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Amber, thanks for joining us today.
I'm so excited to be here.
Thank you for having me.
It is our pleasure, my friend.
So how about you get us started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do?
Sure. Well, my name is Dr.
Amber Wright. I'm a communication expert, speaker, and executive life coach.
In my work as a speaker, I work with companies who value their people and want to prove it by having healthy communication practices.
As an executive coach, I work with high achieving public facing women on the brink of their next level, because sometimes we need a safe space to figure out how to close the gap between where we are and where we want to be.
And I have been teaching the art and the act of effective communication to adult learners for almost 20 years.
And I absolutely love it.
Incredible. And follow -up question.
Do you have any books or TED Talks or anything like that?
I do. Funny you should ask.
I do. The name of my book is called, Can We Talk?
10 Life Lessons on Finding Your Voice and Finding Yourself.
That's a personal development advice book for the young person trying to find their way.
My TEDx talk is called Ask Better Questions to Build Better Connections, because I believe that good questions are bridges to good connections with people.
And I also have a product called Can We Talk Cards, which are 50 questions designed to take the guesswork out of small talk.
So they're conversation starters.
We've got five editions, one for the office, couples, kids, the social edition and the womanhood edition.
There's a woman in your life that you want to get to know better.
Incredible. Awesome!
Well, yes, listeners, make sure you check all of that out.
We have links in the description.
And today, I'm very excited about this episode because the topic we are going to cover is getting people to see how much responsibility they have for showing up.
And maybe we just start off with explaining what that means, Amber.
To me, that means that we all, the three questions that frame the human experience are, do you see me?
Do you hear me? And do you value me?
We're all asking that of one another.
And what I think is important for us to remember is if the answer is yes, yes, I see you.
Yes, I value you. Yes, I hear you.
Then the follow -up question is, how do I know?
How do I know? And to me, that speaks to the responsibility we all have for how we're showing up communicatively because the how do I know peace is what gets expressed by the things we do or do not say.
And that is what I'm here to remind people to do that, like to remember that you have a responsibility for how you're showing up, not just energetically, but also communicatively in all of your personal and professional interactions.
Oh, this is getting deep really fast.
Okay. This is good.
Okay. So one of my favorite sayings is that the sign of a brilliant insight is that it seems obvious in hindsight.
And I think a lot of listeners would listen to what you just said and say, I've never heard it described that way before.
And it is obviously true.
But then the question becomes, why is it so hard for people to really truly embrace that and put it into action?
Because it takes effort.
It takes effort to be a good communicator.
It might become easier over time.
But what I tell people is like, say you are part of a dysfunctional family and you're the first one to go to therapy.
Then suddenly you're like, oh, everybody's crazy.
Everybody's got some issue.
Everyone's got like, oh, you need to work on this, you need to work on that.
Being an effective communicator is like that.
You realize how much people really do struggle with it.
And that's why we have difficulty with the term active listening.
For example, We all know we can listen better to our partners, to our friends, to our reports at work, our team, what have you.
But we don't do it because it requires effort.
It means I've got to put my phone away.
I've got to focus. I've got to look you in the eye.
I've got to lean forward.
I need to paraphrase like all of this effort, efforting that goes into being a good listener, people don't want to do.
And so that I think is one of the there's so many variables and barriers that keep us from being effective communicators.
But I think it's the effort that it requires is the biggest deterrent.
Yes, yes. And I hear a bunch of people listening, groaning, like, oh my gosh, I was hoping you were going to give me an easy answer.
Yeah, no, no, no. And honestly, that's what I love about the work that I do when I'm working with teams and working with leaders is getting, I always say to them, nothing I'm going to tell you today is anything you've never heard before, but you've never heard me tell it to you.
And you've not heard me tell it in the way that I'm going to.
And it ends up being these reminders, like these taps on the shoulder, like I can work on being a better listener or being more forthcoming or more direct or whatever their communication challenge is.
And I love walking away from a team with them thinking like, all right, okay.
And this is something I can do today.
I can apply this today.
Yes. I love these points, Amber, because I think everybody needs reminders and I don't know about you, but I know I need these reminders a lot too.
And the thing is when you are performing in anything, whether it's public speaking or just having a tough conversation.
It's easy to perform when the circumstances are perfect, right?
All right, I'm well rested.
The person is playing along.
They're doing a good job of listening and being respectful and everything like that.
But that's not what life is.
You're going to have these variables.
