There are some things that people just don’t tell you about being a female leader. When you step into a role as a female leader in your business, you are no longer a cog in the wheel. You become a role model and a cheerleader for every woman around you.
What this means is that there are qualities that you really need to embody, whether in your office or your work-from-home space.
Over the past few years, as I’ve worked with business-owners and women all over the world, these are the things that are consistent no matter where you are in the world. These are the essentials for women to have in their strong leadership roles. Read on to learn how to become a leader in your business.
When you’re running your own business, especially if you work from home, it is really really easy to lose hours of our time when your best friend calls you on the way to drop her kids off at school, We approach these things with a sense of urgency even when they’re not urgent. The result is that these take up your time and energy, without
#1: Block off time. On your Monday morning, block off your week and organize your time into block based on what you need for your business. Every day, look at that first and work from that place
#2: Airplane mode is your new best friend. Just turn it off!
#3: Only check your emails two or three times a day, and only when you have time to truly respond. Don’t check on your phone. Don’t worry about the backlog. Give yourself a chunk of time and just do what you can at that time. It’s too easy to spend your whole day answering emails
#4: Schedule time for creative. Like, put it on your calendar! This could be business-related, like planning classes or creating beautiful posts. If your scheduled time comes and the inspiration just isn’t coming, then have a plan in place to swap it with another task and be sure to use that other time for your creativity!
Women gossip; it is just one of the ways that we interact and bond with one another. That’s Psychology 101. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but as a business owner that can take you down. It is not productive. If you are with people who are gossiping, no need to call them out or blame, just sit back quietly and refrain from the temptation to get involved or redirect the conversations.
Things will come up that you need to talk about. Someone will hurt you, someone will upset you, someone might screw you over. Sometimes in order to process our emotions, we need to talk and process. So, keep a close-knit group of people that you trust, people who you know won’t repeat it and talk to them one-on-one.
My grandmother always told me: “In order to keep it classy, you can either tell the story or tell the name.” If there’s a hilarious story, just don’t share the name. If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t talk about it.
In a world where we can do pretty much everything online, it’s easy to give advice on how to live without actually doing the work yourself. For example, I’ve worked with a lot of yoga teachers who teach every day but don’t practice. You can tell that they aren’t practicing because they aren’t embodying their teaching.
If you are going to be a leader in your business you need to be involved in what you’re teaching. Own what your skills and talents are and stay in your lane.
If you do find yourself getting caught in that trap of comparison, it’s ok to mute people on Instagram; it’s ok to pause a newsletter for a bit. If you’re trying to be like someone so much that you’re losing your own voice, turn the volume down on them for a while.
As women, we amplify in stillness and are naturally empathetic. It’s how we are hard-wired. We can move around from person to person or place to place, giving a little bit of our energy wherever we go. What happens is we have energy leaks all over the place and we just keep going.
In order to get some of our energy back and replenish, we need to sit in silence and be still, even just for five minutes a day. Just for five minutes a day sit, be still, and listen to your breath. Every day!
If you are completely stuck with this and don’t know where to get started, you can check out this article on how to start a meditation practice: TK.
No matter how shitty the day was, write down 5 things you are grateful for and 5 things that are working. Take time at the end of your work day every day to write these down in your journal.
Putting pen to paper is a prayer. When we write down and reflect on what is going well, we will end up getting more of it. Gratitude also releases chemicals in our brain that make us more calm, able to be productive, and clear.
A gratitude practice is therefore an incredibly powerful tool and directly affects the success of your business. The difference between people who make it in the long run and those who burn out is noticing what’s not going well and decisively making decisions to change it, and to reflect on what is going well to nurture it.
This could be the most important practice you could have as a female leader in your business!
One of the things that most women don’t realize is that the beautiful and delicate responsibility that comes with stepping into a position of leadership in business. You become a superhero for so many people around you; they are looking to you for how to live their lives, make their damn smoothies, how to treat other people, and how to be successful.
The absolute best thing you can do for yourself and all the amazing women who look up to you is to be intentional with how you use your time, how you handle the thoughts you entertain about yourself and others, and how you move through your day. This is how you become a leader.
“Behind every successful woman is a tribe of women who has her back”
If you want to join me and interact with other female leaders who are in the same boat as you, join my new Facebook Group dedicated to cultivating females in community and leadership.
At any given moment, you can find me handstanding on a foreign beach, running down the rabbit hole of some new subject of study, discussing philosophy over a bottle of red, or laughing out loud at a table full of friends.
