Guilt is not a stop sign
There is a set of rules women inherit from dominant systems about how we “should” behave in the world. Our programs create space to explore the benefits that entice you to follow these rules and the costs you bear when you do.
When women imagine what it'd be like to break any of the rules, emotions surface. Freedom, power, ease… and then bam, guilt. When you sit too long in a divergent possibility, guilt emerges. Guilt kills excitement and possibility.
The typical response when guilt comes in
Many women see guilt as a stop sign. You take it as a signal that you’re entering risky territory and must stop moving toward the reality you imagine. The one that thrills you.
Guilt is an untenable emotion to sit in. You'll do almost anything to not feel guilty.
A wide array of guilt emerges
Guilt can come in many forms. I've heard women feel guilty for:
Requiring accountability and resourcefulness from your team.
Having limits around work methods and structure.
Not being able to meet and deliver upon unrealistic demands.
Saying no to work that doesn’t energize you or that you know is lower value.
Asking your team to handle things you’re not doing yourself.
Taking a stand for priorities that conflict with your peers’.
Not backing ideas that don’t address the core of what you think is important.
That response makes sense… but it’s a trap
I’d expect you to feel guilty.
These rules are the design of conventional leadership. They’re what the world tells you to do to achieve success in your career. You receive them in explicit messages from people who tell you what to do, and implicit messages from the way the world responds to you.
When you identify methods and contexts for breaking these rules, guilt will surface. Anything different from what these rules dictate is something you're not “supposed” to do. These rules are what others expect from you.
Yet, meeting every external expectation is impossible. It disempowers you from determining where you’ll focus your time and attention. It disrupts your ability to decide what's appropriate. It puts you in the passenger seat of your life — and we’d like to invite you to claim the driver's seat.
You need to get out of the trap
If you let the guilt be a stop sign and get back in line with what’s expected of you, you'll get the following results:
An underdeveloped team that isn’t growing.
Boundaryless work that impacts your well being.
A sense of never accomplishing anything meaningful.
A career filled with work that bores you.
Low impact work that never moves the needle.
Investing your limited energy in things that don’t matter.
You don’t need the guilt to go away before taking different action. Over time, as you develop a sense of what’s most important to you and the impact you want to create, the guilt will subside. It’s unrealistic to think you can deviate from conventional leadership guilt free. Holding yourself to that standard keeps you stuck.
Call for reflection:
If you weren’t trying to escape from guilt, what would you want to do?
Shine on,
Alicia