Breaking Good: Ditch the “Good Girl” Role at Work

Listen to Breaking Good: Ditch the “Good Girl” Role at Work

Hey there and welcome. Are you a woman who is unapologetically ambitious, but you're also deeply focused on honoring God, loving your family well and pursuing meaningful work? Well, you've come to the right place. My name is Dana Byers and you and I are going to be fast friends. Let's get started.

Welcome everyone. Before we get started today, I wanna take just a moment to share with you a five star review that really put tears in my eyes. Okay? This was a podcast review on Apple podcasts that I came across, and I don't know who it's from, it's an anonymous person. It may be someone I know, maybe I don't know you, but whoever it is, I wanna say thank you. Here's what you've said. When I listen to Dana, I feel like she's a good friend sitting in my living room, helping me think things through Dana's gentle and transparent dialogue is encouraging. And those words touch me so much because that is my purpose here. My goal is when I sit down and record to talk to each of you that you would understand that I am for you. I am with you, and I am here to engage in your life as much as you're willing and interested in me doing. So. If you wanna learn more about what it's like to have more of me and more of your life, go to Dana by coaching.com/get coached.

Hello. Hello, this is Dana. Welcome back for another episode of Been There, learned that I am in my home office in Oklahoma. And today is very fun, you guys. It's the little things, but it's very fun because I got a new vanilla candle and if you can just imagine my office right now smells extra lovely and it covers up the two year-old French Bulldog smell. So I am very happy the two year-old French bulldog is my dog, Franklin. He generally doesn't smell, but occasionally does. So I'm very thankful for my new candle. I also have my show notes outline here in my Dana Buyer's Coaching notebook. I have a bunch of those available. If you're interested in one, I'd be glad to send you one at no charge. Just email me dana@danabuyercoaching.com, send me your address and I'd love to send one of these notebooks to you as long as supplies last.

Alright, today I am thrilled to be talking to you about something that I learned. I think it was in 1997, so it's been a minute, but I was thinking about this episode and then I really wanted to share this because this is something that has impacted my life in such an incredible way. You know, every now and again you learn something and you're like, man, the timing of that lesson was so powerful. It prepared me for so many things, all my future jobs, for my marriage, for parenting, for friendships, for being a neighbor, for conflict, for leading in a church, all the things. And I'm really thankful that I learned it. And I think of it so much that I realize it's something I wanna talk to you about. And the idea is the concept of being a good girl. In 1997 and 1998, I was in a group therapy setting at my university where we studied a book by Dan Allender called “The Wounded Heart”.

And he gives a description of The Good Girl, which is what a lot of women do do to, they respond that way based upon a variety of circumstances, either in their upbringing or trauma they've experienced. You know, it could be a variety of reasons that lead someone to function this way, but regardless, usually you would wind up behaving in one of three ways. You would be the good girl, which is what we're going to talk about today. We also have women who respond by being a tough girl or a party girl. But in the Dan Islander kind of context there in the Wounded Heart, when I learned about the Good Girl, I just went, oh my gosh, I am seeing myself written on some of these pages. I also had a little bit of a tough girl in me, none of the party girl. But the the point is, I think the concept of what he shares is so powerful.

And I wanna share with you some of these symptoms of being in a good girl that he doesn't necessarily lay out, but I've identified them in my life over time where I've discovered these behaviors. I track them back to kind of a commitment that I had unintentionally and unhealthily made to being the good girl and how those sort of symptoms can appear in my life, in the lives of plenty of women. I work with women who are friends or family and women I coach just to be able to talk about these symptoms. So I want you to listen to them objectively today. You may or may not see yourself in these symptoms. I'm not asking you to criticize yourself if you do see yourself in some of these symptoms, but I wanna bring an awareness, you know, with this whole concept of been there, learned that I'm trying to share with you things that could serve you right where you're at or that you might recognize could help someone you care about someone you're leading at work, or maybe someone in your life that you could share this with them.

So let's just go ahead and recognize first and foremost that if you are listening to this, you are probably on a restorative journey. You're probably seeking wholeness in Christ. Many of listening are women who already follow Jesus, but are at a point where you recognize you're not perfect. And of course, we aren't right? We're human, we're here on earth, we are not God, but we are trying to move in his direction and we unintentionally develop approaches to our work that do not serve us. We develop crutches. We think these are things that work but aren't God's best for us. So I wanna talk about five of the symptoms you could experience if you are living as a good girl, if you were performing as a good girl, especially at work, this could impact any area of your life. But I wanna talk specifically about the workplace today.

