fbpx
 

Emma McQueen

All Posts

“It shouldn’t be this hard”

| All Posts, Challenges for Women

Some days, it feels like you’re going backwards. You’ve pushed as much as you can, yet you’re at a standstill. It’s like Groundhog Day.

You may have been working for several years in an organisation or for yourself. You have been running for what feels like a long time. You are good at what you do, but you feel unappreciated and unrewarded for your work.

You may be asking yourself, “How do I level up at work? How do I step up? I don’t even know what that means. How do I work out what I’m doing well that I can leverage? What skills do I need to build?”

It feels like there’s never enough time …

Women who have their own businesses or are in leadership positions do not seem to have enough time in the day to get everything done – let alone the time to step up and progress their career.

They don’t make the money they know they deserve. They’re juggling family and business, feeling overwhelmed and unsure of what the next steps are. Many women in these positions feel busy but not productive. Everything feels so hard.

So, what do you do if your career comes to a grinding halt?

You may be asking yourself, “How can I do work that I love?” Or, “How can I make money out of this business idea?”

The Harvard Business Review did a study of finalists who were in the running for C-suite roles but got turned down in the final round. The analysis uncovered four main topics or themes that stopped people from progressing to C-suite positions. These were:

1. Executive presence

I hate this term. I think it’s a cop-out and a catch-all for people who can’t quite put their finger on why they don’t want to promote you. It’s when you may be highly skilled and intelligent, yet you come across as “understated” and meek.

2. Communication style

This relates to how you communicate and speak up (or don’t speak up). It can leave a lasting impression that has a significant impact on your career.

3. Peer relationships

Peer relationships are always tricky to navigate. You could be doing great things in your division or team, but at a peer-group level, for some reason, you just haven’t nailed it.

4. Excessive optimism and perfectionism

Apparently, excessive optimism and perfectionism can hinder career progression!

Sometimes, we need to hustle!

The word “hustle” has grown to have negative connotations. But the truth is, success requires a little hustle. Even more, it requires you to get a bit uncomfortable.

As humans, we are neurologically wired to find our comfort zone and do whatever we can to protect it. But growth and comfort cannot coexist. To grow, we need to do things we have not done before, in ways we have not used before, which feels uncomfortable.

The most successful women have someone in their corner, expanding their limitations on what is possible, and helping them identify areas of discomfort worth leaning into. Stepping out of our comfort zone, although scary, reaps amazing benefits.

This reminds me of a time when I pitched a story to a client. I went to the client, who wanted to disrupt the professional services industry, and they asked me to pitch a leadership development program to them.

I threw myself into the pitch. I prepared for days. I made sure I knew the industry inside out. And the creme de la crème was when I walked into their office in a judo suit to do my pitch, because it was all about mindset – and yes, I wore a black belt!

I didn’t get that work

It occurred to me that I didn’t get that work because I was too disruptive, even though that’s what they wanted. But, as one of my mentors said to me a couple of weeks later, when he saw this client in the news: “You know what, Emma? People lie. People lie about what it is they want.”

If I had stayed in my comfort zone, I would have pitched like every other person out there. But I didn’t. It didn’t pay off that time, but it has paid off many, many more times.

So, no, it shouldn’t always be this hard. But the fact is, it often is hard. And to deal with it, you need to lean outside your comfort zone. That’s where the growth happens!

I’m Emma, and I’m a business and executive coach who believes wholeheartedly in the potential of women. My coaching philosophy is simple- taking action leads to results- and I love working with women in business and in corporate roles to take their passion and drive and transform their professional and personal lives.

Be enthusiastic, optimistic and energetic, every day.

How a growth mindset can help you grow your business

| Action Station, All Posts, Challenges for Women, Mindset Tips

No doubt you’ve heard of the term “growth mindset”. But what does it have to do with business results?

Stanford University researcher Dr Carol Dweck first introduced the terms growth mindset and fixed mindset in 1988, with her ground-breaking book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Dweck’s theory emphasises the power of our most basic beliefs and how they can impact all areas of our lives.

As a personal leadership coach, I see every day how critical the right mindset is to business and personal success.

Fixed mindset

According to Dweck’s theory, if you have a fixed mindset, you believe your abilities, intelligence and talents are fixed traits and, therefore, cannot be improved. You also think that “natural” talent leads to success, and effort is not required.

Growth mindset

On the other hand, if you have a growth mindset, you believe you can develop your abilities and intelligence through learning and experience. You know that with persistence, you can achieve whatever you want to achieve. You don’t see intelligence as a fixed trait; rather, if you put in the right sort of effort and practise, it can grow.

