Three Key Principles for Negotiating as a Leader

It's no coincidence that the principles behind interest-based negotiation framework dovetail with time-proven leadership principles. 

1. Success is 80% mindset and 20% tactics. My clients are applying this insight to reinvent their lives and careers from stifling to thriving. Success is an inside job.
2. Ask open questions to understand their why before seeking to be understood. Far from being "nice," this is a powerful strategy that enables my clients to win over a room of naysayers, flip no to yes, and turn transactions into transformational conversations.
3. Be ready to tell a new story. My career changed when I stopped telling myself, "I can't do it," and started saying, "I will walk the talk I give."
What new story will you tell? Come to www.jamieleecoach.comfor future webinar updates and more.

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Full Episode Transcript

Hello! Welcome to Episode 35 of Born to Thrive with Jamie Lee. I’m your host and coach, Jamie Lee.

I believe that we are all born to thrive.

I know that some people are rolling their eyes when they hear me say that but I really do.

I’m not religious. I do consider myself spiritual and I know that we are all created for a reason. For a really good reason which is to expand, to thrive, and to be happy.

And for me, I thrive when I get to help other people thrive and that’s why I feel like I have the best job in the world.

I work as a coach. I train and I teach people leadership and negotiation principles that can help them become more brave, bold, and better paid.

And, you know, I’m on a mission to help double women’s income.

Late last year, at the end of 2017, I was visualizing what would make the end of 2018 really awesome.

And here’s a lesson for you, if you are working towards a goal, start from the end. What would you like to have happened at the end? What would make whatever project or goal you’re working towards, what would make it super awesome for you? What would be the x, y, and z that you would want to see?

And for me, that was having made such an impact that I’ve helped double somebody’s income.

That’s really an exciting goal for me because I want to be part of the solution, not the problem, when it comes to the gender wage gap and I believe that we can make change happen one conversation - one really powerful and transformational conversation - at a time.

And that’s why I teach negotiation because negotiation is simply a conversation with the intention of reaching agreement. I don’t think of negotiation as confrontation, manipulation, or some sort of a trick or a game that you play.

And I also believe that money is awesome. Money itself is not the end-all, be-all of success but that money is a really great tool that can help solve problems, like money problems.

And when you have money you can save time and when you have more time you can do more good. You can make even more impact. So money is awesome.

And I believe that women who negotiate are to be celebrated, not judged, because women who negotiate are women who lead and we need women to lead.

So, I want to share with you three quick principles.

Well, not quick. They’re key principles behind collaborative, interest-based negotiation framework which is the framework that I teach my clients because they dovetail so beautifully with time-proven leadership principles.

So, the first one is that success is 80% mindset and only 20% tactics.

I know a lot of people get hung up on, “What do I say? What do I do? Tell me all the tactics you use!” and I think that’s a mistaken approach.

First, we have to get clear on what we are thinking and believing because what we think and believe get expressed through our emotions, our body language, our tone, things that we do unconsciously like self-sabotage. And it’s in the actions that are generated from our feelings that generate our results.

Let me say it one more time: What we think and believe are so powerful because they impact our emotions and our emotions impact our actions or inactions, and it’s our actions or inactions that generate the results we have in our life and career.

And I think the really powerful thing is that when you believe in your worthiness, no matter what the circumstances are in your life, that’s when you show up as a leader. That’s when you show up brave, willing to risk change, willing to risk a brave conversation and be engaged, willing to make change happen.

Now, when you hear me say that you’ll be like, “Ugh! Here’s another coach who’s telling me I gotta believe in myself. Okay, tell me, how is this new?”

It’s not.

But what I will tell you is that you don’t just believe in yourself after you just decide, you just snap a finger and it’s done.

No, no.

You really gotta practice. You gotta put in the work to believe in yourself and I’ll be honest with you, this is the biggest part of my coaching work with clients. It’s not so much the strategy and script. Yes, I mean, I do the strategy and scripts, but at the heart of it, we gotta believe in you.

You gotta believe in you before you can say the words and really mean it and have other people believe in it.

It takes consistent effort to have the thoughts that support the feeling of confidence, the feeling of bravery, the feeling of courage no matter what.

A lot of people, and I make this same mistake, we are waiting for the circumstances in our lives to line up with the results that we desire. We want to wait until the circumstances are lined up with the results that we want for us to think that we are worthy, for us to feel good and confident, for us to be able to take that confident action and get what we want.

It doesn’t work that way, right?

Think about it. The people who really believe in their vision, they take action, they sound confident, they stand tall, they engage, and they get what they want because they are thinking and feeling and acting from a place of worthiness, of self-respect, of self-appreciation.

So, this takes work, like I said. It sounds like, “What?! What do you mean success is an inside job? What do you mean success is 80% mindset? That’s so fluffy and soft and I don’t get it.”

Well, the truth of the matter is this is bloody hard work.

It takes a lot of effort to really believe in yourself, consistently, with practice.

