In this episode of the Impostor Syndrome Files, we talk about dealing with drama at work. Because we’re complex humans, it can be challenging to navigate other people’s drama without making it about ourselves. In reality, though, very little about other people’s behaviors has anything to do with us. This week, I’m talking with Brenda Neckvatal, a human results professional who helps leaders tackle their toughest people challenges. Here she shares how she softened her own edges with support from a mentor who was willing to give her honest feedback. But she also notes that not all feedback is created equal. It’s important to prevent our people-pleasing tendencies from leading us to take action on feedback that isn’t right for us. We also talk about how to interpret and navigate other people’s emotional behaviors while regulating our own emotions.
About My Guest
Brenda is a three-time bestselling author, an award-winning Human Results professional, and a serial entrepreneur who has been featured in publications such as Forbes, Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Inc., and US News and World Reports. Perseverance, integrity, and relentless optimism are just a few of the ingredients you experience when meeting and working with Brenda.
Not only does she help business leaders tackle their toughest people challenges, but she is also a recognized expert in crisis management and group dynamics. As a trusted mentor to leaders and managers at all levels, she equips them with the skills to navigate complex interpersonal issues, resolve conflicts, and lead with confidence. By mastering these skills, they can lead their teams into tomorrow’s rapidly evolving business landscape with resilience, clarity, and purpose.
She really enjoys helping people solve their unique problems, and human resources offered her the ability to support her co-workers in a greater capacity. Having the benefit of working for a total of six Fortune 500 companies, she converted her experience into advising her audience to use tried and trusted best practices that help leaders achieve their workforce goals.
In her 30-year career in human resources and business, she has consulted to over 700 small businesses and 1,000 leaders. She has optimized employee effectiveness and helped leaders develop high-performing teams and navigate intense employment-related decisions.
Brenda is a devoted volunteer in the Navy SEAL Community and is constantly finding new ways of supporting veterans of Naval Special Warfare. She dedicates 32 weeks a year to working with The Honor Foundation to support the career transition of Special Forces personnel by providing them with her knowledge, insight, and creativity.
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Website: www.yobrenda.com
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Transcript
Kim Meninger
Welcome, Brenda. I am really excited for our conversation. I think this is a topic that is going to be very relevant to many of us, but I'd love to start by inviting you to introduce yourself.
Brenda Neckvatal
Yeah, absolutely. So. I am a 30-year Human Results Professional, my, my beginning started in retail, which introduced me to the field of human resources, which I have been pretty much doing, but I don't focus. I mean, I've, I know all of the tactical stuff on, you know, the compliance side of HR, that doesn't excite me so much as actually working on the difficult is what I would view as difficult. And that's just the wide variety of different people, personalities, approaches, communication. I mean, working with people can be pretty invigorating, but it can also be pretty exhausting at the same time. And I came from a background where I didn't really initially have a like a mentor. I had bosses, and which is nothing wrong with that, because I got really good at operating, but when it came to dealing with people, I had some pretty serious rough edges. And I, I, I applied pressure where I it didn't need it, and then I didn't apply pressure where it needed it. And it's really interesting because I had this conversation with somebody else today is that, you know, there's a difference between a leader and a manager. And a leader is 100% fully capable of separating the very natural transition that happens when somebody is in a management role or in a leadership role, especially for the first time over time, when you do it and you, and you focus on yourself, if you're able to separate the emotional side of it, like the desire to be liked and respected, and, you know, be that legacy kind of person for that individual with the Hey, listen, we have to lead through this, no matter what anybody thinks. If you can figure, if you can get to that point where you can separate the two, you're going to be a really, really amazing leader. If you can't separate the emotion from leadership, you're only going to be a manager, and that's not necessarily a bad thing, but you're, you are going to spend 98% of the time beating yourself up because you can't figure out how to get people to move forward. You can't get people how to come together. You can't get people to figure, you can't figure out how to get people to do what it is you need them to do without being, quote, unquote, that evil one or the nasty one. That's the emotional side of and it's very ineffective. If you can't separate from who that person is. Here's another symptom, too. There, there. And everybody goes through this in their leadership journey. At some point in time, we will always get there's at some point in time, we will get more excited about somebody else's success than they will, you know? And when that happens, we wind up letting ourselves down, right? It's like romanticizing the perfect man, and then all of a sudden it's not the perfect dude that you thought he once was. He's just a dude, you know. So it's a similar thing, you know? There's a lot of correlation between dating and leadership is really wild, so, but…
Kim Meninger
That’s really right. I think about that a lot too. But you what you're saying really resonates with me, because I describe my work as making it easier to be human at work. And I always say it's not the work that makes heart work hard, it's the people.
