[00:00:00] Kevin Stafford: Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the conversations with coaches podcast. I, your host, Kevin, have already been having a very intriguing conversation. I really, the kind of conversation I love to have with Jamie Martin, who’s been a guest on this podcast before you will, if you don’t remember her, just go back and listen to our previous episode.
It’s Frickin great. Let me reintroduce you to Jamie and then we’re just going to jump right back into this conversation because I just, it’s, there’s just, there’s a lot of meat on this bone, so to speak. Jamie is a life and leadership coach who partners with people who have been going so long that they’ve lost themselves.
Working with Jamie, her clients own their power while doing the uncomfortable things they have dreamed of doing. Jamie, thank you so much for coming back on. I’m already just like chomping at the bit excited to just jump back into our conversation. Thank you for sharing some time today.
[00:00:43] Jamie Martin: No, thank you for having me. I love coming on and talking to you. Cause I feel like you said the energy just goes and bounces. And I walk away going, there’s more sweet.
[00:00:54] Kevin Stafford: That’s the idea. There’s always more. So let’s, I’ve been having these these sort of like fall review episodes with previous guests, just talking about either the year in review or, and, or what’s coming up next.
And I feel like you’ve got so much good stuff coming up next. That’s just. reflective of and born out of all the work you’ve been doing since I’ve known you. So let’s talk about what you’ve got coming up very soon. When we’re recording this, it’s mid November, which I’m still emotionally processing how late in 2023 it is, but you’ve got a lot of exciting stuff, mini courses and full, like all sorts of stuff coming up in 2024.
So I’m just going to open the floor to you to start talking about that. And then we’ll just we’ll start pinging back and forth like we were. Awesome.
[00:01:35] Jamie Martin: Sounds good. The mini course that I actually just launched is the thing that I’m really excited about. So it’s all about how we can start to look at the way we’re working and how it ties to how we’re getting respect at work.
So the idea is I’ve been really playing around with the mantra, work smarter, not harder and realizing how it actually fails us.
[00:02:02] Kevin Stafford: Go on. I like
[00:02:04] Jamie Martin: this. Let’s take a moment on that one. Yeah. Because often, especially as women, what happens is we get more work and we pile more on and we pile more on, but there isn’t a direct correlation to more work and more respect or more recognition or advancing our career.
For example, I was just thinking about my internship way back when. I was in my 20s and I was doing account payable work, entering stuff in. And I remember being like, I was just cranking through, going, yeah, this is great. I’m doing an amazing job, but I was pulled into a meeting with the rest of the interns where we got For lack of a better word, laid into for the work we were doing because not everybody else was doing the same amount of work.
In that moment, I was like, Oh my gosh, I’m not getting respect for the work I’m doing by my boss. I’m not getting respected by my colleagues, my counterparts, because they’re not pulling their weight. And as a result, I’m lumped in. To this group, and I see this happening so much over and over again, where we try to take on more and more work.
We try to be more efficient. What we’re doing, and it’s usually in the attempt of solving 1 problem. Okay. So we’re usually doing it so that we can maybe go home at five o’clock and put work away. But what’s ends up happening is that we end up getting more work added because our boss is all about more output.
And they’re not thinking, let’s be gracious to our bosses. They’re not thinking in their head like, Oh, I’m going to, I’m going to get this person. They’re just like, Oh, sweet. You’ve got some bandwidth here. Take it. And more often than not, you’re saying, yes, give me more.
[00:03:50] Kevin Stafford: Now you’re viewing that in your head or in your heart as recognition or respect when really it’s just being delivered as more responsibility.
More
[00:04:00] Jamie Martin: responsibility, but not necessarily the responsibilities you want. Yes. And I want to make that delineation because we can have more responsibility, but if that responsibility is not taking us where we want to go, to what end? And so I really want us to start to have the conversation around where does respect start?
How do we start to lean into that? And how does that play out into our work life?
[00:04:27] Kevin Stafford: There’s I, my there’s so many different directions to go there, all of them relevant. I just love, it’s, as, as important as it is to be to embrace and understand that we’re all at various points in our journey. There’s a very, there’s foundational work that needs to be done. You don’t go all the way back to the beginning, but you do have to you have to build the foundation for this kind of respect and regard.