The second thing I want to share with you, the second key principle of collaborative, interest-based negotiation that also happens to be a really powerful leadership principle, is that you want to ask open questions first to better understand your counterpart’s why before you seek to be understood.

I think I am quoting Stephen Covey and the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”

I did a webinar yesterday on the 7 Elements of Negotiation Framework and I had somebody ask me, “Okay, so when you know your position, when you know what you want, do you start by stating your position, stating what you want?” and my short answer is: No.

You don’t start with what you want. I mean, sure that can be effective in a very specific situation, if they’re asking, “Just tell me what you want!” Okay, you might want to start there, sure. There is a caveat that this advice should be taken with a grain of salt, depending on your situation, on the very specific context of your situation but in terms of overall principle and big picture strategy, first you want to better understand why the other side wants what they want.

So, let’s break it down. First, you want to understand what they want, right? Then you want to understand why they want it. And even better, you want to understand, okay, what are their preferences? What are their goals? What are their fears? What are their desires?

And you do that by asking them open-ended, diagnostic questions.

And this takes courage. It’s a powerful skill to ask really good, open-ended questions. It’s the strategy that the FBI hostage negotiators use, it’s the strategy of the most successful coaches and leaders.

It requires you to be bold and to lead with your ear.

It requires you to manager yourself so well that you can listen more deeply than anyone has ever done for your negotiation counterpart.

This is how you win people over.

And this is not a strategy of being nice. It’s not a strategy of being a pushover because just because you’re asking open-ended questions doesn’t mean that you’re just immediately gonna go do whatever they ask you to do. No. You are gaining really powerful insight and information which is power.

This is a powerful strategy and I’ve given some examples in this podcast and past webinars but asking open-ended, diagnostic questions has the power to turn transactions into transformational conversations.

To give you one example, when I worked as an operations person at a startup, there was a bit of a conflict with the Sales Director around some reporting procedure. And it was very tempting, I was in the meeting, the emotions were kind of running high, it’s a little tense, yeah? And I have the Itty Bitty Shouldy Committee in my head and it was very tempting to let my brain run off with the story that Oh, they are mad at me! It’s my fault! I didn’t do a good enough job! This is gonna reflect poorly on my performance review. Everyone thinks I’m a whatever, failure, not good enough, blah, blah, blah.

Boring, boring old story.

But I decided that I’m going to apply some of the strategies to myself, you know, the negotiation strategies I had learned over the years. And I decided, in an instant, that I’m not going to get defensive, I’m just going to get curious. I’m just going to open myself up. Maybe I don’t know what’s going on.

So, I asked, “Okay, Sales Director, I hear that this is the situation. What would be an ideal outcome for you?”

And this completely transformed the nature of the conversation. He visibly relaxed and he said, “Well, actually, the ideal outcome would be that the sales team own this process, end-to-end. That would be the ideal situation.” So I realized, okay, this wasn’t about me at all. And from there, we arrived at a collaborative solution to the problem that we were sharing.

So, ask open-ended questions. Ask them more than you ask leading questions.

Last week, I led a workshop for the Association of Corporate Counsels, and going in, I thought, “What can I teach a room full of high-flying lawyers who negotiate day-in and day-out, every day?”

And it turned out that the strategy of asking open-ended, diagnostic questions to get past impasse, to get past no, to better understand the underlying interests or the underlying why of the other side was something new to them. It was something that they hadn’t really thought about, so it’s a very powerful strategy and a very powerful leadership tool as well.

And finally, be ready to tell a new story.

For me, I started teaching negotiation six years ago because I needed to learn it so badly, and I realized the best way to learn is to teach it. And so, I started learning so that I can teach and apply it to myself.

And I had the story that oh, I can’t negotiate for myself. People will judge me, will call me a bitch - excuse my language - will call me names or think I’m aggressive.

I had the same stories, but then I stopped telling myself that I can’t do it and I started saying I will walk the talk I give.

And that story generated the feelings of bravery. That story generated the feelings of determination, commitment. And from there, I started making bold asks, and now I have the best career.

And so, start telling a new story.

What about you?

What is the story that you’re telling about you in regards to your negotiation and leadership skills?

And is that story serving you? And if not, what’s a better story to tell?

Again, we’re coming back to the mindset because it’s just so important. 80% of your success is mindset. The strategy, the tactics, that’s just 20%. That’s just details.

And so, I just want to wrap this up with: Please let me know. Feel free to reach out to me at jamie@jamieleecoach.com.

I will be hosting more webinars in the Fall. I will be doing more collaboration webinars with other women’s networks, as well. So, if you want to stay up to date, come to jamieleecoach.com and feel free to reach out to me.

I hope you have a wonderful week and I will talk to you next week. Bye bye!

What are the 5 Key Practices for Negotiation Success?

Negotiation skills are leadership skills.

Conscious leadership and value-creating negotiation both require self-awareness, learning agility, communication and influence.

I share my definition of negotiation and five key practices for negotiation success.

Enjoy!