Brenda Neckvatal
Yeah, yeah, exactly you. You can be human. I mean, believe it or not, some of the most, one of the most compassionate things that we can do to another person or for another person, is just be straightforward. You know, just tell them like it is. That really is, because there's no hidden agenda. There's no judging and evaluating. It's just straightforward. This is what we need you to get done. Go after it. Just get it done.
Kim Meninger
Yeah, and I think that builds trust too because if you're sugar-coating, people know when you're not sincere.
Brenda Neckvatal
Oh gosh, yeah.
Kim Meninger
And it usually isn't sustainable. I know you know from personal experience that when someone is behaving passive-aggressively, or somebody who's behaving insincere, it's usually going to come out eventually, and that creates a lot of insecurity, of like, is this person really happy right now, or are they not? Or what are they really thinking, right as opposed to just being having a direct and honest conversation?
Brenda Neckvatal
Yeah, you know, and that's the thing is, like when you try, when you start putting on a show for somebody, and you start being something that you're not, people won't see you as being authentic, because trust is one. Of those things where not only is it given, it's received as well. And so if you are again coming from straight forward point of view, whether or not that person can, can you think can handle it or not, which, believe me, they can handle it, trust me, and especially when you reframe it in a way that they can handle it, they can handle it. And I know that there's a lot of it, so I don't know if I tell it this way, they're just not going to be able to handle it. That's fine. Tell them. Tell them it this way, like I'll give you, for instance, one of the things that I used to do, and I was always the disciplinarian in one of my jobs, and it wasn't because I was disciplining him so much, is that I was very effective at getting the message through to them. And one of the ways that I did that, and I taught the other managers on the team, this one aspect. It's like, listen, when you're holding somebody accountable for their attendance, or you're holding somebody accountable for not doing something that they're supposed to do, follow it up. It's like, Listen, the only thing we want you to change is this one thing that's it. And I use the exact same phrase every time I say it, and I started off with that, and it's like it. This has nothing to do whether I like you or don't like you. This has everything to do with whether or not you're performing this particular function. This is the only thing that I want you to change, and you have 100% the power to make that happen, right as far as a person goes, I actually like you. I think you're a great person, but I just need you to flip this from being an undesirable situation into a desirable situation, and that is 100% on you. My job is in here talking to you about it. So if you fix that, that's the only thing I need you to do right now. Can, is that something that you can do, and it's amazing that people are like, wow, she actually doesn't treat me like a child. I'm like, No, I'm treating you like real grownup, you know? And so being that clear and articulate it, what they don't see is they don't see a lot of excuse they don't see a lot of narrative. They don't see anything else other than, hey, listen, I just need you to fix this. One thing. I just need you to show up to work on time. What is it going to take for you to do that? Because this is not my problem to fix. I'm addressing my problem right now. Then here's the other thing about a problem. I recently heard this, and I love this. We only label problems a problem because we feel that we can't fix it. I know hits heavy, right? And the truth of the matter is, is that it's less of a worthy opponent than what we actually think. So. When we start addressing things as a problem, we're telling ourselves that we don't have the confidence to fix it, which, quite frankly, we do. We just haven't crossed over some of our own individual hurdles yet. We, we may not necessarily know what to say. We haven't had enough practice saying something that we think is effective yet.
Kim Meninger
So I am curious. You started by saying that you had some rough edges and that you, you know. And so how did you get here? What? How did you know that? And how, like, what kind of work did you do to get to the point that you're talking?
