The People-Pleasing Trap

How differently would you show up to ask for help, work, or money if you didn't have the need to please people? 

My bet is that you'd be bolder, braver, and as a result, better paid. 

I have a lot of experience with the people-pleasing trap, because I'm a recovering people-pleaser. 

In this episode, I explain how this fear of displeasing others holds us back from asking, receiving, and thriving. 

You'll learn: 
- Why and how the life-long training to please others started 
- Why our brains confuse other people's displeasure as a threat
- Why it's impossible to please others with who we are, what we say, or what we do 
- Three ways we can get triggered to sabotage our outcomes 
- Three ways we can work ourselves out of the people-pleasing trap 
- Five of my recurring stressful thoughts around pleasing people 
- How I turn these thoughts around to instill a new mindset of growth, appreciation, and confidence 

Come check out www.jamieleecoach.com for details on Small Group Mastermind, private coaching, and speaking services.

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Full Episode Transcript

Hello! Welcome to Episode 41 of Born to Thrive with Jamie Lee. I am your host and coach, Jamie Lee.

I find it really auspicious that I’m recording Episode 41 on November 1. I like that number and it reminds me to renew and refresh my commitment to delivering and creating exponential value to those who come in contact with this podcast, with my workshops, with my coaching.

And I also have been thinking about numbers a lot because there is now exactly two months or eight weeks remaining to 2018. I am going on vacation at the end of the year and I realized there’s only about 40-something days before I leave and having that very concrete deadline, the numbers are motivating me to create things of value, to deliver more value, to be focused so that I can become bolder, braver, and help people become better leaders.

How about you?

What is helping you become bolder, braver, and better leaders or better paid? Those things can be synonymous, I think.

As we are nearing the end of 2018, soon we will be talking about 2019 goals and what do we want to achieve in 2019, so I think this is a really exciting time for us to be working hard towards our goal while also thinking about what else is possible in the future.

So, with that in mind, I have created a small group mastermind to support those who want to set powerful intentions and wild and improbable goals for 2019. People who want to surprise themselves with what they achieve in 2019. And if you are thinking about being supported in this way while also being held accountable to take concrete action and to start the year in high gear with high momentum, please reach out. I’d be happy to talk to you about what that is going to be like and how you might benefit.

You can also come to my website: jamieleecoach.com. I’m also continuing to book 2019 speaking engagements and private coaching clients, so it is all happening. It is all happening.

We are born to thrive. I believe that. And I believe that negotiation skills are leadership skills that can help you thrive.

The thing that holds us back from doing what we’re born to do is so often fear. And today, I want to talk about a very specific type of fear: the fear of displeasing people. The fear of losing the approval of people, especially those in a position of authority.

Think about going to ask for help, asking for work, asking for money, and if you have the fear that your ask might upset the person who has the authority to say yes or no, how likely are you to go for it? It just takes more courage. It takes more thought-work, I think.

And yesterday, I was exchanging emails with a client. I let him know that the homework assignments that I give this person, it’s not intended for him to please me. It’s not about me, coach Jamie. It’s about serving the needs of the client and the client was shocked. He was like, “Woah, how did you know that I have this need? I’m really curious how you were able to get out of this mindset, this pitfall of needing to please others because I see that it’s holding me back.”

And I wish there was a shortcut.

I wish there was a quick “fix-it”.

But there isn't. There isn’t. I don’t believe there is.

I believe I’m gonna be working through this myself for the rest of my life. But I’d be honored to tell you how I think about this need to please others, how I experience the pitfall of needing to please people, and how I am working through it so that I can still ask for help, ask for work, ask for money, and still show up bold, show up brave, and get better paid.

So, I want to say, first of all, that the need to please others, when I reflect on my life, it started from the very first day of my life. The first day, my parents met me and they said, “Oh, you’re such a good girl!”

I was trained from a very young age. I was fortunate to be trained from a very young age to please my parents, to be good, to listen, to behave, to make mom and dad proud.

I was very fortunate because my parents trained me for a really good reason. They trained me to seek their approval, to please them for a very good reason.

They trained me this way to keep me alive.

When I was one, when I was two, when I just started to gain my bodily functions and be able to walk and talk, that’s when I was most vulnerable to hurt myself.

Don’t play with knives, you’ll hurt yourself. Be good. Don’t go into the woods with strangers. Those are the kinds of things my parents told me and they told them to me so that I would survive. I would continue to live and continue to grow. That was their number one objective.