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Full Episode Transcript:

Hello! Welcome to the eighth episode of Born to Thrive with Jamie Lee. I am your host, Jamie Lee. I work as a negotiation and leadership coach for ambitious women. I believe that we are all born to thrive.

I looked up the definition of the word thrive in the dictionary, and it said it means to grow with vigor. I looked up the word vigor, and vigor means vitality, life force, energy.

The word thrive kind of makes you think of something really happy and joyful, but for some reason I keep confusing the word vigor with rigor. It might be because English is my second language, I don’t know, but I got curious and I looked up rigor, too.

Rigor is harshness. Something difficult. Constraints. It kind of makes sense to me that to thrive requires both vigor and rigor. Yes, you need life force. Yes, you need energy. But you also need to overcome something difficult. You need rigor in order to truly thrive. 

I say that because negotiation is difficult for a lot of people. We’d rather not do it. We’d rather avoid it. We’d rather resist it. Or we’d rather approach it with this attitude of defensiveness, anger, righteousness. We put up a fight.

I don’t think this is really constructive. I also don’t think that negotiation is a fight. Negotiation is not about manipulation, confrontation. It’s simply a conversation. A conversation where everyone has the right to say no. A conversation where we try to come to an agreement. That is it. That is my definition of negotiation. That means we negotiate all the time, for little things, big things.

Who’s gonna do the dishes? What are we gonna do for dinner? How are we going to resolve peace, how are we going to come to peace in the Korean peninsula? These are all negotiations, and we have been engaging in these conversations ever since we were able to say the word “No,” ever since we were able to express our desire for autonomy, for self-expression, when we were either one and a half or two years old or for some people three years old.

So, whatever your age is, subtract two from it and that’s how long you have been practicing, that’s how long you have been negotiating for what you want. 

I believe that negotiation is a leadership skill, and so every time I teach negotiation, I start with, “What kind of leader do you want to be?” Next Monday, I have the great privilege of leading a hands-on, interactive negotiation workshop for Smith alums in Philadelphia, and for that workshop, I prepared a one-sheet with five key practices for negotiation success, and I thought, “You know, why not share it with my podcast audience?”

So, a quick preamble here. There’s a wonderful book called The Fifteen Commitments of Conscious Leadership, and it says there are four core competencies of conscious leadership, and I find that these four core competencies are also the core competencies of value-creating, problem-solving negotiation. I learned this from Lisa Gates at She Negotiates, my business mentor, and I think it’s phenomenal, because it really teaches you what you need to bring in order to have problem-solving, value-creating, negotiation conversations. 

So the four competencies are: 

Number one: Self-awareness. Are you aware of your skills, your strengths, your qualities, your tendencies, your conflict style, your communication style? The more you know, the better you will handle, the better you will manage yourself in and throughout the negotiation process.

Number two: Learning agility. The goal of negotiation is to 1) gather information, and 2) influence the behavior of others. So, throughout the conversation, you want to be learning and learning in different ways. So, improving your learning agility will really help you negotiate with success.

Number three: Communication. Negotiation is simply a communication discipline. It’s a communication with a goal, right? So, how do you communicate? You listen. You express yourself. You reflect on what you’ve heard and you try to express your desires so that it is receptive to the listener. Much earlier in this podcast series, I think it was Episode 3, when I talked about the traps of perfectionism, I talked about how there are four elements within communication: What you want to say, how you say it, what people hear, and what they make it mean. So, that’s communication.

Number four: Influence. You want to influence the other’s behavior in a negotiation, right? You want them to say yes* (In the podcast, I say "no," but I mean "yes." Mea Culpa.) or you want them to change their minds if they’re saying no. The thing about influence is it’s not about telling people what to do and in negotiation it’s not always a debate where you want to prove yourself right and prove the other person wrong. Real influence doesn’t work like that, because real influence is when you have an indirect impact on the other person’s perception, decision making process, and in which they feel that they have come to the decision on their own. So, it’s not about telling people what to do. That’s not negotiation, that’s making demands. It’s not about proving the other side wrong. That’s debate, right? It’s really about influencing. In order to influence, you really need to be able to put yourself in the shoes of the other, see their perspective, and of course that requires empathy.

So, I will wrap this up with, as I mentioned earlier, the five key practices of negotiation success, and what I would like to do in the subsequent episodes is go a little bit deeper into each of the key practices. 

So, number one: the first key practice of negotiation success is to articulate your value so that they see the value of you as a benefit to them. 

Number two: build your alliance. Lisa Gates calls it building your influence posse. I love that. Reaching out to your network. Identifying who are champions who can advocate for you, allies who will go to bat for you, and influencers who will create inroads with the key decision-maker in this negotiation. 

Number three: dig and listen deeply. I know there are a lot of combative negotiators who feel like the point of negotiation is simply to get more than the other side, and it’s all about me, just let me make my point, and I am right. No. Real negotiation happens when you listen and dig deeper into the hidden interests of the other side. 

