Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #127| Why Time Management Won’t Make You a Better Leader—Focus On This Instead for More Productivity
Transcript
- 0:00Katie Calagui: when we interact with others, it's not just our brain that gets activated, it's our emotions that get activated.
- 0:09Michelle Gauthier: You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less.
- 0:16Michelle Gauthier: I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former Overwhelmed Working Woman and current life coach.
- 0:21Michelle Gauthier: On this show, we unpack the stress and pressure that today's working woman experiences, and in each episode you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease and relaxation to your life.
- 0:33Michelle Gauthier: Hi, friend, thanks for joining today.
- 0:39Michelle Gauthier: If you're looking for a better way to handle stress in the workplace, or you're struggling with interpersonal challenges at home or at work, or just feeling overwhelmed in your leadership role, today's episode is for you.
- 0:51Michelle Gauthier: My guest, Katie Calagui, is a leadership coach with a background as chief people officer, and when you listen to the episode today, you'll discover why mindfulness is the key to being a strong leader, not only at work, but also in the rest of your life.
- 1:05Michelle Gauthier: She also gives us great tips on how to handle workplace conflict in a way that actually improves relationships and productivity instead of making things worse.
- 1:14Michelle Gauthier: And then, finally, she shares the power of managing your energy, not just your time, so that you can stay present and engaged at work and at home.
- 1:24Michelle Gauthier: A lot of times, we use all of our energy at work and have nothing left for home.
- 1:27Michelle Gauthier: She's got a great ability to make these concepts really practical and actionable, so I'm confident you'll walk away feeling good with some good strategies you can use immediately.
- 1:37Michelle Gauthier: Let's dive in.
- 1:38Michelle Gauthier: Hi, katie, thank you so much for joining us today.
- 1:42Michelle Gauthier: Hi, michelle, so great to be here.
- 1:44Michelle Gauthier: Yes, I'm so glad to have you.
- 1:49Michelle Gauthier: I think this is going to be a great podcast for our listeners, because we do have so many people in leadership who are listening.
- 1:53Michelle Gauthier: And the reason why I invited Katie to be on today is because she's a leadership coach.
- 1:58Michelle Gauthier: She has previously been chief people officer and had all kinds of experience in helping leaders grow, and I love that.
- 2:07Michelle Gauthier: Her spin on it is a lot of mindfulness and the way that you think of mindfulness as the first step to being a good leader.
- 2:14Michelle Gauthier: So I wanted to have you on today because I think you can help our overwhelmed working women feel less overwhelmed and less stressed, even if they have a job that might take a lot out of them.
- 2:25Michelle Gauthier: So do you want to tell us a little bit about how you got into mindfulness?
- 2:31Michelle Gauthier: Because you started off in financial services, which isn't necessarily thought of as a mindful career.
- 2:37Michelle Gauthier: So do you want to just tell us a little bit about how you got into it and then what you teach your clients and then what you teach your clients.
- 2:48Katie Calagui: Yeah for sure.
- 2:48Katie Calagui: Yeah.
- 2:48Katie Calagui: So I started working with my first coach 15 years ago.
- 2:50Katie Calagui: So I was working for a family business, my father's firm.
- 2:52Katie Calagui: I was asked to step into a leadership role.
- 2:55Katie Calagui: It's a pretty big jump, given where I was in my career.
- 2:58Katie Calagui: They had actually never had kind of a professional leader of the firm yet.
- 3:01Katie Calagui: It was a very entrepreneurial firm at that point.
- 3:03Katie Calagui: And so I first thing I said is I need a coach to kind of help me navigate this.
- 3:08Katie Calagui: And so my first coach I ever had she was trained.
- 3:12Katie Calagui: I mean, she had a very long corporate life but had done a lot of training in mindfulness and that was kind of the foundation of a lot of the work that we did and the tools around mindfulness that she taught me.
- 3:24Katie Calagui: I think what stood out and why I was kind of an instant believer and have incorporated that into all of my leadership going forward, is that, you know, the impact was so immediate and it was so large, like these very small shifts that mindfulness can provide us just made a huge impact into how I navigated whatever challenge was facing me.
- 3:44Katie Calagui: So that's where I got introduced to it and, like I said, as a result.