Because quite frankly, the systems that have grown up. In those places are, as you’ve clearly identified, not conducive to getting that kind of respect and recognition in a way that’s healthy for all parties involved in a way that’s useful and productive for everyone, not just some unconsidered or poorly considered bottom line or whatever it might happen to be giving bosses and giving everybody the benefit of the doubt.
[00:05:13] Jamie Martin: Which on the flip side, like I do see an opportunity there, we, but we have to do the work to get them to the place where they are willing to self reflect. And I hate that’s part of the conversation because, we talk about women and racism and everything under the sun and saying, why do I have to take ownership of getting them to make a change?
And the thing that I’m coming to is more that. It’s not about getting them to make a change, but it’s about us getting to the place where we’re not waiting for them to change, right? So that we get to be at the table, we get to then start to make the decisions that impact and influence the
[00:05:58] Kevin Stafford: system. That is such a critical shift in that regard, because often, and again, you almost fall into a separate trap of now, not only are you just doing more actual work.
For less for guard, you’re also doing more emotional labor on someone else’s behalf, just to bring things up to an acceptable quote unquote level, and I use I put big scare quotes around acceptable because it’s not, it’s just what we’ve allowed to become the floor, it’s what we’ve allowed to become standard operating procedure, which is that’s a double edged sword right there I love standardization but not when the systems are.
Crappy to put it mildly. Yeah.
[00:06:38] Jamie Martin: Yeah. And I think that’s why it’s so important to do our own work first, because what we were talking about earlier is understanding. Am I even in the right company? Because there are leaders who are doing their work and they’re going to acknowledge and say, yeah, I’m not perfect, but I am working and self reflecting and trying harder and harder to do it.
And when we do our own work, we get to then say, Ooh, maybe this isn’t the place for me.
[00:07:09] Kevin Stafford: Yeah, identifying that alignment. It’s that word gets thrown around so much in coaching for good reason, because like without alignment, you’re just, you literally aren’t rowing in the same direction as the people around you, whether it’s your team or the people who work for you or the people you work for.
And you just in my head, I always see. Like the rowboat, because I love the rowboat analogy, and just these oars flailing in different directions off to the side, and the boat’s just, if you’re lucky, spinning in place, if it’s not flipping over.
[00:07:35] Jamie Martin: Yeah, totally. And I think, too, is when we start to feel in alignment with our work, and we get to feel in alignment with ourselves, decisions become easier.
And so when we start in that place, it’s a lot easier to look around and go, oof. This work environment is not for me and saying how do I put myself somewhere else? Instead of feeling like you have to fix the environment you’re in, change the environment. And guess what? If we haven’t seen anything, the pandemic showed the power that employees actually have when we in mass make decisions and companies are still trying, they’re doing the tug with us right now, right?
Say, don’t come back into the office, come back into the office. They’re not successful because enough employees are pushing back. So imagine a place where we own our own, right? We get an alignment and we move to the organizations that are actually in alignment with. What we value, what we have as a mission in life, how we want to function, it’s going to be a powerful shift in, I think, in
[00:08:50] Kevin Stafford: society.
Yeah, it’s an important balancing too, because it’s, for, in a lot of obvious, in some very not obvious ways the scales are tilted and have been tilted in the wrong direction for a while. That’s one of the things that I’m liking. I’m going to put on my Captain Optimism hat, because there’s a lot to see in the world that’s not super, doesn’t put a smile on your face, but one of the things that does is a growing regard for the imbalanced systems that have largely undergirded our entire our personal and professional lives, and enough of us realizing that talking to each other Beginning that journey together and taking action together because that’s what you said that not to start like putting up the pro union sign over here but that’s an example of how community build grows and affects change that benefits everybody and that’s I know it’s like you say that loud it’s common sense it’s oh of course that’s the way you know it’s what human beings are and yet we’re so you For various reasons stuck in the grind, maybe our heads in the sand, maybe we’ve just got too much on our plate.
Maybe we’ve taken on so much of a burden that we can barely, we can’t lift our heads to see what’s on the horizon, and that’s something that I’m that’s something that you are working actively to change, which I love. And so I, we’re, we’ve gotten into some high concept stuff too, but I want to make sure we go back to these programs you’re developing.
