Cycle Literacy: The Leadership Advantage No One Talks About

[00:00:00] Jo Fuller: Women's cycles are not a side note to leadership, they're one of the reasons that many women become the leaders that they are. Our hormones are actually a huge benefit to our growth and development, and understanding them and working with them opens so many doors to us.

[00:00:15] Alyssa Peltier: Great events create great brands, but pulling off an event that engages, excites, and connects audiences, well, that takes a village. And we're that village. My name is Alyssa.

[00:00:27] Rachel Andrews: I'm Rachel.

[00:00:28] Camille Arnold: I'm Camille.

[00:00:30] Felicia Asiedu: And I'm Felicia.

[00:00:31] Alyssa Peltier: And you are listening to Great Events, the podcast for all event enthusiasts, creators, and innovators in the world of events and marketing.

[00:00:40] Felicia Asiedu: Let me start with a question. Where are you in your cycle today? When Jo asked me that at Cvent CONNECT Europe, it changed how I thought about energy and leadership. I mean, actually, she asked me at IMEX about a year ago, and I was like, "What kind of conversation is this?" But it was one of the best conversations I had live on a trade show floor. So most [00:01:00] workplaces expect this steady output, but apparently, according to Jo, our energy isn't steady, it shifts.

[00:01:06] I'm Felicia Asiedu, and welcome back to this week's episode of Great Events. And this episode was inspired, like I say, by Jo, who's about to join me, and by our women in leadership session that we ended up having at Cvent CONNECT Europe, where we explored cyclical strength and why it's a leadership advantage to know exactly where you are. So Jo Fuller is here with us, founder of The Merry Menopause, helping global brands support women through hormonal changes and career growth. And welcome, Jo.

[00:01:34] Jo Fuller: Oh, thank you so much. I'm happy to see you again, Felicia.

[00:01:37] Felicia Asiedu: Absolutely. You really did inspire me. When I say that, sometimes people think, "Ah, she's just gassing me." But imagine I was in the middle of IMEX doing all this stuff and then you came over, introduced yourself, and it was just like, "Oh." I think my mouth was just open with our conversation. I was like, "This is amazing."

[00:01:55] Jo Fuller: Yeah. I mean, it's a question that I [00:02:00] ask a lot of women for my own curiosity, and especially when I see somebody deep in something, which you were at IMEX because you were running with like a live stand, there's events going on in your stand. And I ask it not to be intrusive, but I ask it with permission and to inquire, but also to help women understand why that day might be going the way it is or the external we can't control, but actually how we react rather than respond to what's going on at very busy times, very slow times can be really insightful, but it's actually something. We can't control our biology, but we can have the awareness to understand why we're feeling like we are.

[00:02:39] Felicia Asiedu: Yeah, absolutely. And, I mean, you kind of did that for me. So before we get into the nitty-gritties of it, just tell us what you do. What is The Merry Menopause?

[00:02:49] Jo Fuller: Okay. Merry Menopause is a coaching, consultancy, and wellbeing business, and it's about supporting women through growth and leadership at [00:03:00] home and at work by understanding their hormones. I think Rose, when we're on the panel at Cvent CONNECT, Rose Bentley, very brilliantly wrote an article after it, and she kind of summed it up, and it's something I'm using a lot, women's cycles are not a side note to leadership, they're one of the reasons that many women become the leaders that they are. And for so long, that knowledge has been held against us. It's been our cycle, our periods, our perimenopause has always been seen as an obstacle to development, leadership, and growth. So the work that I do is to spin that round. It's like, actually, no. Our hormones are actually a huge benefit to our growth and development, and understanding them and working with them opens so many doors to us: individually, creativity, leadership, energy, exercise, everything is there, and it's integral. It's inside us. It's something we were born with. It's not something to be ashamed of. It really is something [00:04:00] to step into and something to use.

