Leverage Power and Pressure to Become the Leader You Want to Be
Episode 514 | Host: Emilie Aries | Guest: Sabina Nawaz
How do you make the shift from team member to team leader without stress derailing your best intentions?
Through my work at Bossed Up, I interact so often with well-meaning new managers who are navigating the tricky nature of overseeing the people they worked side by side with just weeks earlier. Leading is so different than being a part of a team, and rising in the ranks while leaving some of your peers behind can leave leaders in a bind. How do you establish trust while also exercising your newfound authority? How can you be clear about your expectations without micro-managing?
These are the questions I’m digging into today in conversation with Sabina Nawaz. Sabina has spent more than 20 years counseling C-level executives—more than 11,000 leaders in total—on how to manage the pressure and power of being the boss. Her new book, You're The Boss: Become the Manager You Want to Be (and Others Need), enables her to reach the wider population of leaders with her expertise and research. She joined me to break down her wise advice on handling some of the most challenging rungs of the leadership ladder.
Being in charge doesn’t mean doing everything
Sabina has found that it’s not just power that corrupts, as the saying goes, but pressure. The sense that everything relies on you and will fall apart if you don’t do it—the very experience that led Sabina herself to start reexamining her leadership style. Pressure is what shortens your temper and has you micromanaging when you should be listening and delegating. Power is what blinds you to the effects of that pressure.
This is especially true when you recently worked on the team you’re now overseeing; it’s all too easy to just keep doing what you did before. After all, the very fact that you got the promotion means you’re doing things right, right?
But if we want to manage—and, better yet, lead—we need to be willing to dial back the doing and focus more on the planning, coaching, and guiding. We can’t take over and do everything; otherwise, we undermine our noble goal of compassionate leadership and make our teams feel untrusted, incapable, and unworthy. We also leave ourselves so mired in self-imposed pressure that we risk becoming the snappish, overbearing, mean manager we swore we’d never be.
The microhabits that help make you pressure-proof
In her book, Sabina acknowledges that it’s hard to achieve a full 180 when the pressure is already taking its toll. That’s why she recommends implementing microhabits—tiny changes that compound, day by day, until a new leader shifts from pressure cooker to pressure-proof.
Building your “shut up muscle” is one such microhabit she endorses. The next time you’re in a meeting, challenge yourself to be the third person who speaks, rather than the first or second. You’re in charge, so you know you’ll have a chance to make your thoughts heard. Instead of launching in right off the bat, instead take that time to observe and give others the space to share their own creative ideas.
The distorted dynamic of leadership
It’s easy to overlook the effect of all the pressure you’re facing on the people below you. While you focus on the C-suite’s weighty expectations, the important feedback from your team is being muted. When you’re a leader, you might suddenly be under the impression that all your ideas are excellent, all your jokes are hilarious, and no one on your team is willing to tell you “no.” As Sabina puts it, now, “when an employee says ‘everything is fine’, it could mean ‘I’ve started a secret group chat about your management habits’.”
At the same time that the feedback coming to you is turned down, your feedback to your team is amplified. Sabina gives an example of a client who set up one-on-ones with everyone on his team as soon as he received his promotion. His aim was to check in, listen, and reconnect with each of them, but to the team, it sounded a lot louder and more severe—many panicked, thinking their jobs were at stake.
Why would you even want to be a leader today?
Before we wrapped up our conversation, I wanted to pick Sabina’s brain on the recent development of leadership avoidance (which I get into in episode 437, The Succession Gap and the Growing Value of Your Aspirations). More and more Gen Z adults are steering away from management, and given the information they’re receiving, it’s not hard to imagine why. Too often, management looks like the short end of the stick with zero redeeming qualities. All the expectations fall on you, the workload increases, you never have time to disconnect—how is that worth it?