Brenda Neckvatal
I was like a, I was honestly, like a cult, I'm telling you right now, if you look at it, at least a horse. I had a, I had a leader who took me under his wing, and he broke me down and not in a bad way. Um, you know, there were he, he acknowledged the things that I did really great, but he also continuously taught me lessons, and he never did it in a harsh or a sharp way. There was a couple of times, and I joke with him. I still talk to him about to this day. So there was one day where I remember he, like, ripped my head off, threw it across the wall, bounced off the wall, bounced right in front of him, and then he lobbed it right back over my head again. And we joke about that, but, and that was a hard moment, but I knew that it had absolutely nothing to do with me, like, I just walked into it, right? He's just having a moment. But, you know, the thing is, is that a lot of the stuff when he would teach me, he used to play this game called, you're wrong, and I don't know how, and, and he was so gracious about it. And so like, he would have me look something up and I didn't get the right information. He goes, Okay, that was really great. He said, But I have something to tell you. And I said, What? He goes, You're wrong. I was like crap, right? And, and it just kind of happened that way, right? He knew I had thick skin. He knew I wasn't like some tendering, you know, like I couldn't handle feedback. He was really good at it. And so what he did is he actually mentored me, and that's how, that's how my rough edges started. Remember, I had bosses, I didn't have a mentor. And so he started to mentor me, but he always used everything that I had, all my attributes at the same time. So he figured out how to balance me out really well, and which actually created an acronym, like, when I look at lead, I use LEAD as an acronym, leverage, employee, assets daily. And that's exactly what he did. So. You lead the way, you're actually leveraging the strengths of your team each and every single day, even if you don't, if you're not a person's leader, if you're just an influencer in the company, in other words, you don't, you don't have the ability to make decisions a matter of importance, but everything that you do leads to an eventual win or failure, right? And there's a lot of us in a business like that. If you recognize that, if you leverage everybody's attributes or assets every single day, including your own, you're actually leading the way. Because that's really what leadership is. It's it goes beyond just looking at figuring out the direction. It goes beyond looking and figuring what the problems are. It's all about, are we maximizing everybody's potential? So that's what he started to do with me, and he actually used me to stay connected with 218 employees, which is a fairly large number of folks. He was absolutely 100% for me not sitting at my desk and being mobile because he knew I was social. He knew I had a caring heart, and he just literally turned me loose in that regards. The managers didn't like it because when they needed something, they need something now, and they couldn't find me. So eventually they gave me a portable phone, and then I then there was no excuse for anybody to not be able to reach me, right? But I was doing the most important thing, and that was actually keeping a pulse for him, so that way he could lead with the rest of the shop.
Kim Meninger
Mm, and so all this time, were you aware, I'm changing my behavior? Like, was there an intentionality to it?
Brenda Neckvatal
It was, it was I told him one day the things that I really didn't like about myself and the and the walls that I felt like I kept running into. And it was funny, before I had him as a boss, I had one of his subordinates as a, as a boss, and, and this guy would, he's like, so think about what it is like. Think about where you could do is little bit better. And I told him, I said, you know, this is the one thing that I keep running into. And he says, What do you think you're missing? And I'm like, I'm finally looked at him. I said, Would you just freaking tell me already, as I'm sitting here telling you, this has been a lifelong struggle, if I haven't figured it out by now, and I'm 32 years old, don't you think I could use a little lift, right? Started laughing, and he goes, Yeah, I kind of do that a little bit too often. I'm like, Just freaking, tell me what it is. I'm not going to get bent out of shape. So he told me. And I went, Oh, okay. And then never happened again. It's like, I don't need you to keep putting me on a thought path. Just, just help me get on the right road, you know? And so. But the thing with me is that I was very trainable and I was very workable. The hard part was, is that, because I was simultaneously a very much a people pleaser, that I took everybody's feedback, and not everybody is giving you the right kind of feedback. So I would take people's advice and it wasn't the right advice for that moment. So I learned. I ate a little crow along the way, and that never hurts anybody. But as long as you can take those, those moment like failure, there's another acronym for you, First Attempt In Learning. FAIL is First Attempt In Learning. So if you try something because you got feedback from somebody didn't necessarily pan out, you just figured out a way not to do something right, like Thomas Edison, like he tried, what? 1000 times to invent the light bulb, and he figured out 1000 times how a light bulb doesn't work. Yeah. Thank God he didn't quit at 999 because we'd all be sitting in the dark. Right?
