Today's episode of Negotiate Anything.
Get started for free or use code ANYTHING50 to save 50 on starter and standard plans for the first three months of your annual subscription at Brevocom.
Slash anything.
Cozy Earth makes everyday comfort feel like a real upgrade from unbelievably soft sleepwear to plush blankets.
Go to CozyEarth.com and use the code Kwame for up to 20% off and you'll get a post-purchase survey.
Make sure you mention you heard about it here.
Incogni helps you to take your personal data back by removing it from places online where it shouldn't be, helping to reduce your exposure to scams and identity theft.
Use code anything for 60% off of an annual plan at incogni.com slash anything.
As always, you can find all of these deals in the show notes.
Hello my friend and welcome to another episode of Negotiate Anything.
Thanks for spending time with us today.
It's listeners like you in 181 different countries that have made Negotiate Anything the most popular negotiation and conflict resolution podcast in the world.
I'm your host Kwame Christian.
I'm a business lawyer, mediator, professor, and the director of the American Negotiation Institute.
Before we get started, I have two quick questions for you.
Is negotiation a critical part of what you do?
Do you need to resolve conflict and persuade at work?
If you answered yes to both of those questions, visit our website to learn more about our negotiation workshops.
We've traveled the country working with professionals just like you, and we'd love to have the opportunity to work with you too.
Check out the link in the description to learn more.
Emily, thanks for joining us today.
Thanks for having me, Kwame.
Yeah, it's my pleasure.
So how about you get us started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do?
Sure.
So I'm Emily Aries.
I'm the founder and CEO of a personal and professional development organization called Bossed Up.
I really wake up every day helping women and marginalized communities advocate for radical progress in their careers.
Bossed up because frankly, I had been an advocate in the professional and public domain, in campaigns and elections, in the world of politics, which I know is near and dear to your heart as well.
But I completely burnt out.
I was so busy martyring myself for the cause, for the campaign, for others, that I, especially as a young woman, struggled to learn how to effectively advocate for myself.
And so that led me down a rabbit hole of research and really question asking and reading all that I could, talking to researchers, assembling an advisory board and launching Bossed Up to help others who struggle with the same really become the boss of their careers and lives.
This is fantastic.
And you know, I love your work.
So I've been excited to promote you to the audience for a long time.
And we're tackling a topic that is often talked about but I don't think is often addressed in the appropriate way, with some actual, tangible skills that we can use, practically speaking, to be better leaders, more persuasive and things like that.
Since we're here talking about assertiveness, I'm really excited to have you on, especially given your background.
So the three things we're going to talk about today, number one what does it mean to be assertive versus aggressive?
Number two, gender and assertiveness.
And number three, the hidden benefits of assertiveness.
So let's really tease out this distinction.
What are the differences we need to know about assertiveness versus aggressiveness?
Great question.
So I first came across this definition difference in definition as an undergraduate at Brown University.
One of my favorite all-time professors, Barbara Tannenbaum, who is my persuasive communications professor, who I've since interviewed on my podcast Bossed Up, put this difference between assertive and aggressive in the limelight as a student.
And I thought to myself in that moment I'll explain those definitions in a moment but I thought how many times have I been called aggressive when i'm simply trying to assert myself and as a woman, as a person of color, i know that being labeled as angry shrill harsh bossy aggressive, you name it is a very common experience when, in fact, the difference lay in whose rights are actually being respected.
So when i'm being assertive, I'm being forthright and clear about my wants, my needs, my desires, while still considering the rights, wants and needs of others.
When I'm being aggressive and let's be honest, we've all been aggressive, like truly aggressive, not just mislabeled as aggressive and we all will be aggressive in the future, despite any good intentions.
I'm just doing what's in my best interest, looking out for my rights needs, wants and desires, without regard for others.
And so the difference is one of, is this a two-way dialogue or is this a one-way proclamation?
And sometimes honestly Kwame, aggressive communication can look very mild.
I don't know if you've ever been on the receiving end of a sticky note from a roommate, or someone in the office microwave sticks a sticky note on it to make their voice heard and then they do not stick around to hear from others.
In the scenario,
So sometimes, in our effort as totally understandably conflict-averse human beings, we can sometimes be aggressive and by simply trying to avoid conflict, when in fact the leadership move and really the human move, the kind thing to do is to be assertive.
When you need to make your voice heard, make it heard.
When you need to speak up for yourself, speak up, but leave the door open for others.
Yeah, this is great.
And I think there are two things that I want to focus on here.
