188. Being the Boss

Are you really self critical and no matter how hard you try to be better you always catch something that you didn’t do right. So if this is an automatic habit, it’s because you have a human brain that has been reinforced over and over that negative needs more attention. Well, this episode is going to take so much weight off your shoulders literally and figuratively as we dive into what kind of boss are you to yourself and how can we change that story?

My name is Dara Thomason and this is the Quilter’s Coach podcast episode 188 being the boss and learning how the kind of boss that you have been and we’re going to figure out why you were that kind of boss and then we’re to figure out what kind of boss you want to be so that when you wake up Every morning, you know that you’re going to work for yourself, your own life in a way that’s not as scary, difficult, or stressful.

How does that sound? I’m so excited. So before we go into the heart of the episode, which by the way, I want to recommend that if you are really interested by the coaching that you hear, the tools, sorry, if you’re interested, but what you hear on this podcast, It is just a tiny, tiny bit of the power of coaching.

So inside my membership where I coach women, you will see when you actually apply these concepts and tools in everyday life, how absolutely life changing they are. So if you want to see, go a little bit deeper. You can go to my website and or you can go to Dara Tomasson. com forward slash free class and you can go and register for my free class and you can see me coaching others and going deep into this work on how you can truly rewire your brain and See how neuroplastic our brains really are.

We can change. Old dogs can learn new tricks. It works. It’s so amazing. Anyway, so go and register for the free class that’s coming up. You are going to love it. And, then make sure you write that date on the calendar and make sure you show up. Okay. So before we go into how to be the boss, which we’re going to do a diagnosis, we’re going to go through different boss types.

There’s different styles. And then you’re going to be able to see, is this the kind of boss I am? And it’s going to be really, really helpful. So Please stay with me because you are your best investment. And I love what Shad Halsmester said. He said that a key to failure is the repetition of a belief in failure.

Negative self talk is the repetition of a belief in failure. So if you just keep feeding that, whatever you feed grows. So if you just keep having that habit of negative self-talk. Then you’re just going to keep having failure not be a benefit to you. And then he said, we are too busy fixing the train to realize that we are on the wrong track.

We are too busy staying alive to figure out how to live. And as a life coach, when life is always happening, this is why we need life coaches. I have a life coach. I actually have, several, and they helped me see, All of my pitfalls because everything we tell is a story. Everything’s a story. How we tell the story, how we, portray ourselves, how we present ourselves, how we think about things.

They’re all just, it’s all just thoughts. It’s all just stories. And it’s our, it’s even our thoughts about like facts, like where we live or how many kids we have or a marital status or how much we weigh or how big our house is. Those are all facts, but there’s always a story about what we want to say about them.

So I’m so glad you’re here at this podcast about how to live the life you want to live instead of This default life that you don’t. I would say that most mornings you wake up and you look at yourself and you’re like How is like, how am I? I don’t even recognize myself. It’s because you’re not connected to yourself.

It’s because you don’t have a very nice relationship with yourself. I know it’s hard to, it’s hard. I get it. But if you don’t do the work, you’re just going to be a human robot and you’re just going to keep living the same life over and over again. So, so happy you’re here and let’s go deep. Now I’m going to share as a quick win from one of my clients.

Oh yeah, this one’s a, this is a quick and a fun one, but it’s my. My client, uh, the, her son texted her and said, do you want to buy the Girl Scout cookies? And her, and so she said, I don’t, but maybe your dad does. So then she went to her husband and said, do you want to buy the Girl Scout cookies? And he said, I want to buy them, but I don’t want them.

And he was able to, say, well, I can make a donation, but we don’t need the cookies because, I know that it would be tempting to have the cookies for my wife and also for myself. Because he knows that they don’t really serve him. So what a fun win. And also, one of the things that happens a lot in my membership are women will like to learn the tools and they’ll start talking about the tools because they’re so excited.

It’s like when you have a really yummy recipe and you’re like, Oh, you’ve got to try this. It’s so delicious. So this is what happens in my membership. The women We’ll learn these tools and say, ah, did you know that you, yeah, you’re not responsible for other people’s emotions. Oh, did you know, there’s this tool called math versus drama?