Sabina reminds us that pressure—daunting as it often feels—isn’t the enemy; it’s the test. It’s where you uncover resiliency and creativity you didn’t know you had, and it’s an incredible opportunity to grow and learn. When handled well, power is packed with perks: more control, more autonomy, a chance to realize your big vision and have a positive impact on your team and the larger world.
With dialed-in microhabits, a service leadership mentality, and teamwork, anyone can become an incredible leader. Picking up a copy of You’re the Boss will help a ton, too!
If you’ve already navigated the tricky transition from team member to boss, what’s the journey been like for you? How do you prioritize handling power and pressure with grace, and what have you learned along the way? Connect with our Courage Community on Facebook or join us in our group on LinkedIn to share.
Related links from today’s episode:
Order Sabina’s book, “You’re the Boss”
Learn more about Sabina’s work
Episode 512, The Engagement Crisis Impacting Young Workers
Episode 437, The Succession Gap and the Growing Value of Your Aspirations
LEVEL UP: a Leadership Accelerator for Women on the Rise
Become the best leader you can be:
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[INTRO MUSIC IN]
EMILIE: Hey, and welcome to the Bossed Up podcast, episode 514. I'm your host, Emilie Aries, the Founder and CEO of Bossed Up. And today I'm delighted to be sitting down with author Sabina Nawaz,
[INTRO MUSIC ENDS]
who is going to break down how to navigate going from being a member of the team to becoming the leader of the team. Sabina spent over two decades counseling C-level executives at Fortune 500 companies and global organizations and recently released her book, You're The Boss, Becoming The Manager You Want To Be And Others Need, which we'll reference throughout today's conversation.
Sabina draws on her extensive knowledge working with over 11,000 managers, geez, totaling over 12,000 pages of original research. To synthesize her observations and ultimately reveal the secrets of highly successful leaders by offering an evidence based framework for managing pressure and power with grace and intelligence. Sabina, welcome to the Bossed Up podcast.
SABINA: Oh, thank you so much. Really looking forward to our conversation Emilie.
EMILIE: Likewise. So, first of all, give us a little background. How did you come to write this phenomenal book? You're The Boss: Become The Manager You Want To Be And Others Need.
SABINA: Emilie. It started with me being a lousy manager at Microsoft. [LAUGHTER] It wasn't always true. At first, I managed teams that build software, and people told me I was the best manager they'd ever had. I coached them, I cared about them. Those were great years and then everything changed. The first day back from parental leave, I'm putting on lipstick for the first time, and my assistant Lori calls me, frantic. Where are you? Yeah, she's like, where are you? Steve expects you in 30 minutes. And that would be Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft.
And I'm sure many of your listeners have been through this situation, which is setting the pace and tone for return to work after parental leave. Inbox overflowing, calendar packed, infant at home, no sleep, no peace, no patience. And so overnight, I morphed from being caring and nurturing to snippy and short. Short tempered. Not just short, five foot three. I started micromanaging, rushing to meet deadlines. I had no time to explain things in detail, let alone, repeat them. And when people would come to my office, I'd leave all ten fingers on the keyboard, look over my shoulder, cueing, I'm more important than you. I'm really busy. Spit it out. Move on.
The worst part was I thought I was being efficient. Until my colleague Joe stops by and he says, Zach is crying in his office because of what you said. No longer hands on keyboard, my attention is on Joe, even though I cannot make eye contact with him anymore because I'm so ashamed and so guilty. How did I go overnight from being caring and nurturing to this, someone people apparently fear and really don't like? And that's, you know, of course I apologized to Zach. And as Zach's eyes brim with tears, that moment of connection makes me realize this is what I want. To treat people with humanity. And that's why I have written this book.
That's what brings me here, is my own experiences realizing and recognizing that it is not power that corrupts, but pressure. And under pressure, the same person who is, best boss ever can become the boss from h***. But you know what? Nobody wants to struggle. Bosses want to manage well. Employees want to contribute and grow. And most of all, we want to feel connected, to be in sync with each other. So how do we bridge that gap? How do we turn that tension into teamwork? And I have so much empathy for managers who walk those steps. And then the experience of my own, as well as working with so many executives that I coach, just like you do, Emilie, in your clients, to bring that to a broader audience than just the people I work with, one on one.
