The Shift Network’s Empaths, Sensitives & Intuitives Summit
Move past overwhelm and turn your sensitivity into your superpower…
Join a global gathering of leading luminaries, empathy experts, doctors, and teachers — including Matt Kahn, Dr. Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt, Dr. Judith Orloff, Dr. Keesha Ewers, Karyn Kulenovic, Dr. Karen Kan, David Gandelman, Wendy De Rosa, Bevin Niemann, and many more!
Discover more about your intrinsic gift — and healthy, science-backed practices, exercises, and tools to master boundary-setting, hone your empathic gifts, and regain control of your sensitivity superpowers so you can thrive.
The world needs your light now more than ever… get the skills you need as an HSP, empath, or intuitive to unlock your innate abilities, build resilience, and bring your soul’s purpose forward.November 15–19, 2021.
Highly sensitive people may often times underestimate their ability to influence others or acknowledge their de facto role as a quiet leader. Many of the most effective leaders don’t wear the title ‘leader’ at all. They are leaders by virtue of the example they set and the respect and trust that competence and conscientiousness brings. Conscientiousness , by the way, is the only trait known to predict job success and we HSPs should rank fairly high in that category as we typically have a strong need for things to be done well.
The gist of the article centers around networking and how we come to be seen and heard by others in the workplace. Being seen and heard is often an area that the 70% of HSPs who are more introverted struggle with and represents a key area for growth if we wish to come into a full blossoming of our potential. Sometimes, we more introverted HSPs need to practice our social skills and develop greater confidence in how we speak and how people are receiving what we say. Speaking in public, whether a board meeting or before a work group, is always a proposition for overstimulation but never fear, it’s entirely doable to PUSH through that fear and learn to use that anxiety as a fuel to propel you through it.
We should all be more mindful of our status within our workplace and be cognizant of the influence we hold so that we can wield it when a project comes along that we believe in and wish to influence in a particular way. We all pick and choose how we show up in the world. Some HSPs may be quite content as influential and conscientious workers rarely being seen or heard in a traditional sense. Others may find it more compelling to be more public as they build networks of influence and spend their social capital on important issues that they feel passionate about or invested in.
As HSPs we are tasked, in a sense, with being the vanguard who possess finely tuned nervous systems keenly aware of subtle energies that register as off, negative, or disruptive before less sensitive people are aware of the same phenomenon. Being aware of early inputs, if you will, places us in a unique position of knowing how things might unfold. Especially true when coupled with a well-developed rational and creative mind that not only develops solutions but plans for the long-term. With that advance knowledge also comes a responsibility, self-assumed of course and dependent on each of us to choose our level of responsibility, but learning to use our influence wisely can lead our teams, workplaces, and, in a broader sense, or communities to better results.
How do you view your level of influence in your workplace? Do you underestimate your influence?
Highly sensitive people have long been termed the “canary in the coal mine” meaning our finely tuned nervous systems pick up on potential danger or hazards long before those with less sensitive nervous systems. Now, employers are starting to FINALLY sense that there may be a problem with burnout among employees as they leave by the millions!
Pause for just a second to let that one sink in: it’s taken the mass resignation of MILLIONS of employees to make these huge impersonal, profit-driven, corporate machines, that chew people up and spit them out, finally wake up to a problem we HSPs have known and talked about for decades…
Research cited in the article suggests that there are six key areas for improvement:
– creating manageable workloads
-giving employees control over their jobs, to the extent possible
-rewarding and acknowledging good work, either financially or verbally
-fostering community
-treating workers fairly and equitably
-helping workers find value in their work
ALL of these are areas that I wrote about in Thrive: The Highly Sensitive Person and Career in 2015!! HSPs told me about issues concerning lack of ANY feedback, lack of autonomy (a huge one for HSPs), too much to do in too short a time with too few staff, need for meaningful work, and feeling a part of something bigger than oneself. These are not new revelations that the corporate world has suddenly discovered because they are HUMAN needs.I admit to being skeptical about the long-term changes being entertained at the moment by employers.
HSPs especially need to be concerned with aligning career with their unique needs or risk being the canary that is continually alerting inside. You will very likely face burnout in conditions that fail to support your needs for autonomy, challenge, meaningfulness, or where there are ethical concerns that come into play. Self-care away all you want but if you don’t work to align your needs with what is demanded of you while you are at work the majority of your waking hours your health will suffer, both physical and emotional, your family will suffer as you return home off-balance and frazzled, and your life will be less joyful, relaxed, and balanced.
I have sadly had to witness this burnout phenomenon in a friend working 80+ hours a week, all day Zoom meetings, and so stretched thin that the result was physical collapse. It’s more than a few workers not being able to “take it,” or not being “tough enough.” It’s about a fundamental inequity between the need for companies to structure work in such a way that it both allows them to make a profit while providing working conditions that suit HUMAN needs. And, being flexible enough to understand that may look different in different people.
My intuition tells me this time it’s up to the people to take work back!! I do not know what some of these folks are doing that are resigning but hopefully they are capitalizing on the shortage and using that as leverage to demand the conditions that they so desperately need. Look, I do not mind hard work at all. I do not mind extending myself out there to accommodate an unplanned for need, but I do mind when the culture needs to shift because it no longer serves the needs of people at THIS time. In the case of culture, we all get a vote and many are voting with their feet… It’s about time….
Dr. Tracy Cooper 