So, they trained me to please them for a really good reason. This is not bad parenting. However, in my very young, impressionable brain, I interpreted these lessons in this way: that pleasing others, especially those in a position of authority is essential to my survival and safety because without my parents I cannot survive as a baby, as a toddler, right?

And this served me really well when I was a very small, very young person. The problem is that I have now outgrown the situations where making that mistake of playing with knives or going into the woods with strangers would cost me my life, would potentially cost me my life.

I have outgrown those situations but my brain didn’t outgrow the groove that was created when this lesson was repeated over and over to me for my own good. And so, what happened was that my brain - the not-so-evolved part of my brain - is associating the risk of displeasing others with the risk of my own survival.

And when my brain thinks that my very own survival is at risk, this triggers this primal fear or the amygdala hijack and, as discussed in previous episodes of this podcast, what can happen is that it can trigger either the freeze, flight or the fight response.

And when those responses are triggered, that’s when I end up sabotaging my own outcomes.

So, let me give you some examples.

Freezing because I’m afraid of upsetting people. I encounter this when I’m networking with very successful people and this not-so-evolved part of my brain is frozen with the fear of not being good enough or displeasing these new people who are more successful and therefore in a higher position of authority. At least that’s how my brain is interpreting, right?

And so what happens is that I freeze up. I kind of get really awkward, I get weird, I say the wrong things and then I go home and I’m like, “Ugh, why did I say that? Ugh, that so awful!” And I didn’t get to make the ask that I wanted to ask.

Number two is flight. Basically, when I avoid speaking up, avoid asking out of fear of making people around me unhappy. It’s something that I’ve had a lot of experience with and I know some of my clients experience as well when they have this irrational fear that if they make their ask, they’re going to make people upset.

Now, this is rooted in the misconception that I can cause people unhappiness. It’s simply not true. Now, I know that when you hear this, you’re like, “What?! Of course it’s true! My parents told me that I made them upset and unhappy over and over again.” I mean, I’ve heard it, too. Believe me, I’ve heard it too.

Most people have the misconception that somehow you can cause other people’s unhappiness or that you can displease other people. But I’m here to say that is a myth. That is simply not true. Why is that? It’s because people are displeased not because of what you are or what you do. People become displeased because of the thought they have about what you do or what you say.

I think about how when I was dating this person, this particular person, I did not tell my mother that I was dating the person because I was afraid of displeasing my mother. So, even though I was, in fact, dating this person, my mother did not have the concept that I was dating the person and so she was not displeased particularly about this topic, right?

And then when I did tell her, it wasn’t until she had the thought that this would not be a good match for me that she was displeased.

It wasn’t because I was dating this person. I mean, I had been dating this person throughout the time that she didn’t know, right? It was only when she had the thought that this wasn’t a good match for me that she was displeased.

So, the point I’m trying to make here is that when we avoid making the ask out of fear of displeasing people, we are genuinely confused about the cause of people’s displeasure. The cause of people’s displeasure is not what you do or say. It’s what they think about what you’ve done or said and that’s something that you cannot control. That’s on them. You cannot change how people think.

So, in other words, when you avoid making an ambitious ask out of fear of displeasing people, you are essentially giving up your power because you’re saying, “I’m giving you all the power to make me feel safe in my brain.”

It’s funny, right?

Okay, so the third response is fight. And I’ve done this. I’ve talked about in this podcast how early in my career, I bungled my salary negotiation and then I felt resentful at my employer because of the thoughts that I was thinking and then I got adversarial with my manager instead of taking a collaborative, problem-solving approach and that adversarial approach, when I just went into the office and I said, “I demand a reimbursement,” it completely backfired.

And I took this adversarial approach because I was reacting from the fear of making people upset. I reacted by doing the very opposite thing that my brain wanted me to do.

So, watch out for these pitfalls. The pitfall being that you either freeze, you flight or you avoid, or you pick up a fight when the best thing is to approach this conversation in a calm and collaborative way.

So, now let’s talk about how to get out of this pitfall. Like I said at the beginning of the podcast, I do not believe there is a quick fix to this.

We’ve been trained from day one, from the very get-go to please our parents and to associate the pleasing of people in authority with our own survival. And so this is something that is deeply rooted. There’s a deep groove in our brains associated with this thought pattern. When I please people I am safe. When I please people, I will be able to survive and be okay, right?

It’s just that this thought pattern no longer serves us. In order for you to brave uncomfortable and difficult asks, you have to be willing to risk them thinking whatever they think when you make that ask. You have to be willing to risk rejection. You have to be willing to risk no in order to get to yes.

So, how do we get out of this? There are three parts.

