Author: Katy Goshtasbi

Have you ever felt that ache in your back or pain in your shoulder, knee or foot and wondered to yourself where that came from all of a sudden? I know I have. It’s often just irritating and I push through it. Sometimes it’s too painful and I can’t push through the pain. Let’s discuss how the body stores trauma to let you know that you need healing and the power of somatic therapy to help you heal and feel good in your body.

Most of us believe that when our body is in pain, we have two choices: ignore the pain and keep on moving forward OR go see a doctor/self-medicate.

We rarely stop and think of another option that could have long-term benefits and relief.

I used to just ignore anything that hurt assuming it would go away on its own. Over the years, I wondered about the role of pharmaceuticals in our health. It felt like everyone was pushing a drug to mask our symptoms but never really addressing the actual cause of our physical and emotional distress/pain. A bandaid can only last so long. The wound is still there under the bandaid for most of us.

When I got diagnosed with breast cancer, I started to see a trend. Western medicine was wonderful and all about getting rid of the tumor. No one seemed to have time to ponder why I had gotten breast cancer when I had no family history and I was a very healthy person for all my life. Eastern medicine, on the other hand, stopped and reflected on the “why breast cancer” with the belief that my body was out of balance and trying to tell me to change a pattern so I could get relief long term. So I combined both eastern and western medicine and have been cancer-free and thriving for years now.

During this time, I really started to explore what my body was trying to tell me with the cancer. It was at this time I discovered somatic therapy. Somatic therapy is not new but it hasn’t gotten the same amount of attention as cognitive behavior therapy, which is talk therapy that engages the mind.

Over the years, somatic therapy has been gaining more attention. The book, The Body Keeps the Score, a New York Times bestseller, brought to light in 2015 how much the body keeps trauma trapped, thus impacting us on a cellular level. Harvard Health has written an article explaining somatic therapy, as well.

As Harvard Health explains, somatic therapy is, “a treatment focusing on the body and how emotions appear within the body….[because] our body holds and expresses experiences and emotions, and traumatic events or unresolved emotional issues can be ‘trapped’ inside”. These trapped events and trauma or emotions show up as aches and pains and perhaps even cancers.

Addressing our emotions seems to be the best tool we know in helping release the body and alleviate the resulting pain. Over the years, whether I’m addressing my own emotions or working through clients’ emotions in order to have an optimal Emotional Resonance Factor^®, I know the role this work has in generating healthy and successful brands – professionally and personally. Mental or physical pain does not allow anyone to bring their best self anywhere – work or home.

I have experienced a form of somatic therapy called The Rosen Method, which has been quite effective. Rosen is very popular in Europe and has yet to gain traction in the United States. From my own experience, during a Rosen session emotions are gently addressed as the practitioner focuses on muscle tension and breathing rhythms. All of this causes my body to release the trauma of memories and events, and thus releases the physical pain my body is using as a signal to tell me something is “off” and needs my attention.

What does this mean for you? Stop and ask yourself:

• How often do you get aches and pains in your body?
• Do they reoccur?
• How do you heal your body? Drugs or otherwise?
• When you get an ache, do you have any recall of an emotion attached to it? Does it show up at work during a particular conversation or big project?

The next time your body feels “off”, stop and take a deep breath and ask yourself some of these questions. The answers may surprise you and allow you to get some relief instantly.

Want to learn more about the role of your emotions and your body aches/pains in how you succeed personally and professionally? Join us for a one-day workshop, The Serenity Summit, to experience the techniques yourself and gain clarity, focus and balanced healing to eliminate your pain.

Sadly, transformational leadership has become a buzzword over the years.In my world, as a transformational leadership coach, it is anything but that. Let’s talk about what transformational leadership is and how to become a transformational leader, including characteristics of transformational leaders and how to be coached to become one.

What is Transformational Leadership

The dictionary defines transformation as “to change completely in composition, structure, or character.”

Transformation is not merely a change, as I see it. “Change” involves doing something differently. Maybe you get a different haircut or make the switch from drinking coffee to tea in the morning. Maybe you drive to work a different route. That’s a change. That’s an event.

Transformation is way bigger than change. It leaves you altered and never the same again after you’ve gone through the events/changes.

