In today’s fast-paced and demanding world, self-empowerment, energy management, and adaptability are key to building resilience for women leaders challenged with navigating work-life balance, avoiding burnout, and thriving, be it in the workplace or as an entrepreneur. My guest today is Stephanie Slocum, the founder of Engineers Rising LLC, and a dynamic advocate for women leaders in STEM.
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Jay Allyson
115 Lessons in Resilience for Women Leaders in STEM with Stephanie Slocum
INTRO
Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Leverage Business Podcast! I’m your host, Jay Allyson, and today we have a phenomenal guest who’s breaking norms and championing women in engineering and technology.
Joining us is Stephanie Slocum, an engineer, author, coach, and sought-after speaker who is an dynamic advocate for women leaders in STEM. She is the brilliant author of “She Engineers: Outsmart Bias, Unlock your Potential, and Create the Engineering Career of your Dreams”, a book that shares her insights and experiences as a woman in a predominantly male industry.
With over 15 years of engineering experience, Stephanie is someone who’s often been the only woman in the room, so she knows firsthand the challenges, pressures and stresses that women face in these fields. She’s turned her experiences into a powerful movement to empower women to speak up, advocate for their teams, and stay resilient.
As a leadership coach, Stephanie is on a mission to normalise women leaders in STEM and help them thrive by leading themselves, their teams, and their organisations. She helps them to confidently and holistically navigate their next career steps and unlock their influence at work.
Through her company, Engineers Rising, Stephanie works with STEM organisations to build leadership pipelines, support women’s groups, and enhance communication skills – all to retain and elevate talented women in these critical fields.
And today, lovely listeners, Stephanie is here to share her insights, strategies, and inspiring stories that are sure to motivate and empower you. So, buckle up and get ready for an engaging conversation on resilience, leadership, and making a real impact in the world.
INTERVIEW
JAY: Stephanie, welcome to the show! I’m really excited to speak with you today.
STEPHANIE: Thanks, Jay. I’m excited to be here.
JAY: Fantastic. I just think you’re a great person to speak to about resilience because when we have our sessions, there’s so much resilience in everything that you do and how you do it.
We picked the theme for this whole year as rising resilient because it just kept coming up in client work. And the things that we were talking about is the sub theme: tackling challenges and changes in your life and business with confidence, compassion, and courage.
So, let’s kick off with, how would you define resilience and what part of the theme spoke to you the most?
STEPHANIE: Yeah, so resilience. I’m coming from a construction infrastructure background into this and the resilience of our community and our structures and our roads and bridges is a very, very hot topic relative to climate change. And so when we first started talking about resilience, my first thought was, okay, how do I take the resilience we’re talking about in engineering spaces and also apply it to human spaces and what I’m doing in my business and what other entrepreneurs might need.
Because in the climate change resilience discussion, it’s all about not just planning, but how do we adapt? How do we recover faster when a climate change event happens? And so like, for me as a human, and for what I’m working on with my clients, the resilient piece in terms of my definition is all about how do we respond more quickly when we run into those roadblocks? How do we recover faster?
And so I think the compassion piece of this along with the courage, like the courage to be compassionate is the thing that then comes up because if when we’re talking about how do we recover faster from the roadblocks that we’re all going to hit and we hit all the time, it all starts with compassion towards yourself, which allows you to show up for the people that you’re serving in your business.
JAY: Brilliant. I love that the way you’ve kind of bridged, to use the metaphor, bridged across from that. And of course, compassion probably doesn’t show up in an engineered bridge, but in quite the same way, but very interesting to take that recovery point there, as you said.
For context, tell us a little bit about the work that you do and, you know, who you help, how you help them.
STEPHANIE: Yeah. So I am on a mission to normalize women as leaders in the STEM field.
So STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and math – anyone listening who’s not familiar with that term. I am an engineer by training and background. And so essentially my business started with me writing a book, sharing all the things I had learned the hard way about advancing through a career in engineering when I was often or usually the only woman in the room.