[00:04:03] Felicia Asiedu: I love that. And I was about to ask you, what do you mean when you say cyclical strengths? How can you have strengths in your cycle? But before that, I keep referring back to my 12-year-old daughter. She's just going through life. I'm looking at her, and I'm just thinking all these emotions that are bubbling up and out. And there's this kind of thing inside me that says, "Well, when she gets past that, she'll be," blah, blah, blah. "When she gets past that, she'll be on the right road."

[00:04:32] And I think one of the things that's helped within our conversations is that, actually, I don't know that I do want her to just immediately grow up and get past it because I'll miss a lot. She'll miss a lot. She won't understand herself. I won't understand her. Why do I want her to just, when she gets past this, and I'm kind of challenging myself to be like, "Well, actually, who is that making her today, and what can she take from it?" And I think that's what you're trying to do with us on all as women. It's not, "When I get past this time of the month."

[00:04:59] Jo Fuller: [00:05:00] Yeah. When I get through menopause, when I get through postpartum, et cetera. But if we can take your daughter as an example here, if we can start talking to 12-year-old girls positively about their hormones and the gifts of each stage of their cycle and what they can use their cycle for rather than the social stigma that we've just been conditioned to believe that it's like, "Every month you're going to bleed, it's going to be really painful, put up and shut up." That's basically the message that we're given: "This is part of being a woman, don't challenge it, don't moan about it, take medication if everything's too sore and crack on."

[00:05:41] And I think that conversation now is changing. It's certainly changing for my generation, but we're coming to the end of our periods. I've stopped my periods now. I miss my periods. I started working with them very late in life and understood all the gifts it was giving me and how, actually, I could be more productive and stronger and a better leader. But if we could start that [00:06:00] conversation in schools, part of sex ed, at home. Let's empower young girls to go, "Oh, I've got my period." Not, "I've got my period." I mean, wouldn't that be wonderful? And the change we would see in a generation's time, wow. Opening up that conversation in the workplace, normalizing it so much around it, so much shame attached to it, and it's like, "Let's get rid of that shame and really say some empowering conversation."

[00:06:29] Felicia Asiedu: Love that. So let's move that in then. How can we find strength? I think you've spoken to us before about different phases and different things you can go through. How do we find strength? And I almost want to, because our listeners, I don't want them to join this podcast and be like, "Hold on, this is an event and marketing podcast. I'm an event planner. I've joined this podcast, and we're just talking about periods and cycles." Let's link that back together for people. Why is this something we should be talking about and how does it give us that strength?

[00:06:59] Jo Fuller: [00:07:00] Yeah, so regardless of your job title, if you were born with a menstrual cycle, you're going to roughly have around 400 periods in your lifetime. So that's a huge chunk of your time. Our cycle is divided into four sectors. We have four phases of our cycle. Roughly, we'll have a 28-day cycle, but any day between 21 and 35 days is completely normal. But on average, a cycle is 28 days. And within that 28 days, we have four phases. So we have our menstrual phase when we bleed, but I also like to reframe this as our reflective phase. So during this phase, we're naturally drawn to rest. It takes an awful lot of energy for the body to bleed. So during our menstrual phase, we can feel really tired. And that is one of the clearest ways that our body ever speaks to us about, "Please just try and slow down." I've just been through a full 28-day cycle. I need to rest and repair because I'm going to [00:08:00] do it again. So work with me on this, try and just take it easy for a few days so we can rest and recharge and go into the next phase of our cycle," which is our follicular phase.

[00:08:11] So in this phase, in our menstrual phase, our hormones are at the lowest, in our follicular phase, the hormones start to rise, and this starts to give us a rise in energy and creativity. So I love to refer to this follicular phase in my coaching as our creative phase. So this is a great time to start new projects, brainstorm with coworkers. And we're coming into spring now, naturally, within the seasons of the year. And it's a little bit of that energy. We're coming out of winter, where we've been a bit tired, and we've been wintering, and now we're naturally coming into spring, and we naturally do this for this second week of our cycle, we naturally feel that rising energy and creativity.