So one thing you might be experiencing if you're a good girl, is some critical kind of inner conversation. And what happens is we are constantly regulating ourselves. We have thoughts about, oh, I shouldn't have said that. Or I think that email maybe wasn't right. Like we're correcting ourselves with intense feedback. If we're awake, we might be hard on ourselves. But at the same time we're doing that the people around us, we are authentically encouraging, developing, loving, and lifting them up. And it creates a dichotomy. It creates an abandonment of ourselves where we think we're supporting other people, but we're actually continually beating ourselves down. And what happens on occasion is sometimes our words leak out. You know, we don't speak poorly of others, but the way we talk about ourselves reveal to others how we see ourselves. And in fact, it can kind of shoot us in the foot because if people realize that we talk about ourselves that way, they might wonder, do we think about them that way as well?

And while our business is not to worry about what other people think so much, it is our business to recognize that our behaviors might water down the intent that we mean to have in the workplace. So some critical kind of internal conversation is one very common symptom of being a good girl. A second one is carrying around unexpressed opinions. We sit at a table, we are in a meeting, we hear an opportunity come up, and we haven't shared our observations and our opinions. And the reason we don't is because we want to only do it when it counts, right? And we don't wanna be thought of as someone who speaks up all the time and thinks everyone needs to know everything that she thinks. So we're careful and we're very guarded, but it can get to a point where we don't speak up, we, we don't express our thoughts.

And then we're not really, for lack of a better term, earning our keep. You know, if we don't stir things up on occasion, people might wonder why we're there? What is the purpose of us being there if we're not sharing our observations? And I, I've seen this from people I've worked with on occasion, I've also done this where if something doesn't work out the way we wanted it to on the back end, another person or myself might say, you know what? I kind of had a feeling that wouldn't work and that is a betrayal. Like I'm laughing. But it's like, come on, how ridiculous is that for us to say on the back end of things? Yeah, I wasn't sure that was gonna work. Well then why didn't we say it on the front end of things? It would've been so much better if we had experience or thoughts, wisdom or knowledge to contribute to benefit the whole group.

But we're really thinking about ourselves and trying to be a good girl to appear like we're not stirring up the waters unnecessarily, but it causes division and problems at work. A third symptom we can experience if we are functioning as the good girl at work is we have overlooked needs. We don't take time for lunch, we're unwilling or uncomfortable taking an afternoon off to have a necessary doctor's appointment. Even something a client said to me once was, she was just like, you know, I haven't had my hair trimmed in a long time and I really need to get it done, but I don't feel like I can. And I had to ask her directly in love, what leads you to think that you can't get your hair cut? You know? And she said, well, I work full-time and on the weekends we're at my son's soccer thing and you know, and, and my hairstylist isn't there on Sunday or Monday.

And, and she had all kinds of reasons that supported why she couldn't, but everyone she worked with who were women were still able to get their hair done. So we just talked about that fact. And she backed down a little bit and said, you know what? Okay, I don't have to die on that hill. Essentially, she didn't have to be the good girl. She could take off or leave early or you know, order out dinner for the kids some night and go get her hair done if she needed to. She didn't have to be a martyr or the good girl in this scenario. A fourth symptom of behaving as the good girl is that we start experiencing momentum towards resentment. It doesn't mean we are always resentful, but we experience things. And I think this goes back to symptom two. If we aren't expressing our opinions when we need to or we aren't, or step three, if we aren't looking at the needs that we need to have met, we can start experiencing resentment.

You could have resentment towards your kids or your partner. You could have resentment towards someone at work. Personally, I experienced that once where I worked at a place where a coworker was very publicly not going along with not only something in our culture, but something the rest of us had been asked to do. And he just kind of thumbed his nose at it, wasn't doing it. And I finally approached him about it because I realized the thoughts I was having were not helpful. And I just said, it kind of feels like you're not on board with this what's happening? And he said, yeah, I think it's a stupid idea.