And so today I do that through coaching, presentations, workshops, training for STEM organisations that care about retaining their women. Because one thing we know, there’s been a lot of, you know, talk about retaining women in the technical fields.
And in the last 20 years, we have been pouring a lot of resources into making sure everybody knows that STEM is a field for women too, yet the retention numbers haven’t shifted very much at all -like less than 1 percent when we look at the number of women that have come into the field versus the number that are staying. They aren’t staying at the rate they’re coming in. And so that is my mission in life is to normalise women as leaders in the field, helping them stay and helping organisations be able to retain that talent.
JAY: Retention! That’s brilliant because what I know about STEM all the initiatives that I’ve been involved in with STEM, it’s all about getting more women into STEM industries, right? Or STEM fields at university, it’s always been about like the entry point rather than once they’re there, how do we keep them there.
I can definitely imagine that part of it is being able to survive the environment, what else is it that comes up for those women in terms of their experience of. entering and surviving and thriving in those industries. But what are the key things that you see that they need help with?
STEPHANIE: Yeah, so resilience comes up in a very interesting way here, because often these women are amazing. They have powered through university to get a degree that’s very, very difficult and has a high dropout rate. And then they continue to power through, and they often continue to power through until something happens to them physically. They come to some kind of a breaking point where they are struggling with work life balance. They are struggling with exhaustion. They are maybe doing the “fake it till you make it” thing around, you know, I’m just going to push, push, push, push, push until I can’t push anymore.
And then they come to this breaking point where they’re like, okay, I have a decision to make: Am I staying in my company? Am I going somewhere else?
And I think one of the biggest struggles ends up being around emotional regulation. Specifically, okay, I’m showing up for all the people that need me to show up until I come to this breaking point because I haven’t been able to be in work cultures that allow me to express my full self, express my emotions.
And then one day, you just snap for lack of a better word. And how that shows up is very variable. I’ve had people come to me and say, like, I’m waking up in the middle of the night, worried about all the things I can’t get done, worried about my team, how I’m going to manage stuff with my manager or personality clashes. This cannot go on. Maybe I should just change fields entirely.
I’ve had people come in and talk about the relationship work culture is not good for me. What can I do? Do I really need to change jobs? Can I find a way to navigate through this in the organization?
And the interesting piece of this – we have the emotional regulation side of this – we also have the pieces of our brain when we come into technical fields, that is very, very logical and is convinced we can logic our way through anything.
And so when I’m working with clients, individuals or training with an organisation, we spend a lot of time bringing the human piece back into our work. Because the major parts of being resilient have nothing to do with logic. And that is a very hard thing. It was a very hard thing for me to learn that I can’t just logic and push my way out of every situation. That just adds more stress. It adds more anxiety. It feels like you’re constantly push, push, pushing, and there is no ease and flow within what you’re doing. It just makes you miserable.
And so, there’s a lot of I would say work culture things here, that when we blend them with some of the societal things, particularly if you are working in a U. S. based corporation, which can be very much, emotions don’t belong at work, you know, don’t show any of those emotions, and don’t be connected and sensitive to what’s going on. I think it’s a confluence of many, many things that all starts with managing your emotions and having that outlet.
JAY: And people going with the grain of all of that, especially if you’re early in the career, I can imagine that they don’t think, no, I don’t want it to be like this. It’s like, there’s no pushback, you’re kind of going with it. The whole big boys don’t cry environment in a sense, isn’t it? You go with that culture. And then after a while, the only option seems to be that you want to quit. Am I hearing that correctly? I mean, not the only option, but it feels like quitting seems easier than tackling it, navigating it, as you said.
STEPHANIE: For many, yes. And there have been studies actually done on this. I’ll give you one example – again coming from my construction industry – they did a study of women and men who are at the top levels of their organisations and they asked them how, you know, have you ever thought about leaving? And one of the surveys, 100 percent of the women had thought about leaving. And these are people, they went to the top of their firms. When they compared it to the men, that number was less than 50%.