And so you’ve got the mini course, you’ve got something
[00:10:11] Jamie Martin: else coming up. That’s what I was going to tee up around what you were just saying is that. Overworking piece of things because what happens when we get into that place is that when we try to create change and still change, we actually come off in a different way, right?
We become defensive. We become thick. I’m putting my stick in, right? I’m not willing to come in partnership. I’m not willing to have the conversation. I’m not willing to actually be in communion with you. Somebody else to create that change and so a lot of the work that my programs are so this mini course around less work, more respect is about how do we start first with ourselves get to the place where we’re not buried under.
All of the extra work, all of the extra thinking, and we’re actually getting ourselves personal selves into our own alignment and the next jump, which is my launch in January, unleash your voice is taking that all to the next level. It’s really about being able to get to that place where when you are speaking and you are contradicting, you’re not afraid of.
The repercussions of it, because you’re in alignment, that you can make a different choice tomorrow as to whether or not the outcome of you using your voice has impacted your life in a negative way. An example is right. I few years ago had to tell a C, the C who everybody was scared to death of that.
He was wrong. And really wrong. And I didn’t hesitate because to me, he was. Impacting somebody else’s reputation in a way that really, I was like, I cannot be in alignment with this. This is not right. You’re saying things that are not true. And so I used my voice after I left the meeting, I went to my mentor’s office and he went, Ooh, you’re going to get your face licked.
That’s how afraid everybody was of him. I stayed there five years because the leadership started shifting. And because I was willing to use my voice, other people started going, you mean I can too. And so that just showed me that there is an opportunity to create change through how we own our own stories, through how we own our own truths and show up for those truths.
And so that’s what I’m creating for other people is that opportunity to not be afraid of saying. The truth that they know and knowing that if in the end you’re, you find out that you are actually afraid that you might be being pushed out the door, then it’s not the right
[00:13:01] Kevin Stafford: company for you. Exactly, and that’s, I, you use that word repercussions, and that word repercussions has, it has, at least in my head, it has a sort of fixed negative connotation, where it’s just but the repercussions here are, some of them might be challenging, and difficult, but they’re all positive, because either, again, you begin to affect real change in your environment, By speaking up by literally unleashing your voice in that way, or you begin to find you begin to look elsewhere, whether immediately or very soon after depending on how things go depending on how toxic the environment you’re currently in is, you’re immediately ejected from that environment.
And have an eye on something that you know you need to find alignment with you have your eye on the next thing and so granted it might be difficult. It might be challenging and the road will sometimes slash often be bumpy, but the repercussions are all going in the right direction. They are all positive.
They are all in alignment again, but it begins with that work of opening up your voice
[00:14:03] Jamie Martin: for sure. And I love that you highlight that it’s not that the road is becomes easy. I think we have this view that when we get to a certain place where we’re really comfortable, I think of the confidence trap, right?
Where people keep saying, Oh, I just need confidence. And I think that they believe and feel that when they walk in the room, that it’s just going to be easy because
[00:14:25] Kevin Stafford: they’re confident. That’s arrogance. That’s not confidence. Arrogance is believing it’ll all be easy because you’ve decided it is.
[00:14:31] Jamie Martin: True.
But I think that there’s a story that we play out when we don’t have confidence or we don’t, we feel like we’re not confident that when we have confidence, everything else will be easier. The challenges will be easier because well, I’m confident. So I can just go and do the thing.
But that’s the thing with confidence is it actually starts to open up. And when we challenge ourselves, it starts to open up more challenges for us. And it’s just allowing us to have the grace to say, Ooh, here’s a new challenge. Let’s go at, let’s go at it. I’m going to learn some lessons.
[00:15:01] Kevin Stafford: That’s real scary to think about. It’s Oh, I got the confidence. It’s just going to, Oh, it’s going to, it’s going to turn, it’s going to open up the next level. There’s going to be different doors that are going to start opening up and then behind the, on the other side of those doors are going to be some, I’ll need more confidence to even walk through that door.
But that’s, again, repercussions, not negative. That’s the good part.