One of the biggest obstacles to transformation of any kind is the fear of never being the same. What if I don’t like who I have become? What if others don’t like me anymore? What if I’m really happy and successful? These are all thoughts that go through our minds unconsciously when we consider being our greatest selves.

Looking at the definition of “transformation”, to change completely your character may seem scary. On the other hand, to stay stagnate, stuck and perhaps feeling in limbo is the most scary thing in life, never reaching your full potential and learning what you are capable of in order to serve your purpose.

I often hear clients proclaiming, “I only get to do this once”, meaning they live only once. Let’s just assume for the sake of argument that this is the truth, that you only live once. What’s more scary: never knowing and growing because you’re too afraid to be better OR changing your character completely and being amazing?

Transformational Leadership is to change completely in character and thus, lead from a place of being transformed. Transformational leadership has many facets but mainly reflected by leaders who are able to accept change in a healthy way. These leaders are willing to take a risk in order to show up great. They are humble, grounded, clear, focused, and about the greater good and purpose. They show up for those they lead as inspirational and authentic, willing to give of themselves, while still striking harmony to take care of themselves, knowing they are the vessel to growth and progress in the world.

Benefits include the obvious and then some. These leaders may not be leading huge numbers of followers. That’s not the point.

However, these leaders very naturally find themselves at the helm of organizations, events, and their communities often. It’s as if followers gravitate towards the transformational leader’s ease and grace around who they are because others can sense their integrity and self-confidence.

How to Become A Transformational Leader

Transformational leadership calls for effectiveness in many areas. To be effective, these leaders collaborate and gain support with their decision-making skills, presenting well, being influential/impactful, creating diverse and healthier workplaces, building a team, selling well and dealing with changes/transitions effectively.

Coaching leaders on being transformational leaders, I’ve come to identify the top 3 characteristics of transformational leaders and the 3 pitfalls to watch out for so you can create shifts to speed up your journey to transformational leadership.

Top 3 Characteristics of Transformational Leaders:

Curiosity

Truly transformational leaders are curious. They have expansive views on life, oftentimes reflected as creativity in the arts or hobbies. Curiosity allows them to remain nonjudgmental, giving constructive feedback to those they lead with ease and grace. Being nonjudgmental allows them to remain neutral, enhancing their ability to lead with focus and clarity in crisis situations. Leading with focus and clarity through crisis means that their followers trust them to do what’s best for the greater good and organization.

Courage

Truly transformational leaders are courageous. I tell every one of my clients how proud I am of them and how much they inspire me because they were courageous enough to show up and get coaching in order to be even greater. These leaders may not be leading huge numbers of followers. But they are willing to look at what they do well and what they could do even better. They are willing to put it all on the line in order to never be the same again- but be better and on their way to amazing.

Often when I coach CEOs of major companies and senior executives in organizations, I am in awe of their ability to get real with me, letting go of pretenses to allow me to be a sounding board, confidante and support for them. Their ego is only going to hold them back – they know it and want better.

Humility

Courage and humility go hand in hand. When my clients let go of their egos and show up, these transformational leaders are humble. Humble does not mean they are modest. Modesty implies being mediocre. Transformational leaders know they are not mediocre, but great.

They don’t have to force their greatness down others’ throats, thereby allowing them to show up for their followers as humble. If you observe truly transformational leaders, they are great listeners with the capacity to stay silent naturally. They do not need so much attention all the time. They KNOW they are great, they don’t need constant validation of their greatness.

Top 3 Pitfalls To Avoid On Your Way to Being A Transformational Leader

In order to become a transformational leader, you have to be willing to be coached. Every great individual has a neutral, sincere, direct coach who holds the space for transformational leaders to be born. I can’t do this alone for my clients. You have to allow yourself to become a transformational leader.

Here’s what to avoid:

1. Refusing to see the world as expansive. Seeing everything through the lens of science and applying linear thinking is excellent for producing substantive work. I can attest to this notion. As a lawyer, my left, linear, analytical brain is great for substantive legal work. The same applies for engineering, medicine, research, etc. However, as a transformational leader, you must be able to see beyond what is proven and in front of you.

