Welcome back to The Look and Sound of Leadership, an ongoing series of executive coaching tips designed to help you be perceived in the workplace the way you want to be perceived. I'm Tom Henschel, your executive coach, and today we're talking about... Mastering anxiety. Maxine was going to be a star if she could just get out of her own way. Those were the words people used when they talked about Maxine.
They were even the words she used about herself. During a coaching session, after she had spoken the phrase once again, I asked her, what did it mean to get in her own way? She replied without a pause, Oh, you've heard me do it, Tom. I suddenly start talking really fast and can't stop. I'm just jabbering away. I asked, Why is that getting in your own way? Because I suddenly sound like a girl.
and being a girl around here gets you nowhere but it's how i feel like a jumpy teenager when it comes over me i am not affective at all i asked maxine what is the it that comes over you oh golly she said as if the list of things that came over her were long and then she breathed out after a minute she shook her head and smiled
It's the work, that's all. Getting the work right is what comes over me. I start worrying about making mistakes, and that's when I get in my own way. I nodded but didn't speak. She went on. Ironic, isn't it? I try so hard not to make mistakes, and then I get in my own way, which is a mistake. What would you fix if you could, I asked. I'd stop that babbling stream of words.
And stop apologizing. That's another one where I kick myself later. I look back and I think, what was that? You've known better than that since high school. What were you thinking? And the answer is, I asked, I wasn't thinking. Well, Max, someone's making the decision to keep talking or apologize. Who is it? I don't know. And then she said, It's the teenage me being super anxious. I asked, Was that you?
An anxious teenager, talking really fast, apologizing a lot? She bobbed her head up and down. It was definitely one part of me. But there was a super serious part of me, too. I was always one of the smart kids. But yeah, when I got anxious, I babbled. I asked, what purpose did your babbling serve? She said,
Oh, it was like, you know, if I could talk fast enough, I would distract everyone from noticing I wasn't really as smart as everybody thought I was. My little missed perfect mask was slipping and, well, you know, when in doubt, you baffle them with bullshit, right?
Did it work? I asked. Sometimes, yeah, it did. Did it make you less anxious? I asked. Maybe. When I thought my little Miss Perfect mask might slip, I remember feeling... super anxious so no i don't think i felt better i don't know for sure what about these days i asked is the mask slipping are you anxious she thought about the connection and stared at me
And then confidently she said, no, no, I don't think so. Then she narrowed her eyes, but then why am I babbling? I understand she used to show up when I was afraid things were going wrong, but I don't think anything's going wrong here. Why is she showing up now? I said, well, in my experience, Max, there isn't always a logical explanation. At least not an obvious one I can figure out when it happens to me. This happens to you, she asked?
Oh, yeah. But my saboteur is younger than yours. Mine is Little Tommy. Little Tommy, she laughed. And what does Little Tommy do? sometimes he's just a feeling i said you know like you it comes over me suddenly i am little tommy and i feel less than everyone else she groaned in sympathy saying ugh i said you know sometimes i can look back and go
Oh, yeah, all the triggers were in place. It makes sense he would get activated. But other times I look back and I haven't a clue what triggered him. But you have a little Tommy, she said with a smile. You even gave him a name. I did. I have spent a lot of time with him. You know, he's just a kid. He means well. This is hysterical, she said, like he's a person. Well, he is, I said. You know, in the same way your anxious teenager is a person. Little Tommy.
is a very specific part of me. He has habits and behaviors just like every other part of me. For me, the problem with little Tommy is that he comes from my fear part. That's all he contributes is fear. So when little Tommy shows up, I want to have an antidote because little Tommy's fear is contagious. When I catch what he's got, I feel bad about myself and I make choices I regret.