[00:15:19] Jamie Martin: That, and that’s what we’re talking about when we talk about growth. So I hear so many people be like, I just want to grow in my career. Growth comes. In the uncomfortable.
[00:15:28] Kevin Stafford: I remember my biggest growth spurt when I went from from relatively short kid to over six feet.
I basically went out, that preteen teenager years when you’re growing. I was a wreck. My bones hurt. Like it’s all this weird stuff going on. Growth is uncomfortable and messy. And weird and you bump into inanimate objects and other people in ways that are also uncomfortable. It’s if you want to think about your growth journey through life, it’s not going to be a one to one analog to your teenage years.
Cause thankfully nothing is, but it’s messy. It’s hard. It’s weird. It hurts. And you don’t know why, but you’re going the right direction.
[00:16:06] Jamie Martin: You’re going the right direction. And then when you can take a breath to look around for a moment, Oh, even when you’re in the midst of it. I love when I stop my clients and I’m like, Hey, just look around for a moment.
And they’re like, wait a second, what? This is where I’m at. They get really excited because even though they’re in the middle of that pain, no, I’ll call it pain, uncomfortableness. It can be pain at times. But they realized that they went from here
[00:16:37] Kevin Stafford: to here. There’s a good little distinction there to be made too, because sometimes the difference between discomfort and pain can tell you a lot about whether or not you are in alignment and on the right track.
I get uncomfortable when I exercise. That’s me. That’s parts of my body growing. The muscles tear, but they grow back stronger. But when I feel pain, I know maybe I’ve gone too far or I’m doing something that’s outside my capabilities, or I’ve pushed too far, too fast. And I’m starting to there’s a pain there that again, it’s drawing your attention to it.
The discomfort is a feature. It’s telling you, yes, you are doing the work. You’re going to feel it in your body and in your heart and in your mind and in your spirit. When there’s pain, that’s also. It also guides you to stay on the right path and to be, you know what, this, this doesn’t feel, this doesn’t feel right.
This feels like something other than discomfort. I should look at that. I should talk to a coach about that. It’s am I, this is exactly, not to blow smoke up your butt, but this is exactly where people like you are just invaluable. Because you’ve got the perspective to be like, okay, let’s talk about whether or not what you’re experiencing right now is a dangerous pain.
Or an important discomfort, right? Let’s
[00:17:47] Jamie Martin: explore that. I would even say dangerous is another distinction, right? Because when I hear pain and what you were saying earlier was really key is looking at it and saying, What is this telling me? Exactly. Because that pain could just be like, Oh, wait a second.
And you’ve said it. I went too fast. I went too fast out at the gate. And it. It, I needed a few more brooks on my path before I jumped, right? And maybe we just have to, all right, sweet, let’s put up a few more bricks. And then that pain disappears. I have back pain and chronic, chronic back pain, but the interesting thing about it is when I started realizing that the pain was actually telling me I was afraid of moving forward in something.
It was, and it is very interesting because now every single time it crops up, I’m like, Oh, what am I afraid of? What am I afraid of? And before it would let, I was laid out for years at time with it. Now it’s Oh, a week because I’m looking at it and I’m willing to say, what’s this pain really telling me?
And is it something I’m actually afraid of because I’m out of alignment? Is it something I’m afraid of because it’s truly in alignment, but it’s so feels so out of reach that I’m really afraid of it and I don’t know how to get there. So there’s a lot of different layers we can look at when it comes to the different
[00:19:18] Kevin Stafford: warning signs.
It’s like you said, the work starts with you. The work begins with you. Yeah.
[00:19:23] Jamie Martin: And it’s the same thing with if we’re thinking about taking on more work when you’re at the job and your boss comes and says, Hey, do you have time? Can you take on this extra work? You’ve been doing such a great job.
Who am I kidding? They don’t ever say you’re doing a great job. The number of leaders that I have talked to who are like, I just don’t understand why people need to be acknowledged. We have this conversation, please.
[00:19:49] Kevin Stafford: Where do we
[00:19:50] Jamie Martin: begin? Understand what your people need. Because everybody needs something different, but I will tell you that I needed to be acknowledged and I, the number of times that I left a company because I was like, are you kidding me?
