Stay True to You

Speaker A: Welcome to the Coaching Outcomes Podcast with me, Karen Frost. Two decades ago I discovered the perfect synergy, drawing on my background as a senior leader and bringing it together with my dedication to seeing people grow and realise their full potential. Since then, there's been no turning back. As an executive and business coach, I found my passion and purpose, my mission to leave a lasting impact on people's lives. Create professionally and often personally too. Join me M as I explore the transformative influence of coaching and leadership development. One conversation at a time. I'll touch on the latest leadership trends, invaluable insights and practical tools by drawing on first hand experiences and uh, showcasing inspiring stories of those I've had the pleasure to work with or alongside. It's good to have you here.

Speaker B: I'm a real fan of the theory of 1%. You know, the marginal changes where we talk about small changes for greater impact. Giving yourself that little bit of grace to say, do you know what? I'm not quite 100% today and that's okay. Yeah, um, I think that was probably the first step in the big change for me. Self care. People think of self care when they think selfish. It's not selfish. It doesn't mean me first, it just means me to be.

Speaker A: Hello. Today I'm talking to Sinead Feramoudi. Sinead and I go back a number of years because we were colleagues together and most recently we set up the opportunity to record a podcast around a specific area of leadership that she has leadership of within her own organisation. And then we went off on a sidetrack talking about what women in leadership. And we decided to record that and these are our thoughts and our comments as a consequence of that conversation.

Speaker C: Sinead, as you know, I've got a group on tin called Values Based Leadership, Leadership and Women. And you and I have talked about some of the work that you do within your own organisation. As a woman, what I wanted to do was just capture your thoughts around leadership. So I'm going to start with how are you navigating your way through being a senior female leader in your organisation?

Speaker B: So I would say that as a female leader one of the most important things to me is that I'm living not just my organisation's values, but my own. It's very important to me that I can build and maintain positive relationships. That's absolutely key in my role and what I do and always try to be true and authentic, which, you know, helps me to build trust and connection with colleagues and everyone that uh, I come into contact with. I think trying to role model positive behaviors. I uh, think as a woman being passionate, open minded, curious tends to serve me very well. Really helps to drive engagement and connection as ah, part of my role as a female leader. I absolutely see it as part of my responsibility to empower other people around me, other female colleagues and also to try and learn from any of the inevitable mistakes that I may make. Always been in a learning mindset. A lot of resilience is needed as a female leader. But that resilience is there because I'm confident and convinced of you know, worth, value of what I can contribute. Yeah, I think it's really important for me to focus on the why part of my purpose um, as a leader. So it's not just about the what I do but rather the how and why I do it. That's really important to me because that sometimes when you're feeling frustrated, up against it, the underdog as ah, I'm sure a lot of female leaders can probably identify with, it's the why that uh, will pick you up and um, you know, bring you back to the front.

Speaker C: It's great to hear all of that gives me a real sense of you, your purpose and how you therefore behave as a leader within your organization. And that authentic piece that you talk about there is what people will see, hear and feel of you which makes it much easier for people to follow you as a leader, whether it be female or male, but it enables people to follow you. So if we then think about your progression within this organisation, um, what's been relatively easy for you in terms of leading and managing people and also then from your experience what has been perhaps the challenges that you've had, the blocks that might have been there for you in terms of how you have navigated your career.

Speaker B: So I would say probably because the organisation that I work for, I'm very fortunate in the fact that they are uh, very supportive organisation that a lot of things that people, you know, women particularly in leadership might find challenging like workload, family challenges. I'm very fortunate to be part of a flexible, supportive organization. Things like that have very manageable for me but I also part of what's kind uh of the so called sandwich generation. So I've worked full time since my children being little, juggling full time work responsibilities for young children and older family members, maybe commitments. It can be really quite challenging. However we're also involved in the manufacturing industry which is a very male dominated sector.

Speaker C: Right, okay.

Speaker B: And uh, it has sometimes felt like a challenge, especially more recently to be able to speak about issues that might be affecting my performance at work. I would say that's probably one of the biggest recent challenges for me.

Speaker C: How have you managed that?

Speaker B: So I. Frank conversations, which I would recommend to everyone. It's not always been easy and I would say that I was probably perimenopausal for a couple of years before I realized that that's what was causing the symptoms, like poor concentration, unexplained, low level anxiety, poor sleep, brain fog, the list goes on. You know, and I think a lot of female leaders, you can feel like you're failing in your role as a mother, a wife or partner and a colleague. It's actually a really upsetting time. You know, I deliver training as part of my role in my organization and my confidence have nosedived. Two, um, where I never been nervous previously, I found myself feeling quite stressed out by the prospect of delivering training. Suddenly seemed like really big tasks. So it did get to the point where I sat down with my line manager and had a really frank conversation with them about what was going on for me and how I felt it might be impacting my performance at work. It kind of came out of the blue for them. I just kind of went into their office, shut the door and sat down and said, look, and if I'm really rubbish at my job at the moment, this is why. And, uh, it all came out. So, yeah,

Speaker C: you said at the beginning it was a very supportive organisation. So going to your boss and sitting down and doing that, clearly you felt that you could.