Kim Meninger
I want to talk a little bit about the people-pleasing side of this too because I think that is especially for women. I think a lot of us are conditioned to believe that we need to take care of other people's feelings and we need to please other people, and that can be a really hard habit to break, and so I wonder what your thoughts are on managing the people-pleasing tendencies that we have?
Brenda Neckvatal
So I will share with you, from my perspective of it. Now, I will also tell you that people pleasing isn't just for women, it's men, too. I know a lot. I when I lost my best friend last year who committed suicide in a cheap motel, and he was a massive people pleaser. We had a very deep conversation about that one night. And, Mike was, if you ever want to really want an amazing story, check out Mike Day. He's a retired US Navy SEAL. Mike also had a tremendous amount of traumatic brain injury, and that really is a lot of what led to, to led his to his suicide. But he wrote a book, and he talks about a lot of different things, but if you look at Mike's story. You look at my story, it is a lack of self-confidence. That's what people-pleasing comes from. And people pleasers are absolute, like fodder and bait for narcissists. And when you are under narcissist's control, your self-confidence diminishes incredibly fast. I had a friend of mine that I was helping. I didn't realize he was such a narcissist until he was he was living in a, in a park, I mean, like literally sleeping on a child slide, and I flew him out from Colorado to where I live. I put him up in my guest bedroom for a little bit. And I will never forget when I realized that mine is probably wasn't the wisest thing to do, but I did it anyway because I felt it was the right thing to do. And one day we were, I don't know we were talking about something, and all of a sudden he saw a beautiful woman, and he goes, Oh my god, she is a nine. And I'm like, You guys really rank women by numbers and, and he goes, Yeah. He said, That's what men do. And he said, and I said, Oh, interesting. He said, looked at me. And he says, By the way, you're six and you're never going to be any better. [Whoa.] And I actually took that as advice, because I was so much of like, again, people can give you feedback, and it's not the greatest feedback, right? And so it was after he left that I realized it was any after he left. It was the day that I told him that he needed to leave, that he had overstretched his welcome. Then I realized that I had broken the first shackle on being a people pleaser and narcissist, and I had some other pretty big ones that I needed to deal with in my life, and so walking away from him was the greatest joy I ever had. I finally started to heal. I got peace, you know. And I had narcissists at work. I had narcissists personally around me, and, you know, some of them you just have to love from afar,
Kim Meninger
Well, and I think what you're bringing up, too, is when we're in the workplace, I often laugh about this, because, you know, people talk about conflict management and communication as if there's an expectation that the people that you work with are perfectly healthy, whole beings who aren't taking all of their baggage and trauma and, you know, issues with them into the workplace. And so what you're interacting with every day are people who have all kinds of things in their backgrounds that we don't know. And some of them are narcissists, and some, some of them are, you know, have other forms of personality challenges. And when we're interacting with them, we assume these are reasonable people, so it must be something wrong with me.
Brenda Neckvatal
Yeah, that's a, that's a people-pleaser mindset, right there too, like I must have done something wrong to have gotten myself here and when, in fact, that if you, if you get really, really good at staying quiet and watching people. I'm sorry, my director of security is informing something is amiss. Apparently, he's not going to run downstairs either to check it out. He's going to hang out right behind me. The transition is being made down the stairs. Alright, it'll be a lot less noisier anyway, um, you know when that happens is that some, some people operate like putting it right out there. And, you know, I can remember a time when I had one coworker who was, told everybody she was an absolute control freak and everything had to be done her way. And then when I fell under criticism, and there were days where it was right, thankfully. So I should have been criticized, right? But what I found, what was really interesting, is that, of the two of us, I was always the one that was being addressed, and I it was never the other person with the control issue. It's just like, at some point in time I came to the and I will never forget when in a meeting, that person and totally unhinged on me, so bad that the entire department, or the all of the entire reaction, and I sat there and my boss is looking at me says, Do you have anything to add? I'm like, I don't have a single thing to add because the less I spoke, the more it was revealed. [Mm.] To the point where it was, it was far beyond anything that was appropriate. Like, totally lost all sense of decorum. Like gone it can. Continued in his office after our meeting broke, and everybody heard every single word, and she was just going off the chain. And my boss came up to me afterwards. He goes, Are you okay? And I'm like, let me tell you something. What happened in that meeting wasn't, uh, it was not all about me and that person's frustration. I said, and that's the day that I realized that sometimes people will, will start giving that critical feedback to the easy of the two parties, instead of realizing or dealing with multiple parties because it's never just a one-way street. Somebody's always going to receive something, and they're going to react. They're either going to accept it, or they're going to push back on it, or they'll absorb it. You know, some people will have the sense to be able to have a reasonable conversation, but when you have somebody that's being unreasonable, you can't view them in your mind as being reasonable, right? [Yeah.] And it's very easy to see when somebody's being unreasonable.