Never got acknowledged and I was just like, I’m done. Let’s move somewhere else. So I digress, but when we do our own work, we get in the power place to sit in that alignment and say, is this comfortable? Am I saying yes out of default? Am I saying yes, because this is just what I do? Or is this actually in my bigger picture of not just where I want to go, where the team wants to go, where we’re moving, because oftentimes.
We, depending on where we are in the corporate structure, can be the ones to say, Hey, wait a second, boss. This isn’t on our strategic plan.
How is this going to impact the other goals we have?
[00:20:43] Kevin Stafford: And then that begins a conversation that, again, you’re an active participant. And that’s there’s really that’s what we’re all, I feel like in our own ways is what we’re all looking for is we just want to be an active participant in the endeavors that we’re choosing to engage in.
And I just, I love that that that default. Yes, thinking about that because something I find myself thinking about quite a bit to the point where like I’ve written on little sticky notes and placed it where I would see it. I would put default or delight and as a prompt to remind myself, am I just doing this unconsciously?
Am I just doing this to do it or am I doing it because it’s coming? Not everything feels delightful in the moment, but is it coming from the place where my delight lives? My, where I want to be going, the work I want to be doing, the people I want to be doing it with and for, and is it in alignment?
Again, it’s another, it’s just another way for me to like, to think about that, to ask myself that question. Is my mask on? Have I put my own mask on first? Default or delight? I just, it really has, it helps me, it’s, I like those little prompts. That I just like style like stash around my environment because I, we all need those reminders and it’s sometimes it’s a sticky note, sometimes it’s a coach.
Sometimes it’s
[00:21:51] Jamie Martin: a coach. It’s interesting because you, when you were saying that I was thinking about I gave a presentation in July and a woman was like I went on vacation. I delegated this meeting. And when I came back, my boss said, we needed you there.
And I think about the idea of delight. And how for her and for other people where you feel like you can’t delegate something because it’s your job, I’m going to put that in quotes, right? If the step back and ask does this align with delight? Does this align with where I’m going? Because now we’ve got the opportunity to reconsider this because for her challenge was after that meeting, I was like, your challenge is to go back to your boss and say this, it’s time for this to move off my plate.
This is no longer something that actually, it’s something she’s junior. Someone more junior could run with no problem. She was like, I don’t bring anything special to this meeting. . And she knew that. And she knew it was also holding her back. . So no longer delightful, no longer helping her.
And in our conversation, she got the awareness of, oh my gosh. But you know what? Someone more junior will find this delight. Yeah. ’cause it’s a stretch for them. It’s something new for them. So how so we were able to get her to the place where she took the challenge on to work with her boss to be like, let’s actually talk about this because it needs to move off my plate.
[00:23:17] Kevin Stafford: That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Shoot. I told you I would be the responsible host. I just looked up at the zoom clock. We’ve been chatting for over half an hour. This is great stuff. No. Yeah. Oops. Yeah. My favorite accidents. The conversation was too good and went on for too long. Oh before, before I let you go One more opportunity to talk about the mini course, the stuff you have coming up in January, where you can be found if people just want to know more about you, your journey, everything about you, and also where people can connect with you if they want to sign up for a course and get to, sign up for a newsletter.
I don’t know if you have a YouTube channel, if you want to push a book or like whatever you want to push, let people know where to find it. So the
[00:23:56] Jamie Martin: course less work, more respect is that work less Jamie martin coaching. com. You can also find me on Instagram and on LinkedIn. Those are the easiest places to find me, and I keep things easy.
Jamie Martin Coaching.
[00:24:12] Kevin Stafford: But it’s Jamie, it’s J A M I E, I
[00:24:15] Jamie Martin: E.
[00:24:16] Kevin Stafford: Yeah. It’ll be spelled correctly in the, in all the, In the notes, yeah. Yeah, in the notes and everything.
[00:24:21] Jamie Martin: And then When you LinkedIn me or Instagram me, the waiting list for the Unleash Your Voice program is up and running, so if you are interested in learning about that, join the list so you can find out all the details.
It’ll be in January, because who wants to start working on stuff with all of the beautiful chaos we’re about to bring with adding more expectation and work to our plates without
[00:24:46] Kevin Stafford: Oh, can I share a personal victory before I wrap this up? Of course. I have completed my Christmas shopping.