Things are going to be more difficult than you thought they were going to be.
And what ends up happening is people are confronted with that difficulty and then they revert to their bad habits.
And so now, Amber, I want to give you an opportunity to be the internal voice of the audience.
And so in those moments, when they're confronted with a conversation that is more difficult than they anticipated, they're going to hear all of these excuses coming into their heads, telling them why it's okay to underperform in this moment.
And so as they're having this internal negotiation, this metacognition, what are some things they should keep in mind as they have to reason with themselves to do the right thing, even when it's hard?
Oh my gosh, that's an excellent question.
And I think that my answer to that is in the form of a formula.
I call it the WSD method for clear communication.
The W stands for want, the S is say, the D is do.
These are three questions that you should ask yourself because we also need to work on flexing the muscle of intrapersonal communication.
A lot of times we focus on interpersonal communication and how we engage with others, but sometimes it's worth it to think about how do you talk to yourself?
And if you have a difficult conversation that you're confronted with, and that can be a time in both times of conflict and chemistry, it works effectively in times of conflict, but also in times of chemistry, you just might have something important that you want to share with someone.
The three questions you're going to ask yourself is one, what do I want?
What do I want from this exchange?
This helps to frame your intention?
Do I want to burn the bridge?
Take a light, you know, take a match and just burn the bridge down.
Do I want to end the relationship?
Do I want to preserve it?
Do I just want to feel heard?
Do I want my team member to feel supported?
What is my intention?
What do I want out of this interaction?
Two, what am I trying to say?
And that is my favorite question like of all time, because I'm a proud overthinker.
I don't know if you're an overthinker Kwame, but if you're an overthinker listening, shout out to you.
I feel you're, I won't say pain because it's not painful to be an overthinker.
I love being an overthinker and I have learned to embrace that.
But what I tell people is that overthinking is not your enemy in action is at some point you have to make the decision.
And so what am I trying to say helps you clear out the clutter in your brain.
So you can say in the affirmative, like, gosh, what I'm trying to say is it hurt my feelings the other day when I was trying to talk to you and you weren't listening.
That's what I'm trying to say.
So then that way you get practice with the message before you actually have to deliver it.
And then lastly, what do I want them to do?
This helps us advance the conversation forward so that now we're not just filling the air with hot air.
We are sharing our thoughts and our feelings.
We're being clear. We're being concise.
But then also now establishing a reference point to say in the future, I would love to have your full attention when we're at dinner.
So if you could put your phone on D &D when we're at the restaurant or whatever, that would be helpful to me.
And that helps you navigate how to have a hard talk or an important talk.
Yes. Oh, this is great.
Because what we're seeing here is that there is almost like a skeletal structure for how we can go about doing this, which can offer a lot of guidance.
And I think when if we're being honest with ourselves, when we look at these three parts, what do I want?
What do I say? What do I do?
That this little exercise here can help us to recognize how infrequently we actually do this in our real life.
We just go in and we say, well, I have the truth.
This person clearly doesn't have it.
I'm going to tell them the truth.
They'll change. Then it doesn't work and then our response is to freak out and we get lost.
Exactly. This is great and I think this is an awesome opportunity for us to transition into confidence too when it comes to communication because I know that's something that you focus on and it ties into how we present ourselves and how we show up in these conversations.
So first of all, let's just talk about what confidence is and what it gives you in these conversations and then we'll move forward.
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To me, confidence, I feel like I want to say confidence is something that you earn in the sense of I was a professor for eight years.
And so in public speaking and interpersonal communication were the courses that I taught most frequently.
So I've graded, listened to and graded well over 1000 speeches plus from a variety of students who run the gamut, all walks of life experiences and what have you.
And the most confident ones, Kwame, were the ones who were prepared.
Like, period. The most confident ones were the ones who were prepared.
The students in my classes learned very quickly that there's a difference between talking and speaking, presenting.
Giving a speech is different than just like, oh, yeah, I can stand up there and talk for five minutes.
OK, let me see. Do it.
Do it without an outline.
Do it without being prepared.
Those who felt like they could just wing it struggled.
And so I think no matter what that looks like, I heard a woman in an exercise program, them say, nothing, no food tastes better than confidence.
And you earn that feeling by making the choices that are best for your body and for your health when it comes to food and diet and exercise.
So that's what I think confidence means to me.
But it is also something that is abstract in nature.