And so, coming to this space of I’ve gotten to this place. Now I’m stuck. Should I stay or should I go? When we look on the organizational side of this, when we’re talking about resilience, one of the biggest pieces after the emotional regulation is leadership styles.
The quandary of resilience – and I’ve seen this in myself as an entrepreneur as well – is that you get to a certain level by push, push, pushing, and by just working hard and putting your head down and getting things done. And then as you find yourself trying to move into a more leadership role, it becomes much more about being than it was about doing, which means you’ve got to be in touch with your human element.
And for many, many women, and this is something I’ve been unlearning as I rose into leadership positions, both in my own business now and before you have to relearn to trust your intuition and trust yourself and trust your innate and natural abilities around connecting with other people. This isn’t being too sensitive. This is bringing out the best in other people.
And resilience is a huge part of that. Because if you can’t show compassion and empathy for yourself, you won’t be able to adapt and you won’t be able to show that for other people so that you can bring out the best in them.
And in the entrepreneurial world: same thing. Like if I can’t show up with compassion and empathy for myself because I’m beating myself up about why isn’t this working, or I’m exhausted all the time, I can’t show up as the best possible version of myself for my clients.
JAY: There are so many directions we could go in from here. I definitely want to return to some of the things that you said. I don’t want to lose my train of thought either. So the push energy thing I think is really important. I have talked about this like way, way back in one of my early interviews. It was Monique Wells she said, I don’t subscribe to push energy.
And I just thought, Oh, how wonderful is that? It’s like, that would be so good. Cause every high achieving person I know – and I talked about it with Lily as well – that’s what we do, right? And especially as women is we push. It’s like that’s what we think we have to do.
But I really like the point you’ve made here almost about as you step into more leadership role modelling, it’s like we can’t show up like that, because that that becomes the culture. So back to that point of culture, and showing emotions.
And one of the questions that came up for me as you were speaking was, to what extent, is this a female thing, and we’ve got to start learning to use our more feminine energies, and I guess, because you work with women in STEM, how do you compare it? I’m sure you’ve talked to men in the industry as well. This comes up for men too, right?
STEPHANIE: Absolutely. And so I think some of this is a carryover of, you know, if we go back decades ago, we had a very commanding control structure of leadership within much of the business world, not just STEM organisations. But it was very, very hierarchical, very I tell you to do something, you go do it.
And over time, we’ve seen this kind of hollowing out of the middle class in the world. And over that time frame, what has also happened is our information workers, which are most STEM professionals, a lot of professional services individuals, have been also required to go from, okay, I’m not just doing the different things, I need to be able to lead myself, even from a very young spot in my organization.
And we have younger and younger leaders who need leadership skills earlier because they have to be able to influence people across departments that they don’t have direct authority over. And so then we get into the conversation about, okay, well, how do you motivate people you have no direct authority over to do anything at all? And how do you motivate as you go up your teams to be able to do things? And that all comes back to this human connection piece.
We talk about AI a lot right now, and I look across and the conversations we’ve been having within the fields related to everyone, not just women, and said, Okay, if you really think AI is coming to, you know, take your job – so we have doomsday scenario and you can Google anything on the Internet – what’s left? It’s human connection.
And so we are seeing a shift on the leadership side away from that command and control style of leadership, much more towards a connection side of leadership. And this idea, which is backed by a lot of science, it’s just that not the type of science most engineers and STEM professionals are trained in.
That, if we want to lead people, it’s not me telling somebody what to do, it’s me being able to bring out the best in the people I’m leading, which requires there to be trust between them and me, and for me to build a connection with them that helps me to understand what motivates this individual, how is that different from another individual, and how can I bring out the best in them so that we collectively can go solve the world’s biggest problems, be it climate change or ethical AI or any of those big challenges we have out there?