I’m proud of stuff and I’m joking, but it’s not the thing I’m proud of this year, but it’s one of the things that like, I’m like secretly proud of stuff. It’s I was thoughtful. I asked people early. I had some stuff. When people would say something like, back in like June or in April or whatever I was writing it in a little book to like back pocket it and be like, what’s coming up next for them?
Is it a birthday or is it a, or is it the Christmas holidays? And I got everything kinda laid out, did all my shopping. Almost everything’s wrapped too. Like I’m beside myself. And so it’s, I’m just like, that’s amazing. I’m so pleased. Now I get to just like. Be an active participant in the seasons, the seasonal holidays, like just the spirit of giving rather than the spirit of capitalism.
It’s all out of the way, now I can just be me.
[00:25:42] Jamie Martin: My goal is Thanksgiving, I’m done.
[00:25:44] Kevin Stafford: That’s reasonable and awesome. That’s usually my I feel good when I get done by Thanksgiving.
[00:25:49] Jamie Martin: I do, I like, there’s two things that I want to make sure people heard. One, that you. You wrote down what people, ideas as you went for other people, the flip is to write ideas for yourself.
I’m getting better at that. Because sometimes the hardest part is actually having people ask you what your list is.
[00:26:06] Kevin Stafford: And you’re like, I don’t know, I have everything I need. And that’s not helpful, Kevin. You have to actually help people to like, help you. It’s yeah.
[00:26:14] Jamie Martin: And if you have. In laws like mine,
[00:26:17] Kevin Stafford: they ask you daily for a wish list or something where it’s
[00:26:20] Jamie Martin: and let me tell you that daily prompt can start stressing you out.
[00:26:27] Kevin Stafford: So let’s just head that off of the past,
[00:26:29] Jamie Martin: head it off, build it over the year that way. And then, and what’s great is you can then go through it and say, okay, this can be my birthday list. This be my Christmas list. If you do birthdays that way.
[00:26:39] Kevin Stafford: That’ll be my, that’ll be my level up, is starting to just not reflexively get things for myself as I need them, but save them for gift ideas.
for birthdays and holidays. That’s good. start working on that. All of the
[00:26:51] Jamie Martin: men out there, because there’s not a lot of women, we can find
[00:26:54] Kevin Stafford: things. Oh yeah, you guys are, yeah, the men are lost.
[00:26:57] Jamie Martin: The number of times I have, I had to, and then we’ll cut y’all off. Tell my husband like, no, you cannot buy this.
We have six weeks till Christmas. Can’t you wait six weeks? He’s no, I can’t.
[00:27:07] Kevin Stafford: Are you
[00:27:11] Jamie Martin: sure? Oh
[00:27:17] Kevin Stafford: man. Okay. I should get us out of here. I just had to share that personal win. And of course I share something with you and it’s delightful and we start going back and forth. Like always loves to do this again.
Like usual. We’ll just, just keep it going in perpetuity. Love it. Thank you so much for sharing a little bit of time today. A little bit more than a little bit of time today. I have, this was just great stuff. I love what you’re doing. Like I love, I selfishly just love chatting with you because our brains and our hearts work in similar but distinct ways so that honestly, like our conversations are always in alignment.
So when we’re talking about it, I’m having this like meta experience of we’re really vibing here and like it’s great. So thank you for that. Thank you for selfishly. And also just thank you for doing what you do. I just, I love your points of focus. I love the way in which you are The way in which you are active in the space that you want to be active in and contributing to an actual like a movement.
I don’t, I hate using that word sometimes, but it feels like what’s happening. And so I’m just glad you’re out there doing what you’re doing because selfishly, it makes me really happy and inspires me. And I’m certain it does that for others as well.
[00:28:19] Jamie Martin: Thank you. I appreciate it. And thank you for having me.
I love being here.
[00:28:22] Kevin Stafford: It’s just fun. And to the audience, I hope you had half as much fun as we did. Cause if you did, then you’re already having a great day. So you know what to do next show notes, all the links will be there. You know how to find Jamie Martin on LinkedIn, Instagram, on our website. Here on the podcast.
Thank you so much for sharing some time with us today. And we’ll talk to you again very soon.