So the reality of bias here and how that will impact the way that this is going to be interpreted.
And then number two, the importance of style and some potential stylistic mistakes that we could make that make our assertive actions be misinterpreted as aggressive actions.
And so let's go deeper into the bias side of it.
Tell us more about that.
Sure.
So there's a lot of intersectionality that we can bring to this topic.
But if we just look at it first and foremost from a gender lens, there has been a long hit of science of researchers for the past 30 plus years finding an inverse correlation between assertiveness and and likability for women.
So when women make their voices heard assertively, which is deemed necessary for leadership, right?
We want to speak.
Everyone needs to be heard and make their voice heard and share their vision to be a leader.
But when women express assertiveness, both men and women and frankly everyone in between deems that woman less likable.
And even though we all know very assertive men who sometimes are not thought of as very nice or very likable, that correlation is positive when it comes to likability and assertiveness for men.
So the Harvard Business Review, back in 2013 in their September edition, did a cover story all about the invisible barriers that women leaders face.
And they wrote.
This mismatch between conventionally female qualities and the qualities thought necessary for leadership puts female leaders in a double bind.
And I always joke saying it's like tap dancing on a tightrope.
You're trying to like be nice and be pleasing to people's eyes and ears.
And you also want to be taken seriously.
And when you're a woman of color, or you're a woman of different abilities, or you're an immigrant, you're a first generation college graduate, you name it.
Right.
There are so many other layers of intersectionality that make that tightrope tap dance a juggling act too.
So it is just an exhausting, never ending obstacle course for folks in, especially in predominantly male and pale workplaces, to try to overcome and navigate, when those tripwires that flag women leaders as brash or bossy or even unqualified for simply speaking up in the way that a man would never be questioned.
It can honestly result in this self-muting behavior in response to the biased feedback that we get as leaders.
That manifests in a really negative way.
It can actually result in us turning the volume down on ourselves to try to appease a biased culture.
I agree 100%.
And Emily, you know, we've talked about this for an inordinate amount of time, right?
And there's a lot of correlation between the experiences of women in this role, especially women of color, but then also minorities in general as well.
And there are things that we need to consider here.
First, obviously, we have to consider And societally, we have to address these cultural challenges.
We have to raise awareness.
Have people become more aware of their own biases so they can recognize and adjust in the moment when they are coming to these conclusions?
That's the first thing.
But then there's the other side. when it comes to us who might be the recipients of the bias, right?
Where we are being labeled aggressive inappropriately.
And so we are presented with a situation where we see, okay, this is how people are taking this.
Do I adjust my behavior?
Then maybe I don't feel authentic.
And then, well, do I just keep on doing the same thing and running into the same problem?
And so for you, based on your experience, how do you approach it?
I'm so glad you asked because we talked about this on your interview on my podcast.
And I do wrestle with it because from an ethical standpoint, you know, we shouldn't have to, as the recipients of injustice, adapt to a biased world.
We shouldn't have to do any of this.
But when it serves your goals...
There's no shame in switching your approach, right?
Code switching is something that a lot of us know a lot about, especially if you have parents who speak another language or if you speak in a different way with certain friends versus how you might speak in the boardroom.
Especially African-American communities are super familiar of code switching to placate and make other people more comfortable.
Now, I think Ibram X. Kendi would say that that is assimilationism.
And I do wrestle with the ethics of whether how we should think about that.
But practically speaking, we're all code switching all the time, right?
It makes sense to consider when you're trying to strategically communicate, which I know your listeners are all about, and your podcast from a negotiation standpoint is all about strategic communication.
You've got to consider your goals and One key approach, one key difference that I have stumbled upon in the research that can really help disarm people.
If you are about to be very assertive.
If you are about to ask for a raise, if you are about to say no, I can't make that deadline happen.
If you are about to assert yourself in a powerful way.
One way is to lead with intent before getting to your assertive content.
And so that might sound like explaining why you're asking for what you're asking for before you ask for it.
Now that takes emotional labor, right?
That takes a cognitive or mental load to actually think about the syntax of your phrasing when, Naturally speaking, most of us say hey, here's what I want.
Can you turn off the lights?
I want to make sure everyone can see the movie.
If we're gracious about it, we might explain what we're asking for.
But if we pause because this is a really important ask, like I don't know for a raise or promotion, and we instead lead with hey, I want to make sure we're on the same page about my growth trajectory here.
I'd love to spend some time talking with you about my future and the organization.
Do you have time on Friday to set some some time aside to really reflect with me?
