Breaking the Chains of Toxic Leadership: A Path to Resilient Self-Esteem and Professional Triumph

Have you ever felt crushed by a leader's harsh words? Imagine the toll it takes on your confidence and its ripple effects across all aspects of your life. Join me, as I explore personal stories and collective experiences that reveal the damaging impact of toxic leadership on self-esteem. In this heartfelt discussion, we delve into the lasting harm caused by negative feedback and the importance of nurturing, empathetic responses. By examining past traumas and understanding how they influence our current reactions to criticism, we provide a roadmap for reclaiming personal power and building resilience in the face of adversity.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

I get really fired up with this topic because there have been so many occasions where I've been talking to very talented, incredibly gifted individuals who have either stunted their progress or really fallen off a trajectory because of the words that have been spoken over them, and these words that have been spoken over them are not based in truth. Today, we're going to dive into what happens when you have a person of authority, a leader or someone who is really. Their role is supposed to be one of integrity, of guiding you, of supporting you to be even better than you already are, but because they lack the skills and leadership, they potentially have really toxic tendencies. So there's a scale here from either lack of the skills or absolute toxicity, and because of this and because of this, it has negatively impacted where you are. We're gonna dive into why this is why this happens, what to do about it and how, if it has happened to you, to overcome it and make sure it never happens again. If this topic resonates, you're gonna wanna stick around. Let's get started.

Speaker 2: 1:50

You're tuning into the Confident, Connected Leader podcast, your premier destination for breaking through your current professional barriers. Your coach and host, Lisa Jeffs, will help you transcend limitations and achieve new levels of professional success beyond self-doubt, sabotage and burnout. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 1: 2:15

Let me first start by saying if you are someone who has been negatively affected by someone's role in leadership, who has spoken words over you that have impacted you negatively and now your confidence has been affected or completely shot, it is not an indication of who you are, what you're capable of and the power that resides in you. I have had clients who and I'm not going to because I want to respect their confidentiality and if I share too much information, someone could potentially look them up and figure out who it is so I'm not going to share specifics, but let me just start by saying that these individuals, their credentials, what they do in the world, and who mean taken aback in a good way. I was highly impressed by these people's credentials, their intelligence, their just the power that resided in them. What they've done in the world is incredible, and still they experienced people in their work environment, leaders that were meant to guide them, and I'm thinking of there's quite a few, but there's two specifics that I'm thinking of. There's one female, one male, and they had similar experiences, they were in similar industries, did a number on them because they were giving very critical feedback without the positives. I'm going to talk a little bit about that. How do you actually give proper feedback? What is it a to be doing to guide the people that they're meant to be guiding? And in one instance, the person was arguably extremely toxic. They were borderline abusing this person, borderline abusing this person. So let's discuss why this can happen.

Speaker 1: 5:16

Why does do we get into situations like this and why is it that some people are affected by this more than others? Well, one of the reasons is, if you are in a position, many fantastic leaders, people in senior leadership or in different leadership roles, are highly sensitive. Why are they highly sensitive? Because to be a powerful leader, you need to be able to feel other people. You need to have a certain amount of empathy. So often you know the other side of being so highly sensitive and empathetic is we can take things on to much more extreme levels, where someone who is not can brush things off easier. But I want to take you through one of the reasons why and this is more of the spiritual element of it Often we have these experiences to heal patterns from our past.

Speaker 1: 6:27

So if we had an experience in our past with a parent or a teacher or someone in authority, could even be a peer, to be honest, and we haven't fully healed that part. We haven't healed those wounds, those insecurities, those doubts about ourselves. We can create new relationships in the attempt to heal this wound. This is why you see people getting into romantic relationships over and over and over again. It's the same story. It's a different person, but it's the same story because they haven't healed that wound. So once we heal a wound, we are no longer going to have that same impact. It's no longer going to throw us off our game to the same extent. So I'll give you an example.