- 3:49Katie Calagui: I just really see it as this foundational piece to leadership, because we think about the challenges that come up in leadership.
- 3:56Katie Calagui: It's not so much the practical problems we have to solve Like we're all smart, intelligent people, like our brains can figure out the business side of stuff what's challenging and overwhelming are the interpersonal interactions, and that's because we're all individual beings with our own stories and histories and personalities, and when we interact with others, it's not just our brain that gets activated, it's our emotions that get activated, and so if we don't have a way to work with our emotion, our interactions at work become more challenging.
- 4:29Katie Calagui: And so that's really what kind of led me down this path of like okay, how do I use these mindfulness tools in leadership?
- 4:37Michelle Gauthier: Okay, I love that.
- 4:38Michelle Gauthier: So I just want to highlight something that you just said, because that felt like a real light bulb to me.
- 4:43Michelle Gauthier: So, if we think about all the things that we have to do in a job, what I hear you saying is the actual part of the job.
- 4:50Michelle Gauthier: The function of the job is the easier part than interacting with all the people, and, at least in all of my corporate roles, interacting with people was like 90% of my job.
- 5:02Michelle Gauthier: It's very rare that we have a job these days where you're just like sitting in an office doing your exact thing.
- 5:07Michelle Gauthier: Even if you have a job like being an accountant, you still have to, you know, communicate with everybody else around you.
- 5:13Michelle Gauthier: So I love that you can help people feel better in that area.
- 5:17Michelle Gauthier: Do you have specific tips?
- 5:22Katie Calagui: Yeah, well, I think one of the first things that my coach taught me that was one of those kind of quick, high impact things was, you know, when I would get into discussions and we were problem solving and emotions were getting activated.
- 5:35Katie Calagui: You know, not only was I working in a leadership team, but with family, so emotions were even more heightened.
- 5:42Katie Calagui: You know, if I felt defensive in a meeting or I felt angry or frustrated, I would kind of go home and, you know, being a very self-improvement driven person, I would try to figure out, like how do I not get frustrated?
- 5:55Katie Calagui: Like what is wrong with me for getting frustrated?
- 5:57Katie Calagui: I need to, like, not get emotional.
- 5:59Katie Calagui: And I was doing all this work, trying to figure out how to not be emotional, and my coach explained to me that, like you can't not feel emotion, like we don't have that ability, it's an innate thing that happens, and so trying to figure out how to make it not happen or how to talk myself out of it or, even worse, criticize myself for having the emotion, was really counterproductive.
- 6:21Katie Calagui: So what I needed to do instead was I needed to start developing a language to identify the emotion I was having and learning how to tolerate it, understand it and move through it, because actually the better that you can tolerate it and work through it, the faster you can move on from it.
- 6:39Katie Calagui: It's actually kind of counterintuitive that that was what I needed to learn, as opposed to trying to figure out how to not be emotional, because that wasn't going to happen.
- 6:49Michelle Gauthier: Yes, oh my gosh, that's so good.
- 6:51Michelle Gauthier: I too.
- 6:51Michelle Gauthier: If there would have been like a box you could check and be like, feel no emotions between the hours of eight and six, I would have been like I'm in.
- 6:58Michelle Gauthier: That sounds good.
- 6:59Michelle Gauthier: And I also think, especially I don't know if you experienced this, but especially as a woman, I was like I can never cry at work.
- 7:06Michelle Gauthier: I will be seen in such a bad light if I ever cry, I have to be nice.
- 7:11Michelle Gauthier: I can't ever get mad.
- 7:13Michelle Gauthier: I had all these kind of rules for myself, so I love that.
- 7:17Michelle Gauthier: So, when you're teaching this stuff, because I know you work with women, you work with men too, right?
- 7:22Michelle Gauthier: Oh yeah.
- 7:25Katie Calagui: Actually, I've probably worked with more men in the space that I'm in, I mean I'm in financial services.
- 7:29Katie Calagui: So I've definitely worked with both, for sure.
- 7:32Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, and do you see, is there a difference between the amount of emotion that people are willing to feel or like?
- 7:39Michelle Gauthier: Does anyone take to this lesson better than others?