EMILIE: Yeah, I think it's so relatable, the pressure you speak to around returning to work, too. For full disclosure, I have an 8 month old baby at home who you might hear squawking in the background, actually, my parents are here providing childcare and I also have a three and a half year old. And the amount of things I'm juggling right now is some days, like on the best days, laughable and comical. And on their worst days, just burnout inspiring, you know? And so, I do think there are these unique, hopefully fleeting, peak pressure moments in our careers. And returning from parental leave is certainly one of them. So that was part of your wake up call, it sounds like, yeah?
SABINA: For sure.
EMILIE: There's so many women listening to this who are in the thick of child rearing or taking care of aging parents. And I wonder, like, the broader system and backdrop upon which this whole conversation is taking place. Not to derail our conversation, because I want to talk about what we can do, but how do you empathize with, and you mentioned, you know, you feel for folks who are in that pressure cooker and holding ourselves accountable to bring humanity to work and to treat people with respect. Like, how do you thread that needle and find that balance?
SABINA: The first way to thread that needle is to find your own humanity and have empathy and connection to that because that pressure didn't just squeeze out my time, it squeezed out my humanity. And the reason, one of the ways in which it squeezed out my humanity is I told myself I have no time for myself. Who does when you've got an eight month old, a three and a half year old, you've got parents, you've got work, you've got podcasts, all these things? And by the way, thank you for having me on your podcast in the midst of all this pressure, because, you know, I mean, it's not possible to be pressure free, but how do we make ourselves pressure proof?
Step number one is taking time for yourself. Now you might go, sabina, you got to get your head examined. How am I going to take time for myself with all this stuff going on where everyone else is giving me gimme, gimme and dependent on me so it doesn't have to be major, major, yes. This would not be the time in your life to go on a 10 day silent meditation retreat.
EMILIE: No.
SABINA: It just is not going to happen. Let's be realistic. What you can do and practice are microhabits. And microhabits are teeny, teeny. The smallest possible increment of doing something that gives you the satisfaction of you've done it, it gives you motivation to then do it the next day because you don't feel like a failure and it starts to build a muscle. Day after tomorrow, I'm going to be running the first marathon of my life. And that's after 20 years of unsuccessfully trying to run.
EMILIE: Wow, that's amazing.
SABINA: Thank you. Because I always said, oh, I've got to go to the gym for 30 minutes, I've got to run 10 miles. But it's only over the last three years that I managed to crack the code and start training for first a half marathon, then several half marathons, and now a full marathon. And that was by increasing my running by point one miles, point one miles. So it sounds so ridiculously small that you're going to laugh out loud. And at that moment when you laugh out loud, you know you've nailed it. You've nailed the definition of a microhabit. And if you do that every day, that's how I'm running a marathon of 26 miles, point one miles at a time, running every day.
EMILIE: Good for you. And I think it's so funny because I, as a postpartum person right now, just ran a 10K.
SABINA: Wow.
EMILIE: And this was my first race. Thank you. This was my first race in over a decade. My last time running was like, that was the longest distance 10k that I've run in 11 years or something like that. And I said to my husband, isn't it insane that I'm doing all of this stuff right now? And he goes, no, it would be crazy if you weren't doing stuff like that right now, because you can't just be serving your team and serving your clients and serving your family. And I run into this with the servant leader mindset folks that I work with, which is like, well, I have to give and give and give. But to your point, if I never take care of myself, if I never create microhabits for caring for myself, that I'm liable to end up feeling resentment.
SABINA: Resentment and burnout and snapping at people. Exactly. And then where does that take you? It's the opposite of what you're trying to create. Care, and connection, and productivity.