Oh, did you know why I’m a perfectionist? Right? They get so excited about these tools. And then the spouses, they start listening and then they start applying these tools. And, It’s pretty fun. They can, they can have a much better connection. All right. So let’s go. I have this, and I, I linked this in the show notes.

It’s a fifth, there’s 16 different coaching styles. Okay. So the one is a coach. So they, they’re really open about your needs, problems, issues. They enlist your help. So they kind of, they use, they’re more like a collaborator. Then there’s the workaholic coach. So this is the, so the workaholic boss.

They spend most of their time devoted to work. They consider work as one of their highest priorities. They often work outside their scheduled hours, evenings and weekends. They may take limited vacation days, but they prefer to work. Okay. Is that the kind of boss you are? The goal setter boss. So the goal setter boss explains objectives and sets challenges to help their team meet goals within a certain period.

They expect their employees to perform tasks to the best of their abilities and produce high quality results. They lead by example and show employees how their efforts can impact their performance. So they work hard, but they have very clear expectations. Maybe they’re a little too much or too little, but they’re probably evaluating.

The autocrat. So this is the boss, often makes decisions with little input from other people on their team. They make choices based on their ideas and judgments without taking advice from others. And autocratic leaders typically provide clear directions and expect their team to follow their rules. So it’s kind of like my way or the highway.

Is that the kind of boss you are to yourself? Then we have the empathetic boss. So an empathetic boss strives to understand their employees’ viewpoints. So do you strive to see your own viewpoints? They encourage all the different people to collect, connect, create connections, build collaborations. They understand how to manage conflict.

Do you do that? the participant. A participant manager often wants to engage directly with the team. They often perform duties outside their job. So they kind of, do a lot of extra extra. They do want them to succeed, but they don’t always manage boundaries and they exceed that. Do you do that? Is that how you’re a boss to yourself?

I wonder. Traditionalist. So the traditionalist boss has a fixed mindset. about the best way to do things. They’re like, this is how you do it. That’s it. They focus on their ability to use power and influence to lead others. And they expect employees to have loyalty. So they manipulate, they, they often perform tasks in the same way.

Uh, they don’t really change. So if you’ve been, if you’ve been doing the same things forever and not allowing yourself to deviate or to evaluate, So, things feel really rigid and they feel very, like there’s not a lot of flexibility. Now the Democrat, so the Democratic boss wants to input from every team member.

They, so you can even do that. Be like, okay, I want to consider all the different angles here in my life. They strive to have a consensus on major decisions and identify a collaborative path. Okay. Do you do that? The micromanager. Now, all my control enthusiasts out there. So the micromanager boss often wants to be involved throughout your working process.

They may provide little guidance or input to help you perform. This type of manager may expect you to complete detailed reports. So do you do that? Do you have really high expectations and always micromanaging everyone and everything? So you always feel really tired at the end of the day because you’re trying to manage other people’s expectations. We also have inexperienced manager So they may be new to their position and have little or no experience leading others. They may be unfamiliar with the industry or company.

They might ask questions so if this would, if the inexperienced, so one of the challenges I see in women with this style of being a boss is that when you’re inexperienced with something, uh, but you’re the boss, there’s a lot of fear of maybe like unmanaged expectations of other people.

Maybe you feel like people are always judging you, if you don’t, if you don’t have like that humility, maybe you’re. Like how this you feel like you have to act a certain way and then you have a lot of fear people finding you out So then they’re like being pissed and posture syndrome. So is that is that your boss style?

What about the bold a bold manager typically thinks outside traditional conventions? and challenges teams to achieve lofty goals. They believe in the company or team and their methods of accomplishing goals. They often, uh, they’re often receptive to suggestions and encourage team members to try new processes to achieve higher quality results.

So, these are the think outside the box kind of, boss. Which can be really fun because you can have these fun discoveries. So even thinking about your quilting practice, are you really bold like putting new colors together or trying new patterns or miss like matching different patterns with older patterns, like newer, like, and different styles.

