Behavior as a Language (Part 2): The Human Behind the Behavior

Hey, Bold Soul,

I know you're not difficult. You're trying to say something.

Last week I wrote to the leaders and this week I'm writing to you.

Not you the manager...you the employee. The person who's been showing up - maybe not perfectly, maybe in ways that haven't always looked great from the outside - but who's been trying to communicate something you haven't quite been able to say out loud yet.

Something happened.

If your behavior at work has shifted - if you've pulled back, gotten reactive, stopped raising your hand - something happened. And if you're being honest with yourself, you probably know what it was.

Maybe it was a moment where you were vulnerable and it came out wrong. Maybe it was a decision made about you without you. Maybe it was a hundred small things that added up to one loud message: you are not as safe here as you thought.

So your nervous system started making adjustments. Pull back. Protect yourself. Don't give too much.

The problem is that those adjustments look, from the outside, like attitude. Like someone who doesn't care anymore. And if nobody around you is curious enough to ask what's actually going on, you can end up in a corrective conversation about the symptom while the actual wound never gets touched.

There is grief in being unseen at work.

When you care about your work and something goes sideways, that's a loss. Loss of trust, of belief that things will get better, of the version of yourself that used to feel excited on Monday morning.

And like any grief, if you don't have a place to put it, it comes out in ways you don't intend it to. In the sharpness you didn't mean, in the effort you're not bringing, in the way you've started counting down to 5pm in a job you used to love.

You're not a performance problem. You're not difficult. You're grieving. And those look different - even though from the outside, they can look exactly the same.

What you can do without waiting for someone to see you first.

Name it to yourself. "I'm just stressed" is too vague. "I feel like my contributions don't register here and I've stopped trying to prove otherwise" - that's something you can work with.

Say it out loud somewhere safe. A coach, a mentor, a trusted colleague. The story that stays only in your head gets darker over time. It needs air.

Consider having the conversation. You don't have to lead with everything that hurt you. Try: "I don't feel like I've been showing up the way I want to, and I'd like to change that." That's a door opener - not a confrontation.

You are more than your behavior on a hard day.

The version of you that's been showing up lately - that's not the whole story of who you are. That's what a person looks like when they're trying to survive in an environment that isn't meeting them where they are.

You're allowed to have struggled. You're allowed to have not handled it perfectly. And you get to decide, starting right now, to do something different.

Behavior is a language. You get to choose what yours says next.

Both parts of Behavior as a Language are live on the Embrace Your Inner Boldness podcast!

🎧 All the links here

Keep becoming YOU!

Melissa