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Show Notes
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Full Transcript
Hey there and welcome back to the unruly leadership podcast! We are back with season two, which is all about highly sensitive professionals.
In today's welcome back episode, I'm going give you a background to why it's all about highly sensitive professionals, what you can expect from this season, and whether the season is for you 
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Then I'm going to tell you about three leadership superpowers (and their kryptonite) for the highly sensitive professional.
Are you excited? I'm excited!
Thank you so much for coming back and being with me here today. I'm so happy to have you. So let's get right into it!
xo
Liz
Resources Mentioned in the Episode
Assessments on being a highly sensitive person
- Elaine Aron (author of The Highly Sensitive Person)'s original 12 question assessment: Are You Highly Sensitive?
- Julie Bjelland's quiz: Do you have the trait of high sensitivity?
- Jenn Turnham's quiz: Are you an HSP, Empath or Intuitive?
Muriel Kosovsky's Sensitivity Questionnaire
Get on the waiting list for the Self-Advocacy Made Easy Summit -- Both Julie and Jenn are speakers at the event!
Well, hello there. And welcome back to the unruly leadership podcast. We are back with season two, which is all about highly sensitive professionals and in today's welcome back episode, what I'm going to do is give you a background to why it's all about highly sensitive professionals, what you can expect from this season, as well as from the Mint Ambition more broadly beyond the podcast. We're gonna talk about whether the season is for you. And then I wanna get into three leadership superpowers and their kryptonite for the highly sensitive professionals. So are you excited? I'm excited. Thank you for coming back and being with me here today. I'm so happy to have you. 
And with that, let's get right into it.
Well, Hey there, I'm Liz St. Jean, and this is the unruly leadership podcast where I help subject matter experts like you design a career on your terms. It's where strategy meets intuition to help you break the rules, ignore the rules and make your own damn rules. So let's break free from perfectionism, imposter thoughts, and that inner rule.
Keep that's keeping you in your career comfort zone. it's time to become unapologetically you and step into the life you were meant to live. We're going to talk presence, productivity career, and having it all. Or as my four year old would say, we're going to take over the world. So let's get to it.
I hope you've had a wonderful summer vacation. I have had a lovely several weeks to enjoy the August and enjoy my summer and do lots of things behind the scenes for this program, for the podcast and lots of other goodies I've got going on. So I hope you also had a wonderful, a wonderful summer.
So, like I said, this season is all about highly sensitive professionals. And to give you a very quick background on why this season is for the highly sensitive professional, I. It's a term that I came across when I was doing research on what to do my next summit about I came across this term, the highly sensitive person.
And as I was reading about this term and about this, about the group, I realized how many folks inside my community. Are either highly sensitive or, or highly sensitive adjacent. I'm gonna talk about this in a moment. And so I designed my next summit around the, the very specific, uh, challenges and desires of highly sensitive professional.
And so I thought, how wonderful would it be to also do the podcast season all about it as well? So what you can expect this season, first of all, we are going to be leading up to the summit itself. So the summit will be in October. There is a wait list and I highly recommend you getting on the wait list because then you'll know, as soon as it opens, you'll get on the registration, be able to get, you know, first access to the summit.
Which is going to be all about. Self-advocacy made easy for the highly sensitive professional, and it's, especially for you. If you have a dream of advancing your career, moving into leadership and you know that you want to feel more natural, self advocating, speaking up for yourself, speaking up for your ideas, speaking up for your career.
If any of that sounds like something you want to do do or do more. Or maybe it's not something you want to do, but you know that you want, what you want is to feel more natural. You want it to feel easier. You don't want it to feel so uncomfortable and difficult come to the summit. So there is a wait list, head on over it's the mint ambition.com/summit.
The mint ambition.com/summit. Get on the wait list. You'll be first to know when registration opens. So that's the first thing that you can expect this season. Now, the other thing you can expect are episodes that are especially picked for the highly sensitive professional. So here are some examples. So things like how to deal with those, those little negative voices that might be holding you back.
Then, um, we'll also be covering the best career assessment tools for a sensitive professional who wants to advance. Oh. And then we've got a good one here. How to be assertive without being rude or without being the B word. And then I have a really special guest expert podcast coming up. There's actually two guest experts that I'll have coming on.
They're experts in EQ. So emotional intelligence and what's super fun is that we're gonna be talking about assertiveness and how sometimes the heavy focus on empathy can get us in trouble when it comes to assertiveness. So those are just a handful of the goodies that you can expect from this season.
From season two. And I'm sure some of you are even wondering like, well, is this season, even for me, if, if you, especially, if you haven't heard this term, highly sensitive person or HSP is how it's often referred to. So there is an actual terminology and there is actual, um, criteria for someone to be considered highly.
A highly sensitive person. And I will link to that in the show notes. There are some websites out there that are really great, that you can take little self quizzes or just learn more about the phrasing and are about the, the concept of a highly sensitive person. Now, when I say the highly sensitive professional, so I'm including HSPs.
So if you're an HSP, 1000%, this season is for you. And for those of you who may not feel like you're an HSP, but it still sounds relevant. That's usually because you are, um, we, we could call HSP adjacent. So folks like my introverts. There. So if you, if you identify as an introvert or you feel introverted, sometimes this season is a hundred percent for you as well.
Like this is gonna be a fantastic season for you. If you are highly empathetic or even, maybe even you refer yourself as an empath, this season is for you. And then there's one last, uh, phrase that you may or may not have heard of before. But I think is quite what I see quite often in my community. And what we work with with my clients is being a high self monitor.
Now, this is a term I first learned when reading, um, Dr. Brian Little's work, he's a psychologist around personality, and that's where I first came across it. And, and it applies equally to my HSPs, my introverts, my empaths, everyone who is highly aware and highly attuned to the impact you have on others.