Then we're giving them context first of here's why I'm asking for what I'm asking for before the.
What I'm asking for.
Imagine if instead you said hey Kwame, do you have time on Friday to talk with me and reflect on my future at the organization.
And you're like, oh, God, what does this mean?
Are they leaving?
And you induce panic, right?
You induce those stress hormones flowing through your audience's body.
When instead, if you give them a little context of the why before the what, that is one small adaptation I've really seen work well for my clients and community members at Bossed Up who are trying to navigate some contentious conversations when they darn well know that they're gonna be mistaken as angry or as aggressive, when they're simply trying to be assertive.
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.
Does your company invest in professional development training?
If you believe that your team would benefit from a negotiation workshop, all you need to do is go to our website, fill out the workshop request form and then we'll set up a time to chat.
These workshops are completely customizable and we've done them all around the country.
Negotiation and conflict resolution skills are beneficial across all professions, but they're especially useful in procurement purchasing sales, sourcing and contract management.
Our calendar is filling up quickly and we even have some workshops scheduled.
If you think you might want one, i'd suggest reaching out soon so you don't miss out.
Check out the link in the description to learn more and we will be right back after this And Emily, the thing that I like so much about this is the fact that this is something that all of us can incorporate into our approach in order to be more persuasive, in order to make it less likely for our approach to be misinterpreted as aggressive.
That context really helps.
It really does help.
And I think this is a good opportunity for us to transition to gender and assertiveness, just going a bit deeper right.
Because we've started to get into this content a little bit.
But let's go deeper when we think about it.
What else do we need to know?
Well, I think, honestly, we have covered a lot of the misconceptions that are out there in the data.
I am encouraged that more recently there has been a reversal, that's showing up a trend.
I should say that is reversing that inverse correlation between likability and assertiveness for women.
We are starting to see To no small effort by lots of powerful people and media makers everywhere that you know.
Maybe a strong powerful independent, outspoken woman is not a bad thing after all.
And same thing for any marginalized group, right?
I have this old Huffington Post article that I wrote back in 2013 that kind of illustrated that trend as it was changing in my own mind.
And I think it exemplifies the culture changing around this.
I said that the title was I'm so over hot mess chic, meaning I don't want to see lovably hot mess characters of young women on TV as much anymore, like Girls and New Girl, which infantilizes so many women.
And I get it.
Your 20s are kind of a struggle and can be, and so can your 30s and 40s and beyond.
And everybody's been a hot mess at some point and will be again.
But I don't want to celebrate that.
I want to celebrate getting your shit together.
That's why the subtitle of my book is A Grown Woman's Guide to Getting Your Shit Together.
And I remember the moment it clicked for me.
Starting something new isn't just hard.
It's terrifying.
Before you launch, the doubt starts stacking up.
What if I fail?
What if no one listens?
What if no one buys?
And even if you push through, you still need a system that makes the business side feel less chaotic.
And that's where Shopify comes in.
Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses all around the world and 10 of all e-commerce in the United States.
It helps you to build beautiful online stores with ready to use templates.
And it's packed with AI tools that can write product descriptions, page headlines and even enhance product photography.
And if you get stuck, Shopify's award-winning 24-7 customer support is there with answers.
It's time to turn those what-ifs into with Shopify today.
Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash Kwame.
Go to Shopify.com slash Kwame.
That's Shopify.com slash Kwame.
All right, let's talk about something that's accurate.
Taking care of yourself before you show up to negotiate with anybody else.
Because if you're tired, stressed, and running on fumes, you're going to make worse decisions.
Period.
And that's why I'm a huge fan of Cozy Earth.
Cozy Earth's whole mission is to elevate the everyday with obsessive detail and better materials.
So you can feel it immediately.
Their bamboo pajama set that's made from viscose from bamboo is unbelievably soft.
It drapes really nicely.
And the classic cuddle blanket.
That thing is dangerous because once you wrap up in it, you're not getting anything done.
It's plush.
It has a comforting weight and makes your home feel like a reset button.
And here's the best part.
It is completely risk-free.
Cozy Earth gives you a 100-night sleep trial and a 10-year warranty.
So they really stand behind the quality.
So this month, show a little extra love to someone you care about or yourself.
Go to CozyEarth.com and use my code Kwame for up to 20% off.
And if you get a post-purchase survey, make sure to let them know that you heard about Cozy Earth right here.
I was walking home from a volleyball game with this hot new guy that I had just started seeing if you could even call it that.
Fast forward like eight years later, and he's my husband.
But we were very much a new item at the time.