Speaker 1: 7:29

So if you know my story, you know that part of it was to do with people in my life really speaking words over me when I ended up putting on a lot of weight after my father passed away and these individuals started treating me pretty much like I was less than a human being, Like I wasn't even a human being. I was just kind of like an object and really speaking to me like you know, shaming and the dissatisfaction because I put on weight and I was no longer attractive to them, as if I wasn't actually a person, as if my whole role was just to be attractive to these people, and those words really affected me at that point. They really, you know, I absorbed them, I took them on as my identity and they affected everything in my life, how it was showing up, what I thought about myself. Now, if someone were to say something now, 25 years plus or more, about my body, it would have zero to no effect, because I am very confident in who I am and my body. I love my body. The fact that you know my body birthed a child just brought a whole new perspective on who I am, what I can do, and just the fact that I've seen so many people over the years I've lost people to cancer and to different things where their body was, you know, impacted, and I just have so much love and appreciation for my body right now that if someone were to say something negative, it would have no effect. I would really just be like see it as their projection, their own insecurities projected.

Speaker 1: 9:29

So, going back to when we get really, really impacted by the words being spoken over us through from a leader or someone in authority, it's an opportunity to look at what was already there that has now been brought to the surface so we can heal this and move forward, because it's, you know, us suppressing something doesn't actually get rid of it. We're just suppressing it and anything that's suppressed is going to come out in one shape or fashion. So that's one of the reasons why we can have these experiences with leadership. There's many people I've had who have gone from one organization to the next and it's kind of the same thing. It's because they are creating the same experiences with the opportunity to heal in mind. Okay, and that really allows us to take our power back. That, hey, I can take some good and positive from this. I'm going to improve myself because of this. Yes, I was victimized in this situation, especially if it's a toxic leader, but I'm not going to remain a victim. I'm taking my power back and I'm going to heal this wound and come back even stronger.

Speaker 1: 11:09

So, depending on you know what you experienced. So if you had a real toxic leader, so this is abusive behavior. So they can be, you know, undermining you. They can be using manipulation, they can be downright, you know, verbally abusive. That is a form of abuse and that's going to have a psychological effect on you, especially if you have a history of abuse. Right, it's opening up all those wounds.

Speaker 1: 11:46

Now, if the person, let's say, isn't necessarily abusive, but they just lack the skills on what it takes to be a good leader and what they're doing is they're forgetting to acknowledge the good you're doing, they're forgetting to point out and celebrate your wins, and they're only ever giving you feedback on what's not working or what you need support in. Then, depending on your own nature, how sensitive, highly sensitive you are then that can also have a similar effect, because it's going to make you start doubting yourself. It's going to make you start questioning yourself. If you were once really confident, you're going to start potentially questioning was I just delusional? Was I always this bad delusional? Was I always this bad? Right, but you're not. It's just that person in authority is lacking the skills.

Speaker 1: 13:01

So, generally, when you are someone in leadership, even if you're a parent and you are giving feedback to someone, you want to give at least three positives to one piece of you know improvement feedback. Okay, so let me give you an example. So if you're you know you have a review meeting and someone comes up and is like Lisa, we need this fixed, this isn't working, it's not connecting with our employees, or blah, blah, blah, this also needs work. You know it wasn't done to this standard and this, and I think this can be done a lot better. Blah, blah, blah. Okay, You're going to leave that meeting feeling like oh okay, I did a whole bunch of stuff.

Speaker 1: 14:04

It needs a lot of improvement. Now, if that same person started that meeting by saying you know, lisa, you know I've been noticing what you're doing with this and you know I'm really excited about where that's going, I think you're right on track with this, discussed this with you know, george, and I thought you did a phenomenal job doing that. Like just it really impressed me and you know this, what you did with that team meeting, it was great. It was great. I'm really excited about where that's going. Now. This, you know, I think, can use some improvement. Or this, you know, I'd like to see this done this way.