Embrace challenges to overcome them

Dweck says that people with a growth mindset have a genuine desire to learn. They know they can develop their intelligence, so they are more likely to embrace challenges. They persist when the going gets tough, see effort as the path to mastery, learn from feedback and, as a result, reach higher levels of achievement.

In the world of business, we face challenges all the time. It’s how we deal with them that matters. If we understand we can learn and improve our abilities, we better position ourselves to overcome future challenges and reach our goals.

Not only that, we embrace challenges – and even failures – as opportunities to learn and grow.

How do you react to challenges in your business? How does this affect your ability to deal with them?

The power of “not yet”

In her video “Developing a growth mindset,” Dweck talks about the power of “not yet”. This really resonated with me.

How often have you not quite hit the mark with something – perhaps it was a goal you set for yourself – and you’ve said, “Well, I failed at that. I can’t do it. That’s that.”

Try turning this around. Instead of saying, “I can’t do it,” tell yourself, “I can’t do it yet.” In this small way, you remind yourself you’re still learning. Yes, you’ll make mistakes. But you can learn from them and grow.

You see, we are all on a learning curve in business and life. We can never truly fail at anything if we learn from our experiences!

Learning is a continual process


If you have a fixed mindset, you may feel like a failure when things don’t go according to plan. You may even see constructive feedback as a personal attack. It’s difficult to grow a successful business when you feel this way. 

But when you have a growth mindset, you see failure as a chance to learn. You use constructive feedback to improve and see your learning journey as one of continual growth.

Your business journey is the same. Your business, your leadership and your confidence will improve and grow all the time – as long as you have the right mindset.

So, what’s your mindset? Fixed or growth? What would you like it to be?

If you need help working on your mindset and confidence, contact me – I’d love to help you.

I’m Emma, and I’m a business and executive coach who believes wholeheartedly in the potential of women. My coaching philosophy is simple- taking action leads to results- and I love working with women in business and in corporate roles to take their passion and drive and transform their professional and personal lives.

Be enthusiastic, optimistic and energetic, every day.

Em x

Rollover, NOT refund!

| Action Station, All Posts

I, like many of you, have been impacted by the not-so-friendly virus that is COVID-19.

I have been working with clients to help them pivot (ever seen that Friends episode where Ross tries to squeeze the mattress around the corner? Do yourself a favour and watch it!), pull things online, and work out what clients and customers need in this time.

There is so much negative news, people cannot stop talking about coronavirus, and we are living in fear (with not-so-clear direction from Scotty, I might add).

It’s times like these we need to face outwards and work out what service looks like for you and your business. Who can you serve at this time? What value can you add to current clients without the icky sell?

As you know, a lot of the work I do is face to face: Lunch with the Queen, Thriving Women workshops, and coaching. The whole kit and kaboodle. We have now moved most things online.

I recently had an interesting conversation with Bel Temby from Digital Services Lab, and we spoke about the idea of offering a rollover rather than a refund. What does that mean? Well, we are all small businesses, so let me tell you what I did for Lunch with the Queen.

Scheduled for April 23rd, our sold-out Lunch with the Queen now can’t go ahead, as restaurants are all closed due to COVID-19. So, I rang everyone (yes, I actually picked up the phone!) and offered them a rollover to a yet-to-be-determined date OR a refund and a Zoom call with all 16 guests, who could BYO lunch.

The result? Some fantastic conversations with awesome women, some of whom I am yet to meet, who profusely thanked me for picking up the phone to check in and explain the situation. Almost everyone chose the rollover and everyone is still meeting on Zoom because they want to connect, especially now!

People want to help. They want the chance to support others in business. I also want to continue to serve, and this seemed like the right choice for right now.

What about you? Do you need to offer your clients a rollover?

Feel free to get in touch with me here

I’m Emma, and I’m a business and executive coach who believes wholeheartedly in the potential of women. My coaching philosophy is simple- taking action leads to results- and I love working with women in business and in corporate roles to take their passion and drive and transform their professional and personal lives.

Be enthusiastic, optimistic and energetic, every day.

“I just need more time.” Or do you?

| Action Station, All Posts, Challenges for Women

What do Jacinda Ardern, Greta Thunberg and Beyoncé all have in common? No, it’s not fame or headlines. They each have 86,400 seconds in a day to make it count!

And so do you.

