Your Next Clear Move
Welcome to Your Next Clear Move™—the podcast for leaders, professionals, and high-capacity humans who are done “getting ready” and ready to move.
I’m Debbie Peterson, Leadership Readiness Expert, and in each episode I deliver grounded insight, clarity-driven mindset strategies, and one actionable step to help you stop the drift and lead yourself forward.
This isn’t about fixing what’s broken. It’s about reconnecting to what matters—and making decisions that align with who you are and how you want to lead next.
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Your Next Clear Move
What Your Unprocessed Emotion Is Costing You as a Leader
Ever wonder why certain situations trigger strong reactions in your leadership? Why you might avoid giving feedback, take on too much work, or struggle to speak up in meetings? These aren't just random behaviors—they're often signals of unprocessed emotions steering your leadership from behind the scenes.
In this transformative episode, we dive deep into how past experiences create emotional patterns that silently influence how you lead today. That boss who micromanaged you years ago? You might still be overcorrecting. The meeting where your idea got shut down? Perhaps you're still hesitating to speak up. These experiences don't just disappear—they become embedded in your leadership approach until you acknowledge and release them.
Using the Clarity Compass framework, we explore how to identify these emotional blind spots and transform them into sources of wisdom rather than limitation. You'll discover a powerful five-step Emotional Audit exercise that helps uncover where patterns began and how to interrupt them. The most surprising insight? The people who trigger you most might be your greatest teachers, reflecting parts of yourself that need attention.
This isn't about denying your emotional history but responding to it with compassion. By recognizing what's really driving your leadership decisions, you can lead from the present moment rather than reacting to ghosts from your past. Your leadership becomes lighter, more authentic, and more effective when you stop dragging yesterday's baggage into today's challenges.
Ready to lead with genuine clarity instead of from old emotional scripts? Listen now, and take your next clear move toward emotionally intelligent leadership. For additional resources to support your journey, visit debbypetersonspeaks.com and explore the Readiness Vault mentioned in this episode. Your team—and your future self—will thank you.
Welcome to the Getting to Clarity podcast the place where busy leaders discover how to create more success in their leadership journey with less sacrifice in their life.
Speaker 1:Here's your host, debbie Peterson, of Getting to Clarity.
Speaker 3:Hey, hello and welcome back. I am Debbie Peterson of Getting to Clarity, and this is another episode of the Getting to Clarity podcast, and this is the place whether in leadership or aspiring to leadership you come to get your next clear move. Let's cut through the noise and focus on what truly matters to help you get to your next level. Today, we are talking about emotion, unprocessed emotion, specifically, and how it is costing you as a leader, because you don't leave your emotional baggage at the door. You actually lead with it, and I'm going to explain how. So stay tuned. All right, let's dive in. So think about perhaps in the past there was a boss who micromanaged you. Maybe you're still overcorrecting from it. Maybe there was a meeting where your idea got shut down and that is translating into you still hesitating to speak up. Maybe there was a time that you just put everything you had into it and it still wasn't enough, and maybe that is why you're afraid to slow down. You know, most of us walk into leadership with more than a resume. We carry a backlog of unprocessed emotions like anger, frustration, rejection, guilt, embarrassment, resentment. You know, and it's whether we realize it or not, they shape how we lead and when they go unnamed, they become our blind spots. So I want to explore how these hidden emotions are driving your leadership and what it is that you can do something about them, so that you are no longer anchored to them. Sound good, all right? So let's explore how hidden emotions are driving your leadership and what it is that you can do about them.
Speaker 3:So we're going to walk through a framework, something I created. I call it the Clarity Compass, and it is a simple way to kind of untangle old patterns and then you can refocus on what really matters. And this isn't about quote unquote, fixing yourself. It's just about seeing yourself clearly, so that you can lead from a place of alignment instead of reacting Okay, so that you're more in control. Here's why this matters.
Speaker 3:So unprocessed emotion isn't just a personal issue. It's a leadership issue, Because what you've buried doesn't disappear. It just gets louder in the background. And it shows up when you do things like you avoid giving feedback to someone who needs it because you hate conflict, right. Where you over-function, because you're afraid of being seen as dispensable Well, we're all dispensable when you take on too much because you think you have to prove your worth, okay. So you know situations like this. You might think that you're being strategic, but underneath it is a pattern. It is an emotional pattern and it's pulling the strings. They're in control. You're not. So it's costing you in your leadership. You no longer have clarity because you're seeing through things through the lens of these emotions. It impacts your energy and it impacts how you build trust with yourself and with your team. So what's really going on here?
Speaker 3:So this isn't about big trauma, although you know that might be part of your story but this is about emotional residue. There were micro moments of hurt, betrayal, fear. Maybe you felt dismissed and they were never fully addressed. You just kind of tucked them inside and said, okay, I'm going to power through it. Or maybe you didn't even realize that you tucked them inside.