Some would call that vision. I often see it show up as vision plus faith. Nothing is black and white to transformational leaders. Take some time and get self-aware of how you view your world. Could you stand to see the bigger picture better? Do you limit yourself to what you know and is right in front of you? Or are you willing to go out on a limb and see beyond what is safe and true for you? When you do so, you will find others are inspired by you and want to follow you.

2. Being judgmental and hard on yourself. Being judgmental and hard on yourself is not only uncomfortable and self-defeating, but it doesn’t allow you to show up as a transformational leader. When you judge yourself harshly and exhibit so much perfectionism perhaps, as a result, you shut the door to curiosity, humility and courage.

Reflect and journal on how often you criticize and attack yourself. We all do it. The key is to see it so you can pick a different pattern of thinking and being on your way to becoming a transformational leader.

3. Reverting to your vices. We all have a vice–or two. While none of us is proud of our vices, when you accept your vices, you can choose to let go of your vice(s) on your intentional plan to become a transformational leader.

The trouble in letting go of our vices is that we often don’t see our vices as negative. For example, I LOVE dark chocolate. I also can easily go into self-criticism and self-blame. Combine these two vices together and I can become a hot mess and lose my transformational leadership abilities.

Eating dark chocolate and beating up on myself is no way to live, but that’s only true if I first stop and witness the negative impact of my vices. Dark chocolate and self-blame may seem fairly innocent. However, any vice that allows a pattern to keep occurring without you living your best life is just that- a vice that stands to take away your inner peace and ability to lead and inspire others.

Stop and consider: what are your vices? Be honest with yourself and list everything you can think of. Once you do, pick one vice and brainstorm how you can shift away from that pattern of behavior. What do you have to lose? What negative belief about yourself is that vice reinforcing? Who would you have to be to choose to let go of that vice and the patterns it creates in your life?

Transformational leadership isn’t just for others. It’s meant for you and me. It’s not something only politicians and those who are trained to lead exhibit. Oftentimes, it’s the exact opposite in fact. Everyone’s version of transformational leadership is different. That’s the beauty of it. Your contribution to your world as a transformational leader is unique and special. It’s all within your power. It doesn’t have to show up in huge ways to have impact and create a better world. I promise.

Need support on your journey to transformational leadership? I’m happy to support you. Schedule a one-on-one meeting with me and let’s discuss.

Being successful isn’t so much about what you do as much as it is about how you cooperate with the changes, twists and turns in your life. Let’s discuss how to work on yourself and grow as a person by developing your resilience characteristics. Specifically, I want to discuss why resilience is so important and the steps to get you to be more resilient and thereby, impactful in your world.

I was recently invited by the National Association of Women Judges to attend a day-long event at our local women’s detention facility. The day-long event included judges, lawyers, therapists and other experts to support incarcerated women who are preparing for re-entry into the world outside of the detention facility.

The day was inspirational, and I hope I was able to leave the attendees with ideas and thoughts to allow them to thrive once they return to their communities. The biggest takeaway and lesson for me was resiliency and the power of our minds to shape our experiences.

Resilience is defined as, “the capability to withstand or recover quickly from difficulties or to spring back.”

As I looked around at the female inmates, I felt some of them seemed to be doing better than others. There are many factors, but what stood out was the resilience some of them have.This resilience is shaped by their ability to use their mind and reframe adversity into something more useful, inspirational and motivating so they can keep going.

As I see it, this ability all comes down to skills development to grow as a person. The final goal is to have inner peace and bounce back and recover from any situation by maintaining our inner peace.

Characteristics of resilient people

If the definition of resilience is to bounce back and recover, then here are the characteristics of those who bounce back, recover and display resilience.

Confident

My formal research is around stress and self-confidence. I have found that resilient people are confident. They may not necessarily be confident in the final outcome of whatever is the object of their focus requiring resilience, but feeling confident allows them to stay focused, march forward and take action with a mindset that is free of fear and guilt and confusion.

Optimistic

Resilient people’s perspective on life has a neutral, if not favorable, point of view. Remaining hopeful and optimistic allows you to have a higher tendency to stay the course while being gentle and gracious.

Clear

Resilient people tend to have vision for their future and clarity regarding what they want in life. This allows them to stay focused on their goals and dreams and not stray off course and give up.