- 7:42Michelle Gauthier: Or do you see that once people learn how to just quickly be like, ok, I'm angry and I'm going to name it and feel it and allow that, does it seem to work for anybody?
- 7:51Katie Calagui: Well, it's funny you bring up the being a woman part, because I feel like we kind of get labeled emotional.
- 7:58Katie Calagui: But I'll never forget being in I think at the time it was a cab, not an Uber with one of my male bosses was very frustrated with another woman on the team and he was very angry and he was saying how she's just so emotional and she can't get her emotions under control.
- 8:14Katie Calagui: And I'm just sitting there thinking, like you know, anger is an emotion and like he and that mom, that was being very emotional.
- 8:21Michelle Gauthier: Yes, yes, how ironic.
- 8:23Michelle Gauthier: But like it seems that there are emotions that are acceptable by gender, like women, we're not supposed to get mad or we get labeled as you know, bitches.
- 8:32Michelle Gauthier: If men are mad there it's fine, you know, and maybe we're allowed to cry and they're not allowed, or whatever it is.
- 8:39Michelle Gauthier: So that's funny, though that's a great thing to point out.
- 8:42Katie Calagui: Oh, my goodness.
- 8:43Michelle Gauthier: Well, well, I want to hear about, like, how you help your clients with this, but I also, as a coach myself, I totally believe that in order for me to teach anybody anything, I have to embody it as well.
- 8:57Michelle Gauthier: So before you tell me how you help your clients, tell me how you help yourself.
- 9:00Michelle Gauthier: How do you use this in your daily life?
- 9:04Katie Calagui: Yeah.
- 9:04Katie Calagui: So I always, you know, kind of think of it as mindfulness is like my main toolbox right, Like we, just as we go through life.
- 9:11Katie Calagui: We kind of our job is to assemble a toolbox to navigate challenges, because the challenge is always going to be there.
- 9:16Katie Calagui: We're always going to, you know, slip into our usual reactions.
- 9:20Katie Calagui: It's just how quickly can we get into our toolbox toolbox.
- 9:27Katie Calagui: And so for me it's like, as I'm moving through my weeks and my months, I feel like there's kind of three levels.
- 9:30Katie Calagui: I'm either frustrated, dealing with a conflict, or I have an issue.
- 9:31Katie Calagui: If that's compounding, then I'm in overwhelm, and if that's getting really bad, I find myself in anxiety, and mindfulness can help me at any of those stages.
- 9:40Katie Calagui: The sooner I catch it the better.
- 9:42Katie Calagui: But you know, the first tool being like just checking in with what I'm experiencing and being present with that and tolerating it, like I said.
- 9:50Katie Calagui: And sometimes the body has to tell us before the mind can.
- 9:53Katie Calagui: So you know, if I'm feeling uneasy and worked up, I might not know what the emotion is yet.
- 9:59Katie Calagui: So it's like, okay, is my chest tight?
- 10:01Katie Calagui: Is my belly hurting?
- 10:03Katie Calagui: Like, am I breathing heavy?
- 10:04Katie Calagui: Like sometimes our body will clue us in first.
- 10:06Katie Calagui: So if I can't really get the words to what I'm experiencing, I first try to get some clues from what my body is telling me and that just starts to slow down, kind of that flight or fight reaction, and then I kind of think about OK, what am I experiencing?
- 10:20Katie Calagui: If I can label the emotion and I can kind of allow it, then I can start to work with it and figure out, okay, where do I want to go from here?
- 10:27Katie Calagui: What can I do?
- 10:28Katie Calagui: That's within my control.
- 10:29Katie Calagui: You know, one of the cores of mindfulness is being present, and so we know that if we're worrying about the future or we're mulling over something in the past, we're departing from the present and that's going to create more overwhelm and anxiety.
- 10:43Katie Calagui: So can I bring myself back to this moment Like what's actually happening now?
- 10:46Katie Calagui: Am I okay in this moment?
- 10:48Katie Calagui: Are?
- 10:48Katie Calagui: Can I bring myself back to this moment Like what's actually happening now?
- 10:49Katie Calagui: Am I okay in this moment?
