Sugar and spice

This month, Her Invitation is focusing on a behaviour that many women portray - many women feel uncomfortable being perceived as powerful...but why is that exactly?

Sugar and spice and all things nice.......

That’s how little girls are brought up, right? To be nice; to be nice to friends, siblings, parents teachers, the left out kid, the bully who will stop if we’re nice; the boy in the playground who is pulling your pony tails; the stranger in the street. JUST BE NICE and it will solve everything.

And we are also taught, whether we realise it or not, that POWER isn’t NICE. We are taught that power is about dominating other people, being in control, being in charge.

So little girls shy away from it...exactly as we shy away from ‘snips of snails and puppy dogs tails...because they aren’t nice either...ergo girls do the nice stuff and boys do the non-nice stuff including the POWER STUFF.

And so it goes on...

But what is really happening when we are doing all this nice stuff?

Well, we are giving our power away and effectively leaving it to the boys (and the men), whether they want it or not (but that is a whole other article)!

The social conditioning that starts when we are so, so young continues into adult life (at HI we call this Little Girl Syndrome) - how you are treated / expected to behave when you are a child has a direct impact on how you behave in certain circumstances as an adult, such as being quietened or not offering your opinion.

We are putting other people first and ourselves second. And let’s face it - that doesn’t stop in the playground - we go into the workplace and we try to show how supportive we are, how flexible we are, how nice we are....we are part of the team....but more than that, we will put others before ourselves, we will make the tea, do the washing up, take the notes - even though none of those things are on our Job Description. And all the time, we are giving our power away...

The result is that we do not demonstrate the characteristics that our boss or our organisation is looking for in future leaders...we are so busy being NICE that we forget to be assertive, to offer our opinion, to challenge other people’s thinking for fear it will rock the boat.

So what we are actually demonstrating is that we are easily persuaded, fobbed off and that we can be easily taken advantage of.....not really what people are looking for in senior roles.

Here at HI, we do not perceive power to be about controlling others, dominating others or being in control of others.

Our perception of power is about an internal power; power over yourself to make sure that you have total control over the decisions you are making in your world and that you are completely true to yourself.

That kind of power only goes to demonstrate firm resolution, strength and conviction. That is the kind of power I would want my boss to be looking for.... and the good news is we do not have to compromise being nice to achieve this kind of power - we can have both!

Why not come along to one of our workshops and learn how to increase your power and influence, without compromise?

Dates now available in Birmingham and London, with more coming very soon - CLICK HERE.