In service

Being resilient enables you to see your purpose in life more clearly and vice versa. At that point, you can’t help but be in service to others because community service is a natural and easy way of staying in service. Any time I do community service, I have a vantage point into other’s lives and struggles, which energizes me and keeps me resilient.

Steps to achieve resilience and increase your impact

1. Self-awareness: The first place to look is inward. Ask yourself, what’s your perception of yourself and how do you currently handle adversity? Why do you do so? What would you like to change about yourself and why? Are you replicating a pattern based on behavior you saw from your parents?

For instance, my mother had a tendency to break down every time there was an emergency. Seeing her react this way for so many years left me with the impression that a viable response to adversity is to break down and panic instead of bouncing back and moving forward with grace. I had to stay vigilant and self-aware to respond otherwise.

2. Reframe: Once you look inward, stop and assess each situation by doing a “reframe”. All this means is choosing a new perspective on your life and yourself.

For example, when I had breast cancer, I had a pity party for three weeks. Then I stopped and reframed my diagnosis. Instead of being a victim of breast cancer, I reframed it and said, “what am I supposed to learn from this experience? What is my body trying to tell me?”. This reframe helped me stay resilient, bounce back and take action from a grounded, centered, focused place.

3. Stay curious: Any time you need to reframe, choose to look at your predicament with curiosity. When you stay curious, you avoid judgment. Judgment is a huge culprit to you losing your resilience.

Take my example above. Instead of judging my breast cancer and thinking, “life’s not fair”, I stayed curious by asking, “what are my lessons here and how can I role-model getting through this with grace for others’ benefit, too?” This curiosity took the focus (and judgment) off of me and allowed me to keep moving forward.

4. Connection: While resilience is about you, it takes a village to support you. Having someone you can share your life challenges with is key. Having more than one person is even better. Just remember, it’s your life and you are sharing for comfort and support, not necessarily to be told what to do.

Resilience, just like anything else in life, is a journey and a process. Stay self-aware, be kind to yourself and use the tools here to guide your journey.

Need more support? It’s an individual, personal, intimate, cooperative experience and you deserve a guide who cares. Set up a Deep Dive Assessment and let’s see how I can support your journey.

“I thought I could ask for what I wanted, but I didn’t”. I hear this phrase often. It’s generally followed by another phrase like “why am I so scared to negotiate”?

Negotiating for anything in our lives is not always easy. Self-advocacy and speaking up for yourself may seem so….opportunistic and self-ish. There’s a certain amount of confidence and assuredness required to be an effective negotiator. I’ve discovered that the easiest way for you to claim your confidence in negotiating is to improve your communication skills, bar none. When your communication skills are optimal, then you’ll find you have higher confidence and improve your negotiation skills and abilities. This is true for business communication skills or personally, too.

COMMUNICATE MUCH?

As with anything else in life, if you find yourself less than optimal in communicating while negotiating, you’re likely an ineffective communicator elsewhere, too. Does that describe you?

Your first bit of self-work is to spend 7 consecutive days establishing your communication baseline. When you are at work, home or even at the grocery store, and you say, “apple”, do others hear “apple” or do they hear “orange”? Why? Can you even tell? What could you have done differently to ensure that your intent is projected well on your audience? Are your tone and actual words direct or brash?

HOW DO YOU ASK FOR WHAT YOU WANT IN A NEGOTIATION?

Asking for, and communicating, what you want in a negotiation presupposes that you KNOW what you want. I’ve spent 14 years coaching exceptionally talented, successful, smart people who can’t communicate in a negotiation because they just don’t know what they want.

They may know what they need, including the final outcomes needed for a successful negotiation, but they do NOT know deep down what they, themselves, want out of the negotiation. Nor do they know where they excel so they can bring “it” to their communication and negotiation table.

To answer this question fully requires deep introspection into your soul and a digging and discernment for your brand. You want to claim your confidence and get more of what you think you deserve? Then it’s time for you to step up and be the brave person I know you are by tapping into your best self and expressing yourself authentically.

Here are some things to keep in mind and steps to follow:

1. Negotiation is merely two parties coming together to form a relationship, aiming for mutual benefit. If it’s not mutual, it’s not going to work. Look for mutuality instead of tapping out or digging in your heals.