And without thinking, I kind of let it slip. that I had just nailed this huge project at work.
I had just run a hundred like.
It was like a 10 million campaign for one of my clients.
Facebook ads and political fundraising.
And I was just so proud.
And I had this moment of like unbridled pride in my own work product.
And then I immediately looked at this guy who I was seeing and was like, oh, I'm sorry.
I don't want to like brag or intimidate you or anything.
Looking back, I'm like, what an, what a totally idiotic thing to say.
But I had in my own mind already apologized for reveling in my achievements, which of course that's a message we don't get from nowhere right.
We hear that from the world around us that says hey ladies, don't be more high achieving than your man.
And that comes out in so many other forms, right?
And he looked at me and said in true, like bro form, because I totally married Brad the boo and Brad the bruh.
We're in Colorado now.
So it really fits.
At the time we were in DC and he looked at me and he goes, that's so hot.
And I was just like, First of all, I'm blushing right now.
I'm like sweating, telling the story.
But I just remember in that moment that, whether we're talking about asserting yourself, like being outspoken on your own behalf to advocate for yourself, or being outspoken about your self-satisfaction, right with your, with your work,
That the world sends us messages to the point where we, as women, internalize that as I shouldn't speak up,
And in that moment, he said, are you crazy?
Actually, please do speak up.
That was hot.
So that's part of the culture changing on this.
Right.
We're starting to see more Olivia Popes and more strong, powerful women who are not afraid to do what leaders do every day, which is to both be caring and kind and a servant leader, and defend your people.
Defend yourself, speak up for yourself, assert yourself when necessary.
And I think Creating a space where women in particular can be a myriad of things is so important.
So I'm hopeful that the world is trending in a positive direction.
And frankly, with Madam Vice President Kamala D Harris being sworn in, I am more hopeful than ever before.
Right.
No, this is great.
And one of the things that I really appreciate about this is the reality that yes, we have a societal and cultural problem right.
That we're slowly starting to address.
And at the same time, we're recognizing how that has an impact on us internally and changes the way that we approach these conversations, the way that we bring ourselves to these difficult conversations, assert ourselves and stand up for ourselves.
And so you have been able to make that shift.
And I know you work with women all around the country and helping them to make that shift.
So can you tell us a little bit more about the mindset shift that needs to occur for us to actually take that step?
I mean, that is...
It's a tough thing to do.
I always say you have to be ready for it.
You know what I mean?
No one can pull you up.
You got to be ready to climb before you can lift.
So, first and foremost, if you recognize that you feel like you're in the passenger seat of your life, of your career, and you are just going with the flow and it's not flowing in the direction you like anymore, that is time to take the wheel.
Then it's time to say, I need to be in the driver's seat of my life.
That's step one.
You got to get there.
And sometimes, frankly, you have to have a breakthrough or breakdown to get there.
And for me, I was so burnt out, not only from martyring myself for years on the campaign trail, but also because I was in a really toxic relationship for years with a caring kind, really high achieving man who also happens to be, like millions of Americans, an alcoholic.
And so I felt this need to wake up every day and save the world by day and save my boyfriend's life by night.
And that was no way to live, especially because he really didn't want help.
So that was like, that's a whole other thing.
Thank you, therapy, for helping me kind of parse through that.
So as a young person I remember getting to the point where I did not like the direction my life was going in.
I was waiting for someone else to save me.
I used to ask my grandmothers, who have really incredible life stories how did you find the courage to in my maternal grandmother's case marry that Irish-American soldier who was stationed in the Panama Canal zone while you were a Panamanian local woman hired to be a little typist in what she calls her Mickey Mouse job?
How did you leave everything you knew behind, friends, family, country, to just take this huge risk.
And my other grandmother.
How did you drop out of college as a young Jewish-American woman studying in Illinois because a Jewish matchmaker told you that they had found you a husband when quote, she says, men were dropping like flies?
Okay,
And she travels all the way to New Haven Connecticut, right around the area where I was raised actually marries this guy was miserable with an infant in hand, divorces him, which was not a thing, moves home with her parents and lives as a spinster, some might say in her own parents' attic, sharing a bed with her infant child for the next eight years as that child grew up.
Before she married this exciting cousin of a typist friend's French wine salesman named Emile Aries, after whom I am named, and moving her whole life across the pond to Paris.
I was looking at the time for permission to take big risks.
No one can grant you that permission, not even my grandmothers, as I was asking for it.
I realized in that moment that No one can steer your life in a new direction except you.