[00:08:48] And from there, we move into our ovulatory phase, which is the height of our cycles, become the bit we all look forward to. And we call this [00:09:00] our expressive phase. So this is when we really step into our confidence. We've got a huge rise in estrogen and testosterone. So we're feeling our most confident, our most persuasive, our communication skills are at their best. So this is really a wonderful time to be outward-facing, to do anything you have at home or at work that requires you to be on top form. So presenting, running panels, big meetings at work, big events at home. And then our hormones start to decline, we're moving back towards our bleed, and we move back into our luteal phase, which is our analytical phase. And this phase of our cycle normally gets a really bad rap, the premenstrual phase, where we can feel irritable, we can feel tired, we can be craving foods.

[00:09:44] But actually, if we really start to work with this week off our cycle, there are so many insights, and this represents our perimenopause. Our perimenopause is roughly a few years of this luteal phase. So if we can get to understand ourselves, our wants and our needs, [00:10:00] what's going to nourish us, how are we going to rest during this phase, that's going to serve us to age well as we age further down the line. And that luteal phase is what I like to call the analytical phase, it's when we can get really driven into detail. So when you're looking at your work diary, save all that really grunty admin to that week, because actually that's really what you want to do. You want to look at this. You want to analyze data. You want to fill out your massive expense form that you've put behind, do your tax return kind of thing, that's the week to do it.

[00:10:30] So we can start planning around our cycle for the tasks that are going to fit naturally into each phase. And obviously, it's not going to work ideally. But what we're going to see is that we can prioritize tasks in each phase. And then if something comes up that doesn't ideally fit in that phase, we're prepared for it. So we know that big meeting's going to come up when we're bleeding. So how do I prepare for that? What do I need to do to manage that? And then our period [00:11:00] doesn't come as a surprise anymore. So we're not standing on stage or delivering a one-to-one, and suddenly we start to bleed. It's like, I know where my period's going to come because not only are we going to feel the physical sensations of the bleed, but we're going to understand our moods and emotion for the other three weeks around it in a nutshell.

[00:11:17] Felicia Asiedu: Oh, I love hearing that, in a nutshell, because the thing is, and you answered that kind of question. I was going to say, most people would be like, "I can't wait around for that phase to be creative," or, "I can't wait around for that phase to be analytic." And that's not what I heard you say. I heard you saying, "Play to those strengths. If you can plan and know that you're going to be a little bit more analytical, then there are things..." I mean, I know I've got stuff I need to look at right now, and I'm already like, "Oh, I'm just going to kick it down the road just a little bit because it will sync up naturally with the phase that will work better for me and I have the opportunity to do that." But I love being creative. I will tell you that.

[00:11:52] And so to know that I see it as what you just said, almost like I'm already creative, but if there's a creative phase of my [00:12:00] cycle, I'm going to double down. I'm going to use that time to be like, "Excellent. My superpower mixed with a little boost of energy of creativity should yield something really cool." So I think that's a really nice way of looking at it.

[00:12:15] Jo Fuller: And I think the thing, you will get so much more done if you can allocate. So if you've got to do your tax return, but you've also got to create a marketing plan, to very simplify this, don't do your tax return in those few days, when actually what you could do is you really utilize your creative side and go, "Okay, I'm not ignoring my tax return. I know it's got to be done, but actually I'm just going to wait a couple of weeks, and I'm going to slot it in there, and I'm going to make the time to do it in there." It's just that you can utilize because then if you've got to come up with a creative marketing plan just before you bleed because you did your tax return two weeks earlier.

[00:12:52] So it's about forward planning. It's about looking three, six months down the line and just trying to plan in. Your personal life, [00:13:00] holidays, big events, weddings, anything like that, just try and plan in around your cycle and just build that awareness of how every month your bleed comes, your period starts, but you have these highs and low, and how do you work with them to prevent burnout, become a better leader, become more confident in all areas of your life and understand why you're feeling like you are.