2. What scares you most about negotiating: getting your way OR not getting your way? Spend some time really feeling into this question. I think you will be surprised by what you find. Most of us are way more scared of being powerful enough to get exactly what we want, than the inverse. This fear of getting it all scares us into submission and represses feelings of anger and hostility that show up somewhere else; leaving us feeling out of control.

3. What you really want boils down to knowing a few key things about yourself like: what are your natural talents, values, business skills, goals, life purpose and ability to imagine where you want to be in one, three, five and ten years to start. Each of these areas deserves your deep, long-term review.

4. What are your emotional tendencies in negotiations? What is NOT said is more important in negotiations than anyone wants to believe. Upwards of 75% of all communication is nonverbal. Emotional Resonance Factor® is critical to your ability to negotiate by nonverbal communication. I am talking about your overall vibe, including your gaze, gate, stance, facial expression and visual presence. Whatever emotions you are feeling, odds are strong that we can sense these emotions directly nonverbally, believe it or not. So a good tip is to remember, based on my formal research, if your bad stress is high then your confidence is low and you are likely not emotionally resonating with your audience.

5. Compensation bias is a very real fact, as is general implicit and explicit bias in life. You can’t outrun these biases. However, you can know your own propensity to be hurt and shut down when you encounter these biases. Over the years, coaching equal numbers of women and men professionals, I have found that both men and women lack confidence in communicating and negotiating. Men hide this lack of confidence better, showing confidence when it comes to negotiating and asking for what they want. Men seem to fake that confidence better and are thus more likely to be perceived as a brand of leadership material. What happens when you sense a bias? Do you shrink back? Why? Do you assume it’s all your problem? What if it’s the other party’s issue and not yours? Next time you sense a bias against you occurs, stop and ask your unconscious mind what the real fear is, changing course slowly to recognize that it’s most often not you, it’s the other party!

In summary, negotiating requires you to be willing to advocate for yourself by communicating what you want with confidence, ease and grace. There will always be things you could have done better. That’s for next time you communicate and negotiate. Not taking the chance in the present will always make you feel angry, like you failed because you didn’t at least speak up.

If you’d like my help with this subject, email me and let’s talk. No one can become an overnight expert at negotiating and communicating. You don’t have to rush it. But we all need support and tools to get us to our final goal with ease and grace.

One thing professionals have in common is their deep focus on their substantive knowledge and resulting work product. Unfortunately, your substantive knowledge and work product will only get you so far. I’m often asked to teach professionals how to be better presenters and public speakers.

Presentation skills are not just about your posture, voice tone and content. In this blog, I’ll discuss what makes for an effective presentation. Delivering a powerful and effective presentation is way more than you think…and your substantive knowledge and work product alone is not good enough anymore.

THE PROBLEM

As a professional, you are trained in school to be good at your substantive work. Odds are, your personality suits you to be a do good-er: creating content alone; reviewing contracts at your desk; drafting pleadings; developing, modifying and testing systems and processes, etc.

All of these things require you to tap into your left, linear brain and access what you learned in school. None of these things require you to really access your right, creative brain and interact or share WHO you are with the world. None of these things require you to inspire, lead or be memorable.

Yet you want to be promoted, recognized by your peers, heard and valued as a leader and legacy builder. But the old way of being good at what you do isn’t working anymore. So what do you do next?

REFRAME YOUR WORK

Your work product and skills are part of your career. That’s obvious. What you think is your “presentation” and public speaking skills and tools are not so obvious.

Anytime you speak in a meeting, to your peers, on a big stage or elsewhere the one true thing is that YOU show up. We are all paying attention to YOU firstly, not your content.

In order to allow your natural inner presenter and public speaker to shine, your presentation skills evolve from your ability to:

Know who you are – Not being a great presenter is a symptom of having low self-confidence. Having low self-confidence is about being unsure of who you are. Being unsure of who you are is solved by tapping into your inner wisdom and knowing of:

• What are your natural strengths and talents? The answer here boosts your ability to authentically build your natural strengths and talents that come easily to you into your presentations to the world.

• What is your real story? Where you came from is crucial to your successful ability to convey your message to your audience, whether you’re selling them your services or meeting with a client to deliver on your engagement. Unraveling and writing your real story (the good, the bad and the ugly) will allow you to find those patterns that hold you back, that keep you from shining in front of others. It also allows you to weave in who you are into every interaction with your audience, leaving them feeling closer to you and inspired by your leadership, formal or otherwise.