EMILIE: Absolutely. And what I also hear you saying is that sometimes people can kind of justify the brutality that they bring to communication of saying, like, I'm suffering, you should be suffering, too. Or, I'm not taking care of myself, so you should. You know, you're asking too much of me, too.
SABINA: Yeah, suck it up, buttercup.
EMILIE: Yes, absolutely. What would you say to the person who's like, get over it?
SABINA: Well, the. The first thing I would say is, how's that working for you? How's that working over time? You know, it's not what should happen, it's what does happen. There's plenty of research that shows that if you're a boss and you treat people poorly, they not only play video games, they deliberately insert mistakes into their work. Think about that for a moment. That employee is willing to deliberately sabotage their own results, their own numbers, just to get back at that boss.
EMILIE: That's wild. Yeah. Talk about, like, active disengagement that derails the whole team. Right. I think that's insane. So one thing I wanted to specifically ask you about, because you've got so many great lessons here about sort of ascending to leadership and becoming the best boss you can be. One common challenge for folks who are stepping into a leadership role, including this woman I was just on a coaching call with, is what happens when you're stepping up into management on a team you were formerly a peer on. So she's trying to think about how to become the boss of her former colleagues and peers. Like, that's a really tricky situation. How would you navigate that?
SABINA: Not only is it a really tricky situation, Emilie, it's such a common situation, and it doesn't just happen. For people who are first time managers becoming the manager of their peers, it happens every step of the way, all the way onto CEO. One of the most dangerous times in your career is when you are promoted.
EMILIE: Interesting. How so?
SABINA: Because you haven't changed, your position has changed. And when your position changes, that is now you're the boss of your peers, for example. When that position changes, it's a new level that comes with new rules. A new rule is whatever your superpowers are that have gotten you promoted up to that point, are now seen very differently from the necks that are craning up because they will see it as a lot louder, a lot harsher than you had ever dreamed of or ever imagined.
It's funny, I was just on a coaching call as well and, right before this, and the person I was coaching said he was just gobsmacked because he had just come in as a, had just become more senior than his peers and he had asked his assistant to set up one on ones with everybody in the company and it created turmoil and terror in the hallways. And he had no idea. He was completely shocked. Well, in his title, because of his big title that was now above them. They all thought he's going to come and fire each of us.
EMILIE: Oh my gosh.
SABINA: And this was the complete opposite. All he was trying to do is I'm in this new role. He was actually coming at it from a servant leader perspective. I want to understand each of you, connect with you, see what's most important to you, so I can serve you better. And he couldn't have been more wrong in what actually ended up happening.
EMILIE: There is something really threatening about authority.
SABINA: There is.
EMILIE: If he's a rock star peer, then we love his rockstar-ness. We love his high performance. But the moment he has authority over my job, people get freaked out, right. Over their safety and their basic needs being met. And they go, oh my gosh. Now his excellence, his precision, his outcome orientation is no longer a great thing. It's now threatening to me, right?
SABINA: Yes. Because now it's micromanagement. That excellence at attention to detail looks like micromanagement or lack of empowerment. Being strategic could look like you're being manipulative. Being direct can look like you're being callous. So everything looks different when your seat has changed, when you've gone from peer to boss.
EMILIE: Yeah. And those rules are very implicit, right?
SABINA: Yes. I mean people don't even realize it. They just think that's fact. And from the, from the downward angle and from the upward angle. You have no idea. All you're doing is of course setting up a one on one to get to know someone. How would you know that they're now ready to leave before you fire them?
EMILIE: Yeah, that's so funny. I wonder, what would you say to someone who's annoyed by that? Because I know the folks that you've interviewed in your book and in some of the stories you referenced in your book, people are like, what the heck? You know, like, all of a sudden there's these new rules, people are looking at me differently, and there's a perception challenge that a lot of women and folks of color in particular run into around. All of a sudden, I'm more threatening. All of a sudden my assertiveness is a liability instead of a strength. And it can just feel kind of exhausting to manage your perception when you feel like you can't control how others see you.