[00:13:24] Because a lot of people, when they're bleeding, they're like they don't understand why they might be... Just before I bleed, our inner critic shows up, Felicia, and we can be really, really hard on ourselves. And a lot of people think, "Well, two weeks ago, I was feeling fabulous, and now I feel dreadful. The world's my enemy and everybody's against me." And it's like, "Okay, I understand why now. I understand why I was on that real emotional high two weeks ago, and I understand why I'm struggling now. I'm just going to be kind to myself because it's two real parts and in a few days' time, my estrogen's going to rise again, I'm going to get creative, and we're going to go around." And [00:14:00] this happens every month, and it's normal.

[00:14:03] Felicia Asiedu: Absolutely. And just thinking about that. So I think two Cvent CONNECT Europes ago, I did something, I'm just trying to think. I've done lots of women leadership panels. I'm trying to think of what the context was, but I know I ended up asking the audience about, "We've got lots of women in our industry, from all ages of women, so I never like to stereotype, but we start to almost move as a pack." And I said, "I'm going to say stuff that no one wants to admit, but it becomes a reality, you start syncing up those types and swings, let's call them swings of mood, seem to happen at a similar time." And you're trying to run these projects. Absolutely. And you're trying to run these projects together, and the projects are often high-intensity, deadline-driven. As leaders, being honest, we don't often have time, or we feel like we don't have time to take into account all these different things.

[00:14:57] It's like I've got clients with deadlines. I've got my bosses on my [00:15:00] back. And I don't know if you've got the silver bullet to honestly answer the answer to this, but how do we make time for that? How do you still manage well and try and do all these things?

[00:15:10] Jo Fuller: So I think it's about the planning stage. So literally it's almost like a personal health strategy, so it's got to start with the planning. So I think if you can look at your work diary through six months ahead and color-code it so that you know where your bleed is, where your follicular phase is, choose colors that resonate with you. I suggest red for bleed, yellow for the follicular phase, orange, for your ovulatory phase, blue for your luteal phase, whatever resonates, and just try and just put a little dot in your calendar so that when you're coming to plan, when you're coming to put in tasks, or when you're looking at your diary and it's back-to-back Zoom calls, you can instantly see, okay, this is what's going on today. And then you can then start a conversation with other members of your team or speak to [00:16:00] your colleagues and go, "Okay, when you see a blue in my diary, please don't try and book back-to-back Zoom meetings, that's not going to work for me. I need a break in between."

[00:16:08] But by giving yourself that awareness, you can then share that awareness with other members. So I would just say definitely there the planning because if you're in it, it's so hard to get out of it. So let's prevention rather than cure. Let's prevent that overwhelm. Let's prevent all those people making demands on you because you've actually empowered yourself by planning your time and your diamond.

[00:16:32] I mean, in an ideal world, Felicia, wouldn't it be wonderful in an organization if this was just a commonality that when you joined a new project, when you joined a new team, everybody was working with their cycle. And then for those who are not having a cycle, you can talk about the moon, which I know sounds completely woo-woo, but very simply, anybody that's listening, whether you menstruate or not, look at your energy on the new moon. When the sky's dark, you can't see the moon. You're naturally low on energy because we [00:17:00] haven't got the light, and the full moon, generally high on energy. So even without having a cycle, we are very receptive to the lunar energy, and everyone will notice the difference between a full moon and a new moon.

[00:17:15] Felicia Asiedu: Yeah. I tell you, this happened to me when we were on the panel, I'm listening to you say, and you were like, "In an ideal world, wouldn't it be good if you could come in..." I was just thinking, we work with men, though, won't they just be thinking, "What is this?" Even some of the women would just be like, "That's too much information. That's too into my business, into the weeds. What is this calendar color code?" Like you said at the beginning, it's almost like a hidden thing, and surfacing this, even having this conversation on podcasts and on these panels, it almost feels very like, why are we talking about this? This is the most private part of our lives, and we shouldn't be exposing it. But within everything you've said, then I'm like, "Well, of course we should be talking about it." So [00:18:00] I don't know how we normalize it. I think that would be very tricky to do.