“I wish there were more hours in the day…”

We’ve all said this. I know I’ve mumbled it! How many times have you heard others say it?

In our society, we constantly hear references to time running out, lack of time, having no time, we’ve got too much to do and not enough time, if only there were more hours in the day… I’m guilty of saying these things, as well.

It reminds me of the great quote from Margaret Atwood in her book, The Handmaid’s Tale:

“But that’s where I am. There’s no escaping it. Time’s a trap, I’m caught in it.”

Can you relate? When we feel caught in this trap called time, we feel crappy. It steals our happiness. And we wish we had more time so we could get everything done.

We’re “time poor”

One of my clients, Layla, never seemed to have enough time. She was a classic example of what we consider “time poor”: always busy, always working, with little time for herself.

Layla was not alone. As a female leadership coach, one of the things I commonly hear from women, especially those juggling a business and family, is that there’s just not enough time.


But is that true?

Do we really not have enough time? Or is it that we don’t use our time effectively? Do we focus on the wrong things at the wrong times?


According to Forbes, time is our most valuable commodity. Research shows that “time stress” is linked with reduced wellbeing, decreased happiness and increased levels of anxiety and insomnia.

So, the question is, how do we value our time? Just how precious is it to us? And what’s a smart way to use it?

The fact is, there is no more time

Imagine, if you will, an hourglass. It holds 24 hours. We all have the same sized hourglass, so everything we do must fit inside it.


This presents you with a wonderful opportunity! How you spend your 24 hours is entirely your choice! Your 24 hours is time for you to nourish yourself. It’s time to sleep well and be fit for each day. It’s time to spend with the people closest to you. It’s time to do the work you love and make the difference you were born to make.

The key is to know your priorities

The most successful women in business and leadership ruthlessly prioritise. They know how to balance the important and the urgent. And when they don’t, they have someone in their corner to gently – and sometimes loudly! – keep them on track.


You see, using your time well has nothing to do with how much of it you have. It’s about the choices you make and how you prioritise.

“Time is a gift, given to you, given to give you the time you need, the time you need to have the time of your life.”

– Norton Juster

Urgent vs non-urgent

Our progress with an important task is easily derailed by the “urgent” – things that require our IMMEDIATE attention. These things are usually not important, yet they steal our attention away from what we should be doing at that moment.

The urgent shouts, “NOW! I need your attention NOW!” It puts us in reactive mode, which is really unhelpful.

Important tasks, on the other hand, contribute to our long-term mission. They bring our purpose, values and goals to life. Sometimes, important tasks are urgent, but typically they’re not.


The Eisenhower Matrix is a useful tool that can help you prioritise tasks by urgency. It identifies:

  • The urgent and important
  • The less urgent and important
  • The urgent and less important
  • The less urgent and less important

Prioritising tasks this way means you can decide what you should:

  • Do first
  • Schedule
  • Delegate
  • Don’t do

Let’s go back to Layla…

Layla continued to show up to our coaching sessions, telling me she couldn’t get all her tasks done because she didn’t have enough time. So, I asked her to make a list of all the tasks she was doing. We then identified the tasks that were urgent but not important, and the things that were important but not urgent.

What we discovered was that Layla really enjoyed networking and building relationships. This was great from a business development perspective, but it meant a lot of her important work was not getting done. Because it wasn’t in her diary, it didn’t take precedence.

So, we worked on Layla’s calendar. We scheduled time for the important things, so they didn’t become urgent things, and we scheduled time for the less-important (but enjoyable) things, such as Layla’s networking events.

One important task Layla struggled with was writing content. She procrastinated on it so much that I issued her a challenge. She was not allowed to attend her coveted networking events for a week if she hadn’t written her content!

What do you think happened? That’s right, she did not like the thought of no networking, so she got onto her content immediately! Suddenly, there was time to write. There was also time to get her calendar sorted, time for all the things she did not think were possible. And there was time for her networking events!

Was it easy? No! Nothing worth it is. Did having a plan make Layla happier? You betcha!  

By becoming clear on her non-negotiable tasks, Layla could plan, prioritise and value her time, and she was loving life again.

I’m Emma, and I’m a business and executive coach who believes wholeheartedly in the potential of women. My coaching philosophy is simple- taking action leads to results- and I love working with women in business and in corporate roles to take their passion and drive and transform their professional and personal lives.

Be enthusiastic, optimistic and energetic, every day.

