What makes a successful woman?

• Bravery:

Be brave and confront your fears head-on. Internalising a negative feeling only helps it grow. Take the bull by the horns and deal with whatever the root cause is. Bring it out into the open and disarm it while empowering yourself.

• Confronting conflict:

Stand your ground with conflict. As a successful woman you will be the target of not only praise but criticism and unfairness. Conflict comes in many shapes and sizes and often from people swearing they are ‘acting with the best of intentions’. Be aware and alert for any behavior from others that is attempting to manipulate your behaviour or thoughts. Stay true to yourself, choose how to respond and deal with those people appropriately. Remember conflict is not always obviously aggressive; it can often come disguised as lack of cooperation or people sending headwinds your way. You need to recognize it in all its disguises.

• Practise positive self-talk:

Keep your focus on positive feedback and only allow constructive criticism. Dismiss aggressive or passive aggressive feedback based on jealousy and other unhelpful emotions. Seek out those who can give you an objective opinion when you are in doubt. Practise controlling your thoughts however tough it may be. Mental stamina is the key.

• Embrace imperfection:

Get used to working in imperfect circumstances. Don’t wait for the perfect moment, circumstances or people before you launch. Don’t surrender when the going gets tough and no one else is ‘doing their job’. Life is unfair that’s a fact, life is tough and everyone has their own agenda. The secret is to keep going and do it anyway. Use what is at your disposal and keep going. Things have a mysterious way of slotting into place once you decide not to give up even when you have a huge rock rolling down the hill towards you and threatening to crush you. Just jump out of the way and keep climbing.

• Build a strong support team:

Surround yourself with the right people: just because you’ve been working with the same people for a long time isn’t a reason to continue if they are underperforming, incompetent, dragging you down or creating passive-aggressive negative energy. In a team you are only as good as your weakest link. High energy is contagious but so unfortunately is low energy and negative group think. Birds of a feather flock together so if you find you are the only one doing things, taking the initiative and a lone warrior then you need to onboard some high energy, inspiring people that will redress the balance. Once you have more positive energy than negative, the naysayers will gradually drop off.

• Success breeds success

Attractive successful women who surround themselves with other attractive successful women who are at the very least as clever as they are quadruple their chances of reaching new heights. Seek out other women who have the skills that you lack.

• Be resourceful

Successful women don’t say they can’t do something, they say they will find a way of getting it done. They don’t give up because they are not afraid of failure. They embrace a challenge and dig deep. They go beyond their limits and if they are not successful they find another way of approaching the challenge.

• Keep calm

Successful women stay in control and keep their cool. Onboard emotions that are useful to you and off load those that are not. Others will provoke you and push you to lose your cool but be bigger that that. You are in control of your own success or failure. If you are not fully appreciated in one place you can take your talents and move to another. It isn’t useful to waste mental energy worrying about what might or might not happen. Take control and if you don’t like the outcomes then move on to fresh pastures.

• Be prepared

Successful women are prepared and do their research. Make sure you know what you are talking about and anticipate the missiles before you start talking. There is no substitute for doing your homework – preparation, preparation and preparation.

Patience

• Finally all successful women know how to be patient. Success rarely happens over night. Don’t get frustrated, trust that if you have put in the hard work the universe will take care of the rest

Judy specializes in transformational coaching on both an individual and team level.

If you would like to receive coaching, communication skills training or language tutoring from Judy, you can contact her on: judy.churchill@orange.fr, via Facebook messenger and www.judychurchill.com