Invisible skillsets

Koren (00:00:00) – Hey there. Ready to not just live and grind it out, but thrive in both your professional and personal life? Let’s co-create that journey together. Here are three options. One: engage in thought provoking conversations at our exclusive dinner party. Two: join Dare to Lead, my upcoming group coaching program kicking off this fall. Three: opt for personalized private coaching for a deep transformational journey. Don’t just work, thrive with meaningful work and personal fulfillment woven together. We’ll create a life that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside. Ready to take the leap? Check the show notes for more. Can’t wait to work with you.

Music (00:00:56) – She’s dreaming, she’s drifting. Never been so wide awake. Captured in the moment by the beauty all around her. There’s nowhere else that she would rather be.

Koren (00:01:12) – Hello and welcome. This is Koren Motekaitis. And you’re listening to How She Really Does It, the place where inspiration and possibility meet. One of the things that you all know is that I really appreciate the work of Brené Brown.

Koren (00:01:33) – She’s been a guest on this show. I am one of her trained facilitators, and I am just so grateful for the research she’s done and the books that she’s written and the stories that she tells. And what I used to say in the early years was doing her work helped give me the lens to see the world more clearly. And what I’m going to talk about today is about the invisible skill sets. And when I’ve done trainings with the Air Force and I remember this, one of the commanders said it was very brave of him actually to say this because they’re not really thrilled to be there. This is mandatory leadership training. And I remember one of the commanders saying, ma’am. The Air Force is soft enough. Why are we learning soft skills? And this often happens when I go into corporations, when I work at the companies and leaders. And there’s this idea that learning about our feelings is soft and it’s actually the invisible skill sets. And I remember this when I was a young coach in college, and I had these young men who were male athletes and were tough.

Koren (00:02:41) – You know, we do hard things and we don’t need to rest and we can sleep when we die. And that whole mindset that I had back then, my thought of being a head coach was I can either be nice and bring you cupcakes on your birthday as your boss, which wasn’t going to happen. Or I can be a bitch and we just get shit done because I’m a busy person and we’ve got to lead these teams and build a culture and get people to swim fast. Right. And it was very this or that. And I didn’t realize that there were actually so many different opportunities between being nice and being a bitch and how I could lead. And it was these invisible skill sets that I learned over the years. And yes, there’s times that I’m more fierce and there’s times that I’m kinder. I’m still not bringing cupcakes for your birthday. Doesn’t happen, but I’ve learned a lot of invisible skill sets instead of this black and white all or nothing thinking. And so it’s not soft skills. And I think we actually do.

Koren (00:03:37) – This is a disservice to say that it’s soft skills because these are the skill sets that are part of the connective tissue of how we connect with other people, how we build trust, how we lead, how we’re able to influence. And there’s not a right or wrong, which makes it hard and we can’t see them, so we can’t touch them. I’ll give you some examples of different invisible systems. This is the world that I see. This is what I’m navigating and navigating my clients through every day. And when we can understand that they’re invisible, we can start to see them and we can start to look for them. It’s kind of like the cobwebs. I’m all about cobwebs these days because of where I live and the time of the year and there’s a lot of cobwebs and sometimes you don’t see them. But then one day you look up and you’re like, wow, look at that cobweb. I need to take it down. And then you forget. And this happened recently in my office. There was a cobweb and I’d been noticing it and I kept forgetting to take it down.

Koren (00:04:33) – And finally one day I got a tissue paper and I took it down. These invisible systems, sometimes we don’t see them until we know what to look for or where to look for them. So here’s an example of an invisible skill set, emotional language, and I referenced this earlier being able to identify what you’re feeling with the word of what you’re feeling, it actually empowers you. It doesn’t weaken you. Oftentimes, my clients and sometimes this is more on the men’s side, right? Because most of our language, especially for women and men, we know 3 to 5 descriptors of emotions, right? Identifiers. So it’s happy, sad, mad, angry. Stress can be one of them. So they’ll often say they’re stressed. And when we can do this work and get really underneath it, there may be shame. There may be fear. The shame of, oh no, this company is going to go down under my leadership or my group is not going to be as good or people are going to know that I really don’t know what the hell I’m doing.

Koren (00:05:35) – And I have all of these outwardly things that would make them think that I do, whether they’re degrees, previous awards, whatever it may be, it’s on the outside. It looks like they just think they’re amazing. But on the inside they’re struggling with their own imposter syndrome, which is shame. So being able to identify what you’re feeling and being able to label it, that’s an invisible skill set and it actually empowers you. It gives you grounded confidence. You can go, oh, that thing I’m feeling right now is shame. Okay. What do I need right now? Oh, I’m feeling shame because I’m realizing I have managed this in a way that has actually created more problems than actually help move the project forward. And I want to beat myself up and lash out because then it would be that old conditioning of if I beat myself up, I’ll do better. But really, I just kind of want to quit and give up or go down myself, right? Whether it’s with television, our phones, you know, it’s Friday night, whatever it may be.