Number one: Just notice. Raise your self-awareness around your own need to please people.

Number two: Deliberately decide that you are going to create a new mindset - a brave mindset that will help you make the ask.

Number three: Practice this new mindset with intention, focus, and diligence as if you’re learning a new language. Practice like you’re learning Japanese.

So, number one, notice. Just raise your self-awareness around your need to please others.

I notice that I get weird. I get awkward. I get needy. I get nervous. I get anxious. And I also notice that when I’m triggered by my need to please people, I am constantly checking email.

Do you hear me on that? Can you relate to that?

And I realize this because, for me, when I get an email from somebody, there’s like this dopamine hit in my brain and I’m addicted to that. And so I keep checking my email over and over again and I keep wondering, why? Why am I doing that?

It’s because I want to hear from people who want to work with me or from clients or opportunities and I associate those emails with approval and that I have pleased people and that I am okay.

And I also notice that when I am triggered by my need to please others, I often feel resentful because I want them to give me something that I can’t give myself. And so I’ve created this manual in my head that they should respond to my email. They should acknowledge me. I need this person to say thank you. I need this person to write me back immediately. I want this person to do x, y, and z so that I can feel happy, so that I can feel acknowledged, so that I can feel safe.

And so, number one: raise your self-awareness. Just notice when you get triggered like I do with the email checking and the neediness and the resentment.

And then write it down on paper. It’s so easy to overlook this part and I think it is possibly the most important part of raising your self-awareness. Just, when you notice that this is happening, write down the stressful thought or the problem that you think you have.

I did this the other day and it was so interesting what I wrote down because I realized it was all coming from this need to pleasing, this need to get approval.

I wrote down, “I’m scared of looking bad.”

I wrote down, “I’m scared of getting fat.”

“I’m scared of being disliked by people I don’t actually know or like all that much.”

“I’m scared of disappointing people.” (In other words, displeasing them.)

“I’m scared I won’t be able to produce good work, so I can be liked and respected and comfortable with myself.”

I wrote them down. And I realized that every time I think I have a problem, it’s almost always a variation on one of these stressful thoughts. I’m scared of looking bad. I’m scared of disappointing people. I’m scared I’m not good enough, basically.

So, number one: raise your self-awareness. Just notice when you are triggered and be compassionate. Be kind to yourself. This is a lifelong training that we’re trying to undo here.

So, number two: Now that you’ve raised your self-awareness, you want to deliberately decide on a new mindset. In other words, deliberately decide the new thoughts, the new beliefs that you want to have.

Belief is simply a thought that you have over and over and over again.

If you were free of your need to please others, if you were free from the fear of disappointing other people, what thoughts would you have?

Perhaps you would think:

I am good enough just as I am.

I am lovable just as I am.

I am safe as I am. I am worthy as I am.

I am powerful.

I create value.

And if those thoughts are not yet quite 100% believable and easy for you to say, “Yep! That’s me. I’m completely free of the need to please other people,” then you can also explore some thoughts to bridge the gap.

And I start with:

I am here.

I am simply here.

I am okay.

Except for my need, except for the stressful thoughts that I have in my head, I am always okay.

I am human.

Here’s another strategy: Once you have written down your stressful thoughts or the problems you think you have, you can also think about, okay, what is one reason to be grateful to have this problem?

This is a tip that I took away from an article written by James Altucher who is a writer and entrepreneur. He wrote this phenomenal article in 2011 about how all the successful people in life and in business are grateful. That’s the number one commonality they all have. They’re always grateful and that gratitude is the ultimate miracle.

And he talked about how you can develop a gratitude muscle and one of the things that he suggested you do is write down the problems you have and then think of one reason why you’re grateful for this. It’s kind of bonkers but it twists your brain and it makes you see your so-called problem, your perceived problem from a new perspective.

And so I did this too. I wrote, “I’m scared of looking bad.” And I realized I can be grateful for this because I get to be seen by people. How awesome is that? And I get to allow people to judge me, judge my Asian face, my open bite or whatever shortcomings that people project onto me. It’s a great opportunity for people to have their own thoughts. It’s a great opportunity for me to simply be and be seen, so I’m grateful for that because, at the end of the day, people will judge. It’s fine. That’s up to them. I am not in control of that and it’s the way things are and so I get to allow things to be the way they are. It’s great.

Number two: “I’m scared of getting fat.” It’s this irrational fear that gets triggered every Fall because in Fall things become more delicious and I want to have more sugar. And I am grateful for this because, hey, this means I have a body. I have two arms, I have two legs, I have two healthy lungs. I have a body, I have muscles, I have fat, I have organs, I have a brain. I have everything that I was born with and I still have them all...well, except for my baby teeth.