SABINA: Exactly. And this is why one of the pressure pitfalls, so the book is at the intersection of power and pressure. Pressure corrupts, as I mentioned, and power blinds you to the effects of that. So one of the most common pressure pitfalls is that of the sole provider, which men and women equally, at least in my experience, tend to fall into. But there is one sole provider trap that I notice more in women, which is the caretaker. My team is under a lot of pressure, so I'll just suck it up. This is a particularly busy time of year. Well, let me ask you, when is it not a particularly busy time of year? So there's this desire to want to jump in and be the only person, the sole provider for this.
One of my clients had been promoted to a pretty senior position at a university. And she said, oh my gosh, it's full on, all day I have meetings. So then after dinner with my family, I have to get down to the real work outside of the meetings. And then I don't go to bed till 1am because then I've got to clean the kitchen and load the dishwasher. And I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold the phone. You have four kids, all teenagers. Why is it that you're cleaning the kitchen and loading the dishwasher? And she said, well, because if they loaded the dishwasher, they would put the forks pointing downward and I want them pointing upward. Is that really something you need to do? How important is that? And, oh, and if I don't clean the kitchen counters, they'll be dirty during breakfast tomorrow. Okay, who else would that bother? Well, I don't know, so maybe you want to find out.
EMILIE: Isn't it funny how many parallels there are between parenting and leadership?
SABINA: Absolutely. Absolutely.
EMILIE: I'm pretty new to parenting and I cannot stop making the connections. And I hope my listeners aren't getting, like, annoyed if they're not parents and not interested in parenting. [LAUGHTER] But I'm like, there are just so many parallels with the delegation example you just gave. Like, am I the only one that can load the dishwasher? No. Are they going to load the dishwasher differently than I, yeah. Is that okay? Can I live with it? Have I defined success enough, you know, for them to meet my expectations? But to your point, if you're a high achiever, you're used to getting things done and doing it right. And when you're the leader, that's not your job anymore, right?
SABINA: Exactly. Your job is to create the space, the guidelines, the goals, the outcomes, the definition of success, and let them do the work. Funny story, a client of mine wrote to me and said, my wife and I have been reading your book together and we are immediately applying three principles, microhabits, delegation, dial, and 360 yourself with our kids. Can you simply rebrand the cover of your book to say you're the parent and have the exact same content? I bet you it will sell really well. [LAUGHTER]
So, because these are fundamentally relationships that you have to navigate, you have to navigate where you are in relationship and you're getting certain tasks done that can happen whether it's at work, or with friends, or in your church group, or with your kids.
EMILIE: I love it. I want to talk about some of those microhabits that you referenced in the book and just now. Which do you think are most relevant for folks who are just leveling up to leadership for the first time?
SABINA: One of the first ones is to build up what I call your shut up muscle. And when you're leveling up, it's easy to think you have all the answers and, or to provide the answers again with seemingly noble intentions of helping other people out. But of course, what it does is continue to make everyone look to you and make you the sole bottleneck. And also doesn't grow anybody else. It stunts their growth. It keeps them away from the limelight.
The shut up muscle, a microhabit for a shut up muscle, would be once a day in a meeting, be the third instead of the first or second person to speak. That's it. Because once you stop speaking and, or you're not the first to speak, it gives other people the space to come up with their own ideas and their own creativity. It also has the bonus benefit of you being able to look around the room or the video screen and notice what else is going on. Because when we're busy talking, we are not sensing, we're dulling our perception senses as to what's really going on.
EMILIE: And to be clear, you're giving that advice presuming this person has real power and authority, right?
SABINA: Yes.
EMILIE: And I think that changes the whole dynamic. So if you know that you'll have a chance to weigh in and get your message across, waiting can teach you more than being the first to speak. I love that.