[00:18:05] Jo Fuller: We start talking about it. I mean, look at mental health awareness in the workplace now. Look at neurodivergency in the workplace. That all started as a conversation, and now it's very acceptable to be very open about your mental health and any neurodivergence you might have. And that had to start somewhere. And we are making steps with this. We were talking about at IMEX, we were talking about on your panel, we're talking about this on a podcast that's going to go out. I've recorded a couple of other podcasts in the base industry, and we're going to be on a panel at the event production show this week, talking about it. So slowly, slowly, slowly it will become normal, but we've got to start somewhere, and we've got to keep plugging away. And we've got to get people to take action and do the work, and for people to start planning their diary and start going, "Oh, [00:19:00] this is brilliant. I'm showing up today, and I'm ovulating." You don't even have to go into that much detail, but it's like even if you can recognize it in yourself, it's a start.

[00:19:09] Felicia Asiedu: And so let's move into life cycles. So that was kind of monthly. There are cycles of life. I'll talk about my daughter, she'll go into her next phase, and then your 20s, you're in a particular cycle. Some people are entering leadership, they're 29, they're already leading, they're running companies, whereas others are entering leadership later, where maybe they've got a couple of kids running around or not. And then you've got later in life with perimenopause and menopause, all these different sort of stages of life. Do you think that there's any kind of, I wouldn't say strength, but any differences in how people should think about those transitions and how they can be better leaders at different stages? And big questions I'm asking you, but do you think there are any of those that are [00:20:00] like, "Uh-huh. Yeah, now that I've gone through this, now I get it, now I can have more empathy," or are you like, "Absolutely not. Every stage has its own strength."?

[00:20:08] Jo Fuller: I mean, every stage is a learning stage, we get better as we get older, and I can speak from personally. And this is, you know, and I work with women in perimenopause and menopause mainly. So either young leaders working with their cycle to step into leadership and then supporting midlife women as they come into perimenopause and menopause, and educating workplaces on why that sector of the workforce is so valuable to them, and why they really should be doing everything they can to retain them, because they've been around the block. They've done it. They've been there. They've had their own life cycles of birth, death, marriages. Also, within an organization, you get life cycles this year, take homers, new management, redundancies. And so when you get to middle age, when you get to your late [00:21:00] 40s and 50s and 60s, you've got all that built-in experience. You've been through many life cycles and 400 periods at least.

[00:21:08] So there's an awful lot to learn. So I think as we evolve and grow, we start to learn. But if we can evolve and grow with our cycle, which will help us to age better, which will help us to manage our expectations of ourselves, it will help us to build our confidence, it will help us to build our exercise and our nutrition. It'll teach us when to exercise. It will teach us when to eat. It will teach us why we're reacting, not responding. It will help us to be a lot kinder to ourselves. All of that, we're learning every month. So every month is going to be something that we learn. Life is going to be different from the month before we're going to have learned something. So if we can learn something every month, if we can do that on rotation, then we don't hit these big... When we do come across an [00:22:00] obstacle, when we do come across a big life change, we're far more resilient to handle it because every month we're doing the work.

[00:22:07] Felicia Asiedu: Yeah. And how do you think that resonates with a younger generation? We've got five generations in the workforce at the moment, which can cause some tensions, but it also, I mean, I think it could make it for a better kind of environment. You've got people with, like you said, a lot of experience, and then you've got people that are younger and ideating every two seconds on ChatGPT. But do you think what you just said that somehow takes away from a younger generation of the workforce and leadership that you haven't lived that experience yet, and they often get challenged with, "Well, you haven't been through it. You don't know, you haven't got the experience yet, so you're not quite where I am." So how do you think we should be thinking about that?