It's something that we have to embody and feel good about when I'm going in front of this group for this important meeting or having to deliver a keynote, whatever the thing is, it's amassing that energy that you get to build on because you know that you have prepared for that moment in time and you
believe your own hype in a good way, though, not from an ego -driven way, but it's like, yeah, I deserve to be here.
For example, when I read the original study on imposter syndrome, I realized I didn't have it.
It was a study written in the 70s.
It was focused on one particular group of women and there the overarching theme was this theme of undeservedness.
I don't deserve the accolades or recognition that I'm getting.
And I said to myself, oh, that's not me.
I absolutely deserve.
I've been very diligent and hardworking in my career and the things that have come to me are, they are a byproduct of those investments that I've made in my, in myself and in my business and what have you.
So the idea of feeling like an imposter just doesn't resonate with me because I'm confident in my skills and my abilities, but I've also earned that confidence because of how diligent I've been along the journey.
This is not a case for perfectionism.
This is not a commercial for I've always gotten it right because that is not true.
I make mistakes all the time.
But by and large, I know that I'm called qualified and capable to do anything that I put my mind to.
So that's what confidence means to me, which is a bit of a layered response.
I think that that's foundationally where it comes from.
I agree. And I love the fact that you talked about earning confidence, because I think a lot of times people say, oh, I don't feel confident in this.
And my response in some cases is like, you have no reason to feel confident in this because you've never put in the work to be good at this thing.
So the fact that you're not feeling confident is actually appropriate in this scenario because you haven't put in the work.
And then that goes down to what you said, the most confident people are prepared.
So then all you need to do is put in that work and you will earn that confidence.
But again, it brings us all the way back to one of the things that you said at the beginning, it comes down to effort.
Are you willing to put in the effort to stay locked in and focused in this conversation in that context?
And then when it comes to difficult conversations in general, are you willing to put in the work to practice your skills in a meaningful way?
Are you willing to actually take the time to prepare intentionally for this conversation?
And if the answer to those two questions are no, then most likely you're not going to have confidence and that is not going to be a surprise.
And I think this is really empowering too, because what you've given people is a very clear blueprint for how to get confidence.
It just takes work.
It takes time, but it can be done.
It can be done. And this applies to everything.
So we don't want to make generalizations to say, oh, you're not confident because you just didn't work hard enough.
But there is a connection there.
For example, just even out of the context of communication, last summer I was in the pool with my children and my youngest child was like, mommy, do you know how to float?
And I said, let me try.
Cause I like for my children to see me try things and it was terrible.
It was just not good.
I was not a good floater in the water.
And you know what I did this summer?
Well, summer's getting ready to start.
I just took some swim classes.
I already know how to swim, but I wanted to be more confident in the water.
So then this year, when she's like, mommy, let me see you float.
I can, let me show you what I learned in my little swim class.
And I took just for fun because I wanted to build my confidence as a swimmer.
And so that, again, it doesn't just apply to conversations with other people.
It could be with anything.
And when it comes to the specific context of like presenting, for example, I tell my coaching clients, never let the first day, the first time you hear your speech be the day you give it.
Never let the first time you hear your speech be the day you give it.
you want to rehearse that thing at least five times out loud.
One time I'll, I will allow recording on a voice note, like kind of just talking it out on the phone.
I count that as a practice round, but you won't know how the word sound coming out of your mouth, what words you're going to trip over, which ones you're going to feel good about until you actually say it out loud.
This is where we see those tips and suggestions of like practice in the mirror.
We know why we tell you that because you know what you look like, but you don't know what you look like to everybody else?
So when you sit in front of a mirror and you see what your hand gestures and I talk a lot with my eyes and very animated, you know, my face and my hands, I need to know what that looks like.
So I've got to watch like football teams when they watch tapes from previous games, all of that preparedness is what helps you earn that confidence that we were talking about earlier.
I love this. I love this.
And now let's say we do the work, we have confidence When we think about this from a persuasive perspective, what is the persuasive power of confidence?
The persuasive power of confidence.
Tell me more about what you mean by that.
So for instance, if we have one person who is confident, say one thing, and then we have another person who is not confident, say the exact same thing.
A lot of times the person who is more confident will be more persuasive.
And so can you kind of break down the mechanics of that?
Oh, man. there's so many places we can take that conversation to sparse tangents though i mean well i think well i feel like i have to name that brings up this visualization of like being in the conference room or being on the team meeting and you're a woman i mean we can even contextualize what you're
saying there's a woman and there's a man the woman knows the right answer the man doesn't but he's louder he's just louder talking over everybody filling up the room with hot air, but he sounds persuasive.