SABINA: Absolutely.
EMILIE: That makes a lot of sense. I want to go back to this idea that, like, what got you here is not what's going to get you there. Because to your earlier references, one of the micromanaging habits that I see leaders take on or servant leadership downsides is hoarding all that work to themselves and, like, doing too much and being used to being the star player instead of the coach on the side of the field. How do we change that habit? How do we, especially if you used to be a peer on the team and you know how to do this job well, what do we need to let go of and what do we need to make space for when we're making that transition to that new level?
SABINA: Yeah. What got you here is going to be viewed very differently when you're there. So, first of all, you could simply understand where people are on these things. Let's say, you know, going back to the home example of the dishwasher. Okay, what if you were to show them how to load the dishwasher? The reason I have the forks pointing up instead of down is this. And here's how I tend to load it. And I don't have knives on the outermost pocket of the dishwasher because it can actually accidentally poke the soap dispenser or whatever, you know, believe me, lots of people come in with the dishwasher example. That's why I can go into all sorts of technicalities about loading dishwashers. But you might do it first and have them watch.
Then you teach them, you show them, and then you coach them. Okay. When you've loaded it before you hit start, let's walk through it. Let's make sure that it's not going to flood accidentally. Let's make sure the glasses are not going to cloud over because we haven't put the finisher in there and so on. And only once they've learned to do that, well, do you take your hand off the steering wheel? So for those people who are concerned about control or quality, you don't have to compromise on those, because you can be there every step of the way before you give them complete reign over what to do.
EMILIE: In fact, you should be right. Especially if it's a new thing that you're delegating. I always imagine the baton handoff, right? And it's like, yeah, I'm going to hold this baton. I'm the only one who knows how to do this task. And then when I hand it off to you, there's going to be a time period in which we both have our hands on the baton, and we're going to do this together, or I'm going to take a back seat and be an observer to you doing this. And then I'm going to let go of that baton, knowing that you have me as a resource if you need it. And I think that applicable in life and in work, right?
SABINA: Yes. And when we're both holding the baton, there's a micro moment of communication.
EMILIE: Yes.
SABINA: You understand I'm about to release it. And I understand you're about to. You've got it. And that, it's only once I know you've got it, do I let go.
EMILIE: Absolutely. I see a lot of junior leaders are sort of new to role leaders. Hand off a baton, it goes horribly wrong. They take the baton back, never to relinquish it again.
SABINA: It is the most dangerous thing.
EMILIE: Yeah.
SABINA: And that's why delegation is a dial, not a switch. That switch is what you were just describing, Emilie. Oh, I'm going to just hand this to you. Good luck with that. And then they give it to you on Friday evening for a Monday morning deliverable, and you spend the whole weekend redoing all the work. Not only is that hard for the pressure's on you, it damages the relationship and the trust between both of you. Because they're like, well, I shouldn't bother. Emilie's going to redo it anyhow, every time. And what am I, minced meat here, you know? So really being mindful on how you do it as a dial, little by little, you show them, you teach them, you tell them, you coach them, and only then do you hand it off completely.
EMILIE: I can hear the efficiency alarm bells going off in my mind, and I'm thinking of you postpartum thinking, but who the h*** has the time for that, right? What would you say to the leader who goes, that's all fine and dandy, but it's too slow?
SABINA: Because if you don't have the time for that, you're going to be redoing it. So then you might say, well, screw it, then I'm just going to do it myself to begin with and not even bother sending it to everyone. And then the challenge becomes, now you're doing everything yourself and nobody else is doing it. So over time it doesn't work. That doesn't mean that if you're in a, in a crunch one time or twice, you don't jump in and just do it because it is faster or you know it's going to be better. The key is, are you doing that every single time? Are you using that as an excuse? Are you hiding behind that as a shield to never grow yourself or others?