[00:22:54] Jo Fuller: I think talking to younger women about their cycle is going to make them better leaders [00:23:00] quicker because they're going to really understand, it's going to reduce anxiety. So one of the biggest issues was amongst the younger generation. So you can understand your cycle and the impact that has, that you're likely to be more anxious in your luteal phase and your menstrual phase and how to manage that. What's triggering that? Is it because you're loading up on sugar and you're not exercise, whereas actually you should be watching what you're eating and doing a gentler form of... There's so much we can do to influence how we're feeling. But if we just start with understanding our cycle and then we can go and that's where the coaching work comes and then we go in really deep and understand what's our hormones and what's like, and how can I handle it better?

[00:23:41] But for younger leaders, my cyclical leadership program, which is where this kind of all came about, because I would ask when they came to coaching, "Where are you in your cycle?" And we would start to see a pattern of reoccurring problems that popped up and how they weren't handling or were handling certain phases. It's like, "Okay, well, this is where you are in your cycle again." So that'd explain why and it's [00:24:00] like penny drop moment.

[00:24:02] So for younger women, by working with their cycle as early as possible, you can really help fulfill their leadership strengths. So imagine by the time they get to their 50s, it's like, wow. So it is all about that knowledge. It's all about that education. As with everything, you've got to do the work. It's lovely to listen about it and love you to read about it, but actually do the work to spend a few minutes a day tuning into yourself and at the end of the month, do some reflection like you would at a month end to go back and have a look at what you achieved and what you learnt and be kind to yourself, always be kind to yourself. It's like, "Okay, I was told I was going to be made redundant this month. How did I deal with that?" So we can learn how to deal with these big obstacles that get thrown up as "I split up with my partner. How did I deal with that? I got a promotion. How did I deal with that? Did I celebrate it or did I just..." Working with your cycle will just [00:25:00] help you to embody what it is to be a really good female lead, at home and at work.

[00:25:06] Felicia Asiedu: Yeah. And how do you think? Just listen to that as well, I started thinking about the men in this conversation. And I know the natural thing for us to say is men have to be part of the conversation. I'd be really glad if a man is still listening at this point in the podcast, so shout out if you are. But I know they need to be part of the conversation, but what can our male counterparts do to have that clarity and empathy and give us the empowerment that we need as women? We're coming up to International Women's Day. What is the role of men in this? Beyond being part of the conversation, what can men do?

[00:25:44] Jo Fuller: Whenever I present all my speak, there are always men in the audience. So men are interested in this conversation, but they don't feel that they're allowed to be part of it. So we have a responsibility to invite them in. [00:26:00] It's like, come and understand the women in your life, your partners, your daughters, your colleagues. This isn't a closed, tight-knit network. The intimate individual coaching group, coach yourself, obviously, yes, that's a private space. But this understanding of female hormones and why the people in your life are like they are, because they are dictated an awful lot by the sex hormones, can only benefit your life by understanding your team, your colleagues, your life at home. And we do have to invite them in. It's really what I'm learning. It's like run joint sessions, run joint education sessions. Any work that I do is open to all ages and all genders, but it is almost like it's a women's club, and they don't feel that they're part of it.

[00:26:47] So it's very much extending that information. So please come along, ask questions, talk to me about it. And that's the leadership skill. So, how do we develop our leadership skills? We work with our cycle.

[00:26:59] Felicia Asiedu: I love [00:27:00] that. Right. We're going to wrap up very, very quickly, but I want to ask you some rapid fires, really quick. Are you ready for this? Okay. So you've got a big show coming up in a week's time. You know you're going to be on your time of the month, but you're going to be running around all day. How do you take care of your energy levels when you're on site? Food might be a bit sporadic. What do you do?