JAY: I mean, that’s where the collaboration comes from. Of course, it’s like, if you can get all of that, like, happening and moving from what I’m hearing, like, then you can then work collaboratively. Then you can go do some like real amazing stuff.
STEPHANIE: Absolutely. And if you are starting from a place in your head where I am anxious and overwhelmed and are struggling to keep yourself together, you cannot show up in a collaborative way.
Essentially, if you are in, I call this survival mode, where you’re just doing, doing, doing, doing – just trying to put one foot in front of each other – you are not connected with the piece of yourself that allows you to bring that human connection to others. So therefore, you’re going to struggle to motivate the team around you. You’re going to struggle to bring that collaboration to your team.
JAY: Makes perfect sense when you lay it out like that, but it also adds another layer of pressure is people are stepping into leadership roles. It’s like, oh, and I have to do that all as well. How do you help people through how to manage all of that and how to develop those skills on the fly whilst still doing the doing as well as being the being.
STEPHANIE: Yeah, yeah. I think it starts with looking at yourself and coming back to bringing this compassion to yourself. Part of that compassion is really understanding what your strengths are and what unique value you are bringing into your organisation. And that’s true whether you’re working for someone else, or you are an entrepreneur. Like really knowing here, here is the unique kind of gift I’m bringing into the world. Here’s where, when I do this, it really helps my team and my organisation. And when you know that, then you know, okay: I need to be able to bring onto my team people that compliment this, but are not the same.
Because a classic example I will give here, so I am a big picture strategy person. I know on my team I need operations people because I can do that stuff, but it is not in my genius zone. And so being aware of that and being able to celebrate that gift in someone else. And how it complements my own means I don’t end up in the situation where I’m micromanaging and exhausted and working hours and hours and hours doing things that are outside of my genius zone.
And so I think awareness of that and clarity on that dictates everything else, because then as a leader, you’re like: I’m okay with letting some of this other stuff go to someone else. I think for leaders and particularly women leaders.
Coming up through STEM organisations, the vast majority of women I have run into, be it from before their work experience or in their work experience and have run into some kind of traumatic situation at some point. And often our responses to that – and I know my response to that – has been okay: I am going to control everything around me to the highest extent possible. I’m going to over plan. I’m going to over think. I’m going to do all the things myself.
And in many organisations, you could get really far as an individual contributor and get promoted doing that, but then when you transition into that management and leadership position, if you keep on doing that, you’re going to burn out. It’s only a matter of time.
And so, coming back to this place of what are my unique skills, gifts, and talents? How can I let the rest of it go? And then being able to connect with other people on that level so other people feel seen and heard and they go do the things.
That’s the starting point and the place that for many can feel challenging to go to. Because it requires you to stop, stop doing, doing, doing, and step into this place of being, which for many STEM professionals is deeply uncomfortable. Even for me, like, I’m like, one of the reasons I really liked math and science, there’s a right and a wrong answer. I don’t have to deal with the sticky emotional grey area stuff, right?
Like, I don’t have to deal with that. And so, you know, I learned as a leader that, oh, that’s the most important part. But it requires a wealth of emotional bandwidth to be able to effectively lead people.
JAY: So I’m hearing a process here in terms of how do you start working with somebody, right? Because you’ve got to get them in the space where they’re, they’re able to start working on it. Of course, that’s the doing thing as well, but we won’t go there.
So holding that space and bringing them into that place of compassion is what I’m hearing, and then starting to have them recognize and positively reinforce their own strengths and the areas that are holding them back, and part of it is how do you get clients, right? Because if you can’t get them to be open to and willing to go into that place, then you’re not going to be able to get results for them.
What’s that part of the process feel like for you? And if it’s not too complicated to ask, how do you take your own experience to help people see the connection of what you’re saying here?
STEPHANIE: Yeah. The first piece of this is, typically when I start talking to someone either they are in some kind of a transition, so a management leadership transition, or they are just really struggling with work life balance issue. And so I always, I make the emergency room analogy here that, if someone is bleeding out, we don’t sit there and give them a lecture about what life decisions led them to this point. That would be a very bad thing to do. We take them to the emergency room, we fix them up, and then we come back and start, like, building the other habits and pieces there.