Koren (00:06:42) – So this is why learning emotional language is really important, because when you can identify it, you can then realize, okay, I’m feeling shame, It’s okay. I have this story that I shouldn’t make these mistakes or I should have known better, but really, did I have the capacity to learn this so that the capacity to do it differently? Did I know this invisible skill set prior to right now? Probably not. And that’s okay. I can learn it. So one of the examples that I’m going to share with you is in 2012, one of the invisible skill sets that I had was not being able to cook. I didn’t really know much, I mean, I could cook like scrambled eggs and pancakes and that kind of stuff and banana bread. But to me, you know, really cooking a meal, I didn’t know how to do it. And I was a nightmare parent because I would freak out when things weren’t done perfectly because my whole thing was, if you don’t know what’s going to happen, just control every aspect.

Koren (00:07:40) – And I was freaking out and it was a total shit show. And then I realized I’m like feeling all the shame because I’m not being the parent I want to be. And I should know better, except I don’t use that word. So I realized once I started having compassion and empathy for myself, which are the antidotes to shame, I said, huh. So the problem is, that I don’t know. I don’t know. I have these rules that when I don’t know, I go into perfectionism and these incredibly unrealistic high standards where everything has to be perfect to the 0.01g that does it. And so maybe I can learn. And then that helped me go, okay, what do I need to be able to learn how to cook? I needed teachers who were compassionate, who weren’t going to judge me, who weren’t going to mock me. We’re going to be safe and break it down in slow steps. And I found those friends who were willing to do that. And I learned and I was able to unlearn my own perfectionism.

Koren (00:08:38) – And then I also learned how to manage risk because the risk was I don’t want to poison my family. And then also, like, I don’t want to waste food or waste money, right? So I learned the skill sets I practice and I became more comfortable. I had support and I was able to cook dinners for my family. I’ve even cooked like a dinner party, not my favorite thing and need more practice doing it. But I was able to do that. And I’ll never forget the night that I went to go cook ribeyes because my friend had taught me. He taught me how to barbecue with ribeyes. So then I went to the stores like he taught me ribeyes a better buy ribeyes and I remember walking out to the barbecue is like a week later going, this is a pretty expensive thing to be doing for my first time by myself and I made the decision, We’re going to eat this even if it’s well, well done, we’re going to eat it. Because I didn’t want to waste animals and I didn’t want to waste, you know, resources, but I didn’t actually do it.

Koren (00:09:32) – Well, well done. It was maybe more medium well, but we were able to eat it. And I learned how to barbecue and make food, but it was because I was willing to, instead of freak out, instead of go into this like, shame storm and beat myself up and offload to my family, I looked at what am I feeling right now? Oh, I’m feeling shame. Oh, And when I’m feeling shame, I’m thinking I need to control things more. You know, I need things to be perfect. And does it really need to be perfect? So that’s an example of emotional language. The next one is mindset, like what’s really going on in your brain. So I talked about a bit about the feeling state, but what are the stories, right? And some of the stories I was sharing there was it has to be perfect. You can’t mess up. If you mess up one gram, you may poison your family. Really? Not true. Especially in baking. Maybe it’s flat.

Koren (00:10:24) – Maybe it doesn’t look pretty. Is it still edible? Probably. Right. But really paying attention to what’s going on in your brain. And one of my clients this week had shared with me that she met somebody in her company and her corporation thought, oh, this would be a great person to do work together with, and then decided and made a thought of, I’m not going to put my name in because I think another colleague of mine is and it’s just going to be too hard. And so here’s the thing is that she said to me, she said, well, Koren, can I share with you what’s going on in my brain? Pay attention to that. Right. If we can own those stories instead of judging ourselves of like, we shouldn’t be thinking this or, you know, I shouldn’t do that because I should know better. Like, how do we create our own obstacles and how do we opt out before we even get started? And this happens so much. It happens in business, it happens in entrepreneurship, It happens with executives and professionals.

Koren (00:11:22) – It happens in athletics. So understanding what your thoughts are and what your feelings are that actually allows you to not become attached to it and it allows you to move through it and get clear with what is really true. So those are invisible systems. Other invisible systems will go to something like this of systems. What are the systems in place? It can be how do you calendar, calendaring meetings? People have different systems. Some people’s systems really support them. Some people’s systems don’t really support them. And I think about clients who I’ve had who’ve had 14 meetings in a day, that’s on a system that supports them in learning how to create a system that does support them. That’s part of the invisible system. There’s time blocking, right? Realizing like so these are invisible skill sets that people not may not realize of like, oh, how do they get all this done? How are they so successful? For some people, it’s time blocking. It’s about doing focus work and being really blocking out the world so that they can go deep into what they’re doing.

