It’s Time to Get Tough!
Listen up, ladies. We need to talk.
If you wanna play a bigger game, you gotta toughen up!
That means disconnecting from your Inner Pleaser and growing thicker skin.
I got it straight from the mouths of the financially successful women I’m interviewing for my next book, Sacred Success.
By nature, we women want everyone to be happy with us. Successful women are no different. Almost everyone I interviewed confessed to a “little girl inside me who wants to be liked.”
However, success requires us to make difficult, even painful, decisions that often have negative consequences for other people.
“You have to do the hard stuff,” said one mega high earner. That ‘hard stuff’ included firing employees, ending partnerships, holding tight during demanding negotiations, enforcing an unpopular policy, firing high paying clients, even enduring multiple rejections and disappointments.
In fact, virtually all the women I interviewed told me that their biggest regret was not making tough decisions sooner.
‘Toughening up” didn’t mean these women had to harden their hearts, numb their senses, or go all macho. It did mean a dramatic shift in their mindset.
The shift sounds like this: ‘I’d rather be respected than liked.’
As one woman told me: “I tried to be nice rather than stand by my convictions. But I learned, you can’t always be liked, but you can definitely be respected.”
The recognition that earning respect is more important than gaining approval was what one woman described as a “watershed moment.” It definitely was life-changing for me…and liberating.
This one shift in thinking– ‘I’d rather be respected than liked’ –means developing a “rhinoceroses hide” while keeping an open heart. This is precisely how we’ll become strong, effective leaders without compromising our feminine nature. This is what will allow us to be powerful without being punitive, forthright without being unfeeling, responsible without being ruthless.
Where do you need to toughen up? If you’re like me, I bet it’s not just at work, but on the home front too.
To get more expert financial advice, visit barbarastanny.com, or follow her on Twitter.