Number four: anchor first and anchor high. Really good, masterful negotiators understand the magic of telling people what you want and dropping that anchor. It’s a cognitive bias that can work towards your favor.

Number five: get genuine buy-in. That’s what I was talking about earlier when I explained influence. It’s not about telling people what to do, that’s making demands. It’s not about proving other people wrong, that’s debating. Negotiation and true influence is when the other side come to see your point of view, and the other side come to decide for themselves to go along with your proposal. So that’s real, genuine buy-in. It’s how you really get through to people and connect.

I’m really excited about going deeper into these key practices with you in the subsequent episodes, and I hope that you have a wonderful day where you thrive. Talk to you soon!
 

Where I'm From, What I do, and What It Means For You

If you're reading this, you might be wondering, who is this Jamie Lee? Where does she come from? What's her story?

If so, then you've come to the right place. 

In this episode, I get personal and tell you where I'm from (South Korea), how I made the decision to become a coach for women, and what it means for you. 

Then I wrap it up with some baller ladybrags. Enjoy! 

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Full episode transcript: 

Hello! Welcome to the seventh episode of Born to Thrive with Jamie Lee. I am your host, Jamie. I work as a coach, speaker, trainer. I believe that we are all born to thrive. No matter where you were born, what color, what creed, what sexual orientation, what gender orientation, we are all born to thrive.

I work primarily with women, and yesterday I did a post about the fear of seeming like bragging too much that a lot of women clients tell me they have, and I shared the Bullish Society culture of bragging. Bullish Society tweeted back at me, and they were kind to let me know that the official name for this is called “baller ladybrags.” I love that. Baller ladybrag. What is your baller ladybrag today? I will share mine at the end of the podcast episode.

Today I want to talk to you about me. I want to tell you a little bit about me. Why do I do this? Where do I come from? And what does it mean for you?

I was born in South Korea. I’m 36, so I was born in South Korea 36 years ago, and my mother had three daughters. This had the unfortunate consequence of causing suffering, because Korea is very much a patrilineal society. It’s a fancy word for meaning they prioritize sons over girls, because sons get to inherit the wealth of the family, the family line, the family name. Girls don’t. Girls get married off. 

My mother suffered. She literally suffered. She was beat up a few times by my father’s family. She was not treated well. When I was eight, we immigrated to America, and then my mother basically raised the three of us by herself after she divorced my father in America. 

She ran a nail salon, and she managed to put a roof over our heads, she managed to put all three of us through college. She speaks English a little bit worse than Margaret Cho’s mother. I’m not really good at accents, but if you’re familiar with Margaret Cho, it’s a thick accent. But she did it. All by herself. 

When I was growing up, my mother always complained about money. If you grew up in a single-parent home where money was kind of tight, you probably know what I’m talking about. It’s rough, and you make do with what you have. And children absorb all of this. I absorbed all of this. My response to this was, “Well, you know what? I don’t like money. You’re always complaining about money. You don’t care about me. You’re not here for me. It’s just money, money, money, money, money. I don’t want money!” I remember saying that out loud to my mother. It hurt her so, so much. 

And now I work as a negotiation coach helping women become bolder, braver and better paid. Because this experience taught me a really valuable lesson: that women are capable of doing great things. We support families, we support networks, we support communities. In fact, the Clinton Global Institute does global-wide research, and they found that when women make money, they invest 90% of their income back into their families and communities, whereas men only invest 45%. So my mother was a classic example of that.

And then I went to Smith College, where it’s all women, and I again saw that women are so capable. Women are able to do all the things that we want to do if we put our minds to it, if we come together and support each other. That was the big lesson that I learned. I remember carrying furniture up four flights of stairs with four other Smith women. We didn’t need men to help us move furniture or do hard things. Smith College is one of the very first, I think it is the only women’s college to have a women’s only engineering department. So, yeah, it had a really big impact on me, and it really instilled the feminist ideals inside of me, you could say that. 

Then I got into the real world after college, and then I was hit with the reality of what it is to work for a patriarchal society that is still here in America. So, my very first job, I worked as a receptionist at a government organization.

It was an international government organization that was going to build a nuclear power plant in North* Korea (*In the podcast, I made the mistake of saying "South Korea." My bad). For reals. For peace, not for war. This was something that was agreed upon during President Clinton’s administration. It’s called KEDO. It’s now defunct, no surprise there, right?

In any case, I went there, and I was so full of hope and ideals, as I still am, but all the diplomats were men. All the support staff were women. One of the things that the Korean diplomats asked me to do - he saw this Korean girl - and he’s like, “Oh, you’re gonna come support me, and every day I want you to bring me a cup of coffee diluted with hot water.”

And I remember walking, going from the kitchen to the South Korean diplomat’s office with this coffee in my hand and hating it. Really hating it, I mean. That was an interesting experience. Again I saw, wait, all the power, all the decision-making powers are with men here. And that didn’t really sit well with me.

And then the next job I worked for a South Korean company, because I speak Korean, and I had some experience with this organization that was going to build a power plant in North Korea. This is a really big South Korean conglomerate called Doosan, and they build power plants, desalination plants, that are big infrastructure that turn saltwater into drinkable water.