Kim Meninger
What do you do in that situation? Because a lot of people don't feel like they have power in those moments. Like, how do you like, do you remove yourself from the situation? How do you how do you manage?
Brenda Neckvatal
Well, the way I handled that particular moment was that the more she went off, the less not only did I see it was about me and everybody else saw it, was about like there was a point in time where I was literally listening to this and felt absolutely no embarrassment whatsoever because I hadn't said anything to instigate it. I didn't say anything to inflame it, like I literally sat there quiet and just let her off-gas, to the point where my inaction actually created more intenseness out of her. And that is very clear. That has nothing to do with you. That’s 100% that person's issue, and if and they have the ability to reign themselves in, and she was just letting it all go, that's not me, right? So why would I get embarrassed by something like that? She's not She's calling me names. She's, you know, telling everybody how horrible I am, and everybody in that room, I'm watching everyone, and they're like, holy crap, like they're not even I, like, they forgot I was there, you know? And it's like, this is not about me, yeah, this is about her, right? So, yeah. And you know that that can happen. And so some people are like, Oh my God, you must have been so embarrassed. I'm like, I wasn't the one that was losing my mind. It's like she was having a very bad moment. And so that, see, that's the thing is, like in situations like that, when you can demonstrate grace, and grace is kind of giving somebody the space that they didn't necessarily deserve. You know, like when you look at grace and faith, for instance, we get grace. We get we get forgiveness when we don't earn it. That's what grace is. And so if you apply that same kind of principle to giving people grace or forgiveness when they don't earn it, doesn't mean that the world is going to be right? It just That's for you. Forgiveness is for you. It's not for the other person, unless they come asking for it. It's you. When you forgive people, it's, it's not for anybody else other than you, right? So when you're dealing with somebody who is that unhinged, you can give them grace, and then you can reset your expectation and that. And in the exit, she came up, she may apologize, hold me aside in the room. I didn't want to go into a room by herself, but I'm like, Well, I am five nine, and she is five one. So, you know, there's that. So, you know, I was just kind of, I just sat and I listened to her, and I realized this was not about me. And she even said she goes, I totally lost it, and I humbly apologize, and I said, I'm going to tell you right now. I said, if you ever do that again, and now I got a chance to set my expectation to somebody who is level. I said, if you ever make a move like that again, if you ever do anything like that again, I promise you, you are going to have a really bad day. I will take this to human resources. I will completely skip our boss, and I will do everything it takes in my power to remove you period. And I just left it like that. She flared up a few times without nearly that bad. And just some people can't control themselves. You know, they just will always get in their own way.
Kim Meninger
Yeah, but I think the thing that you keep saying that's important is it's not about you, and I think that we often make it about ourselves.
