00:08 Hi, I am 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. Hey, welcome to the podcast. So happy you are here. If you enjoy this episode, I'm going to invite you to leave a review, maybe a five star review. I don't know, maybe something nice that you can say so that others can find us here on the platform that you are listening to this episode. Thank you so much for joining me. I want to talk a little bit about power. I know I probably spend a lot of time talking about power and then a lot of the things I do, the undercurrent is power.
01:22 This very strong emotion that I have to be conscious of because for me, power is unnatural. I don't feel powerful every day. There are days where we feel defeated because of the thing that happened the day before. There are some days where we wake up exhilarated and joyful, and that may not feel like power to you. For me, power comes into play when I show up for my clients, when I show up for my customers, when I show up for my students day in and day out, I have to intentionally conjure up this emotion of power. And for me, power looks like capacity. It looks like capability, it looks like authority. It looks like authenticity for me. So there's so many ways I can define power on any given day and depending on the context. And so I want for you to take a moment and think about when you feel your most powerful.
02:31 Is it when you are in front of a group presenting? Is it when you are one-on-one with your employees? Is it when you are pitching a sales presentation? Because speaking from experience, that's not when I feel my most powerful. When I am selling my leadership consulting and coaching services, I don't always feel powerful, and so I have to be intentional before I walk into a boardroom and present a pitch and present a sales package, I have to do a lot of mindset work so that I can feel powerful in what I'm providing these potential clients. And so what is it for you? When do you feel your most powerful? Is it with your children? Is it when you are surrounded by loving, caring, benevolent family members? Or is it alone? For me, I have to spend some extra time alone. Some people call this double introversion.
03:33 I'm someone who will be in your face, charismatic, doing all the things to sell and to teach and do what I need to do to serve my students and my clients, and then I have to go and retreat for a little extra time for myself. And that's just my energetic body. It's just what I need. So for me, I feel my most powerful, yes, not only in front of my students and I'm teaching or my clients, but when I'm alone, when I am to myself and I'm with my own thoughts, and I do that mental rehearsal, that mental replay sometimes of what happened the day before and I replay it in my mind and I pick out all of the positive moments that took place. Plenty of negative things that my mind wants to present me with, but I do that for myself. I replay all of the positive events or circumstances or conversations so that I can anchor it in my mind.
04:34 And I feel powerful when I do that. So what does it look like for you when you feel powerful right now? I had to really work up the moment that I pressed live on here so that I can be here fully present for you and not thinking about the words, really the stumbling of my words. Just like you heard right now. I'm not thinking about that. I'm thinking about the value that I want to bring to you. I'm thinking about what I want to present to you and how I want to compel you today after this episode to feel your most powerful self. That's what I'm focused on. And so I feel powerful because I had to work on the intention of coming to you with that energetic body of powerfulness, right? Being powerful. And so power doesn't mean being better than somebody else. Power doesn't mean that you have to manipulate or control outcomes.
05:37 Power doesn't mean you have to exert it at every second of every day in front of your employees. That's not what power is. And my favorite definition of power is the ability to act or produce an effect. And that's what I'm hoping I'm doing with us today. I'm hoping that I am producing an effect in you very much like what you do as a leader, because a leader influences a change in employee beliefs, feelings and actions to produce an effect on results. That's what a leader does, and a leader is synonymous with power. These two definitions that I just shared with you, again, power is the ability to act or produce an effect. And a leader in my personal and professional definition that I've created is a leader influences a change in her employee's beliefs about themselves, their feelings about themselves in connection to the organization and of course their actions.
06:45 So the leader's always influencing an effect on results, which is what power. That's how power is defined as. And so I want for you to remember, you are a powerful person who has the title of leader because you're doing the same thing in your homes with your families and your children, or if you're a community activist, you're doing the same. You're inspiring, you are influencing, you are wanting to produce an effect on your community, on your children, on your children's children. That's what you're doing as a powerful human. But now we're in the workplace. That's a context I want to talk to you about is you abdicate your power in the outside world, which is the real world is what I like to think. Your family, your community, your extended family members, your culture. That is where you feel the most powerful. But then you enter the organization and you have a title, and there's so much pressure, so much pressure to uphold because you've been deemed a leader through your status, through your position, through your title, through your duties and responsibilities.
07:59 And so then you don't want to feel powerful over here. So real world, you're pretty darn powerful in the workplace. You're like, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know how to influence anybody. I dunno how to compel anyone to do anything. How do I inspire someone? Oh my gosh, am I capable? Whatever. I'm not even enough. My goodness, they're going to find me out. I'm a fraud. So then all of these interesting thoughts come in when we think of you as a powerful leader. A lot of us are denying that definition of power in the workplace. We don't want it. It feels too heavy. It's a negative connotation because we've seen so many bad leaders abuse their power. And so here you are, however, in a leadership position, and you are feeling powerless. And there are many reasons why we feel powerless. I just mentioned a few of course, but we have been conditioned, and I bring this up as often as I can because I want for you to remember, you weren't born this way.