• How do others perceive you now? Why? What of this perception do you want to control and change as you step out into the world either to formally speak publicly or to present in front of your senior leadership team, management or clients?

• Your values. The term “values” is thrown around a lot. Values are the one true path for you to own your greatness. Once you know your values, everything else seems to fall into place. From this place, you will find the strength and power to present and speak to your audience. Your audience gets you, respects and admires you and engages with you at an entirely different, more effective level.

• Your energy. You have a certain amount of energy each day. With this energy, you take care of others and yourself and are able to perform your work. What energizes you and what drains you? Once you clearly identify the distinction between the two you are clearer on who you are and how you can bring your best self to your audience.

Communicate effectively – Once you have a good grip on who you are, in order to convey your message effectively to your audience with ease and grace you must master your best method of communication. Everyone has a different style and aptitude for communicating. Unearthing yours not only leaves you comfortable and able to influence and inspire others, it allows for easy conveyance of data and facts to your audience.

NEXT STEPS

So what’s next?

You need to decide what you want to do to change, grow and become a better presenter, including leaving a legacy others can use long after you’re gone. Not being able to decide what you need is a problem. How often are you faced with a decision, big or small, and you find yourself going back and forth? Lack of decision making is a big symptom of not knowing yourself, including your desires.

Only when you decide to move forward and get support can you combine your substantive knowledge with your presence and inspire, educate and leave a legacy that gets you promoted, hired, retained and noticed anywhere in a good way.

Looking to improve your presentation skills to the world, build a legacy and be an inspirational leader? Let’s talk. Everyone is different, and you deserve a customized and tailored approach. Schedule a Deep Dive Assessment with me and let’s discuss a plan together. Don’t wait to make this decision.

Do you remember that song by the Beach Boys, “Good Vibrations”? Turns out the Beach Boys were much more in tune to the reality of life than I ever gave them credit for. In this post, I will discuss why your Emotional Resonance Factor® strategy is your easy path to not feeling lonely and succeeding professionally and personally, too.

The Challenge: Isolation, Introverts and Loneliness

Over the years, I’ve been told by countless professionals who label themselves as introverts that they cannot get clients nor service clients well. They feel self-conscious, awkward, shy, scared, often saying that they don’t know what to do with their arms, don’t know what to say and on and on. The list is endless, real and so is their fear.

The pandemic has only made this problem worse. As a self-proclaimed extrovert, I even feel a bit awkward in social settings at times. That’s what sitting at home for 2+ years does for us all.

Along with social isolation, comes feelings of loneliness. Loneliness and the feeling of not being seen isn’t a new challenge for humans. I’ve personally grappled with feelings of not feeling worthy in my life more often than I care to admit- and it has nothing to do with the pandemic or being an introvert (I’m an extrovert, remember?).

Post-pandemic, many more of us are also showing up as extremely lonely, despite a busy schedule and lucrative careers. I know I do. I’ve often shared with colleagues that the practice of coaching and consulting is very lonely for me these days. I simply need more than Zoom meetings all day long. I miss the days of weekly travel to clients and regular keynote presentations and trainings. I miss people around me. I miss their energy, their presence and interacting with them verbally and nonverbally.

Loneliness has gotten to a point where the Surgeon General has issued an advisory regarding the problem and the healing effects of social connection and community.

The Solution: Emotional Resonance Building

The term resonance is defined as, a reinforcement of sound (as a musical tone) in a vibrating body or system caused by waves from another body vibrating at nearly the same rate.

In the field of science, resonance plays a very important part. Think physics, engineering and medicine.

If “resonance” means one object’s vibrational frequency due to exposure to a similar vibrational frequency by another source, then it must apply to humans. When one person vibrates or resonates at a particular frequency, then another person does the same.

I bet you have experienced this phenomenon. What happens when you are around nervous or anxious people? If you are anything like me, you want to turn and run away from anxious and nervous people because you start to feel nervous and anxious all of a sudden, too. That’s not in your head. It’s real.

Emotional resonance is a way of promoting well-being in humans AND allowing professionals (even introverts) to relate to other professionals, prospective clients and current clients.