And eventually I talked to my leader about it. My leader was like, yeah, I just don't think he really sees the value in it. And left it at that. And it was frustrating because I really lost some respect for my leader in that scenario, but I didn't lose respect for myself. I was so thankful I just spoke up and said something about it because it helped me move on. I didn't like the outcome, but I did like that I had said something so that resentment wouldn't continue. So that was a fourth symptom of being a good girl. And the fifth one is when we struggle or maybe even think we're incapable of relaxing, you know, we just go from task to task. We hustle, we take our laptops home on the evenings and the weekends. We can't just sit without a phone in our hands and look people in the eye and have a conversation, or we don't really know what a hobby would be if we had one.

We think a hobby sounds lovely, but, but what is that by the way? What is a hobby? How could we ever do that? That sounds like a luxury that I could never have. So those are some experiences, some thoughts, some symptoms, behaviors of being a good girl. And as you hear this, you might recognize that being a good girl is someone who might also really struggle with people pleasing. You know, giving an unfair focus on specific people in our life, giving an unfair focus on their opinions, what they want from us, getting their approval and feeling like that is what gives us value. So what I want to do is ask you a specific, a targeted coaching question for each of these symptoms. So you might not have all five of them, you might just have one or two of them, maybe you have none of them.

And this again, is an episode for you to share with someone lovingly. But I wanna share with you some targeted coaching questions for each of these symptoms to get a little bit more to the heart of how we can unravel it a bit. Because like I said, you and I are on restorative journeys. I learned this material in like I said, 19 97, 19 98, and I am still finding myself at moments falling back into a symptom or two of this good girl kind of approach to life in my work. And because I don't wanna be there, I choose awareness and I choose to coach myself. And I love coaching women. So let's coach on this a little bit. Okay? So when it comes to having the thoughts that are negative, when we're very critical of ourselves when it comes to that symptom, I want you to lovingly ask yourself, who am I when I do that?

Who am I being when I berate myself, when I am so critical of things that were maybe unintentional, things I couldn't have known, or maybe just I'm critical of the way God made me. Who am I when I do that? And is that who I want to be? So we start with that open-ended question. Who am I? Maybe it's a learned behavior that you've observed in someone else in your life, but you get to ask yourself, is that who I want to be? You give yourself the opportunity to make a decision here so you don't have to stay in that behavior. And it allows you to kind of step out to, you know, move backwards to step out of that habit. You're moving in a direction you likely don't want to move in when you berate yourself in your mind all day long. So bringing the awareness to who that voice is and that it's really not the voice you want to be using is going to allow you to understand that that is a choice.

You have to not behave that way. That's the first step. Now, when we take a look at our failure to express our opinions, and again, we don't have to have opinions on everything, but whenever we aren't speaking up, when we kind of feel that voice within us urging us to say something, I want you to use this coaching question to, to talk yourself through it. Ask yourself, what is the worst thing that could happen if I share my opinion truly, what is the worst thing that could happen? Well, the people pleaser in us would answer quickly. Well, someone might not like me, someone might disagree, and oh my gosh, I might be wrong.

Now I'm making light of those things. But it's true. I've thought all of those things. Someone might not like me, I might be wrong, they might disagree with me. And that's where we have to stand toe to toe with the unhelpful habit of people pleasing and recognize. This is not about us. We're just sharing an observation. We're just sharing an opinion. We remove the ego from it when we admit we could be wrong. We don't have to be right, but we care about the team, the organization, the project. We're working on enough to speak up. So we take the focus off of ourselves, we recognize what could go wrong, we acknowledge what could go wrong, and then we take the risk anyway of sharing our opinion. You are going to do this to build evidence for two things. One, that you're capable of sharing your opinion and not dying.

And two, that no matter how someone responded to you, you are going to be able to continue in your job without falling apart. You will prove this to yourself. Your worst fear is very likely not going to happen. So next, the third kind of symptom or behavior in being the good girl and our people pleasing is when we overlook our own needs. And I wanna ask you this coaching question, when it comes to overlooking your own needs, what limiting belief could be holding you back from getting your needs met? What limiting belief? So limiting belief is something that we feel pretty attached to that we think is pretty accurate, and we accept it as truth. We accept it as truth. And that could be, you know, for going back to the example I shared earlier, well, I don't, there's no hair stylist who could do my hair on a Saturday evening or I'm not gonna be able to get a massage in because there is no money in the budget.