Are you able, do you let yourself do that? Now there’s the leader. So some managers earn their promotions because they exhibit natural leadership skills. A leader manager typically has various soft skills such as communication, decision making to help them manage teams effectively. So, do they, you know, are you respectful of all the different moving pieces?

And do you have a strong community? Are you able to clearly communicate with others what’s going on? What about introvert? How many of us have the introvert boss style? So an introverted manager has advanced in their career. because of their hard skills rather than their communication or charisma. They may prefer to work alone and complete tasks independently.

They often have strong introspection and listening skills, which can help them be effective leaders. So one of the things that I,love about thinking about this introvert is we typically have stereotypes of like who makes a really good boss. And when we study, different kinds of leadership or even like people in the world who have made huge changes, there are the servant kind of, leaders who are very introverted, right?

They, they are, they just, they, they work their own thing. They do their own thing and then people can. respect them and they have that quiet energy. So, sometimes we stereotype what is good and bad. So even sometimes people stereotype introverts as not being as good because they don’t, they don’t share as much or they’re not as, you know, outgoing or, loud or whatever, but there’s, there’s gonna be a lot of power in the introvert, boss. Now, so if that’s the way you are. Are you embarrassed about that? Do you allow yourself to really capitalize on that quiet energy, that confidence? Respecting other people you respect yourself. You let people be them So I’m just I do want to bring that up because we can have judgment on like what is What you think is the best boss and that can be with like how you saw your your father or Someone that you respected and you think well I need to be a lot more like them and One of the messages that I hope that comes across in this podcast is your one of your number one jobs is to be the most you possible so You we need to like I think about our worth You It’s like our inheritance, right?

Like, we are already 100 percent worthy. But there’s all these layers that, keep us from feeling worthy. So we feel like, Oh, but I don’t have my, my body isn’t skinny enough, or I don’t have my, my arms aren’t, you know, sculpted or my stomach that I don’t have a six pack or my hair. It doesn’t look like so and so’s or I have wrinkles or hooded eyelids or, whatever.

And so we can, we can stop ourselves from getting into our inner wisdom and our inner knowledge and our intuition by judging. So I’m curious while, while I’m sharing all these, there’s a few more boss styles. Are you allowing yourself to be inquisitive and being like really with yourself on this? Or are you judging?

You’re like, actually I should be more like so and so. All right. So I do want to warn you of that because I do want you and you can go back. I have, these linked in my podcast notes and you can go back and you can look at more. And so you can even click. on each one of these types and you can get more information.

So the more you can spend being introspective of yourself and what resonates with you, the more you can step into your own power. And just like I used to say to my elementary school kids, I would say, everyone is unique and different. And I don’t want to, I don’t, I don’t want you all to be the same.

That would be so boring. Right? I say that to my own children. And it’s funny because my boys all kind of look alike. They’re all tall. They all have red hair. They all have blue eyes. They are all really good at basketball. And sometimes when I look at pictures of them, I’m like, Oh, is this okay. Like, which one is this?

Because, you know, they all kind of looked similar, especially at different ages. So, but they’re all super unique, their personalities, and we want to really capitalize on that. So. Just, just as a reminder as we’re going through this list. Okay, visionary. A visionary boss gets goals to help the team or company achieve long term success.

While they communicate effectively to explain their goals, they may provide less direction about the methods for achieving these objectives. They believe in working as a team to identify strategies for accomplishing goals. So they would be the, next one is the experienced manager has often been working in their position for many years.

They have a deep understanding of the company. So you have a deep understanding of yourself and you often use your knowledge to develop effective workflows for you. So if you know that you really need more sleep. Then you have to say like hard stop if you’re like going out with friends in a night or quilting or something you’re like, okay, I have to I have to be Leaving here at 9 30 because I have a 30 minute drive I’m gonna need 30 minutes to unwind when I get home because I know that i’m not happy if I don’t go to bed by 10 30.