And it is scary because that also means taking responsibility for doing so.
The research would call this identity expansion.
It's imagining a new version of who you can be.
And I always like to say, first, you have to sketch out where you want your life to go.
If everything went as perfectly as possible, what would you actually want to have happen?
And that sometimes takes a lot of independent reflection and thought and quiet time that we in this world do not really have much of.
And we have to assert ourselves and demand from ourselves and from the world around us.
And then we have to have that reflected back to us from others.
I have this theory in my book, Bossed Up, that's called mirror theory.
And you know how there are some mirrors, Kwame, that make you look real good?
And you're like, ooh, I'm going to hold on to this mirror for life.
And then there are other mirrors that are like funhouse mirrors that reflect back to you a really warped version of yourself.
People are the same way.
So my very analytical neurotic, nervous Jewish father is not the guy to call when I'm thinking about quitting my steady job and starting this little company called Bossed Up.
He's just not that's not his that's not his role in my life.
He's the guy to help me figure out what could possibly go wrong.
And you need to think about when you're expanding your internal sense of who you can be, how fierce you can become, how much of an advocate you can be for yourself.
You have to seek out and surround yourself with the people who will reflect back to you a more courageous version of even what you can see in yourself.
And that duality of like internal courage and vision and external reinforcement is an absolute prerequisite.
So starting to demand what you want from this world in a very unapologetically assertive way.
This is great.
And this is a perfect chance for us to segue into the last part, which is that we're going to talk about the hidden benefits of assertiveness.
And so the obvious one is, hey, makes it more likely for you to get what you want.
That's what, you know, that's what people think about.
But what else is there that we should be aware of?
One of the most common misconceptions about assertiveness is that it's very stressful.
And I think you know as a negotiation expert, people don't particularly love negotiation, unless you're a total freak like me.
I love a good negotiation.
But there's this misconception that having one of those tough conversations is super stress inducing.
But I would ask our listeners to think about this.
When you ever were in a workplace, a friend group, a relationship, even where every single day you felt like a doormat, like people walked all over you, like you could not make your voice heard, where you couldn't stand up for yourself for whatever reason, that creates a lesser but constant fear, form of anxiety.
That's going on in the background, right.
A low grade stress and anxiety that occupies physiologically really occupies your body in a way.
And that stuff adds up.
That's where burnout comes from.
Chronic stress leads to burnout.
Unless we're rinsing our bodies and brains of the stress hormones that build up when we experience stress on a daily basis.
Even in small ways, like microaggressions, which disproportionately impact folks of color and women and all kinds of marginalized folks, that stuff adds up in a big way.
Imagine that versus the feeling of relief you experience when you finally have a tough conversation that you know you've been needing to have.
It's just like that sigh of of your body saying I don't know if this is definitely going to go in my direction, if I'm going to win this fight, but at least I feel heard.
At least I've made my point.
At least I've stood up for myself.
And what actually happens here is that one of the hidden benefits of assertiveness is reduced anxiety.
It is those folks who feel like they can never be assertive that feel the most anxiety, contrasted with.
You know it's not.
I'm not going to win every battle, but I'm going to feel better and less stressed and less anxious because I at least have assertiveness as a tool in my communications toolbox.
And that is the biggest benefit I see to assertiveness, especially when it comes to drawing healthy boundaries with family members.
Like I, have an easier time being assertive in work situations than it does navigating in-law politics or navigating the holidays and who's going to be spending what time with who, where you know.
We have to draw on our assertiveness, both personally and professionally.
And the biggest hidden benefit personally is being able to experience the relief and lack of anxiety of making your voice heard.
Absolutely.
And one of the things that really helps people to feel better, right, is just a sense of control.
Right.
You think about the people want to be in control.
That's why people are afraid of flying, but not as afraid of driving.
You are safer in a plane.
You're more likely to die on the road, but you're not you have zero control in the air.
That's why it's so unsettling for people.
And you're 10,000 feet above the earth, that too, right?
But it's also control.
And so you feel a greater sense of control when you say, okay, I'm going to be proactive.
I'm going to have these conversations.
There's a significant psychological benefit there too.
Another thing is self-respect, right?
You know, I always tell people to shift from the fear of failure to the fear of regret.
I want to look back and think about the things that I did without regret.
And I want to be able to be a guy that I can respect when I look objectively at what I did or did not do.
And sometimes to make yourself proud, you have to let other people down.
And I think women especially need to hear that loud and clear.
Sometimes to make yourself proud, you are going to let other people down.