And you monitor it. You're a high self monitor you're aware of, and you even adjust how you react to the impact you're having on others. So those are just some examples, but essentially, if you, if that terminology resonates with you in some way, highly sensitive professional, you're sensitive to others.
You have a lot of empathy. This season is for you. Definitely subscribe. So my iTunes or apple podcast listeners hit that. Plus. Follow or subscribe, whatever it's called, make sure you're following so that you get each episode as it comes. Now with that, let's talk real quick. I was going to list out for you a few of the leadership superpowers and their associated kryptonite of the highly sensitive professional.
Okay. So we're gonna go through this real quick and what I want for you to do your action step for you is as, as I list these off, I want you to identify one that seems to be most relevant to you. Um, if all three, see relevant, then just pick one or pick the one that seems most relevant. And, and I want you to reflect on it this week.
And, and when I list the, the kryptonite piece, I want you to just pay attention to yourself this over this next week, pay attention and notice when that kryptonite is coming up. That's, that's literally all I want you to do because the first step of all of this work we do is, is awareness and noticing and noticing without judgment.
Okay. Noticing with. A neutrality to it, like, oh, that's so interesting. That was my kryptonite, or I was having a kryptonite moment. Um, that's all I want you to do. That's it just pay attention and pay attention without judgment. So even, and asking for without judgment. I know that can be a lot, if you're anything like me, it's I find it very ever very good self judge, self judgment.
I don't know if that's the word, that's not a real word, but I think, you know what? I. Okay. So with that, let's jump in. Number one, leadership superpower, you are attuned to others' needs. That makes you an incredibly responsive leader. You are a phenomenal leader leader because you care and you notice other people's needs.
Now the cryp tonight for this is that this attunement can also make you hesitate or cause a lot of internal distress. When it comes to making hard decisions or having difficult conversations, right? You nodding your head with me. I know for sure. I have this happen for me. So I am as much a part of this community as anyone.
Okay, so that's number one, number two, you're often able to predict the impact of change and especially predicting it on people. And for my strategic thinkers out there, you can predict the impact on systems as well as the people. Now, what this means is that you are fantastic at problem solving ahead of time.
You're probab you might even be solving problems that are like, that are months down the road. You can see it coming. the kryptonite is that you are often 5, 6, 7 steps ahead of your manager or your senior management or your senior executive management. Now we can kind of look at this as the Cassandra problem, right?
Like you can see the future, but no one believes you. And so it can become difficult. It feels difficult to be persuasive because you see the future and you might be talking to someone who's more in the moment. And especially if they're in the weeds as well, they're in the weeds in the moment and may not be seeing it.
So that's the, the kryptonite for that situation. Now number three is that you are highly aware of your impact on others. Remember earlier I was talking about high self monitors. Okay. So this is such a superpower because it means you can adjust your style. And I cannot begin to tell you how valuable and important that is in a leader role.
That ability to adjust based on what the other person. Right. Like if you have someone on your team who needs a certain style of communication versus the, you know, that's person, a and person B needs a completely different style. When you are aware of your impact, you can adjust and you can, uh, kind of tune yourself in to the best way of responding to someone.
This is very similar to number one, but slightly D. now because a kryptonite here is that when you are very aware of your impact on others, quite often, A good chunk of your brain half or even more of your brain might be occupied during meetings. And you can even spend an hour rewriting an email because you're so attuned to the impact you're having on others.
So in meetings and live meetings, this is you. If you notice yourself like afterwards, you realize you spend half the time, just thinking about what people are thinking about you. And this is also for you. If, uh, if you're anything like me and you've caught yourself, rewriting an email. Okay. So that's the, the kryptonite for that high awareness, that high self monitor.
Now what's in common. What's the common thread between all of these three. It's the worrying about what other people think worrying, worrying about other people and what they think. And I know that you want to work on that and you want to work on being more assertive and especially wanting to work on the self-advocacy piece.
This is exactly why I created the summit because after talking to a lot of you, it was really clear that people want to be more assertive, want to speak up for their ideas and their, um, your, uh, their careers and for themselves, the boundaries that they need so that they're having a good integration between work life and not feeling overwhelmed and overloaded from all the work you have.
So that's why I created this. that's why it's for highly sensitive professionals and it's especially for highly sensitive professionals because of those superpowers you have. Okay. We need you in leadership. We need you in decision making rooms. We need you at the table. And we wanna help with that. We wanna help with the summit to help you getting there and doing it your way.
Okay. Not joining the old boys club, not changing your personality and definitely not sacrificing time with your family and friends and loved ones. Okay. We want you to get there. We want you to feel natural. We want you, we want to remove some of that discomfort around self advocacy. So that's why we have this season about the highly sensitive professional and the summit for self-advocacy made easy for that, for that highly sensitive professional.
So head on over to the wait list, jump on it, make sure you're on it. So, you know, it. Just the moment it opens, you know, it's open for registration, this, this will, you'll also get some, uh, sneak peaks as to the topics and what we're gonna be working on. And it'll also give you a chance to engage with me as well.
You can let me know any, any extra topics or areas you really want us to cover during the summit. So again, that's the mint ambition.com/summit. Can't wait to see you there. It's in October. We'll see you there. And also can't wait to talk, chat, more chat more with you as the podcast season goes on. So with that, have a good one and we'll talk soon.
thank you so much for listening to this episode. If this podcast helped you or inspired you in any way, I would love for you to leave me a review over on apple podcasts, it takes 20 seconds, if that, and it's, it's honestly the easiest way for you to thank me for this episode. Every time I see a review, it brings me so much joy and it just lights me up.
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Thanks again. And now get out there and start breaking some rules.