Koren (00:12:27) – Right. And that’s what I’m doing right now, is that I have everything on focus so that I don’t get interruptions so I can be here with you and be in deep focus. It allows me to actually get things done faster than if I allow the interruptions to be coming in, the text, the emails, the phone calls, right. All this different noise. That’s where it’s constantly coming in and pinging us. Scheduling is an invisible skill set. There’s not one way to do scheduling, and it’s about figuring out what is the way for you. And so sometimes it’s about trying on different ones to figure out what works for you. I was talking with a girlfriend about this the other day. You know, do people have access to your calendar? And she’s like, no, you know, and people don’t have access to my calendar. One, it’s my clients are confidential. And then two is I don’t want people just to be able to put time on the schedule. Like there’s stuff that I need to have, like being here with you doing this podcast.

Koren (00:13:23) – And I have clients who people, they’re like, well, all of a sudden a meeting got scheduled, right? So does that invisible system, does it work for you? What skill sets do you need to create? It may be boundaries, right? Because in this world of emails, texts, pings, slack, team, zoom, there’s so much coming at it. So what are the skill sets that you need so that you can be supported? Other invisible skill sets would be connection. What brings connection and thinking about that, paying attention to what works for you, for connection and what doesn’t work for you? Connection so often, Right? The thing that we want, and we’ve heard this from Brené, the very thing that we want from somebody else is vulnerability. They’re going to show us who they are. They’re going to share with us their vulnerable selves. And we want to never share our vulnerable selves with them. But then it’s not a give and take. So part of what brings connection between two people is vulnerability and having the discernment to know what you share with this person and what maybe you don’t share with the other one, and this is one that I’m working on is tone.

Koren (00:14:34) – You know, what is the tone? I’m such a you know, again, I was willing to be bitch right in my 20s and being a survivor and being a coach and wanting to get things done, not having enough time growing up in the family of origin that I grew up in was very fierce. So working on tone and how can I change that? How can I improve that so that I can help create connection versus foster disconnection? One of the ways that I created this connection, especially as a young coach in my 20s, was I would have sarcasm, I would joke around with sarcasm. And while it’s kind of funny and there’s humor, we’re kind of laughing, but inside it doesn’t feel so good. And that’s actually a way to create disconnection is humor. It’s armor. It’s armor on our hearts. We say this, we don’t say what we really think, what we really feel. So that’s a way to do disconnection, the one upping of each other, like, oh, well, you think that’s a problem? You should hear my day, right? Instead of allowing that person to have their experience and you can have yours, there doesn’t need to be a competition from people who are very competitive.

Koren (00:15:43) – You know, and athletes can be hard not to have competition because that’s the way that we’ve gotten so ingrained in our way of being. And it’s part of our invisible system. But realizing when we are in competition and when we aren’t in competition, things aren’t a zero sum game. So that one upping that can be an empathy miss versus a connection. How can we connect having perspective? Sometimes what I’ll do, and this is a new thing that I’ve noticed I’m not not anything I’ve noticed. I’ve noticed that for a few years, but I’m really working on practicing, is that I will often laugh at things because the stuff, it’s so painful, it’s ridiculous. And it’s either like I’m like, I can either laugh or cry, right? And I choose to laugh. But that can create disconnection with the person that’s telling them to me. And this isn’t in my coaching. This is like my personal relationships, right? And realizing like, hmm, how about I just hold space and don’t say anything and don’t laugh, right?

Koren (00:16:42) – Because that can create disconnection because who knows what the story can be on the other side. So paying attention to what are the invisible skill sets that creates connection and that creates disconnection. The other skill set is on trust building. Bring in the Rising Strong Dare To Lead model has the braving acronym as trust building. And that’s part of the anatomy. One of the ways that I do trust building and connection within the Aqua Monsters, especially those five and six year olds this summer as they played Uno. Instead of trying to get into this power theme where you must swim and you must go warm up. And instead it was about meeting them where they were resistant and saying, that is okay, how about we play a game of Uno? Let’s have some fun and trust each other. And how about you see me in a different role than I’m the big boss? I’m the one that, you know, says the hard stuff. How about we play cards together? And then they learn that, Oh, they can beat me.

Koren (00:17:39) – Not that I’m giving up. I won’t give in. Right? But literally, they could beat me at Uno and be able to realize their own power and their own. And when I say power, like their own empowerment, like they have their agency. So it’s not a power thing between the two of us. It’s about building trust. The other example is, is that with those kids, with Uno, when we were at Championships, we do a parade. And there was resistance that morning about warm up. And I said, hey, can I take you around to walk through where the parade will be? Because I can tell that she had some resistance about doing the parade. And I said to her, I said, remember, I do what I say. And so I’m not going to try to trick you and put you in the pool. I’m just going to walk with you. So you know what the parade looks like. Then you can decide, do you want to do it right? So we went around and we walked.