Okay, so that’s what I mean. Like you, you allow your experience. I have a client just recently. She’s like, I’m really tired. We just were, helping a family member and she’s like, I’m just so tired today. There’s, I wouldn’t, it wouldn’t be effective to go quilting. I mean, get coached. So I was like, no problem.

Okay. The best friend. This type of manager wants to be friends with the employees they manage. They strive to make each of everyone on the team, including themselves, feel like they’re equals. They typically have a friendly, warm demeanor and want to be well liked by others. Okay. So I want to recommend that you go back and you just explore and say, what kind of boss am I to myself?

And you might even just say, you know what, Dara, I know what kind of boss I am. I am a jerk. I am mean, I am my, I am like, I’m always picking up the negative and I, and I’m like, okay, so if that is your story, what I would do is I would say, okay, tell me. And, and I would even, for two days, I would write down some scenarios of when I was a really mean boss to myself.

So it could even be like, I put too many things on my to do list. I expect too much from myself. I don’t give myself a break. I don’t give myself, uh, I only focus on the things I didn’t accomplish and I never, I Uh, celebrate my wins. I don’t even look at the quality of my life. I’m always focusing on the negative.

start getting curious about your behaviors and your patterns. Okay. So I have some questions for you here. So in the, so you can get the worksheet. Uh, I, I feel like they’re really helpful just because I know the way my brain works. I like to break things down and think about them. So we went through the strategy of what kind of boss are you to yourself?

And I gave you lots of different options. Obviously you can make it however you want and you might be a cross between this kind of boss and maybe when you’re dealing with your grandkids or when you’re dealing with certain parts of your life you’re like very direct, you’re very neutral, you’re very to the point, but maybe there’s other places where you’re like just a tyrant.

Okay. So you can have different versions of yourself as different bosses. Okay. So I have these four questions. What kind of boss do you want to be for yourself? And in a couple of pre, uh, a couple of podcasts ago, I talked about JK Rowling’s speech to Harvard about the importance of failure and imagination.

And so When you think about this, what kind of boss do you want to be? I want to invite you to really be creative and say, Hey, what, what sounds fun? And I was thinking about this on my walk cause I was, uh, I knew I’d be doing these podcasts today and I thought.

Oh, what was I thinking about?

Oh yeah. I was thinking of my walk. I knew I would be talking about this and I, I thought one of the suggestions that was really helpful for me when I went to a workshop with Jodi Moore in California, she said, who are people that you admire? And so I wrote down some of the people and she said, why do you admire them?

And then she said, why, like how much of that Do you give to yourself or how much of that are you lacking? So someone I really admire is there was a woman, she was quite a bit older. I don’t remember how old she was, but she, uh, was just, she was one of those people where I, she was so sweet. Like I doubted her.

I thought, how could anyone be that sweet? Like she is just so loving and she’s so kind. And, she was assigned. So in our church, we are assigned to care for other people. And she was assigned to take care,, to check in on my sister. And, uh, my sister was not going to church at all. And she was living a very different lifestyle.

She was living in a loft with. I think there was, it was a band. She was living with a band and the loft was crazy. It had like a hole in the roof and it was in a pretty rough area of town.For those people who know Calgary, it was like in the old Stampede Park area. And, that building has now been completely renovated and now it’s amazing and beautiful, but it was ramshackled.

And I remember feeling nervous going to visit my sister because it was just so Rough. It was rough. It was a rough neighborhood. It was a rough building. Like sometimes I worried about going on the stairs, like they could break. And I remember my sister saying to me, Oh, do you know so and so? I said, Oh yeah, yeah.

She said she came by on a Saturday morning with cinnamon buns, fresh cinnamon buns.

And I thought, she’s amazing. She didn’t care. And she was probably like 70. two, 75 maybe. And here she is driving to a sketchy part of town,

just loving my sister and not judging her and not being afraid. And I thought, I admire that. That’s, I want to be, I want to be someone who just loves, just loves no judgment. And that is something

that has stuck with me. That was when I was 23 years old and I’m 51. And I have been striving to be like her since that time. That’s the kind of boss I want to be. That’s the kind of person I want to be. And Now I’m a hugger. I used to not be a hugger and she was a hugger and I am so much more like her than I ever have.