Yeah. And so, when people come to me from a process standpoint, the first thing we do is unpack the immediate issues. Okay, like, what’s keeping you up at night? What are you struggling with? And how would you prefer to be and show up in the world?
That first call is usually an hour or two, we unpack all of that, we go after kind of the quick wins and I’ll share some of those in terms of relatively easy tools people can put in place immediately if you’re like: I am feeling stressed, burned out, overwhelmed, all of those things. And then we’re like, okay, we fixed this. Now we can go back and work on the habits, so that you can be more resilient in the future.
Another analogy I will use here is if I was going to run a marathon, I don’t get off the couch and go run the marathon the next day. My training leading up to this dictates how the marathon will go and then how fast I will recover after that event. But we want to triage what’s going on first, and then go from there.
JAY: I love that, it’s a really great analogy. You have to prep for this, that’s what I’m saying, getting into that space, and having a process. I think people have usually tried a lot of things to get themselves in a better situation. And having a coach sort of unravel a lot of that for you.
One of the things I was thinking about was the analogies really to business people. Because, as entrepreneurs, I think we’d fall into the same pattern: we’re very much full of ideas, full of stuff we want to do. We’re not short on the vision. And then we want to do it all at once.
And often you’ve got to think about, well, what are the steps? And as you know, from working together, like we work on bottlenecks, like what are the immediate issues? So I love that unpack the immediate issues as you said.
And that’s how you can speak to the pain points for your clients as well, presumably. It’s like, we’re going to like tackle this bit first, and then we’re going to set you up for sustainability going forward. I really like both the examples and how that process allows people to feel a sense of control and structure again in how they’re going about things. So, thanks so much for sharing that.
I feel I’d like to understand a little bit more about some kind of techniques, because it feels like you’re probably applying things that you do yourself for your own resilience – the big strategic stuff plus the day to day and I know you’ve got a family and young kids and you’re juggling lots of things outside of work as well. How do you maintain that kind of resilience and that energy and yeah, that’s my question.
STEPHANIE: Yeah. Okay. So for context, for our listeners, I have three kids right now. We have a elementary school, a middle school and a high school. I am very heavily volunteered as well. I’ve used volunteering for a very long time to help build my business and stay connected. Even before I had a business, I was volunteering. And so I have leadership roles in some non-profit organisations.
And so this question in terms of like, if I were to go and say I was busy, I am objectively busy to the outside world, all the things I have my fingers in. And so that means for me that building resilient habits into everyday things- like literally taking the five minutes here and there, the 20 minutes to meditate – for me, walks are non-negotiable. If I go more than, you know, if it’s raining and I don’t go for a walk that day, the next day I will feel the tension in my body. I will feel my shoulders and this kind of like vague sense of I’m feeling restless. I feel like something is not right.
So for me, for example, there’s a lot of stuff out there about, Oh, have the, you know, two hour morning routine. That doesn’t work for someone in my situation. It doesn’t work for a lot of the women who are caregivers or want to have a life outside of work. And so really looking at what are the key pieces of the routine that I need to feel good?
And I’ll make this very, very tactical for our listeners. When I’m looking at this for myself, so when I’m feeling a sense of ill at ease ness which, to be very clear on this, the last three months I’ve been doing a lot of traveling, which has upended my schedule, and so I have felt this in the last three months. I come back and I sit down and I say, okay, I’m making a list of energy drains and energy gains. And I’m going to track how many of those I have in my day.
Here’s what I will tell you. This is true on team interactions and organizations. This is true on how you talk to yourself. If you’re trying to get a ratio of three positive to one negative, three energy gains to one energy drain. Most people, it’s closer to the opposite if you’re not paying attention, right? And so even if you can get to one to one, you will feel better.