EMILIE: Right. Because good leaders develop leaders all around them. I always come back to that. And that takes an upfront investment of time. And it's not like you have to do that every day, all day. There's times when you're like, you know what, I'm going to run with this. But you're right, if it becomes a habit and a crutch, then that's just an excuse for poor leadership, frankly.
SABINA: And it's a key to being honest with yourself. Are you doing this every single time?
EMILIE: Absolutely. So you've mentioned this a few times and I want to really be explicit here. You've got a couple chapters here on the obscuring effect of power and the hidden impact of pressure. What is that relationship between power and pressure? And can you, can you share more about what that looks like?
SABINA: Mhm. The higher we go, the more pressure we have on our roles. So all of us these days, just about all of us are under tremendous pressure with the huge disruptive forces that are going on in technology, in the world, in the macroeconomics, you name it. Not to mention the pressures from our families, our day to day existence. And the higher we go, the more we're responsible for, the more pressure we are under. And under that pressure, it hijacks. When we don't manage it, our best instincts get hijacked into destructive habits like me, where I was barking out orders and not being fully present when people were coming to my office, not being mindful of how I communicated or treated people properly because of the stories we start telling ourselves under pressure that justify that.
So when we're under that pressure and we have power, nobody tells us the truth. The minute you become a boss, the room shifts. People are not willing to be fully honest with you. Your jokes are not funny enough to land you on America's Got Talent. Your every idea is worthy of a TED Talk. Why? Because as you said, Emilie, people want things from those in power that they don't want to lose. A raise, a promotion, or their very jobs. And who wants to tell a person in a position of power something that they don't want to hear or they think they don't want to hear?
So power becomes this distorted volume knob. Everything coming up is milder, muted, cushioned in praise. When an employee says everything is fine, it means I've started a secret group chat about your management habits. [LAUGHTER] And meanwhile, everything about boss says is amplified, harsher, more urgent, more dire. It's directed straight at me. So when a boss casually says, yeah, let's set up a one on one, they're thinking, here's when I get fired, I hope I said goodbye to my office plants. [LAUGHTER]
EMILIE: Wow. Yeah. So that is the distortion. I hear that it's sort of muffling and muting and, and your. Your tool, the 360 yourself tool, sounds like it would be a really helpful way to get past that distortion. Can you tell us more about that?
SABINA: There are 42 questions in the back of the book which can help identify which pressure pitfalls and which power gaps you tend to fall most prey to. If you tell yourself right now that you don't have time to answer 42 questions, which takes about 10 minutes, you could simply start by a couple of initial questions. Does anyone ever disagree with you? That doesn't mean you're that brilliant. You might be, but it might be that you've opened up a bigger power gap. Are you the only one who brings up ideas? Are you the hardest working person in the room who takes all the initiative to come up with agenda items, follow through, follow up, and create new things? Do you justify your actions with a yeah, but. This is the yeah, but I don't have time for that right now. Yeah, but I told them once, yeah, but they should just suck it up. If you're using a lot of “yeah buts” to justify your actions, you've likely fallen into one of those pitfalls as well.
EMILIE: Interesting. Yeah. Wow. What a great analysis here. I love this. So 360 yourself is your self assessment for like, identifying where things are challenging. I love that.
SABINA: You got it.
EMILIE: You know, I'm wondering what your take is, Sabina, on the listener who's taking all of this in and says, wow, leadership sounds like a really thankless endeavor. In fact, I did an episode of this very podcast about a year ago about the growing ambition gap where a lot of younger workers and a lot of women workers are looking at management and going, no thanks, this does not seem worth the trouble. What would you say to the. I don't want anyone to like, shrink themselves out of fear alone. But what would you say to that underlying concern that management is just not worth the hassle?