Brenda Neckvatal
Yeah, we do. You know, there are times where. People get me upset, like somebody will say something, they'll say something snarky, and, you know, like, I'll get there's certain things that even I'll still to this day, get very aggravated about people who aren't doing what they're supposed to do, and they say that they're going to do it, and you have to repeat yourself. That drives me crazy, right? That I lose my patience when it comes to that. But you know, when somebody comes out with an underhanded, you know, just totally T-bones, you with something, I'll get upset about it. But at the same time, there's something missing that I haven't taken into consideration, and that's something that I know for a fact. So the question is, what is it? It doesn't mean that I'm take, it's not an excuse, right? So when we start making excuses for somebody, oh, they're, you know, like this, because they just had somebody pass in their family, or, oh, you know, she had to put her dog down. Or, oh, you know, it's like that. It's like, Don't make excuses for people, but at the same time, recognize that there's something you've missed. There's always a reason why people do things, and it may or may not have anything to do with you. So if you're able to keep your eye, you know your mind open that because they flared up doesn't mean that their flareup is right, but there's a reason for their flareup. And typically, if you understand the reason for the flareup, you understand how you fit into the equation. And I'm going to give your audience one of the biggest things in life, that is the number one rule I live and die by. And I guarantee you that somebody in your, in your audience is going to go, oh, in the absence of information, people make stuff up. And I say that because if somebody, if you were to have a situation with somebody, a frustrationship, right with someone, if you ever caught yourself justifying in your head, quietly why something is or isn't? The reason why that justification is, is that there's stuff that you don't know, so you have to put a placeholder piece of information in it to satisfy your need of not knowing. If you get comfortable with not knowing, like somebody caps off, or something like that, and then you sit there and go, “That was interesting”. And you're comfortable with not knowing the reason why, you'll be amazed. Eventually, it will bubble up, and nine times out of ten, it had absolutely nothing to do with you. But we don't like the pressure of that feeling of that unknown, so we'll plug a story in. [Mm-hmm.] Right? And if you don't believe me, just watch a teenage girl date for the very first time. Oh my god. You know, we've all done it, right? You know, even, even in our 20s, 30s and 40s, it's like, Well, I haven't heard from him. Maybe he's like, dead in a ditch somewhere on the side of the road. Why is he late? And then, like, you know, you know, you stood up for a date, right? More commonplace now today's world than ever before. But same principle, you don't know, you don't understand, and so you plug in a story to satisfy the need of not knowing. But if you can build that muscle and get really good at being comfortable not having the information. What it allows is the time and the space necessary for you to see things the way they are and allow the truth to really come forward.
Kim Meninger
Yeah, and I have the same philosophy you do. I always say that, like, if there is information missing, we make it up, and we make it up in ways that are unfavorable to ourselves and others, right? It's yeah me, or it's because you're a jerk, or, you know, always things that that are, you know, more that, more often than not, removed from the truth. And so I always, you know, there are people who use the expression assume positive intent. I always say, assume information is missing.
Brenda Neckvatal
Yeah, I like that. I think there's a time and a place for each one. Like you see somebody making an honest, noble try at something, and they fail horribly, right? Assume positive intent. I mean, they made a great effort. We've all been there at some point. We fell right on our butt, right? [Yeah.] Assume positive intent. But you're right. I, like the other one, is assume information is missing and, and that that goes for the 85% of everything else that you run into. And it's, it's not an easy discipline to put into place. It takes self-practice to be able to do something like that, otherwise, we just get into this, you know, mental grind of and then start questioning our value in the situation, when, in fact, more often than not, it's very little to do with you.
Kim Meninger
And you know, I think in certain situations it can be easier than others. But let's say this is your boss, right, and your boss has such an outsized influence on your experience. And do you? Do you recommend any kind of like tips for how to know when it's time to just leave the situation?
Brenda Neckvatal
Oh, I wish I could, you know, I get that and I can't. I can never tell anybody when it's time to leave the situation. Everybody's got to make that determination of yourself because when you make a shift, there's those consequences that fall, you know. I mean, there's the financial aspect of it, there's the security aspect of it, you know, I can't do that, but what I can say leading up to that is, if you truly, honestly see that a manipulation is taking place on a consistent basis, that's a good indicator to start making your move and making your plants. Because once manipulations start, it doesn't stop. And there's a difference between evil manipulation and manipulating situations. So that way, you know, like I said, leverage everybody's assets, leverage employees assets daily, right? Well, you have to manipulate things. You have to move the players on the chessboard. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is the intentional, the intentional and the willful dishonesty that that comes along with that. If that's really, honestly what you're facing, then it's time to leave. But if, if your leader is telling you something that's simply you just don't like the answer. They may say no and you're not liking the No, or they may saying, well, that's not our priority, and you don't like that. That's not manipulation. That's the straightforwardness, right? And there are people that not only are people pleasers, but then, like, their self-confidence is so low that they can't even accept the genuine, the genuine article. And when you have that Double Indemnity, I used to be that Double Indemnity person. So not I didn't like anything, you know, and it wasn't until I'm like, I really just don't like feeling like this. So I took a long time for me to sit down and actually, like work through all of that, and, you know, and heal from it too. And that's a lifelong process.