And for me, those non-negotiable things that I’m like, okay, when everything is falling apart, here’s what I need to put back into my schedule. Getting enough sleep is number one, followed by getting my walks. For me, there’s something very soothing about being out in nature and no, I don’t go for an hour long walk every day. Sometimes I set my timer for five minutes, I go outside and I do laps around the driveway. Yeah, and that’s what I get. But it is enough to give me the reset.
I will, you know, try to do meditation. That is hard for me if it’s not walking meditation. I don’t tend to sit still very often. I can tell. I guess. Yeah. I, yeah, I don’t sit still. And so I will tend to do more walking meditation than I do staying in one place. But nature.
JAY: To do something with all of the stuff going around in your head right is to have some place where that that can happen. But I mean I can hear and everyone can hear the energy in you and so that that was the question, right, is how do you sustain it. So I think you’ve answered that beautifully.
Because sometimes people think oh I’ve got to do the whole regime, but actually finding the pieces that really work for you. I mean, I’m the same. I love getting out. It’s not just the walking. It’s the nature. It’s the outside air and all of that. And that’s why I choose to live in the middle of the countryside. I can do it off my doorstep. I haven’t got to get in the car because that’s like an extra barrier. Right. And people have a dog so it forces them to go out and have a walk.
STEPHANIE: Yeah, yeah. And I just want to add. So I’ve had hundreds if not thousands of women go through an exercise, because this is an exercise I make people go through in some of my presentations and training as well in the group. I’m like, okay, tell me what your energy gains are. Tell me what your energy drains are. And it is very, very individualised.
So I think that’s a really important point I want to just come back to, because some of this depends on if you see yourself as more an introverted or an extroverted person. I tend to be more introverted.
And so I will tell you and my kids will be like, mom needs a timeout. Is that if I don’t get enough me alone time, and for me, like I said, walking in nature is definitely my go to if I’m feeling at all, kind of feeling the anxious feelings in my body coming up. If I don’t get enough me time. I will be a very grumpy individual and no fun to be around.
But if you are the kind of person that recharges around other people, that may not be your thing. And so figuring out what your things are, I think is really important here.
JAY: I’m glad you emphasised that because that is really important. And even when I’ve seen self-care tables, like fill in what’s your self-care plan? There’s like six boxes. There’s like six types of things and they don’t really speak to what you’ve just talked about in that extrovert introvert. We need different kinds of space, so I love that energy gains and energy drains. I’m going to borrow it shamelessly.
STEPHANIE: Feel free!
JAY: So there’s a couple of things I want to do. One is: I’d love you to share a story of a before and after, and a process, as succinctly as you can, of at least one person that you think is a really good example to others of how you can take a situation that feels like I’m going to quit my job because I can’t deal with this to someone that feels empowered in their career and energised.
STEPHANIE: Yeah, and so there is one particular client that immediately comes to mind because she came to me and she’s like: I’m struggling with work life balance. I’m planning to have a family soon. I don’t see how my career in this small organization that’s relatively entrepreneurial in nature, but everybody’s working nights, weekends. I don’t see how this is going to fit. And I am waking up at night worried about all the things I’m not getting done at work.
She was at a mid-level role in that she did not have direct team members. She is giving work to other individuals, but these other individuals are also working for other people within her organization. And so there’s this constant balancing act between all the things that have to get done, the people available the lower level people available to help her, and she was at a breaking point. She’s like, I don’t know if I need to change a job. I don’t know. I just, I don’t know what to do. I’m ready to throw my hands up and throw the towel in.
And so we did that hour two hour long session to unpack what do you want, where are you at, what can we fix. We had her do the energy drains and energy gains thing. And then I asked her the question, okay, when you do pick the first thing, first thing that will make you feel better. We did that.
We worked on some time blocking productivity things, because the thing we haven’t touched on here on the energy drains and energy gains, especially when it comes to women is that there are times of day when your energy is higher and is better suited to certain types of work than other types other times of day. And so we worked with her on that.