That’s pretty cool.

Number three was “I’m scared of not being liked by people I don’t actually know or like all that much.” And I can be grateful for this because this shows me my own neediness for approval, right? I was talking about how you need to raise your self-awareness and so this problem, ironically, is helping me because it raised my own self-awareness. And it helped me realize I still have this attachment to a random concept, to the misconception that somehow I can cause other people’s feelings. And just noticing it is half the battle, so I’m grateful for this.

Number four: “I’m scared of disappointing people.” I’m grateful for this because...GOOD! I get to disappoint people! What a privilege. The more I get to disappoint, the more I get to learn about how to serve. The more I get to learn about how to become better. The more disappointment I create, the more and deeper my learning is.

So, I’m grateful for that.

Number five: “I’m scared I won’t be able to produce good work so I can be liked and respected and be comfortable with myself.” And I’m grateful for this because I get to ask myself why do I want to be so liked and respected and comfortable? And when I ask myself that, I realize, hey, I tell people that the key to mastery, negotiation mastery, is losing the need to be liked, to be respected, and to be comfortable.

And so then this helps me realize, wow, I still have a way to go before I fully walk the talk that I give. This gives me a ripe opportunity to learn, to grow, to stretch myself, and to see how hard it really is to walk the talk that I give. This gives me a deeper sense of appreciation.

So, this helps me, ironically, listing my own problems, my own stressful thoughts and then being grateful, finding ways to be grateful for these, help me instill a new mindset of growth, learning and appreciation.

So, number three is to practice with intention the new thoughts and some of my new thoughts are:

I walk the talk that I give.

I have a body.

I am here.

It’s a privilege to disappoint people.

Yes lives in the land of no.

And I am okay no matter what.

What I want to say about this is I think it really helps to be future focused.

I talked about my goals for 2018. I talked about how I’m starting to think about new goals for 2019 and it’s really motivating to think about how I want to feel at the end of 2018. How do I want to feel on December 31st, 2018 while I’m on vacation, when I look back on the progress I’ve made, when I look back on the brave asks that I made over the next coming two months?

And I realized I want to feel proud. I want to feel accomplished. And all of my clients tell me this as well. They want to feel proud. They want to feel accomplished.

So if you are feeling proud, who have you become? What are you thinking? What have you done?

Think about how you can please your future self. Make that a priority rather than pleasing other people which is an impossible task, right? I mean, think about how your parents have these mile-high expectations, if they do and it’s an impossible task because at the end of the day, it’s not what you do or say that pleases them, it’s what they think. It’s what’s in their mind which is out of their control.

So, instead of setting yourself up for failure and disappointment by trying to please other people, what if you tried to please your future self? What would be possible then?

My bet is that you will become bolder, braver, and better paid.

I look forward to speaking with you again next week and I wish you a marvelous week.

Bye!

How to Negotiate a Career Pivot with Lisa Lewis

If you are ambitious and analytical, and if you want to grow your career through strategic pivots, you won't want to miss this value-packed conversation with career change coach Lisa Lewis. 

Lisa Lewis is a career change coach helping ambitious, analytical individuals feeling stuck in their current jobs find different work that “fits” who they are. She does this by helping you clarify who you are, what you want most, what a great job for you looks like so you can make your career transition in the easiest way possible.

In this conversation, Lisa shares how she successfully negotiated a career pivot with a $10K increase in salary offer. (Listen carefully for the word-by-word script!) 

We also explore how the growth mindset can help ambitious people like you overcome the trap of perfectionism so you can embrace change, risk, growth, learning and joy. 

Learn more about Lisa here: LisaLewisCareers.com 
Watch the Carol Dweck's TED talk here:www.ted.com/talks/carol_dweck_the_power_of_believing_that_you_can_improve?language=en

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Full Episode Transcript

Hello! Welcome to Episode 37 of Born to Thrive with Jamie Lee. This is Jamie Lee and I am recording this intro at the Phoenix Airport.

I am here because my flight back to New York was delayed by three hours. Well, originally, I’m here because I presented a talk at the Human Capital Institute’s HR Call to Action conference here in Scottsdale, Arizona and you know what?

I think I did a B- job.

I pride myself on being a frequent public speaker and I learned that I have a lot more that I can offer. I have a lot more to learn. I have a lot more to grow in terms of my public speaking capacities. That’s my biggest takeaway from attending and presenting at this marvelous conference for HR professionals.