So we have limiting beliefs. We tell ourselves why things can't happen without really giving ourselves the opportunity to look for possibility. And now those examples I gave are things that cost money, of course. But when we, when we talk about overlooked needs, you know, a need could be something as simple as quiet time. You know, I live with some incredible introverts, they need quiet time. I am not a high extrovert, but I am not quiet. So the people I live with do need Dana free time. Does that cost anything? No, but they do have to speak up and let me know if they need that. And I am comfortable hearing that and I love honoring that request. But if they had a limiting belief that they're going to hurt my feelings or ruin our relationship by saying, Hey, I need a little bit of alone time that's going to keep them from having their needs met.

I don't want that experience for them. And they have to be able though, to advocate for themselves to get beyond a limiting belief so that they don't hold themselves back from getting what they want. So one more kind of side note here about this symptom of limiting beliefs is really recognizing what your overlooked needs are. You know, I gave you some examples about like not going to the doctor or, or not getting your hair done, having quiet time, things like that. Those are very common ones that I've discussed through with clients. But there could be other things. You might have a significant need for a friend to hold you accountable to pray for you. You might have an overlooked need of some help with meal planning or some help with the dishes in the evening or bath time for your kids, whatever those are. The first one that comes to mind is probably the one that is most glaring and the most consistent.

And I would encourage you to start there and just see what a limiting belief might be around that scenario that is holding you back from getting the help that you want and that you need. Okay, so a fourth symptom we talked about in trying to be the good girl at work is about the momentum of resentment building in our lives. And I, I have a whole episode about this. It's called unpacking resentment. I encourage you to take a look about, I encourage you to take a look at it where I talk about kind of the five re five ingredients and the recipe for resentment and how we can unintentionally build that in our lives. We put these ingredients in and all of a sudden we're making a recipe for full-blown resentment. So go check out that episode for sure. But for our purposes today, when you start notice noticing kind of the momentum around resentment building in your life and you're trying to be the good girl, you don't wanna stir up any trouble at work.

When you notice that, I want you to ask yourself this coaching question, where are you settling? Where are you settling? Because it is completely true. There are many things that might be a frustration to you but that aren't gonna require much of your energy or attention. They're going to dissolve on their own or be handled in other ways. And the scenario I gave earlier where I noticed a coworker was just blatantly not going along with a plan that we had all agreed on. I felt that was up to me to go to him directly, one out of respect, but two out of just because I kind of thought, am I, you know, I kind of thought maybe I've misunderstood something here. I really wanted to be wrong, honestly. But I also felt like I was settling. I couldn't accept it. I couldn't ask the rest of the team to go along with our approach if he wasn't going to be held accountable for his behavior.

And so if we are settling for something, that is the recipe for moving that that momentum, a fast moving train towards resentment. So if you're settling for something that you know is not fair or right for yourself or the people on your team, that is something you'll want to identify and determine what the best response is for you to be able to speak up. And then finally, I talk to you about the symptom of being a good girl. Where we're not great at relaxing, we are unfamiliar that word hobby. People might not get to make eye contact with us very much, whether it's in the evening after work or even during the workday because we don't stop to relax and enjoy. So a coaching question you could ask yourself if you struggle with relaxing is what if you could just practice relaxing? What would it look like to practice?

And I love this question because when I talk to women about this, and frankly when I've been coached on this years ago as well, I remember just thinking there has to be a method for it. There has to be an approach. So many people I love and care about seem to just do this naturally. Well. They just kind of came by, you know, came honest by whatever it is that is of interest to them that helps them relax. If we get so forced and focused on it, we won't actually be able to enjoy our experience of trying to relax. Do you see the dichotomy in that it doesn't work? It's ironic that we try to force ourselves to relax and then it becomes more stressful. So what if you could just practice relaxing? What if you could just become a student of what relaxing might look like for you?

So many parts of our lives are truly just experiments. I wanna set you free not to think you have to get it right, but just that you're going to give it a try. You might find that you love something or you don't love something. You might find that the, the experience of relaxation is not as elusive as you thought it was. And I just a little side note here that I wanna point out that a lot of ambitious women when I'm in conversations with them, point out that what they have considered relaxing over time are actually things that they're using to distract themselves. Okay? So you might have one or two or 10 habits that you call relaxing, but you're actually using to distract yourself. So I don't say that as a point of judgment, but I say that as a point of awareness. If you think playing games on your phone is how you relax, maybe that can be on occasion.