You know, before I had an antidote, little Tommy would show up with all his fears, and I would get so angry with myself, and I would think, damn it, kid, get out of here. I don't want to be fearful right now. Leave me alone. and I would find myself in this wrestling match with my little Tommy trying to get him to Amscray. She laughed. That's never happened to me, but I completely get it. I sat back.
what really began to disturb me was that i knew you know like you knew that your anxious self made you babble it was crystal clear to me that when i was wrestling with little tommy my capacity was diminished i was not my best so what was the antidote she asked compassion i said i found compassion for that fearful kid i realized he wasn't trying to upset me
If he showed up and I got angry, it was like I was throwing a tantrum at a kid who was already throwing a tantrum of his own. I was never going to be effective. So I started to soothe him, quiet him down. I had compassion. she asked what does compassion sound like i looked down as if talking to a child i laid both hands palm down on the air and quietly calmly i said
It's okay, kid. I'm the grown-up here. I got this. Thanks for coming by. Love you. And that's it. He's soothed. He can go away, and I can be at full capacity. She laughed, until next time. Right, he's going to show up sometime, right? But when he does, I have the antidote, right? I respond with compassion again, so it's fine. You know what I've noticed, I asked, continuing? Sometimes I seek him out proactively. Sometimes I look on my calendar and I see an event and I think, that situation.
has a whole lot of little tommy's triggers in it let me calm him down now before he gets riled up and i do i think about little tommy and i say hey you know that meeting i've got it under control Nothing to worry about. You keep on sleeping. Everything's fine. She gave a little clap. I love that. I'm going to do that. And then she asked,
This is talking back to your anxiety, right? I heard about this idea somewhere. Oh, I'm sure, I said. I imagine this is an old, old idea. I used to do a form of this when I was an actor, and I'm sure the idea was old even then. At which point I told her the story about the near career-ending bout of nervousness I had when I was a professional actor. I told that story in an episode called Mastering Nerves back in April of this year. The link is in the show notes.
During Maxine's coaching, she worked on mastering the anxious teenager who got in her way. Gaining control over her anxiety... allowed her star to continue rising towards the look and sound of leadership. Over my years as a coach, I have shared this tool with so many people, and many of them have found it enormously helpful. The tool calms people down. It quiets people.
So in this part of the show, I want to be sure you know how to use it. I want to hit on four things. First, I want to articulate the concept that's at the core of the tool. Number two, I want to identify when should you use this tool. Number three... How do you use the tool? And number four, I want to give you the magic key that makes everything work. Okay. Ready? Number one, the core concept here.
The core concept in this tool is a psychological concept. It is the concept of parts. There are many schools of psychological thought that imagine ourselves, our personalities, as having different parts. parts or components so for example sigmund freud believed in the id the ego and the superego that they were
parts of ourselves. Jung believed in archetypes as being parts of ourselves. There's a major school of thought these days called Internal Family Systems, or IFS. They train a lot of practitioners in their idea about how... the psyche has parts to it, including a separate self part. The concept at the core of this tool is that parts of us exist within us. Your superpower parts, your fearful parts, your rational parts, your emotional parts. No one part is your entire self because our whole self
is made up of many parts. That's number one. That's the concept at the core of the tool. So number two, when do you need the tool? The answer is when strong feelings show up. So you lie down at night. And instead of drifting off to sleep, you are replaying an incident with a co-worker from over a week ago. And every time you think of it, your heart rate goes up a little bit. And every time you think of it, it gets you a little agitated.
That is a good time to use this tool. When you have intense feelings about anything, consider using the tool. Why? One answer... is in an old phrase about human nature hysterical is historical do you know that phrase hysterical is historical the idea is that When we feel strong emotions, when we are hysterical, which, by the way, is one of the actual definitions of the word, having strong feelings. When we are having strong feelings, those feelings...
weren't triggered by whatever incident just happened. The feelings connect to something old in your life, something Historical. You're at Trader Joe's. You're talking to the manager. You're just trying to find out when that favorite item of yours is going to be back in stock. And the manager makes some joke. pisses you off. And you can feel that fury raging up inside you. Time out.
Let's just agree that is not an appropriate reaction to the manager's joke. No matter what the joke is, it's not appropriate. Something else is at play here. from a different time in your life. Hysterical is historical, and that's what's stirring up those strong emotional responses. This tool can tap into the historical part of you, the part of you that gets so triggered.