[00:27:24] Jo Fuller: Before the event, really try and manage your sleep. So get off your phone, go to bed at good time, get a good minimum seven-hour sleep if you can on the leads up to any big event. Be really boundaried with your time and make sure you get a good night's sleep. That's then going to impact the next day. That's going to impact what you eat and how you're feeling. Cut down on caffeine, really reduce your caffeine. Don't run on caffeine. And if you can, in your bag, have some good, healthy, nutritious breakfast so you're not grabbing a packet of crisps or just try and prepare in advance, "Okay, I'm going to have some dark chocolate and a bag of nuts in my bag. I'm going to boil some eggs in advance, going [00:28:00] to carry those around with me." Really just start to think how you can help your body get through that really stressful time in a nutshell.

[00:28:08] Felicia Asiedu: In a nutshell. I love that. Okay. Number two, aren't you loving my creativity at the moment? I'm just coming up with these questions on the spot. So number two is you know that in a week's time, you're going to be your most creative phase, let's say, but it is going to be the most spreadsheet-heavy week that ever lived because you're looking at your budget versus actuals, you're looking at all of your really deep spreadsheety planning. How can you be creative in a phase that calls for more analytical?

[00:28:37] Jo Fuller: You will naturally feel creative. So you can even feel creative with your spreadsheets. So you can still channel that creativity into what you're doing if you'd rather be writing or drawing or playing a musical instrument, but life doesn't allow that. You still channel that creativity and learn from it. Go, "Okay, that's a fair bit of planning. That's come up. Let's try and see [00:29:00] what I can do for next month." But always, always, always be kind for yourself. And every day's a school day, Felicia, we're learning something every day about ourselves and our workload, and maybe it's then that you make the decision, "Okay, I'm going to start form of planning because this has really not been a good use of my time this week."

[00:29:18] Felicia Asiedu: Yeah, I love that. Do you know what that makes me think of? It's not a surprise that you needed to do the budgeting at that time. I think sometimes we're like, "Oh gosh, this thing's coming up next week." And like you said earlier, you know you're going to have to budget around a particular time of the year, so why not get ahead of it at a time when it kind of more suited where you were?

[00:29:38] Jo Fuller: It will be so much easier. But that task will become so much easier because you'll have the energy and the headspace for it.

[00:29:45] Felicia Asiedu: Yeah, absolutely. All right, here's the last one, and this might not be a particular phase in your cycle, but it is just something that could happen. So your boss has given you a real dressing down, maybe in front of a crowd, and you just want to cry [00:30:00] right in public in front of everyone, and you're holding it and your lips quivering and what do you do? What do you do? Because I know I've been in that situation, and I think I default a little bit to anger instead. I'm like, "I'm going to replace this sadness with anger so I can just stand here." But what would you recommend if you're in that situation?

[00:30:18] Jo Fuller: Oh God, I mean, I just for thought of that. I've been there too. I just the thought of that just, yeah, that's just got my nervous system going. It's all about composure, though, isn't it? And it's about how we deal with something at that time. When something like that takes us off guard, wherever we are in our cycle, we're going to have to have a real quick check with ourselves about how, do I burst into tears? Do I lash out? How do I deal with this with grace and integrity?

[00:30:45] If you're in your ovulatory phase, obviously, that's going to come a lot easier. If you just started your period, it's going to be a lot harder. So again, yeah, that comes to the planning and the working and the [00:31:00] understanding. But I think in any situation like that, there's a real... I would always say to any client that I work with and to myself, "When something like that happens to you, it's like, is this really going to matter in two weeks' time, a month's time?" It's really painful right now. It's probably going to be really painful tomorrow, probably to the end of the week, but I have a choice how I react or how I respond to this. And is it really going to matter further down the line?

[00:31:27] And it's all about taking that time to compose yourself and not react. And it's okay to stand there and take a deep breath and just go, "Okay, this is really sh*t, and it's happening, but what do I do in this moment?" And I think if you don't know what to do, just breathe and say nothing, regardless of where you are in your cycle, and then go and cry or then go and shout.