SABINA: Yes. And we're seeing that with, I believe it's Gen Z's, where there's this great un-bossing happening, right? And so here's the thing. Here's the thing. When power and pressure are not managed well, they can create monsters out of us and eat away into our productivity and our peace of mind. But power and pressure are also good. Think about it. Pressure isn't the enemy, it's the test. Pressure turns coal into diamonds. It's where you recognize the resilience, the creativity, the brilliance that you didn't even think you had. It's an invitation to grow and learn. And so pressure doesn't have to define you. It can refine you.
And power, power comes packed with perks. More control, more autonomy, a chance to realize your vision, maybe even a bigger seat on the airplane. When we begin to recognize that it's not possible to be pressure free, as I said, but when we begin to recognize there are ways to manage it, we open up huge possibilities for ourselves and for others to have a much bigger impact. And who here doesn't want to have as big an impact as possible in the limited time we have on this earth.
EMILIE: I think that is the core of it all, right? Like, if pressure and power can be leveraged to do your best work, to have a bigger imprint on the world, like there's something very enticing. They're talking about perks, right? Like there's something deeply satisfying. I've actually witnessed my husband go on this trajectory himself. He started off as a very technical expert, an architect by trade, someone who taught himself digital fabrication. And so he really creates custom, beautiful cabinetry for his clients.
But over the past few years, he went from being the go to project manager to being kind of like the COO in the seat of how do I grow this team? How do I expand this team? How do I magnify our collective impact? And trust me, there were lots of false starts along that journey, and there were lots of two steps forward, one step back, and oh my gosh, what did I get myself into? But the satisfaction of seeing a vision come to fruition and saying, wow, I've now upskilled my team so that I've got three rockstar project managers. I don't have to be the only rockstar here. We can serve more people and it's through other people's self-actualization that I made happen like that. That is so deeply satisfying as a leader. Even if it feels hard fought and thankless at times, right?
SABINA: Absolutely. Absolutely. That multiplying what I'm hearing you say, Emilie, the multiplying effect and really impacting people's lives in addition to the work.
EMILIE: Yeah. Power with other people, power to influence their lives, their day to day experience of work. Like what a beautiful vision that is. So what is your leadership vision that you want to leave our listeners with? Like how do you want to magnify your impact and who do you want to influence, who might be listening right now?
SABINA: I would love to influence anybody who's dealing with pressure in how to harness that in a more mindful way. Every action has a reaction. Are you aware of which direction your reaction is going so that it has the appropriate impact that you want? You know, everybody I work with goes, but my intent is good. And I said and your intent is only as good as your actions. You wouldn't even be here if your intent wasn't good. So now let's look beyond that to how do you land that intent? So there's fidelity, there's integrity between your intent and the impact it's having. Who is this book and how do I do this? Through people reading the book so that it's not just the clients who I have this exclusive one on one relationship with. I believe this book has the power to transform your relationship with power and pressure in everything you do at work and at home.
EMILIE: Absolutely. Where can our listeners get their hands on a copy of You're The Boss?
SABINA: Anywhere books are sold. And Emilie, if they go to my website, Sabina Nawaz.com once they've ordered the book, they can download tools and worksheets and scripts to help them or even book discussion guides.
EMILIE: Great. I will drop a link to your website in today's show notes. Sabina, thank you so much for joining me.
SABINA: Thank you very much, Emilie.
EMILIE: For more links and resources to everything Sabina and I just talked about, head to bossedup.org/episode514. That's bossedup.org/episode514. There you'll find a consolidated blog post highlighting some of the key points that Sabina and I talked through today, as well as a fully written transcript for those who would like that. Now I want to hear from you. Let's keep the conversation going after the episode in the Bossed Up Courage Community on Facebook or in the Bossed Up Group on LinkedIn. If you've gone from peer to leader yourself, what has that journey entailed? What worked to navigate that transition with grace, and how have you handled the power and the pressure?
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And as always, my inbox is always open. If you've got feedback about today's episode, just shoot me an email at emilie@bossedup.org until next time, let's keep bossin’ in pursuit of our purpose, and together let's lift as we climb.
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