Kim Meninger
Yeah. Well, and I think, you know, just as I'm listening to you and thinking about all of the different characters that we encounter in the workplace, we can only control what we can control, right? And that is ourselves, yeah? Because, literally, narcissists around us, or the, you know, I mean, just we can set our own boundaries, and we can decide, you know, how we navigate those situations, but people are going to be who they are.
Brenda Neckvatal
Yeah. Yeah. And you know, the thing is, here's the secret is that when you when you constantly work to master yourself, you go through a progression of immaturity to maturity. You mature, right, when you can accept responsibility for your actions without having anybody prompt them when you can, you can effectively navigate those situations, when you can articulate what's on your mind, when you can also engage in self-efficacy and really start being your own. That's a word I want to use. There's a word I want to use, not cheerlead, but when you are advocating for yourself in a very level-headed, very controlled with little judgment mode. That's maturity, you know? And we've got you know people of different levels of maturity in the workplace. You know, those individuals that leave those snarky remarks on their way out the door? Those are your immature ones. If you have the passive-aggressive those are your immature ones, right? Even people pleasers can be immature. Narcissists, it's immaturity, because maturity is actually overcoming the things that weigh you down in life.
Kim Meninger
Mm-hmm, yeah, yeah, wow. This has been a really insightful conversation. I really appreciate it. Brenda, and I know you do this work, so I want to make sure that people know where to find you if they want to have more of you.
Brenda Neckvatal
Absolutely. So I actually came bearing gifts. I'm, I'm the early Santa Claus, so I actually have a free course. Now, if there are people out there who struggle with getting to the root of the drama, I'm going to give you three scripts that you can use. I've used for 30-plus years now, and they are amazing. And I mean, this is a No BS kind of type of situation, so I have this, course, it's called Impact Scripts, and you folks will be able to get access to this who would like to and the easiest way to go ahead and sign up for it is just to go to yobrenda.com because I make it easier than my last name, yobrenda.com and you put in your information, you put in your name, you'll put in your email. And then I'm going to ask you one other question, and that is, what is the one thing that you heard today that, like totally wowed you, that really, really, truly resonate because I really love listening to that stuff. And then once you do that, it's going to give you instant access. So I'm going to tell you, give you an example of one of them right now. So when you're dealing with drama, and, you know, those people that just come running up to you, and then they start like, like, you know, vomiting details all over the place, and you really just don't feel like you have a sense of what is going on. This is the best phrase to you. Help me understand, what is going on. Help me understand, is the words. Help me understand, how did we get here? Help me understand, how did that happen? How many understand who was involved? Help me understand and what you're doing by using that phrase consistently, help me understand, and then add whatever else to it. What you're going what you are going to learn is exactly what's happening, because you bypass the ego and you get to the details, right? And there's a couple other scripts that in there. They're going to help you do exactly the same thing as you're confronting very specific situations. And these are very common situations, but you can navigate these things like an absolute master. When you I use help me understand so often that people tell me they're like, how we can literally count in a day, how many times you actually use that? And I'm like, what works? Yeah, but yeah. I mean, it is the absolute get to the root of the drama. And then once you get to the drama, it'll allow you to really, you can see the truth for what it is like. You can see the facts for what they are. And then it will allow you to help start to create a plan, moving past it, moving through it, moving forward, right? So Impact Scripts are great. There may be a little bonus in there for you guys as well that will allow you to take that with you. But that is how the best way to get a hold of me. And then once you're once you take the course, and you're totally 100% in my little ecosphere.
Kim Meninger
That’s wonderful. Yes, I'll make sure that, to put that link in the show notes as well for anybody. And thank you for, for sharing that with us. Thank you again for being here. Brenda, I really appreciate it.
Brenda Neckvatal
No, thank you so much for having me on Kim. I really appreciate it.