She came back into the next session, which was, I think, three weeks after that first session. And she says to me, she’s like: things have completely changed. I would never have thought sitting with you for two hours in that first session, I would be walking in now saying Okay, I’m taking care of myself again. I’m protecting my time and getting things done. I’m leaving work on time just because now I’m paying attention to my energy. Yeah. And so, yeah, I’ll, that is as succinctly as I can share that story but it’s one of many that related to this focus on energy as the path to being more resilient in your career and leadership.
And again, within my story, like this is something that was, we’ll say, mind blowing to me when I first learned about it, because all the emphasis on the logical side in the engineering science world is on productivity. You don’t hear a lot of conversations about energy, especially when it comes to feminine energy and how that fits into cycles and things like that.
And so I find when I apply that and share that with my people, it’s like this huge light bulb goes off that, Oh, I don’t have to work harder. I can leverage my high energy times to get more stuff done then and get more done during less hours than I would if I wasn’t paying attention to leveraging my energy.
JAY: One huge thing in what you’ve said, is paying attention, right? I’ve taught for a long time that it’s counterintuitive to spend a half hour walking because you think, well, I’ve got so much to do. And so I use that word quite a lot counterintuitive to productivity, but it actually increases your productivity.
So, I mean, it’s huge but noticing and knowing yourself is a really big part of that. So that’s what I’m hearing again in like just bringing people back to that.
So we’ve got energy, we’ve got introvert versus extrovert in terms of like with or without people, we’ve got biorhythms. We’ve talked about this in our work as well, in terms of doing your most creative strategic stuff at the point where your brain is in that kind of place, not when you’re exhausted at the end of the day. That’s when you do like the, the tail end admin type of thing.
STEPHANIE: Invoicing!
JAY: Yeah, the stuff where you don’t have to think too hard. And we’ve done a lot of work with that in the program as well in terms of having people understand. We call it self-care and a lot of people, they think, Oh, I don’t have time for that.
STEPHANIE: Yeah, I’m one of those people that the word self-care doesn’t really resonate with me for many reasons. The word energy management does, and I find that a lot with my technical people that they’re like, you know, self-care. Some people have this idea. Oh, this is spa days and things like that. And don’t get me wrong. I love a good pedicure and a spa day. And much of the time I don’t have time for that.
JAY: Yeah. Yeah. That’s the whole day. Right. I love a spa too. Yeah. The whole day. It’s like, well, I’ll book it maybe next week. And then, yeah.
The other thing that I wanted you to touch on, you mentioned fix the immediate things and then move towards the habits. How do you help people to create some of these energy management habits that stick? Positive reinforcement sounds like it does the job in itself, but what else as a coach or when you’re working with someone that you’re helping people with this, so it becomes more routine and a choice, not a chore.
STEPHANIE: Yeah. I realised in my kind of entrepreneurial journey over time that people don’t need a lot of, we’ll say, training. What they need is kind of a just in time, five minutes, here’s why this habit matters. And then a level of accountability to be like, okay, now we’re practicing this habit. I build that into my coaching with kind of mini training modules. And then we do a lot of reflection feedback on what we learned.
And so for example, one of the most powerful ones on the resilience side and emotional regulation and helping people step more into the being space and away from the doing space is what I call the “power pause protocol” where we make people set timers on their phones for at least once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and then something a longer break over lunch. And when I say a break, we’re talking like five, 10 minutes. We’re not talking an hour where people are able to reset.
So for some women, that’s five minutes of meditation sitting at your desk. For me, that’s getting outside, if I can, and doing those couple of laps. And what I find is that when there is consistent attention paid to, Okay, I’m doing these things, and how do I feel about my days?
I think that is the key linkage there. Because it’s still easy to fall into the trap of I’m checking this off my list and not paying attention to how am I feeling? Am I feeling like I’m coming out of more days, less overwhelmed, less stressed, less feeling like I am being reactive instead of proactive?