- 10:50Katie Calagui: Are these things I'm thinking have they actually happened or am I just worried that they're going to happen?
- 10:52Katie Calagui: So it's just kind of bringing me back to sort of the wiser parts of myself, as opposed to the kind of primitive, reactive, self-protective parts of myself.
- 11:02Michelle Gauthier: Yes, yes, so it sounds like and it's very similar to what you said about at the beginning too, just about emotions being part of everyday life.
- 11:10Michelle Gauthier: So I love that.
- 11:15Michelle Gauthier: You just know, no matter how advanced you get in mindfulness and I will say me too to this that stuff still comes up, you still get upset, you still get frustrated, you still get overwhelmed.
- 11:21Michelle Gauthier: But just noticing it and asking yourself questions and slowing down really seems to work for you and, I'm sure, for all of your clients.
- 11:29Michelle Gauthier: So how do you help your clients Like, do you work with a big group?
- 11:34Michelle Gauthier: Do you work with people one-on-one?
- 11:35Michelle Gauthier: And then my follow-on question to that is what's the impact?
- 11:40Michelle Gauthier: I'm thinking of you going into an organization where they haven't learned anything about mindfulness and then suddenly all the leaders are trained and able to be much more mindful about things.
- 11:51Michelle Gauthier: What's the impact on the business when you do something like that?
- 11:55Katie Calagui: Yeah, well, you know, I think like one of the biggest values of the work that I do and other coaches and consultants is I'm always striving to improve quality of life.
- 12:04Katie Calagui: So it's like you know, yes, there's things we're going to do that make the business better, certainly, but I want people to experience their work life in a better way, and so I think the biggest part of that that I help teams with is how to navigate conflict well, and so I do that one-on-one.
- 12:21Katie Calagui: So most of my executive teams that I coach, I coach the whole team as a group.
- 12:25Katie Calagui: So I'll facilitate meetings and we'll work together as a group, and then I'll often coach them one-on-one individually, and so we'll do some work one-on-one and then we'll do some work as a group.
- 12:34Katie Calagui: One of the things I do with groups generally, like a kickoff retreat or one of our off sites or even in a regular meeting, is I print out a page with words of emotions on it, because, interestingly enough, we don't actually know how to label a lot of emotions and we kind of mislabel things in a lot of ways, like, instead of saying I feel hurt, we're used to saying that person was a jerk.
- 12:58Katie Calagui: You know, it's always very external, so just giving language so that people in the moment can start learning how to say hey, I feel confused right now, or I'm feeling stuck, or I'm feeling hurt.
- 13:09Katie Calagui: If something is really escalated, I try to help us.
- 13:11Katie Calagui: You know, work through like how do we communicate what we're experiencing versus going on the attack or getting defensive, which is what typically happens when we're finding ourself in conflict.
- 13:21Katie Calagui: And you know, good process, also with a group, helps as well.
- 13:26Katie Calagui: So if we have a good structure for what we're doing, we have good, clear objectives, that kind of also helps them or the conflict.
- 13:34Katie Calagui: And then one I really debriefing with individuals on.
- 13:38Katie Calagui: You know what happened, what was your experience, and let's talk through that.
- 13:41Katie Calagui: And so you know we'll kind of generally start from a very self-protective place and we'll start weaving these stories around.
- 13:49Katie Calagui: You know that person was mean to me or out of line and this is not going to work and I just give up.
- 13:54Katie Calagui: And you know, our kind of self-protective narratives start getting very, very loud and you know it's kind of our ego talking a little bit.
- 14:01Katie Calagui: And so if I can help one-on-one with clients kind of refocus on well, what do we know for sure?
- 14:08Katie Calagui: What are the facts of what happened?
- 14:09Katie Calagui: What were you experiencing?
- 14:11Katie Calagui: Did you feel hurt?
- 14:13Katie Calagui: Did you feel scared?
- 14:14Katie Calagui: Did you feel what was going on with you?
- 14:18Katie Calagui: So someone might start with like, well, I'm angry because Joe is a jerk and if we let that story play out, we go down a path of how he's wrong and I'm right and I can't work with him and all that, and then we actually start to abandon ourselves and we're operating from a place of survival versus wisdom.