So some of that can be smoke and mirrors.
And I think as you were posing that question to me, the answer that came to me or the word that came to me was delivery.
Delivery is what makes the difference, I think.
It's what I think perpetuates the impact.
Am I boisterous? Am I excited?
Am I emoting when I'm sharing something?
If I'm drinking a bottle of water, it's like, this is the best water I've ever had versus this is the best bottle of water I've ever had, the impact is going to feel different.
And you probably are going to reach for the one who was a little bit more convincing.
So I think understanding that and being able to apply that to our individual selves and our individual personalities is where we can kind of craft our own brand of persuasion.
Oh, I like this. It's a tough question.
I don't know the answer.
I was genuinely curious because we can understand some of those points.
The points that you made our right on.
And the thing is, the approach that you had where you realized, oh, wait a second, you see these tangents we could potentially go on.
We realized this because we could write a PhD thesis on this topic, just the perception of confidence and what is real confidence and what is performative.
And what I'm recognizing is that in a lot of these situations, we have the reality of confidence, like as we described before, but then we also have the performative aspect of how to convey that confidence to other people.
And sometimes you might actually have the confidence, but you might not have that performative aspect.
And what's really challenging, I'd love to hear your thought too, because you're somebody who thinks a lot, because I recognize that sometimes if you're a deep thinker, you can recognize a lot of the pros and the cons, and that could lead to an intellectually honest delivery of the message that involves trepidation.
So it's like, yeah, I believe this is the right answer.
And I also see how it could not be the right answer for these reasons.
But then somebody else who might not have thought that deeply comes in very excited, smiling, very loud, saying this is the right answer.
Do you have any doubts about that?
Absolutely not. I haven't thought deeply enough to have any counter narratives.
So now can we balance this, the performative aspect with authenticity too?
Yeah. Well, I'll tell you what, this is what my actual dissertation was on.
I studied Black female entrepreneurs and their journey to raising capital.
That's the title of my paper.
And it was a qualitative study where I interviewed eight Black female founders and talked to them about what their journey has been like to raise capital for their businesses.
And what I learned in my research is that storytelling is what gets the golden egg.
Doesn't matter. i mean some of them would say we would see white males pitch in these competitions and they would pitch an idea not even a business that had like data just tonight a concept but because of their delivery or storytelling it's like who tells the best story and that is what ended up having
an impact on not only whether or not they got they earned the pitch or the investment or what have you.
But it was a really key factor.
And I was so interested in that because I believe that stories are also like bridges.
Like I was saying earlier about questions, stories are bridges of connectivity as well, because that gives us an opportunity to have these shared experiences.
And so some of the founders, they shared with me how they had to get more creative in telling their brand stories because also investors invest in other people, not just in ideas and so i think that that's where we see that's a space where we see persuasion kind of play out a little bit how effective
are you at telling a compelling story about your whatever the thing is about your your case in the the courtroom or your business in a pitch meeting or whatever the circumstance may be or even trying to get somebody to take you on a date right like all of that that's that's what those these apps are all
about persuading people to like swipe let's match or whatever however it goes I mean I've been off the market a long time so I don't know but from what I've heard out in these dating streets it's a lot of smoke and mirrors to sift through yeah but that's another podcast interview for another thing first
of all I love that point first because I've been out of the game too I missed the whole dating app scene thank god yeah that looks complicated the other thing is we can get inspiration for persuasion from anything so that's what's really interesting so we have the entrepreneurs who are pitching for funding
we do have people who are trying to persuade somebody to go on out on a date we have a parent who's trying to persuade a child to do what we want to eat your dinner broccoli or whatever yeah yeah yeah and you know we have to develop almost different elements of our authentic self in order to be effective
i don't know if this is something that that could resonate with you but i found out oh i have a daddy voice okay cool so it's like all right kids get in line you're not listening well now it's time for the daddy voice and then you get in line it's not yelling but it's very assertive it's like oh yeah
dad jokes and dad voice i got it right but it's still part of my authentic self but i recognized all right i need to dial up this part of myself in this moment in this instant to kind of step up and i remember one guest we had on the podcast a while back beth bueller her podcast is the introvert entrepreneur
and she said that even though i'm an introvert, I recognize that sometimes I need to extrovert.
And so there are some times in meetings where I have to dial it up.
It's not really comfortable, but I recognize I need to do that.