Again, all the managers, men. Flown in from South Korea. And the South Korean flavor of patriarchy is like this: if he’s the older male, it means that he knows best. He just does. And he just deserves all your respect. You obey. You submit. I hate using that word, but it’s true. I lasted about ten months there.

It was not a good fit for me, as you can imagine, and it really hit home for me that I had to leave when one day I was working late, filing all these papers. I was working as a buyer, negotiating with American vendors on behalf of the Korean company. And then one day, out of the blue, I get a call. It’s 5pm. I get a call from a South Korean manager, and he just rings up my phone and then he says “What the hell are you doing?! You’re doing a terrible job!” And then, click. He hangs up.

To this day, I don’t know who this man was, I just know that he was from South Korea, so he was probably a manager. And I don’t know what needed improvement. There was no dialogue, there was no discussion. It was just like, “You’re bad.” Click. And that kind of really drove home for me that this was not a good culture fit for me.

I had another job where I worked for a women-founded American company, and I realized, “Wow! The culture is so much better. I really like this! It’s a great fit.” But I kind of stalled in learning and growing, so I worked at a hedge fund.

Again, this hedge fund was founded by a Korean guy. I think the common theme here is, for me, don’t work for companies founded by Korean patriarchs. But in any case, again, I encountered kind of a toxic experience where all the men made the decisions. I was the only woman at the trading desk.

What is the definition of toxic? I gave a talk on this at The Wing the other week.  It’s self-poisoning. And I started to feel the poisoning emotionally, mentally, physically, going there and listening to these guys talk and joke and not having a voice, not being respected. I had to go. I just had to go. 

One day I read this article in The New York Times about this group of women investors who invest only in women-founded companies. They saw the problem: women-founded startups don’t get VC funding, even to this day. It was only about like 6% of women-founded companies, in the latest article I saw, only 6% get VC funding.

There’s a great need for funding for these women-founded companies, and this company, this little company called Golden Seeds, decided to provide the solution. They were a group of women accredited investors, and they decided to pull together and do due diligence and do angel investing only in women-founded startups.

When I read about them I thought, “Wow. This is the group that I want to be aligned with. This is the kind of people I want to be associated with. This is who I want to become. Because I know the pain of being the woman, the only woman, in a male-dominated workplace. I know the pain of being a girl in patriarchy. I know the pain of being overlooked, ignored, discriminated against. And I want to be part of the solution. I don’t want to sit and be a victim anymore.”

So I wrote to them. They didn’t have the wherewithal to pay me a salary, but I did an unpaid internship, and it changed my life. It gave me connections to other women investors who later gave me job opportunities, and the job opportunities led to me working for startups, and then when I started working at startups that’s when I started thinking, “Hey! You know, I have some entrepreneurial ideas. I can teach. I can speak. I love to give back to the community.” And then when I thought about what is the thing that I can give back, it’s what I’m doing now. It’s helping women find their voice. It’s helping women shine. It’s helping women thrive on their own terms. And it’s helping women advocate for the value they bring.

What does this mean for you? The lesson that I am trying to live through my work is to walk the talk I give. I talk about confidence. I talk about advocacy. I talk about believing in ourselves. I talk about being proactive. I talk about leading by example. I talk about speaking and acting from a sense of purpose.

And I try to live this every day. It’s important because we need change, right? We need to press for progress. Time is up. Those are all the trendy hashtags lately around this topic of women and gender equality. We need to close the gender wage gap.

But it starts with you. That’s when I realized that it starts with me, and I needed to take action and live what I wanted to see in the world that things started to change, things started to turn around for me. For you, that means it starts with you. It’s not enough for us to wait around, be angry. It’s time for us to live the change, to walk the talk that we give.

This is kind of a long episode and I should wrap this up with a baller ladybrag. I love that. Baller. Ladybrag. It’s confusing. Baller? Isn’t that masculine? Ladybrag? Does that even make sense? I don’t care. We’re doing it. Baller ladybrag.

I have three! Number one: A recent client of mine, I helped her negotiate her salary. She just got promoted to director level, but her salary, they were like “Oh, our budget is small, blah blah blah.” They were giving her these passive-aggressive excuses. So, we worked on a custom strategy/action-plan/script. Her result: 44% increase in salary. 44%. That’s nearly double what she was making.

And on top of that, she got equity, and she found out that not all directors get equity. So she got an even more fluffier icing on the cake, if you will. I just made that up.

Number two: I wrote a script based on this experience to share with more people. I thought there was just so much value I couldn’t keep it to myself. It’s called “How to Ask For A Big Pay Raise.” And I shared it with my network. Somebody used it to negotiate a pay raise, and her result? She got a 9% increase in salary. That’s pretty baller. 9%. It’s like double of the cost of living adjustment which is about, or less than 5%. So that’s pretty baller. I love it.