Speaker 1: 14:56

Okay, you see how, when you put on that positive, you have the positive feedback three to every you know improvement piece. It just changes the energy completely. You're going to leave that meeting feeling great. I mean, maybe, depending on how critical you are of yourself, you could feel like, oh, I wish I had it all great. But it's not going to be to the extent of if you're just only getting feedback of what went wrong, what you need to improve on, this does not encourage anyone to do better. This is a very outdated form of leadership, extremely outdated, from a different time period where maybe at certain points it was beneficial, no longer work. You are not going to have any individual invested in the business, in the company, in the team to any extent that they would be if the praise was also included. So if you are someone and all you've ever gotten you never gotten the praise understand that how you're reacting to that. If it's affected your self-esteem, if it's affected your confidence levels, if you're questioning how you're showing up and if you should even be in this role, if you're questioning, you're feeling like an imposter, then that is a normal response to only getting this critical feedback. And if you have been getting literally is you know there's nothing wrong with you. Is what I'm trying to say? Something about that? Because, again, even when we are victimized, it doesn't mean we need to stay a victim and it's up to us to change that if we want a different experience moving forward. So one of the things I want you to understand and acknowledge and, by the way, this is going to be a continued conversation, this isn't a one and done episode because this runs so deep and when we are talking about really creating, you know, your most confident, self-assured self, so you can be the sought after leader that you are envisioning, that you desire to be, then this conversation that we're having is very multi-layered, so I'm not going to get into everything in this episode. If you do have questions or you have stories or you have anything like that, send me a DM on LinkedIn, on Instagram at Lisa Jeffs, or send me an email at info at lisajeffscom, especially if you have specific questions and I can answer them directly on a podcast episode.

Speaker 1: 18:30

But going back to how do we start healing this, one of the things we need to do is not looping around these negative interactions. So a lot of people have a pattern of looping around, so constantly thinking about and replaying negative interactions. Right, we'll kind of keep thinking about it what I could have done or we just loop it around in our mind and we feel sad about it, or we feel angry. We have to stop looping this. Right, you really need to be aware of when you are getting lost in a past story, because you will not be able to move forward if you continue to be in that story and be in that identity. Okay, moving forward, we need to be thinking about how am I going to show up moving forward. Because when we experience this and let's say we've had an experience, so using, you know, past clients as an example, some of them have you know they've gotten out of the experience, so they're not in that same environment anymore, but they are continually, continually thinking about what happened right and they're feeling bad about it and they, you know it stops them from taking opportunities. It stops them from taking opportunities, it stops them from putting themselves out there and they just keep kind of reverberating the same story and the same identity. We need to shift out of that. We have our mental body and our emotional body and they are connected. So, stopping the thought path if you're thinking about that, literally putting a almost a stop sign you can see a stop sign coming down in your mind and saying just stopping that loop, stopping the loop and bringing in that loop. Stopping the loop and bringing in.

Speaker 1: 20:51

What do I choose to believe now? That I am confident, that I am capable, that I wouldn't have had that role in the first place if I wasn't capable of doing it, that I am capable of achieving anything that I'm desiring, and focusing in on all the amazing qualities you have about yourself, even if this means writing out 50 things that you're proud about, 50 things that you love about yourself and reading it daily for 30 days and if you're thinking, whoa, that's really extreme Sometimes. To counteract what we've experienced, we need to get serious and commit to a new way of being, and that is absolutely a strategy you can take to shift the mental loop that has come over you is implanting a new one. What do you love about yourself? What are you proud of? What have you already achieved? You know, when I do this with clients, often they're reading it and they're like you know what I have achieved so much? I'm actually pretty freaking awesome.

Speaker 1: 22:16

So we need to change the record right, change the record player. We also need to really look at our boundaries. So if you're someone and you are still in this working environment, what needs to happen for you to honor your boundaries? That may mean even leaving the organization right, and I know for some people that can bring up a lot of fear and a lot of worry. But I can guarantee you that you are not meant to stay in an organization where you are being abused Like that is, hands down, not where you are meant to be and there's another place where you can prosper and really letting go of any lack or limitation where you feel that that's your only opportunity. Because that is a survival mindset which, if you're in that that's okay, but know that that's some work to be done is really, if you feel you're trapped there is really, if you feel you're trapped there, potentially and highly recommended working with a professional to help you shift out of any survival programming, because that's not a place where we want you doing the work. Okay. Now, if it's a place where you just have poor leadership, then we can look at.