09:03 This programming was not in you. It is something that we little ones learned either watching our mothers, our fathers, our immediate members of our family. We watched them abdicate power to another person or to the government or to their parents. I mean, I remembered watching my mom relinquish all sense of power and control when it came to my father. And so I saw her behaviors, I saw how she reacted, and a lot of that was programmed in me, which is why I talk a lot about power today. I mean, let's just be real. I'm healing from my past by talking to you about these things, these subjects like power. And so this is what I saw growing up. And the same thing in my culture. We were programmed to believe that we didn't have a voice. We didn't have a subculture. Let me be very clear.
09:59 That's my disclaimer in my sub, sub sub subculture of the Mexican-American culture in my very specific family and my very specific geographical area that I was raised in, you needed to be quiet. You couldn't speak unless you were spoken to. I mean, I was in private Catholic school and at seven years old, my teacher put tape on my mouth because I told my classmate what page we were on. My classmate turned around and said, what page are we on? I said, page 46. My teacher, Ms. Cisneros, I'll never forget you lady. She came over to my desk, cut duct tape or whatever that gray thick tape is. She cut it and put it on my mouth. And I had that tape for the entire day. And when I got on the bus, I took off that tape and I was red like a tomato, and I show up at home and my mother, who's a nurse, freaked out and was like, what happened to your face?
11:06 And I said, well, I spoke when somebody asked me what page we were on, and my teacher put tape on my mouth. And so even then as a seven-year-old little girl anchored with that idea that you don't speak unless you're spoken to. And if the teacher, the authority, the person with the power in the room, if that person with that power in that room does not ask you a question unless you are asked a question, you will answer. So it was like what? This is what I learned as a little girl, especially my culture and especially in my school that I was in. And so this was the theme. This was the theme for a lot of years of my life where professors wouldn't acknowledge my requests. I couldn't speak in front of a boardroom unless I had asked for permission six months before and I had to run it through with the c e O as to what I was discussing, and it had to be approved through him.
12:09 So there's so many events in my life, circumstances in my life where I felt my power was diminished. And so I bring this up, yes, because it's something that I know I'm not alone in. I know that many of you out here feel the same way. And so what I want to do is help you feel powerful. When do you feel your most powerful? When you are your most authentic self, when do you feel your most powerful? When you are with your children, do you feel your most powerful in front a group of active listeners? Do you feel powerful when you are pitching a sales contract to a group of stakeholders, a group of board of directors? When do you feel your most powerful? Because I want for you to anchor that moment in your mind and in your nervous system, in your body. That's what I want for you to do today.
13:11 Because when you do that, you are able to show up in your life, feeling like yourself, feeling at peace, feeling confident, feeling like you are more than capable, right? That's the whole point is that I want for you to show up just like you show up in your real life over here. I want for you to show up in your organization and in your workplace with that same level of energy and with that same definition of power that I shared with you earlier. And so some of you feel powerless because you haven't mastered your mindset yet, and that's normal. We're talking about mindset right now. That's what we're doing right now. I'm helping you unravel some things about power that you feel in the context of the workplace. And I'm helping you anchor when you feel your most powerful, because that is how I want for you to show up in your organization.
14:09 So before you walk into that building, I want for you to remember those moments, to remember and recall those memories so that when you walk into that building, you are walking in with that energy of power. And by the way, your employees are feeling your power way before you enter a physical building. So you can practice this on the way into your office, on the way into the workplace. And so some of you may feel powerless because you don't have the skills, the proper skills to lead, because nobody tells us this is how you're supposed to lead. It's an elusive, nebulous, abstract concept leadership. And what I to do is simplify it, because when we simplify leadership, we democratize this concept, which means that more people are able to enter the pipeline. And you know me, I'm very, very concerned with how many women enter and are not entering the pipeline of leadership through management.
15:10 And so you may be feeling like you don't have the proper skillset for your current role, much less for the next role that's coming behind or coming soon thereafter. But this current role, you may not have the skills because nobody sends us to training unless we demand it, unless we ask for it. I mean, it's something that a lot of organizations say that they allocate budgets for, and in reality, they're not allocating budgets for professional development. And so maybe you are noticing a lack of skills and knowing that there's a gap between where you are now in your skill inventory and where you need to be to fulfill your current role. So that may be a reason why you don't feel powerful. And so another way that we feel powerless is when we don't align as leaders, we're not aligning the strategic vision and planning of the organization with our own department goals.