But if that's where you go when something stressful happens, maybe you're using it as a tool to disengage from your life. So really the only kind of clarity I want to bring around relaxation is not so much that you can do it wrong, but the true relaxation is something where you're able to unwind and be present, kind of get lost in the moment instead of try to distract yourself from the stresses of your life. Okay, so you've looked through these five symptoms of being a good girl with me. You have learned some coaching questions to help you with each of those si, with each of those symptoms. And now I just wanna invite you, I want to invite you on this restorative journey to break your system, to break your approach to work. If you are showing up as the good girl, you will hit a ceiling.

And I'm not talking about the glass ceiling, I'm talking about a ceiling that we place on ourselves of a definition that we have created through life experiences, through observation, through our values, we create our own ceiling of this is as far as I can go at work because I don't wanna upset people because I'm critical of myself, because I'm not going to meet my needs. And I think the the overly sacrificial approach that I take to work is eventually going to pay off. And I wanna say to you as lovingly as I can that it will not pay off. It will not. I'm speaking from experience from a number of experiences I had over my career, unfortunately, of burning out where I would show up for pretty much everyone else except myself. And I thought that showing up for other people meant supporting them without giving my opinion on occasion or being critical of myself so that I would get better, but encouraging everyone else around me.

You know, some of these approaches to being a good girl are the very things that keep us from enjoying our work. And then, you know, by kind of process of elimination, they're also the very things that keep us not only from enjoying work, but enjoying our personal lives. So I love starting with these symptoms and looking them fully in the face from a place of grace for you and me to think about our restorative journey and thinking about breaking this approach to work. And then what happens is, as you start breaking your system, as you start being less critical of yourself, expressing opinions as needed, meeting your needs, or getting help with your needs being met, when you tackle scenarios where you're seeing some resentment building, and when you're learning how to become a student of relaxation and how to relax well in your own life, you are going to stop being the good girl in your office.

When you stop being the good girl in your office, some incredible things happen. One, you're going to get your bearings and not being the good girl and your example is going to inspire others. But the other thing that happens is you start building experience and knowledge and expertise to invite the other women around you to also stop being the good girls in the office too. You give them permission to stop people pleasing. And then what happens is the overall result, the output of your ministry, the work that your team does, whatever kind of work you're involved in, the overall output is going to be so much healthier and so much authentic and powerful because you have removed that feeling of being the good girl in the office and you're allowing yourself to fully step into the strengths and the experiences that God has given you so that you can show up and serve others well, I am so thankful that you and I got to talk about this today, and I wanna give you just kind of one more bonus coaching question as we head out of this episode, because it's really important to kind of just have a meta holistic, broader look at what no longer being the good girl at work could do for you.

Okay, so here's the question. If one year from now you were living a more purposeful and fulfilling life, if one year from now you were no longer functioning as the good girl in the office and you were speaking up for yourself, you were living more authentically, what would be different? What would be different? The people who love you and know you, what would they say? Gosh, I've seen a change in you. What would be different? The thoughts that you have in your head, what would be different about you getting consistent haircuts? I'm being a little bit silly there, but it's true. There's something about you making a shift and noticing over time the impact that happens because I'm not asking you to hustle to make a significant quick change. I'm asking you to lovingly approach these habits that might be holding you back, creating a ceiling over you and your, you know, your performance in your career.

I'm asking you to walk that out over time to lovingly coach yourself towards that. And then to start with this question of imagining a year from now, what would be different if you would do this? I believe in you. I know this is completely capable of that. You're completely capable of this. And I'm telling you that because I am on this journey myself and to be on this journey to be from where the point I was years ago and where I am today, I have fully seen God help me and coaches and friends and loved ones and coworkers help me no longer stay in that role of having to be the good girl at work. I invite you along the same journey, use these questions, see how they impact you. Send me an email at dana@danabycoaching.com. Let me know what action you're going to take based upon this episode and let me know if you'd like to work together. Thanks friends. It was so fun chatting with you today. I'll see you on the next episode.

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