And so it's just an ongoing process of self -discovery and self -creation to find that authentic voice that is both authentic and true to you, but also persuasive and performative when necessary.
Yeah. And two comments I'll make about those two points that you just made.
One about authenticity.
I just shared a video recently on LinkedIn talking about what it means to be your authentic self.
And I tell people that authenticity does not mean that people have to know you intimately.
They just need to know you honestly.
And what that means to me is sometimes people are like, oh, I have to tell the people all my business at work and they want to ask me about my weekend and details that I don't want to share.
And I say, that's fine.
You know, people don't, they tell me all the time how much they despise small talk.
And then I remind them that small talk is a bridge to big talk.
Sometimes we can't just jump into the big, deeper existential things at the water cooler.
Sometimes we needed to chat a little bit about the weekend just to warm folks up.
And so that's the reminder that even though communication is contextual, how you might talk to the CEO of your company might be different than the way you might talk to a friend at a football game, but inherently they should experience the same person in both of those conversations.
That's when you know that you're being authentic.
It's just the context might change?
So there's a note about authenticity.
Are you being true to yourself no matter what environment you find yourself in?
And then the piece about introversion and extroversion, something that I love to remind people, I'm a Myers -Briggs practitioner.
And so we only focus on those first two letters, these two preference pairs of introversion and extroversion.
And what I like people to understand is that we need to see that as a scale, almost like a spectrum.
And so when introverts say to me like, oh, I got to fake it till I make it.
I got to turn it on.
and I got to pretend that I like these people and pretend that I'm an extrovert.
It's not pretending.
You actually can genuinely be that, but you use the word comfortable just now when you were talking about that.
And that's the difference.
I am left -handed, but I cut with my right hand because growing up in the eighties, the left -handed scissors were always broken.
So I had to learn how to cut with my right hand.
So I don't say to people, I'm a right -handed, left -handed person.
That doesn't make sense.
I'm a lefty, tried and true all day long, but I've learned how to adapt in a right -handed world.
So if I prefer extroversion because that's where I'm most comfortable, I can use my other hand of extroversion, but it's a little, it just takes more effort to do that.
So I want to release everyone who's listening from having to say I'm an extroverted introvert or I'm an outgoing introvert.
You might be someone that we might call an ambrovert, someone who is equally as comfortable energetically because introversion and extroversion are not about sociability.
They're about energy and energy only, but the way that they are expressed or they it's easier to determine that based upon how they're expressed socially introversions with solitude extroversions with interaction so I like to just remind people that you're both we all are we all are we have traits of both
it's just what you're most comfortable with oh my goodness you're making this hard for me to end this interview we need a part two yeah we'll have you back there's so many things to explore here this is unbelievable This is great.
Dr. Amber Wright, before you go, this is the most important question.
Hypothetically, if there's somebody in the audience who is looking for a communication coach or somebody who could be there, put on some kind of training or something about asking better questions, communication, where would you suggest that they go?
They go directly to wordswellsaid .com, wordswellsaid .com, which is my internet home.
It's the hub of all of the activity concerning me.
And if you are interested in having me come and work with your leadership team or speak at your conference or an event, you can inquire about that there.
And we would be happy to work with you.
Amber, thank you so much for joining us.
Really appreciate it.
This is fantastic, Kwame.
Thank you. Welcome to The Breakdown with Kwame Christian.
yes let's go with the breakdown with kwame christian so just chatted with amber and it was a great conversation had a lot of fun and i love the topic that she chose for this episode getting people to see how much responsibility they have for showing up i really love that because life is hard these conversations
are hard these situations are stressful there's a lot of tension but just that reminder that stoic mentality of our only responsibility is to control that which is in our control.
And that is liberating and also kind of scary.
It's liberating in the sense that, hey, I'm not responsible for the weather.
I didn't choose that, but it's my job to adjust to that, right?
This person is responding in a very disrespectful way.
It's not my responsibility to control the way that they responded.
They have autonomy in that, but it is my responsibility to control my response to their response.
And so just really starting off with that mentality of There are some things that are within our control, and it is our responsibility to do the very best we can with what we have in these circumstances.
And a lot of times, the failures that we have in these difficult conversations are simply due to unforced errors, due to the lack of willingness to put forth the effort necessary to perform at a high level.
Because focus, attention, those things are costly.
They take effort. It's not easy.
Time, focus, attention.
These are resources that are limited.