- 14:33Katie Calagui: So instead, if we can say, hey, I was hurt because I felt attacked in that meeting and now I'm feeling really insecure about my idea and you know, maybe I got something wrong.
- 14:44Katie Calagui: And so if we can really get to the heart of what's going on with you, then we can talk about okay, how do you want to respond in a way that feels authentic to you.
- 14:53Katie Calagui: Maybe it's I need to go back to Joe and set some boundaries, like, hey, joe, it's okay to not like my idea, but it's not okay to raise your voice at me.
- 15:00Katie Calagui: Or maybe I need to find out what's going on with Joe, because that was really unusual and he doesn't usually act that way.
- 15:05Katie Calagui: So is there something going on with him that I don't know about?
- 15:08Katie Calagui: But, like, our defensive behaviors are not going to lead us to places that are true to ourself, and so if we can get back to you know, kind of moving back into that rational side of how we want to handle things, then we can act in ways that are more aligned with our wisest self.
- 15:25Michelle Gauthier: I love that.
- 15:25Michelle Gauthier: I love it so much.
- 15:26Michelle Gauthier: And if I think about the repercussions of that, let's say you teach someone that skill at work and they've just reduced by a huge amount the number of hours that it's going to take to solve that problem because they can just talk to the person instead of being mad and defensive and them arguing.
- 15:42Michelle Gauthier: And then I'm picturing that person going home and being able to use those same skills with their wife or husband or partner, kids or anything.
- 15:52Michelle Gauthier: I mean just it feels like once you teach them that as a leadership skill, they can just take that everywhere in life with them.
- 15:59Michelle Gauthier: I love that.
- 16:00Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, 100%.
- 16:02Michelle Gauthier: Okay, that's awesome.
- 16:03Michelle Gauthier: So I feel like you've given us already a lot of great tips.
- 16:07Michelle Gauthier: But if there's one thing that you would want to tell someone who's like I don't do anything mindfulness wise ever, what's the number one thing that you would say to them?
- 16:19Katie Calagui: to just get started, Well, the easiest thing is always to breathe I think we've all heard about this and it doesn't have to be like a isolated meditation, breathing on a cushion, like just doing four counts in holding it, four counts out slow that kind of reactive, protective, self-defensive reactions, right.
- 16:48Katie Calagui: So if we can just slow down a little bit, and then the second thing would just be to like check in with your body, like if that's all you can do in the moment is just kind of start to notice your body Cause again, that gets you out of like your head spinning and more grounded and it just kind of slows that reaction.
- 17:05Katie Calagui: So, just learning to take a couple of breaths, you can do that anywhere you know.
- 17:09Katie Calagui: If we have time to pick up our phone and scroll for two minutes, we can stop and just breathe for two minutes and that can really start to kind of build those neuropathways that help us identify what's going on in our experience faster.
- 17:23Michelle Gauthier: So that's easy to start.
- 17:25Michelle Gauthier: I love that because you can do it without anybody else knowing.
- 17:29Michelle Gauthier: You know you can count your breaths while you're sitting in a meeting if you need to, and you can check with your body and see.
- 17:36Michelle Gauthier: You know where do I feel uncomfortable while you're with other people or not.
- 17:40Michelle Gauthier: That's great.
- 17:40Michelle Gauthier: I love it.
- 17:41Michelle Gauthier: Okay, awesome, all right, thank you.
- 17:44Michelle Gauthier: Those have been all great tips.
- 17:46Michelle Gauthier: So now I'm going to ask you the two questions that I ask everybody who comes on the show.
- 17:50Michelle Gauthier: So the first one is what's one thing that you can do to instantly feel more calm?
- 17:56Michelle Gauthier: Is it the square breathing?
- 17:57Michelle Gauthier: Did you just give us that answer?
- 18:00Katie Calagui: No, I wish I was.
- 18:01Katie Calagui: Yes, I should do that.
- 18:03Katie Calagui: But I think what I have found is I just have to let go, like I noticed this relationship of the more overwhelmed I feel, the more controlling I get, the more I start to control things.
- 18:14Katie Calagui: So if I can just let go and kind of let things be and sort of watch the outcome happen without trying to control it, that instantly can bring my overwhelm down.