I didn’t, I never even knew it was possible to be that loving and that kind and that not judgmental. I didn’t even know that was possible to that extreme. So I want you to do the same thing. And obviously this brings up a lot of emotion and I’m not going to apologize for it. I’m not going to excuse it. I think it’s so beautiful that I’m allowing myself to feel that kind of love.

For her and for that experience and what she taught me. And so what needs to change for you to be the kind of boss that you want to be? And I was on a call with a coach just last Friday, and she said, Dara, everything’s a story. Everything’s a story. And so the good or the bad, and you just get to decide how you want to handle it.

How you want to talk about it and that’s the, the masterclass I’m doing in February is all about that. How do you rewire? How do you retalk? How do you retell the story without having to change anything? So then what will you feel when you are that kind of boss? So clearly right now I’m feeling generous.

I’m feeling kind. I’m feeling nonjudgmental. I’m feeling compassion. I’m feeling, like just love. I’m feeling service. And so those emotions, and then I love this question. How can you feel those emotions now? So you can bring back memories. You can talk about things you can like there. You can think of other times in your life where you feel that. So for a lot of women who struggle with weight loss, they say, well, I can’t feel good about myself until I’ve lost a certain amount of weight.

Well that’s, So, what I want to encourage you to try on is I want you to start feeling those feelings before you lose the weight because how you lose the weight is how you’re going to keep it off. So, I want to help you to stop using negative self talk. I want you to stop beating yourself up and using those old antiquated strategies, they don’t work.

So the more that you can, like, go and buy a bra that fits your body right now, go and buy pants and a, and a shirt. I have so many, most of, like, most of my clothes are from thrift stores. I love thrifting. I just love the idea of, like, reduce, reuse, recycle, and like this sweater is so pretty and I got it for 4.

And, I think it’s anyways, so like go in and I started, well, like when you, when you buy clothes that fit your actual body, it’s a symbol that says, I care about you. You are important to me. And so go do that. Go and you can say, well, one lady I was coaching, she said, well, I have my good fabric and I don’t want to make clothes until I’m at the right size.

I said, no, go back. No, make those clothes now. Because what does that thing? And one of the things that I’ve thought about was could you imagine if you walked in a room and you talked to somebody like your grandchild or your child or your spouse, the way you talk to yourself, like you’re such a loser, what’s wrong with you?

Why haven’t we learned, but that person wants to be your friend? No. So we have to start that now. So when you brush your teeth in the morning, say, Hey girl, how’s it going? And when you brush your teeth at night, you’re like, Hey, that was a day. Some parts were great. Some parts were not so great. We’re going to keep going.

Maybe bring up three things that you liked about that day. One thing, maybe you could change a little like, Hey, we spent a lot of time on Instagram. We’re not feeling a lot of connection, are we? Maybe we should reach out to a friend tomorrow. That’d be really good. Okay. So something like that. All right.

This was a good one. So good. But one of the themes for this year inside my membership. is being the CEO, being a boss. And this is not conceited. This is not narcissistic. This is you taking the best care of you. It’s like you buy a car, you’re going to maintain the car, right? You’re going to clean it.

You’re going to get oil changes. You’re going to, you’re going to take care of it. When you buy a house, same thing. You’re going to paint it. You’re going to, if the piping is something’s wrong, you’re going to get a guy to come. Or a person to come and fix it. So it’s the same thing with ours. We need maintenance and we need to take care of ourselves.

All right. I cannot wait to hear what you think of this one and what you start doing. All right, take care. See you next week. Oh, by the way, if you made it this far, it means you’re ready to change. So I want to remind you, press the button to register for my free class and then make sure to put that calendar, put that on your calendar and come and attend and see the power of coaching as you see me, coaching other people. You will not believe how transformational it is. I can’t wait to see you there.