And so we have to be able to allocate those resources effectively during these conversations in order to show up at our best.
And one thing that we didn't talk about is just that energy resource management, because sometimes we might recognize when it's actually time to have a difficult conversation, we might be so depleted after such a long day where we recognize it is our responsibility to show up as our best self.
And we say to ourselves, you know what, if I'm being completely honest, I cannot show up in a way that is appropriate for this conversation on this specific day, but I can tomorrow after a good night's sleep.
And I've canceled negotiations, like massive six -figure negotiations with multi -billion dollar companies.
And just, I was very honest with them.
I was like, hey, I know we have this negotiation later today, but it is 2 a .m.
and Dominic has been crying all night and I will not be at my best.
So can we please postpone this?
And they appreciated the transparency.
So yeah, it takes a lot of effort to perform at a high level.
And so I just wanted to put that out there to start.
I like those three central questions about relationships of humanity.
I've never heard that before, but I think that's really strong.
Do you see me? Do you hear me?
Do you value me? That's powerful.
That's really powerful because when you think about it with our closest relationships, that's what I want.
I want to be seen. I want to be heard.
I want to be valued.
Those are the core things.
And then to that next level, how do I know?
And the thought that that sparked for me is just kind of putting on my lawyer hat here.
It's like, if those things are true, if I'm put on trial for whether or not I care about a person based on these three dimensions, will there be enough evidence to indict me?
Okay, think about that, right?
If there's somebody that I care about, and I show that I care about them by seeing them, by hearing them, by valuing them, and I'm making my case, and people look to evidence for that, would they be able to find evidence to substantiate that point?
That's a tough question.
And so it's not just about actually caring in your heart.
It's also about showing that you care.
And that's meaningful.
It's meaningful not just from a general relationship perspective, but also when you think about it focused on difficult conversations, the totality of the relationship will have an impact on this particular conversation.
If I haven't generated enough evidence of true care about this person, then they're not going to believe that I care about them in this conversation.
So no matter what I say in this conversation, it might not be persuasive simply because they don't trust me enough and they don't believe that I care.
And so it shows how the entire relationship will have an impact on every single conversation.
I thought that was a brilliant place to start.
I also like this framework for how to have the conversation, the WSD method.
it. We ask ourselves, what do I want?
And then what am I trying to say to the other person?
And then what do I want them to do?
And I like the concept of that reference point when it comes to the actual action that we want them to do, then we can actually help them to understand the discrepancy between where we are and where we want to be.
So now it becomes really tangible to the other side.
But you recognize that it starts with ourselves.
I need to be clear on what it is that I want and what I need to say, what I'm trying to say, and then what I actually want them to do.
And a lot of times in difficult conversations, they fall apart simply because they're not organized.
You have two people who come together and all they do is emote in front of each other.
These are my emotions and how I feel.
And the other person says, well, these are my emotions and how I feel.
Now that I hear your emotions, this is how I feel.
And now it just becomes this dangerous emotional cocktail where if you drink it, it's toxic for everybody, right?
And so when we go through this WSD method, it helps us to get internal alignment and clarity so we can communicate with clarity.
And a lot of times in difficult conversations, they fall apart because the person is not clear within themselves.
And if you're not clear within yourself, it's gonna be impossible for you to communicate clearly to somebody else.
I like that point about overthinking isn't your enemy, inaction is.
And overthinking is one of the things that holds people back from actually having tough conversations too.
They try to think about, well, maybe I should say it this way, but if I say it that way, they might respond poorly.
And I'm not saying that you shouldn't prepare.
We talked at length about the importance of preparation, but there's a difference between preparing and overthinking.
With preparing, there is a concept of enough.
With preparing, we say, I am going to prepare until the preparation becomes adequate enough for what is required for me.
And the process of preparation is narrowly tailored to that end.
But when I'm overthinking, it is a disorganized, uncontrolled process of hypercognition, where we just think about this thing, that thing, this thing, that thing in perpetuity, where there's no end point, there's no purpose.
And a lot of times we're just focusing on the negative outcomes that could possibly happen, the bad things that we want to avoid.
And then we just hyper focus on those things and we catastrophize.
Catastrophizing is not preparation.
And so what you want to do is you want to take all of that maybe nervous or fearful energy and channel it into preparation and figure out what it is that you actually need to do or say.
That's why we have these toolkits and frameworks and things that you can use so you could actually go through the process and say, all right, you know, I've gone through this checklist from the American Negotiation Institute and now I feel really confident in my preparation.