- 18:26Michelle Gauthier: That's so good.
- 18:27Michelle Gauthier: I think you're the one who taught me this.
- 18:28Michelle Gauthier: That said, when women start to feel stressed, they go towards control and men go towards what is anger.
- 18:35Michelle Gauthier: That's what I thought.
- 18:36Michelle Gauthier: I didn't want to throw them under the bus, but that's it Okay.
- 18:40Michelle Gauthier: That resonates for me big time, like when I start to feel stressed and out of control, I just want to control things that aren't in my control.
- 18:48Michelle Gauthier: So I love that.
- 18:49Michelle Gauthier: Okay.
- 18:50Michelle Gauthier: So the answer is let go.
- 18:51Michelle Gauthier: And then what's something that you consistently do in your life that enables you to do less?
- 18:58Katie Calagui: Well, I've become very fierce about managing my energy.
- 19:01Katie Calagui: Now there's always like manage your time, it's like whatever the day is going to be what it is, but I got really I don't know.
- 19:08Katie Calagui: Part of being a working mom was like I had to manage my energy and so it was like how much time am I going to give or energy am I going to give to this problem, for example?
- 19:18Katie Calagui: Or you know this drama that happened Am I going to lose myself in this for 20 minutes and ruminate, or am I going to preserve my energy so I can walk in the door and feel more peaceful after work and enjoy my kids?
- 19:29Katie Calagui: I think just being very mindful of my energy and very, very protective of it.
- 19:35Michelle Gauthier: I love that.
- 19:35Michelle Gauthier: That's such a great answer.
- 19:36Michelle Gauthier: And just so you listeners know, katie is managing, she's got her own business and then she also has a high schooler, a middle schooler and a baby and they're all boys.
- 19:52Michelle Gauthier: when you're saying energy management to like be home with your husband and your three boys, I think it's like extra, because usually you've got the little kids and you know what that energy is, but then that can end at like eight o'clock because they go to bed and then high school energy is a different one, but you've got them all.
- 20:09Michelle Gauthier: So I think you managing your energy is a brilliant idea and something that everybody could learn how to do.
- 20:16Katie Calagui: Yeah, yeah, I need the energy to like chase the toddler, and then I need the energy to have a very intellectual conversation with my 16 year old, who have those at 1030.
- 20:26Michelle Gauthier: So, yes, oh my gosh.
- 20:28Michelle Gauthier: I saw some meme the other day that said, like the okay, when they're babies, they wake you up in the middle of the night because they're crying, and when they're teenagers, they wake you up because they want to talk to you at a time where they feel energized, which is like 11.
- 20:41Michelle Gauthier: And I'm always like, okay, sure, yes, just let me sit up and pull myself together.
- 20:47Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, yeah, it's tough being a mom, especially on both ends of the spectrum.
- 20:53Michelle Gauthier: Good for you, good for you.
- 20:54Michelle Gauthier: So, based on what you've taught us today, it sounds like you work with a lot of leaders, but can you just tell us who you work with, in case people are interested in hiring you, and then how they can find you?
- 21:07Katie Calagui: Yeah, so easiest way to find me is probably my website, which I know you'll drop in the notes because a long name to spell.
- 21:14Katie Calagui: And then who I work with you know I work, so I do one-on-one executive coaching with leaders or emerging leaders, and then also with small businesses and their leadership teams.
- 21:23Katie Calagui: So any business that's wanting to grow, they're hiring more employees and they're looking to professionalize as a team, work better together and then create a great experience for their employees.
- 21:34Katie Calagui: That's who I generally support.
- 21:36Michelle Gauthier: Amazing, okay, perfect, thank you.
- 21:38Michelle Gauthier: Will you just spell your name for us, in case somebody is only listening and they want to go to your website right now.
- 21:45Katie Calagui: Yeah, so it's Katie K-A-T-I-E, and then Kalagi is C-A-L-A-G-U-I, and so it's just katiekalagiconsultingcom.
- 21:54Katie Calagui: There you go.
- 21:56Michelle Gauthier: Thank you very much.
- 21:57Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
- 22:05Michelle Gauthier: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegothiercom.
- 22:11Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.