16:12 We don't know how to do that. And so here we are spinning our wheels, taking massive action, massive action, and not creating the results that we want with our teams. And so then the fact is the implications are you are a failed leader. You don't know how to lead, right? And so you have not mastered your mindset, your skillset and strategy and execution. Those are three variables I'd love to talk about when it comes to leadership. These are the only three variables that impact the results you create as a leader. Simple. And so we feel powerless when we don't have the proper mindset, when we don't have the right beliefs and identity about ourselves, and of course the beliefs about our employees. It causes so much heartache and a whole lot of suffering in our leadership positions. And then we haven't mastered skills, skill development.
17:07 We don't even know what skills we're lacking. We just know there's something missing. We know that we need to go back to training. We have to go get certification so that we can show up with the skills that this leadership role requires, and then to prepare you for the next level of leadership. So a lot of us, again, feel powerless when we don't even know what strategy is, how to even plan and execute department goals. So here we are creating negative results. And remember what I said, that power is defined as the ability to act or produce an effect. Your results will tell you whether you are producing an that is yielding a positive reaction or a negative reaction because you're a leader. You were hired to create results and to solve for problems. That's what you were designed to do or that's what you were hired to do as a leader.
18:03 Two things, and we use our teams to do that. We use our teams to create results and solve for problems. That's power my friend, right? Again, the definition of power is the ability to act or produce an effect, right? And if you're not doing that as a leader, of course you're going to feel powerless. Of course, you're going to feel defeated every day. Of course, you're not going to feel confident. Of course, you're going to feel overwhelmed and doubtful and feel like an imposter, of course. So this is why I talk so much about power and you, dear leader, you've got the power. Just go ahead and scan your life. Tell your mind. Go ahead and scan the other areas of my life where I do show up as a leader, where I feel my most powerful. How can I anchor those memories so that I can show up tomorrow feeling like my most powerful self?
19:04 That's your homework for today, dear leader. Now, listen, speaking of power in mindset, skillset and strategy, so that you can create effective, powerful results in your organization with your team members, I want to invite you to my certification program. It's a capstone certification in leadership. It's called Leadership Mastery, and my institute is putting this on. It will be cohort based, so you will enter as a group and we are going to spend 12 weeks in immersion. Now, listen, immersion doesn't mean like you're underwater for 12 weeks. That's not what immersion means. It just means we take the 12 weeks together very seriously where you are given a proven framework, evidenced based leadership strategies that I have compiled for us. So you enter where you are, wherever you are on that leadership pipeline, and I'm going to take you all the way to mastery. I know it's a big bold guarantee, but I'm taking you to mastery.
20:14 We're going to summit together, and I'm going to show you step-by-step what you need to do to master your mindset, master your skills and master strategy. That is three variables that will affect your leadership. We're going to show you how to do that. I want to invite you into this very first time offering of a capstone certification. That's right. So you're going to be able to hang up a certification in your office, whatever wall you want at home, in your cubicle, wherever you are leading, I'm going to want for you to show that proudly because you are going to earn it. Yes. Let me tell you something. This is my best work yet. I've worked with leaders for all of my adult life. I've been in leadership, still in leadership as a C E O of a seven figure company with a few handful of employees who I create incredible results with.
21:16 So I'm not only molding the clay and I have been since very young and now as a C E O of my companies, I am so excited to be able to put this pathway together for that. This was a long time coming. It took over a year to really formulate this pathway to gather all of the evidence-based strategies that we need to show that you are more than capable of doing this, and we implement that right away as soon as you enter the certification capstone. So I'm inviting you. Yeah, I'm inviting you. It's going to be an incredible opportunity, first people to be in this cohort with us. And so I'm going to invite you to get on my email list. This is how you're going to receive information as we unveil and open up registration. You're going to want to go to www.drdenisesimpson.com/leadership. And again, it's dr denise simpson.com/leadership.
22:24 This is how you're going to get on my email list. This isn't the wait list, it's just an email list. Just get on there so that you can get updates as we roll out the news of the program opening. But if you're on my email list already, fantastic. But if you're not, you're going to want to get on there. All right, dear Leader, thank you for showing up today and for taking a few minutes for yourself to learn about this word, this emotion that really propels me forward in my leadership practice and it's power. And I hope you enjoyed our time together today. So make sure you join my email list so that you can be the first to learn about this new certification program that will help you harness that power not only in your mindset, but in your skillset and strategy so that you can be the most powerful, effective, impactful leader in your organization. Alright, dear leader, I'm wishing you a fantastic rest of your day, and I look forward to serving you on our next podcast episode. Bye for now.
23:35 Hey, leader, do you want weekly leadership tips, coaching and training straight to your email inbox?
23:41 Yeah, I thought so.
23:43 Head over to dr denise simpson.com/leadership.
23:47 Again, that's dr denise simpson.com/leadership. Just submit your name and your email address and we'll get started right away. I look forward to serving you inside
23:57 Your email inbox. See you soon.