That's when to use it, when intense feelings show up. Which gets us to number three, how do you use the tool? Here it is. You're going to summon up one part of yourself to deal with another part of yourself. So let us suppose you are feeling intense emotions about something at work. You are feeling threatened. You are considering revenge. you are angry and you cannot let it go all of that fury is just one part of you it is not the whole you and because this is historical right
You have probably felt those feelings before. Look back. When else were those feelings present in your life? Was it in college? In junior high school? Was it as a kid growing up? Tag yourself at that age. what did you use to wear what was your hair like what was your posture picture that part of yourself who had all those feelings and who is stirring up those feelings right now and then
And this is where the tool kicks in. And then you're going to summon up a different part of yourself, the grown-up part of yourself, the part of yourself that has experience. and self-awareness. The grown-up part of you is going to take over driving. Up until now, that frightened kid has been driving, right? But now the grown-up part of you is going to drive. You're going to get back in.
Control. So think back to the episode. The dialogue that I modeled, talking to little Tommy, hey, it's okay, I'm the grown-up here. Those are real thoughts that I have with myself. That is the tool at work. So the grown-up part of you is going to talk with the frightened child part of you. And the goal for the talk... is to soothe the fear, quiet the anxiety. Now, how do you do that? Well, I happen to have a magic key, and I will share it with you right after this month's gratitude.
Gratitude this month to the many people who sent me emails about last month's episode, Coaching vs. Therapy. I am so glad you found it helpful. You can imagine that that episode sparked some very interesting conversations that I had with my therapist, Robin Sevitz. And talking with Robin about last month's episode sparked this episode. The conversation that I had with Max that you heard during the episode is about 60% verbatim from an episode back in 2018 that was called Taming...
The wild child. The wild child tool is something I learned from Robin. And it changed me. And it is... because of that, that I have shared it with so many of my clients. So it felt really apt to update it, clarify the tool, and share it all again. So gratitude to all of you for your support, and gratitude to Robin for her many gifts in my life.
Gratitude this month to Stephen Foster, who hosts the How to Survive and Thrive podcast. He invites folks on and asks them to share their one golden nugget in under two minutes. Stephen invited me on. I shared a nugget that I called How to Rise. It's short and sweet. Give it a listen. Link is in the show notes. Thanks again, Stephen.
Thank you again this month to those of you who reached out about coaching. We have two tiers here, corporate coaching and personal coaching, so a lot of people find it's more affordable than they thought. I am grateful to hear your stories, and I'm grateful to be able to help.
Thank you. And finally, this month, the pendulum swung. Last month, we had like, I don't know, 10 or 12 new reviews from all over the world. This month, there are no new reviews to be thankful for, but I am thankful because I know you're listening, and I thank you. Okay, the final point about this tool. So let's just get back into it. You're having intense feelings. You pull out this tool. Your grown-up part...
is ready to confront your frightened child part, you're ready to get in the driver's seat, what's the best way to do that? The answer is number four, the magic key. The magic key is that your grown-up part... is going to show up with empathy. The magic key is empathy.
Think for a minute what really happens when a kid gets frightened. Some kids cower and some kids fight. There's no one way to be a frightened child. But no matter what the exterior is, the inner part is fear. The kid is... scared if you were a grown-up and you saw a kid who was really scared how would you approach her would you be angry at her
i can't imagine that you would wouldn't it be better to approach with curiosity and compassion i mean look after all what does a scared kid want right a scared kid wants their fears taken seriously They want their hurts acknowledged. They want to be heard. But it is hard for us in our grown-up role. It is hard to listen, partly because we're...
fighting our way back into the driver's seat, but also partly because we know it's historical. Listening to those fears takes some courage. I think of it as kind of spiritual jujitsu. All those strong emotions, instead of trying to extinguish them like they're some dumpster fire, you're going to draw them closer.
You're going to be open to them. You're going to be curious. You're going to be compassionate. You're going to listen and soothe. And whatever you hear, hear it with empathy. Whatever the child is frightened of, deserves compassion because that fear is a real experience that is part of you. So don't dismiss it. Don't diminish it. Approach it with curiosity and kindness. The magic key is empathy.
If you want to keep exploring your growth, we have a whole library of shows. This episode is tagged in three categories for women, personal growth and self-development, and self-talk. And five specific episodes you might listen to are Coaching vs. Therapy, that's the one from last month, Combating Emotional Hijacks, Conquering Fear,
The many parts of you, which is exactly about what it says it's about, parts of you, that whole concept. And last, unmasking a stand-in. Okay, that's it for me. Until next time. I'm Tom Henschel. Thanks so much for listening.