The Power of Three - Trialogue Two: Security

Welcome ladies to our second trialogue exploring the challenges of job and financial security and how they are impacting our life and our roles now during this period of heightened uncertainty.

Key Highlights:

● Cultivating our mindset about security is key to managing our anxiety

● Articulating our value can help us overcome our fears

● Challenges and trigger events can magnify our existing beliefs and impact our

behaviours

We felt it important to recognise and acknowledge the fact that these challenges existed pre COVID world, however our awareness of them has been magnified due to the current pandemic and its economic impact.

Paula (PK): If we can turn our minds back to pre March 2020 for us in Australia, pre COVID-19 impacts, some of us already had an achilles heel. A weakness ready to catch us out with regards to closely linking success with value, worth and financial rewards. In my opinion, this huge global trigger event has caused us now to review, to audit our self values,  self worth and self belief. 

Sue (SR): I agree Paula, I think it goes back to our formative beliefs and owning those. I have my own narrative going in my head all the time about being scared of having no job or no money. And that narrative was running before this happened, although I was already doing some work on loosening the hold that story has over me. What's happened with this pandemic is, as you say, that it's magnified our fears and we're back in that threat state.

Adult development work asks an interesting question about this: does this story have hold of you, or do you have hold of the story? Who's running it here? Because if it is running you out of fear that's when you get stuck and can’t move forward. But if you can actually explore the story and acknowledge that it's there, then can you work through it and manage your fears. I think this is the work that needs doing right now; we need to turn inwards and ask ourselves that question and then it goes to a question of how we value ourselves.

Alena (AB):  That's exactly right, Sue. What value do we see and how do we value ourselves? It is very easy to ignore the question of value and self-worth when you're in a senior leadership role, getting paid a lot of money and having a lot of power or authority or influence over a large number of people. I think what we're experiencing now is a moment of exposure, where all of that is up for grabs. It’s almost like the current situation has removed a layer of “corporate gloss”, which has forced us to look inwards and say, “What is the value that I bring? And what is the potential that I have to bring more to deliver more value?” 

I think self-worth and value has always been a really challenging one for women in finance. We talked about it in our last trialogue. You look around the room in a meeting. We’re one of only a few women. There are less of our voices and we don't feel like we can perhaps speak up, perhaps because we have different opinions, we approach things from a different perspective. It takes self-awareness and true belief in your self-worth to say, “I might be the only one in the room that thinks this way, but the value that I bring with my diverse perspective outweighs the fear that I might have”. Now more than ever, we need to have the confidence to articulate our value. 

SR: I hear you Alena. Too often we don't cultivate that self-worth. I see this in a lot of women, looking for that external validation of our value. So it's almost like we are waiting for someone to say, I will invest in you, I believe in you. Because we don't have enough belief in ourselves. 

PK: I believe that external validation does have a place although should not be the lone key driver of our own success. Creating space between the return and value of achieving something and the financial reward is critical.  I only realised in the last ten years that we have many rewards in our professional and personal life and these are not all financial. A large number of us financial, logical brained individuals need to realize that happiness and fulfillment is not just about the monthly salary. Which is easy said, and difficult to see when it’s taken blood, sweat and tears over a third of our life (perhaps 15- 20 years) to get here. 

AB: When we believe our security is being threatened, this thought triggers our fear brain, and we clench up: we have that knot in our tummy holding on to all the stress and tension and that's a physiological reaction as well as a mental one. For me, when I find myself in that fear state, it's quite often when I'm comparing myself to someone else, or an expectation that I, or someone else, had. I'm spending too much time focusing on that external validation. And I think we all do the comparison thing at times. 

If we think about the pandemic, that's really what we're all doing we're extrapolating results, aren't we? We're saying, x% of people have lost their job. That could be me. This triggers feelings of fear, anxiety and insecurity about something that hasn’t happened yet.

It’s important to recognise those feelings, because when you can, you can choose to take an alternate approach by reframing your mindset. Shift to gratitude and abundance. Ask yourself, “where am I? This is my job. I'm so grateful for this job.” And yes, bad stuff may still happen, but you know what? You get the results you focus on. If you choose to focus on what you do have, you can sit in that abundance mindset space, and not worry about everything else. When you have an abundant mindset, you trigger the very important executive function of the prefrontal cortex part of the brain, which allows you to do a better job and make better decisions. You won’t lose your job because they need you!

