Your boss can’t make you feel anything.
photo credit: Uday Mital on Unsplash
Your story is what makes you feel.
When a leader (or anyone for that matter) “makes you feel something” you don’t like, it is time to get real.
Something I hear a lot in my coaching practice is: “My boss makes me feel less confident”.
This is great news! Because if your story is what makes you feel bad, you have the power to change how you feel, by changing the story.
Let’s break this down…
No one can MAKE you feel anything.
Your boss said words.
You have a story about what these words mean.
A more true statement would be: “I feel less confident after talking with my boss”.
But why? What is the story that is behind this feeling? What exact words did your boss say? What did you make those words mean?
You have the freedom to choose the story.
→ Here’s an example from my personal experience:
I had, what I labeled as a micromanaging boss, that constantly told me what to do and how to do it. I felt that she didn’t trust my judgment, and this left me feeling unconfident in my ability to do my job.
It wasn’t my boss’s words that caused me to feel unconfident. Her words were neutral. They were just words. But I had the freedom to choose how I interpreted these words.
I chose to make her words mean “She doesn’t trust me to do the job”, or worse… “I am not trustworthy”.
My lack of confidence led me to take fewer risks, to try to ‘please’ my boss, to play it safe. Playing it safe led to me doing less than my best work.
It was a vicious cycle.
In reality, I had the freedom to make my boss’s words mean whatever I wanted.
Drilling into a specific instance when I left a conversation with this boss feeling less confident, I recalled her saying “Make sure you include an out-of-scope section in that proposal”.
When I look at this objectively I can see there is no reason for my story that I am not good at my job because I had never not included an out-of-scope section in any proposal in the dozens of proposals I had written for her.
How else might I have interpreted these words?
Some options could be: “My boss might be anxious or under stress”. “My boss doesn’t know how to manage me very well”.
But, I don’t have to know the true meaning. Which is great, because I can’t read minds.
In fact, it can be dangerous to presume the truth.
The solution is to get curious.
Once I have the awareness of my story, I can start to get curious about myself and curious about other stories that may be more useful. (hint: it doesn’t matter if they are true or not, but it does matter if I believe the thought, so make sure it is useful and believable to your brain).
You can also consider sharing your experience with your boss. Perhaps she is not aware of her words, and perhaps you don’t want to continue to have to manage your mind every time she says certain words.
In my example above, what if I had said instead: “I noticed that you said to not forget the out-of-scope section, but I can’t think of a time when I didn’t include that section. I’m curious — why are you mentioning this specifically to me?”
Note that I didn’t presume to know any answer here, I simply asked her.
And then, I would silently wait.
What if I had let her come to her own realization? How might this have changed our relationship and my experience of her?
I can’t say in this exact situation what would have happened, because back then I didn’t have the skills that I am pointing to in this post.
I have experienced deep relationship transformations in similar circumstances, and I have seen my clients create giant shifts in their own work relationships by employing these skills.
Genuine curiosity, coming from a place of love, builds trust and deepens relationships.
And… Relationships are where the solutions lie.
Important:
→Genuine
and
→coming from a place of love… both are key.
Questioning, without being genuinely curious, is likely to backfire. Curiosity is an energy. It has a vibration, and people can feel if it is there or it is not.
Don’t try to disguise assumption or presumption as curiosity.
Sometimes we ask questions, not from a place of not actually being curious, but from a place of assumption. We may have lots of ‘evidence’ for our story, and be carrying the even stronger energy of presumption. We think we know the answer, and we have an agenda that the other person needs to come to our same conclusion.
This is NOT genuine curiosity. This is presumption dressed as curiosity. And presumption has a very different energy.
Being genuinely curious means that we are open to learning the unexpected. We do not presume to know the answer.
Coming from a place of love shifts the energy
Even when we think we are genuinely curious, the energy of a question can still be a bit edgy for someone to receive. Questions, even those from a place of genuine curiosity can be challenging to receive. They can catch people off guard.
And so, the 2nd part of bringing in a more pure, helpful curiosity to bear is to come from a place of love.
Like curiosity, Love is a feeling. A vibration. If you think loving thoughts, you’ll get to feel the vibration of love. It feels good, so that’s great in and of itself.
They may or may not feel it, but if you are feeling it, there is a much better chance they will too. And, if they feel it, even just a little, they are more likely to hear and be open to your question.
As we learned above, what we choose to think impacts, or even causes, our feelings. And so to feel love, we can decide to think loving and empathetic thoughts. We can think about the other person and how we appreciate them. We can think about the effort they put in, or the challenges they are likely faced with. We can think how much we care about the client, the mission, the project, the company or the team.
The exact thoughts you can think will vary depending on your situation. You can’t really fake this part, so taking some time to reflect on what you appreciate about certain people, relationships and situations can be a great practice.
Of course, we cannot control how our words are received by another person. They may choose to create their own story about our question. And so, here is where love for yourself comes in. If your question doesn’t land and they get defensive, be kind to yourself. You are learning something new.
This work can be tricky. If you want support in navigating a specific situation with a boss or employee, reach out and let’s chat.
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