Koren (00:18:27) – We picked up another swimmer who was refusing to get in. And we walked around and I explained it. They asked questions and soon enough she was feeling more comfortable, right. And more warmed up. And then she said, Look, I have my swimsuit on underneath. And I said, that’s great. And there was no warming up for her because I’d already promised her that. But that’s trust building, that’s connection. That’s doing what I say I’m going to do and that’s being reliable. And I’ve continued to build trust with her. Right. And then later she did the parade and then she did her races and then she warmed up in the afternoon when she made finals and she did her races. And then come Monday, she was like leading the pool at practice. So things changed. So I oftentimes I hold the vision of where we’re going to go, even though maybe a shit show in the beginning, trust building is about doing what you say you’re going to do. Soft skills are often viewed as weak, and we can easily armor up and say we don’t have time for this.

Koren (00:19:21) – And when I was a young coach, I would say that I’m too busy. I’ve got stuff to do right. But being reactive and not learning the invisible skill sets can be actually very harmful to ourselves, our relationships, our lives, those we lead, those we are responsible for. And you may be fine right now, but I’ve also seen firsthand how the lack of those invisible skill sets get in the way of the dreams that we desire. So whether you’re one of the little kids that I’m coaching, it’s so important that we learn these invisible skill sets so that we can overcome our resistance and figure out how do we create the results that we want. And here’s the thing. This is so, so important. As I wrap up. We need to stop beating ourselves up that we don’t have the results in our life because it isn’t because we aren’t worthy or good enough. That’s what we do. Or we’re not disciplined like there’s something’s fatally wrong with me. And that’s why oftentimes, there are these invisible skill sets that we have missing.

Koren (00:20:19) – So we need to rest and nourish ourself so that then we can then come from that place of compassion to look for what the invisible systems are in that place. And often when we’re looking, it is faster and more helpful for ourselves to go with a trusted guide who has the experience of the invisible skill sets. Therefore, a swimmer joins a swim team where if you need to learn emotional language, trust building, practicing courage and vulnerability so you can be a brave leader and you’re working your personal life right? You join my upcoming coaching group stepping into leadership by learning these invisible skill sets so you can support those that you lead as well as yourself. These are all learnable. That’s the beauty of this. So if you’re interested in joining my upcoming group this fall of 2023, go to the link in the podcast page. We have an Early bird special that’s going to be going until the beginning of September 2023. So make sure you apply. Let’s meet and see if this is a great fit for you. All right, my friend, I’m smiling big for you.

Koren (00:21:28) – Hey there. You know, coaching is a term you’re hearing a lot these days, but let’s be real good coaching. The kind that truly changes lives is more than a buzzword. Imagine your favorite sports team without their coach. Hard to picture, right? A coach is someone who sees their blind spots, pushes them forward to perform better and help them achieve their goals, and above all, is always there to support them. And that’s what I aim to be for you in your journey. But here’s the thing. It’s not just about advancing your career. It’s about living in integration, where the work you do is not only rewarding, but deeply meaningful. It’s about fostering, loving, connected relationships not only with others, but also with yourselves as you do your meaningful work in your life. It’s not about splitting your time perfectly between work and life, because life in all it’s wonderful. And predictability doesn’t work that way. It’s about weaving your professional and personal life together in a way that each one enriches the other, allowing you to thrive in all the areas of your life.

Koren (00:22:43) – Here’s how we can kick start this transformative journey. One, Dinner Parties. Imagine an evening filled with fantastic food, thought provoking conversation, and people who are on the same journey as you will share stories, learn from each other, and of course have a lot of fun and connection. Interested? Let us know where you’d like us to host one. You can fill out the form linked in the show notes. Two, if you prefer a group environment, join one of my group coaching programs. My upcoming one is Dare to Lead starting this fall. It’s an amazing way to grow. Surrounded by folks who share similar challenges and aspirations as you while they’re pursuing to unlock their leadership potential. Three. For more tailored experience, we can dive deep with private one on one coaching. This is a chance for you to focus purely on your journey, your goals, your struggles and your growth. So three opportunities. One goal. Thriving in a life where meaningful work and personal fulfillment are interwoven seamlessly into your life. Ready to take the next step?

Koren (00:24:00) – All the details are in the show notes. And don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter for updates. Remember, growth isn’t just about work. It’s about creating a life that feels good on the inside, not one that just looks good on the outside. So let’s do this. Can’t wait to work with you.

Music (00:24:24) – She’s dreaming, she’s drifting. Never been so wide awake. Captured in the moment by the beauty all around her. There’s nowhere else that she would rather be.