. This is now a pattern. This is now something that I need to address. Let me see what she needs. And perhaps it's adding more breaks into her Workday because she needs to recharge. So first, first leader look at what your needs are. How do you replenish your energy? Are you an extrovert or are you an introvert? Are you a double introvert? Like me that needs a little extra time during the day and in the evening where I disconnect from my clients, I disconnect from my team.
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I disconnect from anything. That's requiring emotional energy from me. I cannot, I will not. That is a boundary that no one will cross because I won't let anybody cross that. That's my duty, my responsibility to recharge myself so that the following morning I'm ready for you. I'm ready for anything that the day brings. But I do plan those breaks in between. So what do you need? What are your needs? My friend, you are, who is my priority. You are who I serve first and foremost because how you replenish and recharge yourself will impact the way you lead. You'll start looking at employees differently. If you're that, that Energizer bunny, that's go, go, go, go, go. And you have an employee who needs to take more than one break a day. You're judging them. You're wondering, what's wrong with these people? Like they're lazy. They don't wanna do the work.
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No. They just need to recharge and allow them to do that. Yes. Under your conditions under your terms, but don't deny them that because you are the Energizer bunny and they are not, they are not so something to consider my friend. So the reason why I wanted to do this episode for us is because I had a client say to me, I'm the life of the party. I am the one that's organizing parties. I'm the one in my circle of friends that gets everybody together. I'm just, you know, such an extrovert. I said, oh, okay, that's fantastic. She said, however, in the office, I'm very much an introvert. And I said, oh, well, what do you mean by that? She said, well, I have a stiff upper lip. I'm not someone who socializes. I don't wanna talk to anybody unless it's my team. I'm very, you know, focused in my, and, and, and I just, I'm, I'm just not the life of the party in the office.
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I'm just a very different person. And so when she brought this up, I wanted to clarify for her what extroversion actually means versus an introvert and everything to do with the energy and the recharging that an individual needs. It has nothing to do with personality. It has nothing to do with charisma. It has everything to do with what that individual person needs to recharge. It's that simple. I am a very charismatic leader. Get me in a room and I am, oh, I'm running circles around everybody. I'm excited. I'm in my element. And when you're in your element, you don't feel burnout. You don't feel challenged. You don't feel depletion. You're in your element. Are you in your element as a leader, right? Do you feel natural in that role? Because if you don't, then there's some resistance, there's extra energy that you're burning that maybe we can look at.
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But what I want for us to focus on is your needs, how you replenish throughout the day, whether you're charismatic or not. It has everything to do with what your energetic needs are. So let's ask ourselves right now, what do I need during the day to rejuvenate, to recharge, use whatever word you wanna use, whatever resonates with you recharge is a very strong one for me. So what do you need throughout the day to recharge? Is it a coffee break in the afternoon or is it a tea break? You know, midmorning right. Do you take a mid-morning and a lunch break and a midafternoon break, you know, or are you working later hours? So you have to add a little extra time in your bio slash nature breaks, right? Or maybe you just compile it into your lunch break just a little bit of extra time for you cuz you're the leader and you're able to do that.
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And when you go home, are you hitting the streets or are you going home home to recharge, please again, don't confuse this with charisma or a great personality. It's nothing to do with that. So moving forward, start asking yourself these questions and then start looking at your employees differently. You're gonna start noticing patterns. You're gonna start noticing how they behave, how one doesn't wanna take a break ever. And maybe that person doesn't wanna look like she is lazy or doesn't wanna do her work. She may wanna impress you. So there she is like an Energizer bunny burning out, feeling all kinds of depletion in her energy because she doesn't want to look a certain way to you address that with your employees. And maybe you can bring 'em all together and ask them, you know what? I wanna talk about? How you all recharge. Do you need some extra break time during the day? Now, listen, y'all are a great team. You all, you know, create results for this amazing department. I trust every single one of you, but I also wanna make sure that we're taking care of ourselves and that if there's extra time that you need to break to replenish, to hydrate, to rejuvenate, to recharge well, nature break. If you want, let me know. I'd be happy to talk to you about what your individual needs are.
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Do not make the mistake that a lot of leaders do because you are one way you think everybody should be just like you. Please don't make that grave mistake. No one is like you. And thank goodness. You're not like them. Right? All of your team members, including yourself are individuals. And so you respond to external stimuli very differently. And so I want for you to honor that for yourself and for your people. So start changing that mindset for yourself and start noticing what your employees needs are. All right. My friend, head over to IG. That's where I like to hang out at Dr. Denise Simpson. I wanna hear from you, tell me what your needs are. Are you an introvert needs a little time to recharge without people in the room without socializing without even your children bothering you? Or are you an extrovert? Are you go, go, go.
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And you're just, you have plenty of energy to spare. Listen, I'm a little jealous of you, but I, I do love my downtime. I have to tell you, I've created this in my brain to rejuvenate. And what I mean by I created this was really, my body was asking for it. My body, my physical entity was asking for the extra time and I honored it. I didn't convince myself not to. I didn't say Nope, you're too lazy. And people are gonna think you're lazy. I don't that. Nope. It's not a good idea. No bullshit. This is what I desire and what I need. And guess what? I'm, I'm responsible leader who will see to it that I adhere to my desires first, before I can go help another, okay. My friend start thinking of what your desires and needs are in regards to recharging your energy. And then go let me know over on IG. All right, my friend have a fantastic week. I will catch you on the next episode. Take care.
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Hey, if you enjoy listening to this podcast, you have to join me inside my exclusive coaching membership for women in leadership. Just like you. I wanna help you become a masterful leader with the help of a community of the most powerful women on this planet. My membership is called masters of leadership. Yes, of course it would be called that . So whether you're a novice or a master, you have to join us. You're gonna get the support that you need and deserve inside my membership. So head over to Dr. Denise simpson.com/m O L. That website again is Dr. Denise simpson.com/m O L. You deserve this, my friend. So join us inside. See you soon.