Number three: I told you I gave a speaker’s workshop at the UN, and I just got feedback that the women that I coached over the weekend got to give their speeches at the UN, and their speeches were better. You could see the impact of our work together. So this makes me really proud, this really makes me feel good, and this gives me more drive to continue to grow, to continue to thrive.

So, I wish you well today, and I wish you a thriving day. See you tomorrow!
 

How to Speak to Impact Social Change

This is a recap of the advocacy workshop I led for Global Network of Women Peace-builders to an audience of feminist activists who gathered for the 62nd Commission on the Status of Women at U.N.

The lessons are

1. Connect with your Why; Connect with your Fire

2. Don’t Force; Guide the Listener to a New Understanding

3. Tell Compelling Stories; Share Your Story. 

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Transcript:

Yesterday I had the awesome privilege of leading an advocacy workshop with Global Network of Women Peacebuilders for feminist activists who have gathered from around the world to attend the 62nd Commission on the Status of Women at the UN. 

Wow. It was a great privilege for me, and today I am thriving because I have three reasons.

1. I get to share some of the amazing stories that I have heard with you. I get to tell stories.
2. I have a roof over my head right now. I’m drinking a delicious cup of ginger lemon tea, and no one is shooting bullets at me. I’m really privileged to have a peaceful existence, and I am grateful for that. I am thriving.
3. I get to do something that I really love. I love coaching, I love speaking, and I love training, and I got to do all of it yesterday. So, I feel really grateful, deeply privileged, and so I want to share some of the lessons with you, because you know what? I wish you could have been there. It was so fun.

I'll share top three lessons that I shared with the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders, feminist activists, who want to impact change. Let me guess - 

You also want to communicate, advocate, negotiate so that you can impact change for the better in your life, in your career, in your world. 

What are the top three lessons? 

1. Connect with your why or connect with your fire. 

2. Don’t force, but guide, and make it easy to follow. 

3. Tell compelling stories and share you with the world.

First, Connect with your why.

To give you an idea of what my workshops are like, I will tell you how it started. I introduced myself, and then I asked the crowd, “Why are you here?”

There was this kind of an awkward pause. The activists looked at each other. They’re like, “Uh, to promote gender equality. Duh!”

And I said, “Why is gender equality important?” 

Another person in the audience said, “It’s important because everyone deserves a right to a peaceful existence.”

So I said, “Ah, that’s a pretty compelling reason!”

And she added,

“It’s not just about gender. It’s not just about women. It’s about the potential of our future generation. It’s about the potential of women and men, so that they can live full, rich lives not constricted by gender roles, expectations.”

Wow. Yeah. That’s a good reason. That’s a great why. 

I asked the audience to really vividly picture the impact that their speaking will have on the audience.

I asked them, "What is the transformation that you want to create with your speaking, with your communication?"

When we got down to it, this metaphor bubbled up. It’s like lighting a candle. One of the activists from Moldova, she said that somebody who had listened to her speak on the topic of gender equality told her it was as if a candle was lit within her after hearing the speaker. And that’s exactly it, isn’t it? 

Yesterday, I briefly talked about the four elements of communication, so to quickly recap, it’s number one: what you mean, or your purpose, your sense of desire to change the world, right? You see it in your mind’s eye really clearly, what is possible. And you want to communicate it, because you have passion for this possible change. Number two: how you say it, how you express that fire. Number three: people hear it. Number four: how they interpret what they heard and what they make it mean. 

And so when she said that this person had told her it was if a candle had been lit, she had succeeded in the transference of the fire. She helped this person feel and connect with the fire within her.

That fire, that passion for change is the purpose. That's the leadership purpose of these women who want to speak up, who want to advocate on behalf of women whose voices are not being heard at the negotiating table, or in the halls of power where these big international policies are being written. 

So, what is your fire?

What is the vision you have in your mind’s eye of what is possible? I really want you to connect with that.

If you have trouble articulating it, just ask yourself why? Why is this important? Why do you feel compelled to share this? And keep asking why until you get to a reason that is super compelling.

Everyone wants peaceful existence. Everyone deserves a right to live their full potential. And I thought that was a really compelling reason. And that is what drives these women peacebuilders to go out there and face criticism, even face violence and opposition, in some parts of the world to continue to speak up so that they can impact change.

So, number one: connect with your why. Connect with your fire.

Quick anecdote: for me, when I connect with my fire, when I feel like yes, this is my purpose and I am speaking my truth, I have the chills. So there are tells when you’re super clear on your why, when you’re connecting with that fire, you will know. And only you will know. So, whatever your tell is, trust it.

Second, don’t force, guide. Make it easy to follow.

What do I mean by this?

Yesterday, when I had the audience envision the impact they’re making with their speaking, one of the activists said she wants to force people to see the truth of the atrocities that are being committed against women around the world, especially women in conflict areas.

Did you know that there was armed conflict in Armenia? I had no idea. Did you know that there’s still a war in Ukraine? I’m sorry, I didn’t know, but I learned yesterday.