I need to make sure that you all still have access to that.
But that's been helpful.
I still use it for my negotiations too.
So yeah, one thing that helps me in general, yes, with difficult conversations too, but just in general, if you're somebody who identifies as an overthinker, I like to put a shot clock on there or a timer.
So I like shot clock because I like sports.
There's a countdown timer for when you have to shoot the ball.
But just in general, it's like that timer.
So how long will it take me to prepare adequately for a circumstance like this?
And so if it's a negotiation, like let's say it's a difficult conversation with a colleague about a project, you probably prepare for like half an hour, an hour, like that'll be, that'll do it.
You'll be good. Maybe even five or 10 minutes, if it's a simple conversation, but you don't need to like catastrophize and overthink about it for like two weeks, two months, two years.
Right. But a lot of times what ends up happening is that the overthinking, we trick ourselves into thinking that the overthinking is preparation.
And what it really is, is just a sneaky manifestation of fear.
I'm afraid. So I'm just going to keep on thinking and thinking and thinking because if I just keep on thinking, then I am not doing and doing is what is making me very, very fearful.
And so if we recognize we're starting to get into that pattern, give yourself a shot clock.
How long should it take for you to prepare for this?
And then take that amount of time and no more and get it done, right?
So I like that point.
Also thinking about imposter syndrome, I was not aware that the first study, the original study was about not feeling as though you deserve it, because I think that is a very interesting approach.
Yeah. I think a lot of times people might say, yeah, I'm not sure if I can do it.
I think I deserve it, but I'm not sure if I can do it.
I'm questioning my skills.
I'm questioning whether or not I should be here, questioning whether or not I'll be exposed as a fraud, those types of things.
I liked that distinction too, because a lot of times imposter syndrome comes from a lack of confidence.
And we discussed confidence really well.
My whole first book was about confidence as it relates to difficult conversations, finding confidence in conflict.
But when it comes to the imposter syndrome, what I've recognized is that there are different types.
And for me, sometimes imposter syndrome is just the recognition that I'm constantly living at the outer barrier of my comfort zone.
So if I'm growing, I'm going to be pushing myself to limit that I haven't gone yet.
I've never been here before.
So yeah, if I was not striving as hard, then I would feel incredibly confident.
I wouldn't feel like an imposter.
These are things that I've done all my life.
I'll just continue to do those exact same things.
If I'm not growing, then I'm not feeling imposter syndrome.
But that moment where I actually try to take a step and push myself to those outer limits of my comfort zone, that's when I start to wonder like, is this for me?
Am I doing the right thing?
Can I pull this off?
That's when the questions come.
And I think getting a better understanding of the various types of imposter syndrome can be really empowering because then you can be a lot more specific with the antidote for that challenge that you're facing.
I really love that point of never let the first time you hear the speech be the first time you give it.
So let me tell you a story about how I prepped for my TED Talk.
My TED Talk is called Finding Confidence in Conflict and the preparation process was significant because I'd never done a talk like that.
I've done workshops, I've taught in university, but that's very different from going up on stage speaking without notes.
People ask me if there were teleprompters.
I didn't have any teleprompters.
It was memorized. And so this was my process.
So what I did is I practiced that speech 200 times, not hyperbole, literally 200 times.
So this was my process for the months leading up to it.
Once I finally focused on a script, like I finalized the script, I used the mind palace technique for memory.
And so this is the mind palace technique.
This is a technique that was utilized by the ancient Greek rhetoricians, the speakers, the Greek philosophers who would teach for hours and just go off memory.
And so what they would do is they would use this mind palace technique.
And they were actually putting parts of their speech in different parts of a building that they were very familiar with.
So for me, I chose my home.
So I would have like every line was at a different marker in my house.
And so in my mind, I'm just walking through my house and seeing the memory pegs that I was using in order to remember it.
So when you look at me doing the TED talk, it looks like I'm looking at the audience, but in my mind, I'm just taking a stroll down my house, remembering each line.
So every morning I would get up, go to the gym.
And so at 6 a .m., as I'm getting out of bed, the alarm goes off.
I start saying the speech to myself backwards, sentence by sentence.
And so by the time I'm done getting ready, now I'm done with the speech.
Then on the gym, on my way to the gym, I'm saying it regular forwards, line by line.
And so every time I was in the car, that was the practice.
And then after work, what I would do is I would try to perform under cognitive load.