Speaker 3:So in NLP we'd say that they become emotional imprints, patterns that replay in new situations until they're acknowledged and they're released. So you might not even realize that it's happening. But every overreaction where you get triggered, every time you know it's a quiet, just resignation, every time you freeze up or you lash out, oftentimes that is a flare from something deeper. So it's happening. You are overreacting in some way because there's something inside of you that needs to be processed. So here's the reframe. Unprocessed doesn't mean forgotten, it just means it's hiding in how you lead. And once you name it you can begin to shift it. So who can help? Right, you don't have to do this alone, you don't have to figure this out alone, you don't have to carry this anymore. And sometimes the first step is just saying it out loud to someone else a coach, a therapist, a peer leader, even to yourself, in your journal. You write it down and then you look at it and you think, oh, my goodness, where did that come from? And you might also benefit from exploration through support tools like emotional release work from HUNA or even NLP practices.
Speaker 3:So NLP put me on my path to really recognize the baggage that I was holding and how it was therefore holding me back the ability to reframe things, the ability to change my thinking patterns in Huna, the the way to do higher self-release work. So you can go to nlpcom or hunacom and check these out. In my work I've created a vault of tools. It it's called the Readiness Vault and it has all kinds of things that can help you navigate this. And if you'd like access to the vault, just leave me a message and I'll be more than happy to get it to you, but even conversations with people who have walked this path before you, people who you know, who have gone through things similar to this and they've come out on the other side.
Speaker 3:And here's a surprising source of insight Pay attention to the people who trigger you, people who stir strong reactions in you, because sometimes the people who frustrate you are mirroring something that is unresolved in yourself, and that is why they are there to show you this lesson. Okay, and the people that you admire? They might be reflecting something that you've buried or that you're afraid to claim. So kind of, let that curiosity pay attention to it, pay attention to the patterns there, and it can guide your growth. So, what is one tool or practice?
Speaker 3:Well, there is a simple exercise, but it's powerful, that I use with the leaders that I facilitate leadership development cohorts with, or the people that I coach, and it's called an emotional audit, and here's what it is. I want you to think of three recent leadership moments that didn't feel great. You felt like, oh, I totally reacted to that. Or you felt like you were stepped back or withdrawn, or you just felt like something was off, you were out of alignment. If you can't think of three, think of at least one, you know. Number two ask what emotion was present while you were going through that moment, not just what you did, but kind of you know what it is that you felt. So once you identify that, number three, ask yourself, or ask your unconscious where have I felt this before? So what you're asking is where did this pattern begin? And just ask your unconscious and pay attention to what pops into your mind, because that is your unconscious guiding you.
Speaker 3:Number four name the version of you that you needed. So that version of you, was it needing safety? Was it needing recognition? Was it needing permission? So what is it that you were looking for in that moment? And then, number five what is one small way, one tiny step that you can move in that direction as the leader that you are today? This is how we rewire, not by denying our past, but finally responding to it, paying attention to it with compassion.
Speaker 3:I mean, essentially, you're just looking at the patterns that you're running. If they're not supporting you, then you want to identify that pattern and interrupt it and then create a new pattern that supports you. That is the ultimate goal. So what's your next clear move. So awareness is powerful, but it's not the finish line, it's the doorway. So I want you to choose one emotional thread that's still active in how you lead today.
Speaker 3:You know, now that you've been doing this introspection, what are the patterns that you've been running. Maybe it's perfectionism, you know. Maybe it's the fear of being misunderstood. Maybe it's the notion that you resting equates to weakness. So now I want you to ask yourself what is it costing me to keep carrying this? And then, what is one way I can release a piece of this this week? You know, and who even can support you in that release?
Speaker 3:Because leadership gets lighter when you stop dragging around the past into your present and you are more than ready to lead from right now, not from. You know who you think you had to be back then. So if this article stirred something in you, great, you don't have to navigate this alone. Head on over to my website at wwwdebbypetersonspeaks for resources to help you reconnect to what's most important to you and lead from a place where you have more clarity and confidence. That's my ultimate wish for you. And if your team's ready for real identity-based growth, explore the Readiness Reset Keynote or my customized Readiness Labs. So, until the next time. Take your next clear move, and I wish you a great day. Be good to yourself and bye-bye for now.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to this episode of the Getting to Clarity Podcast with Debbie Peterson.
Speaker 2:If you enjoyed this show, please rate and recommend it on iTunes or wherever you enjoy your podcasts.
Speaker 1:To learn more about how you can bring Debbie and her transformational clarity leadership strategies to your organization, visit debbepetersonspeakscom.