So she wants people to see it, accept it, and take accountability. I understand her passion and her outrage is justified, however it’s not very effective communication because people are not going to do what you tell them to do.

People are not going to change their minds, they’re not going to change their hearts because you are right, because you know so much, because you are so impressive.

People are going to change their minds, change their hearts and take action because they have decided for themselves that this is the right thing to do, and this is the right time to act on it.

The job of effective communication isn’t to force people to take a point of view, it’s to guide them, and it’s to aid in their changing of their minds. 

How do you do this? Really simple. Tell compelling stories. Ask questions, it gets their minds engaged. Make eye contact. Literally connect with the audience.

Make your speech, or your communication, really easy to follow. Tell them what you’re going to tell them, organize it into three digestible chunks, tell them the three things and count it off: one, two three. Summarize what you said, and then finally make a compelling call to action.

These women from around the world, they had really impressive recommendations on how to impact social change at the local level, national level, international level. How do we get journalists involved? How do we make the promise of the U.N., which is to promote gender equality, how do we make that promise a reality?

They had some really concrete but also very technical recommendations, so I challenged each and every one of them to just organize it into top three points that they want to make. Tell people, “I have an idea and these are three reasons why this idea is valid, and here is my recommendation.”

Third, Tell Compelling Stories

Once you have grabbed their attention and have guided, not forced, a point of view on them, the most effective and powerful way to have people empathize and see your point of view is to tell compelling stories.

In a story, there are three basic components. There is a character, there is conflict, there is resolution or lessons learned. Yesterday I heard some really mind-blowing stories. 

Take for example:

Imagine that you are a 16 year-old girl born in a rural area in Congo. Imagine that at 16, you’re sold off to be married to a strange man. And imagine that you have three kids. And imagine that every day, with a baby strapped to your back, you have to go out into the field and do farm work, and your husband does not help with that farm work. Your husband does not help with any household work. He doesn’t feel that he needs to, he feels justified, because he paid money to marry you. You don’t have a right to own land. You don’t have a right to inheritance, so when your husband passes away, you have nothing.

How would you feel?  

This was one of the many stories I heard yesterday.

Did you see this woman in your mind’s eye? Did you feel the hot sun on your back as you’re working in the field?

Did you feel something inside? I hope you did. I don’t want you to feel bad. I’m just trying to convey to you the power of storytelling. And this is what I shared with the crowd yesterday. 

Another thing I shared with them is, don’t be afraid to share stories about you.

These are really smart, really accomplished women, humanitarian workers and lawyers. At the U.N., they feel like they have to be perfect, that they have to impress people with their knowledge, with their professionalism and their activism.

When you are communicating a message, you are the conduit.

So people can’t help but be curious about you. And when you tell us a little bit about you, when you brave vulnerability and open up about your life and what these stories mean to you and how they impact you emotionally, people will feel compelled. Vulnerability is a strength. People will react to your courage to open up. 

For example, yesterday, one of the women is a domestic violence activist, and she said the topic of advocating for rural women in her country is important to her because her grandmother is from a rural area. So she feels connected. When she told me she feels connected with her grandmother while looking at me in the eye, I felt connected to her and to her story, and it was very powerful. It was very compelling.

So these are top three lessons that I shared.

Of course there are several other tips and tricks: don’t make wordy Powerpoint slides and then read from the Powerpoint instead of speaking to your audience. Make eye contact. Don't use filler words.

These are all very good, very fundamental public speaking tips, but at the heart of speaking to impact change, I think it’s important to connect with your why, connect with the fire within you. To not force-feed ideas into people to change their minds, because they won’t, but instead to guide them and make it easy for them to follow you so that they feel like they have arrived at that destination or a new point of view on their own. And finally, the best way to do that is to tell compelling, vivid stories. Don’t be afraid to open up and be vulnerable about what that is like for you.

These lessons can be applied to people who want to impact social change, people who want to advocate for themselves, people who just want to be more compelling leaders and tell better stories.

Traps of Perfectionism & Itty Bitty Shouldy Committee

In this episode we explore the trap of perfectionism and the voice of Itty Bitty Should-y Committee. 

You know this voice. It's the voice inside our heads that tell us to stay small, safe, and to not take that audacious risk. 

Then we break down communication into four parts, so that we can focus our energy and attention on the parts we can control and not worry over things not in our control.

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Transcript:

Today I want to talk to you about something I was struggling with just this morning: perfectionism. 

I tried to record this podcast episode about eight times. I’d start, and then I’d fumble a word or I would say something a little awkwardly, and then I would stop. Delete. Re-record. And then I’d try again. And then I’d lose my train of thought. And then I’d say something and I’m like, “Ugh, this is terrible, no one’s gonna listen to this.”  Stop. Delete. Re-record. It went on and on and on. I was struggling with my own perfectionism. 

And a lot of people do.

Especially the kinds of people that I work with who are people who want to be thought leaders, people who want to impact change in the world, people who want to leave a better world for the next generation.