Research on the brain shows that your brain is involved in how you emotionally resonate outward and how you are impacted by the “vibe” of another person. Specialized cells called mirror neurons become activated, not just when we act but when we see another person acting the same way as us. This is the reason why in the coaching world, we often teach clients to practice “mirroring” someone with whom they are trying to connect. It’s also referred to by some as entrainment, where your behavior is modified to be in rhythm with another.

If you can mirror another and feel their plight, then you are emotionally resonating with them. This ability to connect and mirror allows us to develop emotional empathy for one another. When you feel for someone else, they can feel it, too. They start to trust you more and more because they feel safe with you. You’re safe for the other person because you’re more like them than different. Likeness feels comfortable to humans.

This is the start to healthy relationships and well-being for all of us. This is also the start to professionals being able to show up and more naturally share their message, connect with prospective clients, colleagues and superiors.

My process of working with clients on emotional resonance has many steps and doesn’t produce results overnight. It’s tailor made to you and your strengths.

Want to learn more?

Sign up to take an EQ Assessment

Sign up for my intro to Emotional Resonance Factor® mini-course.

Sign up for my Deep Dive Assessment and let’s see how we can tailor it for you and your team.

Happier attorneys with better health are more confident, less likely to miss work or leave their job. Confident lawyers bring in better clients who stay longer and pay better.

Conversely, under-represented lawyers often feel left out and not valued, suffer from 41% more stress and lower self confidence. Lawyers with high stress are at greater risk of depression, self harm, attrition and likely to consider suicide 22% more.

Wellness, diversity and inclusion at your firm aren’t just a “good cause” or trendy buzzwords, but vital drivers of your firm’s viability and revenue growth. Period.

This isn’t often a consideration in the fast paced world of law firms. I should know. In my career as a lawyer, I worked in many fast paced legal environments. No one stopped to consider my health beyond getting the ergonomics of my office correct.

But what about my mental and physical health? And what about how I felt when I was the ONLY woman lawyer in the room about 85% of the time? I can tell you I often felt lonely, isolated, not seen nor heard. It impacted my billables and interactions. I tried desperately to fit in, choosing to wear pant suits and putting my hair in a bun, reading the sports pages so I could entertain our male clientele and so on.

This went on until the day my doctor told me that my stress was too high and that I needed to stop practicing law. Stop practicing? After putting myself through law school as a single woman, who would pay my bills?!

In the end, I did stop practicing law. I made the best decision for myself. Your employees and your health matter. Lawyers are not as easily replaceable as we’d like to think when we burn out. We often don’t talk about the pain and isolation and fears that plague us. We don’t want others to know or judge us.

You don’t have to give up revenues for health and diversity. There’s a harmony that can be struck easily. You just have to stop, assess your situation and ask for support.

 

“Generating more revenues and keeping your legal staff healthy and in place with a thriving and diverse culture is easier than you think.”

 

We all know how costly it is to a law firm when lawyers leave and need to be replaced. There are recruiting costs to find an adequate replacement and training costs once a new lawyer is hired.There are productivity costs when a lawyer’s workload may need to be redistributed among the remaining lawyers, which can result in decreased productivity and longer hours for everyone involved. This can also cause delays in delivering work to clients, which can damage the law firm’s reputation and result in lost business. Lastly, there is institutional knowledge loss which a lawyer takes with them when they leave a firm, making it more difficult for the remaining lawyers to serve clients effectively and efficiently.

Did you know?

• Associate attrition rates are close to 25%. Attrition of minority lawyers is at 34%.

• For every 20 lawyers hired in a firm, 15 lawyers leave within 6 years.

• Lawyers who reported high stress levels were 22 times more likely to experience thoughts of suicide than lawyers with low stress.

• Job stress costs U.S. employers more than USD 300 billion annually and may cause 120,000 excess deaths each year.

• Unhappy lawyers may stay at their firm, but work inefficiently and contribute to toxic cultures where the inefficiency spreads.

• Law firms can get “canceled” for lack of diversity, thereby losing business and clients and revenues.

• Underrepresented lawyers are likely to have more mental health disorders leading to alcohol abuse and anxiety, such as those who experience microaggressions.

Ready for Success?