So I would turn on music that I was familiar with.
I picked like Disney soundtracks and I would turn the music up loud and I would practice doing the speech while driving with the music playing.
Then when I gave myself a break, I would play video game and I would say, all right, this speech is about 11 minutes and 30 seconds.
I'm going to try to say it as fast as I can.
Let me see if I can get it down to five minutes while playing video games.
And so I was just trying to like force myself to do it in different ways under different levels of stress, cognitive load and duress, just to make sure that there was nothing that could potentially shake me.
And then the day before the TED Talk, it was my first time on stage doing the TED Talk with the dress rehearsal.
And the light was very distracting.
I've never had a spotlight on me like that before.
And it was really distracting.
So I was doing the speech, but I was missing my lines because the light was like blinding me.
And I said, listen, I've tried, I've worked too hard to let this light be the thing that sinks me.
And so I was like, all right, cool.
We just practiced through it.
So what I did was I was like, all right, we're going to do another rep.
We're going to do some more reps of practice the night before under duress.
So I went into my basement and I had this balancing beam, like not a balancing beam.
It was like a like this little plastic exercise thing that practiced your balance.
It would look like a top.
And so I was standing on that while doing it to add to the cognitive loan.
I turned off the lights all the way and then I took a flashlight.
And then I just did the speech like 10 times while looking directly into that light.
And I was saying this spotlight is going to be rough, but it is not going to be as rough as me in this pitch black basement talking directly into a flashlight at point blank range while trying to balance.
And so by the time I got to the presentation, I felt like I'd been there.
I was doing visualization techniques.
I took the time to figure out, all right, what do I need to eat?
I know I'm going to be on stage at like 9, 18 a .m.
What do I need to eat?
What time do I need to eat to make sure that I am adequately fueled, but not actively digesting during this presentation.
And so like all of this meticulous preparation went into doing this speech.
And so when people look at it now, they're like, there were no mistakes.
It looks like you were reading it off a teleprompter.
But no, I was going through my mind palace and it just felt like the 201st time that I did the speech.
And so that's an example of a speech.
You don't need to prep that much for your difficult conversations, but I've never had the chance to like tell that story publicly.
So there you go. Hope you like it.
Let's wrap up with delivery.
Yeah, this is something that I'm recognizing too, because I'm, was in school for a long time.
My dad was a professor for a time.
He's a surgeon, but he, he also taught, my mom has a PhD in nutrition.
She was a professor.
I went to school for a long time.
And so that academic delivery is the way that I found myself delivering a lot of my messages.
And when you go shift from academia to business, there's a type, there's a little bit of showmanship that is lacking in academia that exists in business.
And I recognize that it was holding me back when it comes to persuasion, the different elements of persuasion.
So in difficult conversations and negotiations, when you think about it, think back to ancient Greece, we have Aristotle talking about the persuasive triad, ethos, logos, pathos, you know, ethics, logic, and passion.
I just did not come with that passion.
I just wasn't comfortable with it.
I was always thinking, well, my intellect and the data and the logic should win the day.
Obviously, as I learned more about persuasion, I recognized that wasn't enough.
And so I had to find a way to bring my authentic self to these conversations and level up the energy that I was bringing at specific times, but it had to be true passion.
So that's blending the recognition that you have to have a performative aspect to persuasion, blending that with authenticity, because there is probably some element of yourself that does care, that does have some fire, but we temper it down.
Sometimes you need some fire.
Sometimes you need to slow it down and show the person that you're here with them.
There are different parts of yourself that you have to kind of flex.
And so when you are having these conversations and you're thinking about that performative aspect, like, oh my gosh, that's not me.
I don't like that. How do I do it?
Just ask yourself this question.
How do I want the other person to feel during this conversation?
How do I want the other person to feel during the conversation?
If I'm talking to Whitney, my wife, and I'm saying, I love you.
And we're in the middle of a difficult conversation.
I won't simply say, Whitney, I love you.
I mean, those words carry the meaning, but the sentiment was not felt with the delivery.
So you have to be able to recognize that the performative aspect is a critical part of the message and asking yourself, how do I want the other person to feel in this part of the conversation?
How do I want them to feel at that part of the conversation?
Because that will shift with time, right?
That will be a really, really central question that will help you to be a lot more persuasive when the time is right.
So yes. Awesome. appreciate you.
I hope you liked this breakdown.
Enjoy Negotiate Anything Premium.
I'll catch you later.
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