Speaker 1: 23:45

Well, what are the boundaries that need to be in place here? Do you need to have a conversation with HR? Do you need to have a conversation with people in your team? Who is your support network in this environment? What do you need for your own self-care and what do you need to put in place? Whether that is making a shift, making a switch, having conversations, what are the boundaries that you need to put in place? What are the boundaries that you need to put in place? Okay, boundaries, keep ourselves safe. Boundaries are a form of self-love and boundaries are not only for other people, but they're also for us to put in place and to acknowledge.

Speaker 1: 24:41

What else do you wanna do to really get your confidence back? I highly recommend working with someone. It is the absolute most efficient way to get your confidence back hands down. When you can work with an individual professional a coach, a therapist, depending on what level if you did experience a high level of abuse. When you can work with someone who you can lean on their confidence in you, it hands down. You can have radical changes overnight, whereas it may take you longer for the shift.

Speaker 1: 25:30

Now I always say this with you don't need someone else to do the work for you. You don't need someone right? Because then if we feel like we need someone, that's a disempowering place. Everybody has it within them to overcome this. Everybody on their own if necessary. But if you are a leader and you are serious about moving forward, you're serious about healing and improving and creating a life for yourself and for your family that is one of abundance, prosperity, fulfillment, health, wealth, satisfaction then if you've experienced something like this, working with someone, making an investment in that journey, is, hands down, the most efficient way to do it, because you will have rapid changes in comparison to doing it potentially on your own. You, if you are resonating with this, I can tell you right now that you are meant to go on this journey to heal the words that have been spoken over you, that have been keeping you down or in a place of limitation, insecurity, self-doubt, imposter syndrome you are. This podcast is meant, you are meant to hear it and you're on that trajectory. It's just a matter of okay.

Speaker 1: 27:13

What's my next step? If you want to book a breakthrough call which I highly recommend, it's a complimentary breakthrough call with me for an hour. They're not going to be around forever. They are available right now so we can discuss if coaching is in your best interest, if it's the best next step. If it's not, I will do my best to recommend what I do think is going to be a better path, and I do recommend sometimes for some people that there's another path that will be beneficial. Book your breakthrough call.

Speaker 1: 27:51

If you're not sure what the next step is. This is the next step that's being presented. This is what I do with my clientele. This is pretty much why I'm so passionate about coaching, because I know what it's like to have words spoken over you. Words were spoken over me that drastically impacted me for years, and I was able to understand and learn and implement what was needed to break away from that and really find my confidence that was always there it was just, you know, hidden for a while and to build back up my self-esteem and to empower myself to then say no, hell, no, I am not letting these past experiences dictate my future, because I have so much to offer, and so do you.

Speaker 1: 28:56

So I'm going to wrap it up here, but again, send me your questions, send me your experiences, if you need. If you want me to answer specific ones, send it to me. I would love to answer it in a podcast episode. If you are ready to catapult your future and where you are currently, book a breakthrough call. If you want me to really dive in to your specific story and you feel comfortable sharing that story with me, send me an email at info at lisajefscom. If you're still with me, you know, as always, I'm so grateful for you. I honor you. I hope this was a value. Let's continue this conversation and, as always, let's stay connected.

Speaker 2: 29:49

Thank you for tuning into the Confident, connected Leader podcast. Lisa Jeffs is committed to helping you break through barriers and climb to new professional heights. If today's episode inspired you, we'd be honored if you could subscribe, rate and leave a review To stay updated with practical tips and insights, follow us on LinkedIn, instagram or Facebook. You'll find all relevant links, including those for our complimentary gifts and trainings, in the show notes. Until our next episode, embrace your confidence and stay connected.