Losing a lawyer can be a costly and disruptive experience for a law firm, both in terms of the direct costs associated with recruiting and training a new employee and the indirect costs associated with lost productivity, delays, and institutional knowledge loss. By investing in initiatives that promote diverse, healthy employee retention and engagement, law firms can reduce the likelihood of losing valuable employees and the costs associated with employee turnover, making life and practice much easier.

Here’s your easy 2-step solution:

1. Download this flier.

2. Meet and Plan: Every law firm and lawyer are unique and different. To get answers and a tailored plan just for your law firm, schedule a free Deep Dive Assessment with Katy and together we can get your law firm moving forward to success.

We have a real problem on our hands in the legal world and it’s not just about women lawyers leaving the practice of law.

As I was co-authoring the Wellness Study Report addressing the attrition crisis of women lawyers in a post-pandemic world, I had a realization.

I tend to look at life from a different perspective often. My perspective tends toward the bigger picture and underlying causes of unhappiness, unrest or strife. Over the years, I’ve done much research and work on the underlying causes of lack of diversity and gender inequality.

Our problems in the legal world around gender inequality and the attrition problems we face in practice is the cause of our inability to stop and see the bigger picture.

It’s not that lawyers, and people in general, don’t care about others, equality, etc. I’ve found it’s because we can’t seem to find, make, have time to see the bigger picture.

“That’s it?” you ask. That’s it. And that’s a big deal.

The legal profession is a noble one. We do so much good for our clients and justice. As lawyers, we are trained to see both sides of an argument, the gray areas and the greater implications for our clients.

We are also trained to rely on precedence. This reliance on prevailing law, tends to put us in a mindset that is focused on the past. It often leads us to have a mentality that hinders us because we are conditioned to use our reliance on the past to subconsciously believe, “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it”. This perspective does not allow us to always see the bigger picture necessarily.

Yet, how often do we each really step back and view diversity and gender equality from the bigger picture? Could it be that “it is broken” and we just don’t have the time to fix “it”?

How often do you step back and really stop and make time to think about what it would really mean to have an equal number of lawyers and staff that represented all walks of life, be that gender, race, beliefs, hair color, etc? How much of this is based on fear of not seeing the same type of people around us? Maybe it’s a thought of, “If you don’t look and act like me, maybe I’m not safe with you?” Safety is a real issue for all of us.

The solution is not just to “make time” or be a better lawyer and human. It’s to effectively step out of our left-brained, analytical mind, the one we use each day to be effective lawyers. Once we step out of linear, left-brained thinking, we are able to access our right-brain.

This right-brain is the part of us that allows for more expansive thinking and creativity, allowing for safety in our world. This is the part of us that clients count on for creative, ethical solutions, for dynamic interactions and effective communications. This is also the part of your brain that allows you to show up and be dynamic, captivating and work with less effort and with more ease and grace.

For our purposes here, accessing your right, creative brain allows you to suspend judgment and see others for the valuable, safe beings they are- no matter if they look like you or not.

Ready to get started? Stop and consider:

• How often do you allow yourself to have unstructured, creative time for thinking, planning and just being?

• Take 5 minutes each day to sit still and “daydream”. This is NOT a waste of time, but your opportunity to access your right, creative brain.

• Notice what comes up when you daydream? When I do so, I invariably always come up with creative ideas and solutions to a left-brain problem that I’ve been grappling with.

• What other outlets for creativity do you have? If none, why?

• What’s your perception of creativity? Is it just for children and those without legal careers? I had a successful lawyer client who came to me because she was feeling very disconnected from her practice and her life. It left her uneasy and anxious. I discovered she had been trained for many years as a classical violinist. She had stopped playing when she became a lawyer because she felt it wasn’t appropriate anymore. Through our work together she gave herself permission to own her creative side as a violinist. This process allowed her to enjoy her practice more, do her work with more ease and grace, feel more authentic AND embrace others for their differences more easily. If she could be herself, then she could allow others to be themselves, too.

Katy Goshtasbi is a securities lawyer, business development expert, coach, consultant and founder of Puris Consulting. She works law firms, lawyers, executives and organizations on mastering transitions/changes, finding their authentic voice/power to influence/inspire, improving mental & physical wellness/diversity and developing brands that get their message out effectively.

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