I find that after about a month, they’re starting to notice significant changes in how they’re looking at the world. After about three months, it tends to be pretty sticky. Now that said, anytime there is a transition or upheaval, we often need to come back and reground ourselves in, okay, what was working really well when we were practicing these habits?
And this is true for myself as well. So I’m constantly in this space of: yesterday you didn’t do it, last week you didn’t do it. That’s okay. Let’s restart. Let’s reset. And I have to do this for myself especially when travel or seasons of life when I’m driving my kids all over the world, it feels like because of kids activities and stuff like that.
Going back to the compassion piece of resilience here that, okay, I’m in a season of life and I’m going to choose to show compassion towards myself and not beat myself up when I miss these habits and just be like, okay, today’s a new day. I can do something in five minutes right now to reground, reset me. And then continue doing what I’m doing so I can have the biggest impact I can in the world.
JAY: Yeah, so not beat yourself up and not let yourself off the hook. It’s a neat combination.
It sounds to me that you may have just answered this question, but what would you say is your positive superpower for rising resilient for yourself and for your clients? If you had to pick one thing and you may have said this already, so let’s just hear it again.
STEPHANIE: Yeah, I think I’m going to say it in a different way, then I said it in the past. And so I think my superpower is the ability to see possibilities in other people, even when they’re at their lowest points and they don’t see them much themselves.
I have never met a situation or a problem or a person that I’m like: Oh, I see greatness in you. I just need to help you see it in yourself. And so I think that I have a generally very positive outlook on the world and I think that’s why. It’s because I see that there are problems, but the possibilities are the things I get excited about for myself and for my clients, because I can see I’m like, Oh, look at your potential. I can’t wait to see how I can walk with you on your journey and help you have the impact that you want to have on the world.
JAY: I love that. And it’s sort of where we started as well in the sense of we’re all like, full of ideas and high achievers and we’ve got a lot going on. So, how do you pick the right things and strategically as well, you know, in business or a career is like, what are the most important things to focus on, which is where you started: let’s tackle the immediate issues first.
Any other parting wisdom that you’d like to share before we close up?
STEPHANIE: Yeah, I’ll share one quick thing for the entrepreneurs out there. We started talking about the ability to adapt. And I know for me, this has been an ongoing struggle. I talked about the control thing and wanting to keep on going in paths that weren’t working in my business. Because I had planned it and it was going to work and sometimes missing, especially early on before I had a coach, the opportunities that were in front of me.
And so this putting in these habits of resilience for yourself is also about making good business decisions because it allows you to be more open to opportunities that come your way instead of banging your head against a wall.
And for me, like, I literally made a transition in my business from all B2C to mostly B2B. And so that’s a story for another day, but I think it goes back to the adaptation part of resilience. It’s not just about grit and pushing, pushing, pushing. It’s about being open to the possibilities and giving yourself enough space to be open to those possibilities and to see them instead of having the tunnel vision that happens when you are in that survivor mode.
JAY: Brilliant advice, brilliant advice, and I’m sure we’ll have lots to talk about in our strategy call. Fantastic. Look, Stephanie, thank you so much for joining me. You’ve shared just so much wisdom. I didn’t want to interrupt even with any thoughts of my own because you were just like on a roll and it’s wonderful.
Lots of real juicy tactics in here. And in a way for me, it’s nice to experience a little bit of you on stage almost because I only see you in coaching.
STEPHANIE: So, right. Yes, this is me pretty unscripted.
JAY: And I can imagine your coaching clients being very, very fortunate to have met you and come across you so that you can help them get out of their own way, and thrive. So thank you so much. It’s been brilliant.
STEPHANIE:
Yeah. Thank you, Jay. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation today.
TO CONNECT WITH STEPHANIE, AND FIND OUT MORE ….
- Stephanie’s book: She Engineers: Outsmart Bias, Unlock your Potential, and Create the Engineering Career of your Dreams
- Engineers Rising website
- Connect with Stephanie on LinkedIn