Speaker B: Yes. And, um, um, also because I am very open about it in the workplace, I might be in a meeting, I might be chairing a meeting and I might suddenly m. Lose concentration and I will be open about that and say, listen, I need you to just give me. Or I might say before I deliver some training, I might say, listen, there might be periods where I, um, might lose my train of thought or we might have to go over something. I said the reason and I would be very open about the reason why that is. And what's been really refreshing and reassuring is that I have had other women in the business contact me and said, oh, I was in that meeting. Um, you know, what have you done? Or what have you, you know, how did you speak to, you know, your line manager about it? How did you broach it? And I've encouraged so many, um, of my female colleagues who hadn't spoken to line managers or, you know, colleagues about it to just, you know, go and have the conversation, which is great advice.

Speaker C: What did you do then for yourself because the symptoms that you talk about, they're not there for a few months, they last for years sometimes. What have you done to enable you to build that confidence again to deal with some of the side effects that you get being perimenopausal?

Speaker B: So I would say that some of the things that I've done, one of the biggest thing I've done is just give myself some self compassion really is a big thing that's happened for me because I think a lot of times women, we are programmed to think that we need to be the perfect mum, um, the perfect leader, the perfect. And I think giving yourself that little bit of grace to say, do you know what, I'm not firing 100 today and that's okay. Yeah, um, I think that was probably the first step in the big change for me. I also did that. I've had so many people at work ask me about that because it's very daunting for ah, a lot of women, they worry about the questions they're going to be asked. They're worried about not being able to get across, you know, what they would like from their gp, especially at a time when you sometimes find it difficult to string a sentence together and so many women end up leaving those appointments with a prescription for antidepressants or something else. It's incredibly frustrating. So me, if by me being open about what's happening for me or my journey in this helps anybody, you know, to navigate that with their own GP or pathway they decide to take with it, then I'm more than happy to do that. Yeah, uh, I think I'm really focused on change and helping to drive change. So I talk about change, not just about me, but I think about, you know, if we just even thinking about it from a work and leadership perspective, there's over four and a half million people or uh, women aged between 50 and 64 in the workplace at the moment. And it's also the fastest, the fastest growing demographic in the workplace.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: So you know, and I think in a recent study that I read more than 70% of women reported that they didn't feel comfortable talking about menopause at work. Say ah, one in ten women will experience the menopause will leave the workplace. And I do think that as women in leadership positions we're the only people that can change that statistic really. So as uh, female leaders, I think it needs to be part of the legacy to the next generation of female leaders and we can be the catalyst for that change. I am thinking about how I, the female leader, can influence and change the culture within my organization. Like, do we have a meaningful menopause policy? Do we offer reasonable and appropriate adjustments of female colleagues experience in the menopause? Is there scope for a female development and EDI program? You know, asking other female colleagues, you know, in leadership positions, could you be a coach or a mentor or a role model to future generations of female leaders? There are all things that we can influence and change. We've moved forward loads in the last decade, but there's still a lot of scope for improvement, I think.

Speaker C: I agree, I agree.

Speaker B: You know, I'm a real fan of the theory of 1%, you know, the marginal changes where we talk about small changes for greater impact.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, and that'll be unique to everyone on their personal journey. It'll look different for everybody. That's not a, uh, one size uniform across the board, one size fits all. Um, I'm going to continue being self compassionate. I'm um, going to practice self care because it's a really challenging time and I've found it a challenging time trying to reframe it for me as well as the beginning of a new chapter, you know, which can include empowerment and growth for me personally has um, allowed me to see it in a different way as well. So, um, that's definitely my plan going forward.

Speaker C: I really admire you. It's m amazing how you've been able to rationalise this and then think about how you navigate your way through it successfully for yourself, first and foremost. And then thinking about supporting other women within your organisation and doing that proactively. And then that third point around trying to leave a legacy not just for your organisation but, you know, perhaps other women that will come into that organisation when perhaps you're no longer there because you might be closer to retirement, for example. We have to keep making sure that the messages come through. And for me it's not just about the women doing that, it's also about enabling the men to understand that as well. So that you've got male senior leaders that are as empathetic around it.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And I know as well that from, you know, being really open about it, I've had male colleagues and male leaders, you know, say to me, oh yeah, actually, you know, and they might kind of draw comparisons without giving details, you know, kind of about females in their lives who've experienced challenges and you say, oh, so you understand then like how challenging it can be and you know, how it affects them, you see how it affects them every day and you know, you can kind of pull male colleagues in on how we can support and change things for the greater good for everybody. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker C: If there was just one piece of advice that you would give a woman who was starting to feel some of the impact and the side effects of. Because they manifest themselves in very many different ways. It's not one set of side effects that everybody has. They vary, don't they? Is there one piece of advice that you would give somebody, uh, a woman in an organization that is leading and

Speaker B: managing teams, I would say, to get support from, um, as many places as possible. You will be surprised what's available. You know, don't wait. Don't wait until you feel, uh, overwhelmed or feel you start to think about perhaps putting your career on hold or leaving the workforce. Yeah, I think that you need to self care. People think of self care as being selfish. It's not selfish. It doesn't mean me first. It just means me too. And I think we are not great at that as women, females in leadership or just in general.

Speaker C: Well said.

Speaker B: Look brilliant.

Speaker C: That's lovely advice, Sinead. Thank you so much. He's been really fascinated for me to listen to you and understand more about the journey that you're on and how you're managing all of that and the influence that you're having within your own organisation in terms of that leadership piece, but more importantly in terms of supporters of other women within your organisation to be able to get the support and the help that they need. Thank you.

Speaker A: Thank you so much for listening to this coaching outcomes podcast with me, Karen Frost. Hope you enjoyed it. Take care and goodbye for now.