[00:31:49] Felicia Asiedu: And then go and cry in the toilets. It's okay.

[00:31:52] Jo Fuller: Yeah. And that's okay to cry. And it's okay to show emotion as well. But if you are, as you say, in front of a group, [00:32:00] you've got your peers in the whatever, it is about that composure. And then it's about going away and thinking about it and then maybe coming back to that group, maybe coming back to that senior leader at the next meeting when you're composed to go "I really going to talk about what happened last time."

[00:32:15] Felicia Asiedu: Yeah, absolutely. I love that. I think it's a really nice way just to end because it's like that kind of visit for everything we've been talking about, it's having openness, having an understanding of yourself. I am sad in that moment, or I am feeling feisty in that moment, or I am whatever it is, just owning it, but having composure in that and saying, "Okay, what am I going to do with it? How am I going to use that to learn something or to maybe go away, have what I need to, have my cry?" Sometimes you need it and come back. And then I've done it. I did it even recently.

[00:32:51] I had a hard conversation and I'm really grateful for myself having a little bit of composure because on reflection, I was like, "What that person was saying was [00:33:00] actually right." I didn't love how they said it, but you can take a moment and then be like, "Okay, it was fine. It didn't feel good."

[00:33:08] Jo Fuller: And that Felicia is why you are a great leader. Because being able to have hard conversations is one of the key skills of any great leader. And if we look at some of the leadership that we're seeing in the world at the moment, being able to compose yourself and have a hard conversation rather than lashing out, that's a sign of a great leader and that will grow you with as a person because every time we do something that's really hard, having a hard conversation, we grow, you've learned something from that, you just reflected back on it.

[00:33:39] Felicia Asiedu: Yeah, absolutely. Oh, well, brilliant. Well, thank you so much. Thanks for that, but thanks for teaching us so much today. So I would just say just to sum up, firstly, thanks, Jo. But our energy shifts are data. I think they're data input areas, they're not weaknesses, and our life transitions, they just sharpen our leadership capabilities. It doesn't mean [00:34:00] that as a young leader you're not sharp, but there's always something to learn. And having that openness and that honesty in your conversations about where you are in your cycle and what you're doing can only sharpen you further. I think we've learned that organizations that normalize this level of conversation will retain that stronger talent, will retain that top-tier talent that might be thinking about what their next transition is in life. But if we can operate at those different speeds, it means that we can get great leaders all across our organization.

[00:34:32] Finally, it's about knowing your season and leading accordingly, knowing not just your season in life, but your season even in the month, and leading your teams accordingly and managing your own personal planning and your business planning accordingly. So thank you, Jo, so much. Last question for you. Where can our listeners find you? Where can they go to find out more about you?

[00:34:52] Jo Fuller: They can go to my website, themerrymenopause.com, or you find me on LinkedIn. I'm quite active on LinkedIn. So Jo Fuller on [00:35:00] LinkedIn.

[00:35:00] Felicia Asiedu: Brilliant. Thank you again, and we'll speak to you soon.

[00:35:03] Jo Fuller: Thank you, Felicia. Goodbye.

[00:35:06] Felicia Asiedu: Bye.

[00:35:09] Alyssa Peltier: Thanks for hanging out with us on Great Events, a podcast by Cvent. If you've been enjoying our podcast, make sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode.

[00:35:19] Rachel Andrews: And you can help fellow event professionals and marketers just like you discover great events by leaving us a rating on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform.

[00:35:28] Felicia Asiedu: Stay connected with us on social media for behind-the-scenes content, updates, and some extra doses of inspiration.

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[00:35:46] Felicia Asiedu: Big thanks to our amazing listeners, our guest speakers, and the incredible team behind the scenes. Remember, every great event begins with great people.

[00:35:56] Alyssa Peltier: And that's a wrap. Keep creating, keep innovating, and keep [00:36:00] joining us as we redefine how to make events great.