Em x

Working from home can suck

| All Posts, Challenges for Women

Working from home can suck

So many women are building fantastic businesses. They often keep overheads low by working from home, but what happens when working from home isn’t taken seriously?

Let me explain …

One of my clients rang me, feeling extremely frustrated. She worked from home, and because of this, her friends thought she was available to them all day. She had to deal with all kinds of interruptions – phone calls, visits, texts. Meanwhile, her working time was already extremely limited.

When I asked her how many people she was talking about, she said she received at least two visitors a day! Can you imagine? When you have children at school, the only time you can work is during school hours. Having a couple of visitors drop in each day meant there were days when my client was getting nothing done.

“Take me seriously!”

Previously, my gorgeous client saw her business as a hobby. A visitor here and there was okay, but one year later, she had transformed her “hobby” into a profit-making centre. She had changed, but her friends thought it was “hobby as usual”. Throw in the fact she genuinely wanted to help her friends and didn’t like saying no to them – it was a recipe for disaster.

In fact, my client’s situation had become so bad, she drew her blinds during the day so no one would think she was home. I don’t know about you, but that would make me feel like a prisoner in my own home! At least it was a start to tackling the problem, I thought.

Plan of attack

Things couldn’t continue this way, so we came up with a plan. Here’s what it looked like:

  • We did some work on her mindset, so she would feel okay about putting her business first after years of focusing on others.
  • We brainstormed options that would work for her personality and business.
  • We agreed she would let her visitors know she needed to be more vigilant with her time as her business was getting bigger.
  • She scheduled time in her diary so her visitors could still see her, but when it suited her and her business.
  • She also talked to her family about the changes she was making, so they could have her back when necessary. This also signalled to her family that her business was now a serious one.

Two months later, I am happy to report this strategy worked – mostly! It didn’t work when my client accepted visitors outside her scheduled times. She quickly discovered that when you loosen boundaries once, it’s hard to force them back into place.

What about you? Do you have people “drop in” because you happen to work from home? How does this affect your business and wellbeing?

Perhaps it’s time to set some boundaries of your own.

There is more out there

| All Posts, Challenges for Women

Do you want more? Do you find yourself thinking you want to have more, do more, be more?

“I want more energy. I want more confidence. I want more financial freedom.”

How often do we say these things to ourselves?! As a female leadership coach, I hear it from my clients all the time. The good news is, you can have more. Now is the time!

The problem is, when we tell ourselves we want more, we usually follow it up with something like, “But it’s impossible. What I have now is all I can hope for.”

How wrong this is!

If there was nothing more to have, how boring the world would be! There is more out there for you, but you need to go out and get it.

To get more, you need to tap into a different mindset. As I talked about in my previous blog post, I should be happy with what I have this blog post, so often, we revert to a mindset that tells us, “It’s too hard. I should be happy with what I have.”

No, you shouldn’t be happy with what you have! It’s time to silence that inner critic. You should never feel guilty for wanting greater happiness and success in your life!

So, instead of adopting a mindset that points out all the reasons why you can’t have more, you need to create a mindset that focuses on the reasons why you can have more – and how.

So, how do you get more?

To get more, we need to challenge the status quo. We need to look for new and better ways of doing things in our businesses and personal lives.

This is not easy to do. It involves a level of uncertainty, and it can even make us feel unhappy in the short-term. But in the long-term, the result is greater happiness, because we’ve uncovered new possibilities and have gained better insight into what makes us happy and unhappy.

To get more can take a leap of faith. It’s helpful if we have a tribe that has our backs. And the more we take that leap of faith, the easier it becomes, and the more our confidence grows.

Is it possible to have it all?

I think it’s possible to have it all, just not all at once.

In her article, “Women CAN Have It All — Just Not All At The Same Time,” Lisa Quast talks about feeling frustrated while trying to balance her job and family life. I’m sure many of you can relate to this.

It’s hard. Juggling a family and career at the same time takes so much time and energy. Women are still the main caregivers, they are paid less than men, they do more housework than men … All this certainly eats into our ability to strive for more.

So, perhaps it’s not a simple question of, “Can we have it all?”

Perhaps it’s more a question of, “How can I manage my expectations so I can have it all – at different stages of my life?”

So, what are you waiting for? Go out and get it!

I’m Emma, and I’m a business and executive coach who believes wholeheartedly in the potential of women. My coaching philosophy is simple- taking action leads to results- and I love working with women in business and in corporate roles to take their passion and drive and transform their professional and personal lives.

Be enthusiastic, optimistic and energetic, every day.

Em x