PK: Now is the opportunity as female finance leaders to really step up and call out the really negative language and behaviours around security. I mean now is THE TIME. Even if you can't necessarily do anything about the actions of corporations reverting to cost cutting measures as the only way, then call out, this is not how I want to manage the business,  my finance team, or my organisation. And if you do lose your job you know the value you are taking elsewhere. It takes a shit load of courage. Right?

AB: Yeah, maybe it's coming back to that female force that we spoke about last time. Understand your value and step into it with intention. Make sure others know the value you bring and focus on giving your very best. 

What do you think, Sue?

SR: I thought the same as I was just listening to you. We’re back at this point about actually being strong and feminine and speaking up. And back to your point about gratitude, amping up my gratitude and mindfulness practices has been making a huge difference to me during this time. And when we're talking about you know comparing: that can suck us in so dangerously. I heard a quote years ago that comparison is the thief of joy  (Theodore Roosevelt), which  I love because you can feel so joyful and then you look over at this person's got more money or more whatever, and the joy disappears unless you really focus on the gratitude piece.

PK: They’re very physical hurdles that we have to get over though. If we are the sole breadwinner of the family and it's our salary that's paying the mortgage, we can't just say, Oh, we need to practice mindfulness and grace and gratitude and that’s going to satisfy the bank manager…. 

AB: That’s true, but I think you need to lift the focus up a bit, because that challenge is one of purpose. As you know the first third of my book is all about purpose: identifying your purpose. Identifying your purpose sets you free. All your other decisions are made through the filter of your purpose. It then becomes about purpose integration: how do you integrate your purpose into all other elements of your life. 

When you identify your purpose, it is a choice on how you will integrate it into your life. No one forces you to do so, so if financial security is the most important thing to you, then don’t complain to me that you’re stuck in your job because you need to pay the bills. Your lifestyle is a choice and so my counter to those that say that to me is that we need to find a way to integrate your purpose into your work. They are not mutually exclusive. 

It’s a choice.

SR: That bears repeating: we have a choice. That was enormously liberating for me a few years ago when I realised that I had choices, even if some were hard.

AB: Yep. You can choose to maintain the lifestyle, but you're gonna hate your job, and that's fine: it's a choice and you have to step into that. Or you can choose to approach a business in a way that is in line with your purpose and values and makes you full from the inside, and perhaps you need to make some choices to tweak other elements of your lifestyle.

SR: I agree Paula that you can't take the mindfulness and gratitude to the bank, but they help me manage the story, and connecting with my purpose has been keeping me going so that I choose how I show up in the world.

And I'm glad you said choices Alena because it does remind me I do have a choice. But I'm also in a very fortunate situation that I'm not a single mum with no one else to help pay the mortgage and some of the women that we work with are absolutely in that position. And we need to recognise that it is significantly harder for some people than for others, to loosen the hold financial security has over them.

 AB: So I agree, a great purpose doesn't pay the bills, but purpose integration, I believe, is what leads to true career success. One of the key takeaway’s in Daniel Pink’s book, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, is that you can do everything but not at the same time. Timing is critical. And consideration of timing, for example on financial expenditure, is a huge part of purpose integration. 

All three of us have come from big salaries to starting a business from the ground up and it's forced us to think about the timing of what we’re spending and how we live.

PK: And we've talked about this before, that the three of us feel way more fulfilled than we did before. So it's almost like there's, you know, a constant renegotiating of alignment between financial security and fulfillment.

Our collective reflections;

• managing your ability to stay calm in the face of anxiety and pressure is critical, so that you can think clearly and assess risks intelligently;
• building your confidence around your self-worth and your ability to articulate your value is essential to stepping up in leadership;
• you can create greater freedom and fulfilment for yourself by shifting your mindset to one of abundance and integrating your purpose into your life.

What’s your feminine force? If you have found this useful, we’d love to hear from you. Share in the comments below what you have done to lean into your feminine force to manage your feelings of insecurity around your job or financial situation.