Because we are so ambitious, sometimes we are held back by our desire to please, to be perfect, and to perform. 

Behind that desire is this fear that if you don’t impress the people who are watching you please, perform and perfect, that you won’t be accepted. That somehow, you won’t belong and that you won’t be worthy.

You hear that fear through the voice of the Itty Bitty Shouldy Committee. 

I call it the Itty Bitty Shouldy Committee because it tells you to stay itty bitty, and it tells you all the shoulds. You should be perfect. You should over-perform. You should take care of other people’s feelings. You should stay quiet if you don’t have the perfect answer. You should impress all the people.

If you listen to this voice, it holds you back. The reality is we all have a version of this voice. You might call it something else. You might give it a name like Hilda. You might call it The Saboteur. It’s the voice that tells you to stay safe, small, don’t take that risk. Don’t do that scary thing that can actually help you grow, that can actually help you thrive. 

You know what I’m talking about, right?

We’ve all heard it. “Who do you think you are? You’re gonna fail.”

It’s the voice that’s inside of us that is the most difficult, the most challenging to quiet down.

So how do we deal with this? I think it’s really helpful to recognize that when you communicate your brave ideas, or when you engage in that difficult conversation or negotiation, four different things are happening. And some of them you can control, and some of them you cannot control. So focus just only on the things you can control.

So, what are the four things?

First: What you mean.

What you desire to say, to express, to put out into the world. It’s inside you. It’s an internal experience. Does it make you feel good, or does it make you feel agitated? Only you can know, and only you can put those feelings or the desire inside you into words.

Second: What you say.

And what you say is an approximation, or a description of that internal experience. So, sometimes it’s not exactly the same as what you see or envision in your mind, but it’s how you best put it into words. So, it helps to say what you mean in very, very simple and clear terms so that you can be easily understood. 

Third: What people hear.

Are people always listening?

I think you know the answer. No. They’re not always listening. Even the people who are closest to us are not always listening.

People are distracted by visual information, people are distracted by their smartphones, by Twitter, etc. And you can’t control that. You simply can’t. And you can’t control the last part of this either.

Fourth: What they make it to mean.

How they interpret what they hear or parts of what they hear.

Take for example, I have this ongoing discussion with my life partner, and he’s taller than me. He’s got a deeper tone of voice, and even though he’s right next to me I sometimes struggle to hear what he says. I often, I frequently struggle to hear everything he says. And we’re always saying, “What did you say? What did you say?”

Even in small everyday conversations, you can see how the need to be heard, the need to be liked, the need to be approved of, or the trap of perfectionism can really put a relationship or communication at risk.

It’s because you can’t control what people hear or they don’t hear, but all you can control is how you express what you want to say. 

So how do we get rid of perfectionism?

I don’t think it’s possible.

It’s not possible to shut down that voice that says you should stay small and quiet and safe, but as long as we just focus our action and our words on what we can control: our thoughts, our behavior, and our words.

It’s because what other people think, what other people hear, what other people perceive is really none of our business. I can say one thing and people can hear a completely different thing and make it mean and start thinking about some completely unrelated thing, and I have no control over that. It’s not my business.

I’d like to end this with a quote by Tony Robbins. I read it this morning actually, as I was struggling with my own perfectionism and wanting to put out a perfect podcast episode.

“If your happiness requires other people to behave the way you want, then what are the chances you’re going to stay happy?”

Very slim, no? 

I’d like to rephrase this, since we’re talking about thriving.

If you’re thriving requires other people to behave, or to listen, or to approve and like you, what are the chances that you’re going to thrive? Very little.

So, put the ball back in your court. As Wayne Gretzky says, “You miss one hundred percent of the shots you don’t take.”

Put yourself out there. Put your best foot forward. Step up. Say what you mean so that you can thrive on your own terms. 

3 Steps to Organizing a Winning Speech

Welcome to the Born to Thrive podcast with me, Jamie Lee - your host, coach, speaker and trainer. I am a negotiation and leadership coach dedicated to helping women become bolder, braver and better paid. 

Because public speaking is a key leadership skill, I present three steps for organizing a winning speech, especially for those who want to speak to advocate for social change.

The common pitfall advocating for change is that we get tempted to tell people what to do. In other words, we go straight into the call to action (Sign this petition! Give to this cause! Go here and do that!), without giving enough thought to what truly motivates people to take action. 

Remember that influence is the skill in having an indirect impact on people's internal motivation without controlling them.

In order to become an influential speaker whom people enjoy listening to, use the following three steps for organizing your message: 

1. Big Idea

Unusual or surprising way to grab the attention of the listener. Share your big idea in the intro and make it captivating. 

2. Premise

Proposition supported by evidence or stories to support your call to action. After each point, provide easy-to-follow summary for emphasis and clarity. As a general rule of thumb, it helps to have three points, because it's easy to follow and remember. 

3. Call to Action 

Drive your points home here. Inspire the audience to see your vision and take action to make it a reality. 

Listen to the full podcast episode here. 

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