And that is a hard lesson to learn in a world that conditions people, but especially women, to be liked.
It's a perfectly normal innate desire.
But do you want to like yourself or do you want to be liked by others?
Because sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes your choice comes down to that.
And how you behave comes down to who you want to please, yourself or others.
It's tricky.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
And it's so interesting too, because when you shift the focus in a healthy way, more to yourself, then things get a lot clearer.
Because a lot of times, when you start to do that and you just ask hey, what do I want in this situation,
What do I need in this situation?
Oh, I mean, that is very clear.
And so the other person can make adjustments.
And I think it's similar to the story that you told earlier about your previous boyfriend, when you recognized this is not my responsibility.
And in a lot of these situations, their happiness in this moment.
What they need in this situation, is not your responsibility.
It's really theirs.
Right.
Totally.
I have another term in my book that I call the martyrdom mindset.
And I was raised by an amazing caretaker, my mother, who is a professional caretaker.
She's a nurse.
She was also personally our primary caretaker of four children, five if you count my dad.
And Honestly she let like she created a model of motherhood and womanhood for me that is impossible for me to achieve.
And she uses all of her vacation days until very recently when she moved to Colorado, when she was still in Connecticut where I grew up.
She used all of her vacation every year to run medical mission trips in Don Marie Haiti, which is some of the most remote parts of Haiti, to provide medical, life-saving OBGYN care.
And she was like.
She built this nonprofit from the ground up, along with her co-founders and doctors and team.
I mean, I remember taking her back to her home country.
She was born and raised in Bogota Colombia, and she had not returned to since she was 13 years old when she moved to the States until her 60th birthday.
When I said, Hey mom, it's time to take a vacation.
You, me, your 60th birthday, we're going to Bogota.
And then we went to Santa Marta and we did this hike in the jungle to La Ciudad Perdida, which is like Colombia's Machu Picchu, but it's even older and it's amazing.
And I highly recommend it.
And she, like I just saw in her eyes And as we were flying home I saw this shift with her and I said to her wow, this is just a once in a lifetime trip.
I'm so grateful that we took it together.
And she said, Emily, you have got to stop calling it that.
This is not a once in a lifetime thing.
I have to start doing more of this.
I cannot let 40 years go by, or 50 almost years go by, without not having revisited the place where I grew up, that I love to call home.
And I can't let my life slip away from me and not prioritize my wants, my needs, my desire in sacrificing it all for everyone else, children, patients, whoever, my dad, whoever.
And I'm telling you, since she's moved here to Colorado and since we've returned from that trip, she has taken radical steps to transform her life.
And it makes me happy because I wanna see her happy.
I don't wanna just see her serving others.
Well, as admirable as that is sometimes, what the world really needs is for you to serve others and serve yourself.
I got a mantra of mine that I really leaned on when I was just starting Bossed Up is you deserve to serve and be served.
And I think that's a really hard shift for so many of us, for whatever reason, have inherited this idea that we have to just constantly be fighting for others and not fighting for ourselves.
Like.
Think about the model you're setting for the little eyes looking up at you boys girls, whatever.
The little people in your life are looking to you to say, how should I stand up for myself?
I will base that off of how you stand up for yourself.
And I think more we need to give our mothers out there especially permission to put themselves first, which is a radical act in this world.
Right.
Oh, I think that's a fantastic message to end on.
And yes, I'm excited to have you on again in the future.
Before you go, can you tell the listeners again about your company and how they can get in touch with you and how they can work with you too?
Yes.
Wherever you're listening to this podcast, search Bossed Up and subscribe now.
If you like what you heard today, you'll hear two episodes a week full of Bossed Up gems.
You can also head to bossedup.org for lots of resources.
And for my women leaders on the rise, I've got a free training you might find really helpful.
It's called What Women Managers Need to Lead.
And we talk more about the double binds that women leaders really run into in the workplace and how to overcome them.
That's at boss step.org slash women lead.
Thank you so much for having me on Kwame.
It's been such a delight.
Likewise.
Our pleasure.
Congratulations.
You've just joined an elite club by listening to a full episode.
You're now officially on the negotiate anything team.
So welcome aboard.
What most team members do is they subscribe to the podcast because that allows them to automatically get the latest episodes of the show.
The best things in life lie on the other side of difficult conversations.
Keep learning, keep practicing and keep getting better.
Your relationships will improve, your career will soar and you'll have the confidence you need to get the most out of these crucial conversations.
Again, thank you for joining the team.
We're excited to have you and I will see you in the next episode.
I'll catch you later.
