Confidence Classic: How to Stay Powerful When Someone Tries to Intimidate You with Heather!

Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan

Heather Monahan shares powerful strategies for maintaining confidence and power in the face of intimidation or bullying at work. Drawing fro

Key takeaways

• Don't react—respond. Reacting gives power to others; responding from calm control takes it back.
• Bullying often stems from jealousy or feeling threatened by someone's potential or success.

Main topics

• Handling workplace intimidation
• Assertive communication vs. aggression

Notable quotes

When you are a threat, you will always be the target.

Don't react, respond. When you react, you're allowing someone to puppeteer you.

Conclusion

Heather Monahan concludes by empowering listeners to reclaim their power through self-awareness, calm

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) When you are a threat, you will always be the target. The people that lose in all these situations are the ones that react. Don't react, respond. When you react, you're allowing someone to puppeteer you. You're allowing someone else to control you. When you give yourself a moment to take a breath and think and then respond in a very calm manner, you take all the power out of the room. You control the table and you are in control of yourself. Most importantly, I'm on this journey with me each week. When you join me, we are going to chase down our goals, overcome adversity and set you up for a better tomorrow. I'm ready for my closeup. Tell me, have you been enjoying these new bonus confidence classics episodes we've been dropping on you every week? We've literally hundreds of episodes for you to listen to. So these bonuses are a great way to help you find the ones you may have already missed. I hope you love this one as much as I do. Hi, and welcome back. I'm so glad you are back here with me today. Okay. So I got a few DMs that I need to dig into with you because they really caught my attention. And I promised I would give them a response. One came from a woman, of course, no names here, but says, Heather, as you know, I'm a huge fan, but I need your help. I have listened to your books and your podcast. In fact, every day on my drive to work, I listen to an episode of your podcast. as I find them motivating and inspiring. Thank you. In fact, because of you, I've learned that I have worth far beyond what a company is willing to pay me. And yes, you do, by the way. And so do you, right? We all have worth beyond just what we're being paid at work. A paycheck is just, you know, money is an exchange of value in any moment. And... Valuations change, right? Our excellence, our expertise changes and grows and evolves. You know, there's so many factors that, no, we are much more than just a paycheck at any given time, people. And you are too. Okay. I've also faced my fears and I've made some big moves going to a new employer and making some leaps of faith in my life. Good for you. Growth. I love it. I love it. Living in that uncertainty is all about... stepping into fear, growing, taking risks. Yes, yes, and yes. Okay. However, at this new company, someone who's supposed to be my equal and supposed to be showing me the ropes has been condescending and bullying to me. So this sadly is life, right? There are villains in our lives. We are going to encounter villains and we have to decide. how we are going to handle it and not allow it to go on. So she goes on to say that, you know, she's almost at her wit's end at this point. Why is she even putting up with this? Maybe she should just quit. She said, I thought about it and I realized I need to face my villain. Yes, yes. In fact, I think she is probably intimidated by me. Bingo. When you are a threat, you will always be the target. Okay, that's something that I learned. So 99 % of the time, if someone's bullying you, it's because they're jealous of you or they are threatened by you. Fact, straight up facts. Doesn't make it okay, but it is a very true. Okay, nevertheless, could you help me figure out how to say what I need to say, which is, I don't like the way you are speaking to me. I want to sound assertive, but I don't want to be too aggressive. Super smart, you are right. Okay, so. I want to address this in the best way possible. Yes, it's important to be assertive and not aggressive. And I want everyone to know this. You don't have to yell at someone to make a point. You don't have to beat your fists on the table to be heard. In fact, the most powerful people are typically the ones that sit in silence, own their thoughts, and then respond when they're ready. The people that lose in all these situations are the ones that react, right? So my whole message on this podcast today and in this specific situation is don't react, respond. Now, this is something that's taken me 47 years to learn, right? And I'm still a work in progress like we all are, but I'm getting a lot better. My amazing moment that I'm so proud of, I have to share it with you because I'm super proud of it. I was almost going to say I can't believe I did it, but no, I totally believe I did it. It's so, oh my gosh, it's so good. Okay, so here's what happened. You know that back at the end of 2017, I was fired unexpectedly when a CEO I had worked for for 14 years became ill and he elevated his daughter to replace him. My villain, my number one villain, and she fired me. So anyways, here's how it went down. She had her assistant send me an email. That was yet again another power play that she would try to implement to make me nervous or frightened or feel fearful of her, like these tactics to be, you know, a toxic boss or whatever. Oh, my gosh, it's so far in my rearview mirror now that it's just comical. But at the time, it wasn't, right? Like, when you're in it. It's horrible. I remember I was losing my hair. I was crying when I would get home from work. I was so stressed out all the time. My jaw was cracked. It was bad, really bad. So for anyone who's in a situation like this, number one, there is life outside of it. And it's going to be a lot better when you're away from these negative situations, these negative people and negative environments. But I do want you guys to know I'm empathetic. I get it. I struggled for so long with that woman. And it really took a toll on me physically, mentally. But when you get that space, when you fire that villain, when you put yourself first and do what's right for you, that's when you set yourself up to take off and take on the world and find your purpose and find your right people, right? It just, it's incredible. And now that I'm on the other side of it, I'm not saying it's easy, right? I wasn't handed a special little box that I opened the day after I got fired and all my answers were inside. Uh, hardly. No, that really was not the case. You know, I did learn so much about myself along the way. I made so many mistakes, right? And then the pandemic really wiped me out. And there's been a lot of challenges. We'll leave it at that the last couple of years. But in the end, sitting here today with you, I'm just, I'm so clear that. It wasn't easy, but it was so worth it, right? And that's what I want everyone to know, putting yourself first, not allowing someone to bully you, leaving a negative situation and trying to fix it, attempting to fix it and address it first before you leave, because it is the right thing to do because you do need to stand up for yourself and you need to let someone know when they're not treating you the way that you want to be treated. Few reasons for that is that they might not know. that they're treating you in a poor way. Maybe they're going through a horrible time in their life. Maybe they have health issues. Maybe they just lost a family member. We don't know what's going on with someone. And maybe they're lashing out at everyone and they just need someone to tell them, hey, I don't appreciate the way that you're speaking to me. It doesn't feel good when you and I sit down and talk. I feel like you're upset or angry with me. Is there something that you want to tell me? Because... This doesn't seem to be working the way that it had in the past or, you know, the same way that I