I’m telling you this because this podcast episode touched on something really big that is helping me work through my feelings of inadequacy, feelings of embarrassment, dare I say shame because I did a B- job at my public speaking engagement.

This is a really wonderful conversation I had with Lisa Lewis who is a wonderful career coach. She is in my coaching alliance. I have an alliance of coaches who...we all support each other and we help each other be held accountable so that we can continue to do the work of growing our business no matter how often we are told “no” or people don’t respond to us.

In any case, Lisa Lewis is great and she is a career change coach who helps ambitious, analytical individuals who are feeling stuck in their current jobs find different work that fits who they are. And she does this by helping people like you clarify who you are, what you want most, and what a great job for you looks like so that you can make your career transition in the easiest way possible.

And in this conversation, we talked about so many really amazing things. We talked about a wonderful way to negotiate your career pivot. She shared with us the Jenny Blake career Pivot Method, the four-step process. We talked about the trap of perfectionism. We talked about how to work through the fear of change. We talked about how courage is different from confidence. And we talked about the growth mindset, which is the mindset I am trying to apply to myself today as I work through my feelings of inadequacy because I didn’t do a perfect job.

So, if you are somebody who is ambitious, who wants to pivot, who wants to grow, who wants to risk change, risk uncertainty and thrive nonetheless, I think you will find this conversation super, super valuable.

And I want to give you a heads up that I am doing another webinar on October 17th. Come over to jamieleecoach.com to sign up for that and also, if you are interested in being on my podcast, write me at jamie@jamieleecoach.com and let’s take it from there.

Without further ado, here is the conversation with Lisa Lewis.

Lisa: How are you?

Jamie: I’m doing great, how are you?

Lisa: I am good, thank you. So honored and excited to get to show up on your podcast. Thank you!

Jamie: Same here, same here! So, I want to just share with you that...I’ve shared with my audience that you’ve been holding me accountable to grow my coaching business, so thank you for that, and I’m curious to know: What is a negotiation in your life or career that had the biggest impact on you?

Lisa: Well, I’m so excited to get to share parts of this story because it has some overlap with how I got into being a career coach myself. So, back when I was still working in the corporate space, I was doing digital marketing work, and I had been marching up the career ladder, and getting promotions and raises and additional responsibilities and it all felt exciting and very seductive. But more and more, the further I climbed up the career ladder, the less and less the work felt like it was aligned with my heart and my soul.

Jamie: Yeah.

Lisa: So, I had gotten myself into a great situation at an ed tech company where I was making really good money, I was eligible for a pretty strong bonus and by all accounts on the outside, I would have been in somebody’s dream job. It looked fabulous. But it just felt soulless for me.

And I spent a good, probably two or three years of my life trying to figure out how to find work that felt a little bit more like me, that I would feel alive and excited to do that work. And pretty quickly after I had moved into this job doing marketing work and managing multi-million dollar ad-spends for this tech company, I had started my own career coaching business on the side. It was my little test-drive side hustle to see if the type of thing that I had realized that I really loved doing was something that people would actually pay me to do.

Jamie: Hmm.

Lisa: And, slowly but surely, I started to get one client and then two clients and then three clients on the side while I was still doing my 9-5 job in the marketing space. But what I was realizing was that I was becoming more and more unhappy in my 9-5 and that dissatisfaction and unhappiness was bleeding into the rest of my life, as it is often wont to do.

Jamie: Mm-hmm.

Lisa: So, I was trying to figure out a way to make an internal pivot and get into something else at my organization. And I tried the route of making a pivot into HR, because I thought, you know, marketing into HR isn’t too, too big of a leap and HR feels kind of like it’s aligned with career coaching. You know, it’s very focused on employees and their happiness and creating sustainable career paths but that didn’t work.

And I tried to make a pivot into corporate communications because I thought, okay, corporate is a little bit more removed from the day-to-day work that I’m doing for our clients and our partners, so maybe that would feel good.

And then I realized that we had a career services offering that we did as part of the education branch of our work as a company. And so I talked to the folks on the career services team and they prefaced the conversation with “You know, we’re not hiring right now, but happy to have an informational conversation with you.” And I said, “Great! That works for me!” You know, anything to start to plant some seeds to make a transition felt like it was directionally correct and helpful for me.

Jamie: Mm-hmm.

Lisa: So, I sat down with the head of the department, head of the team, and had this great 45-minute conversation with her and by the end of the conversation, she said, “You know, I know I said that we weren’t hiring but let me see what I can do.”

Jamie: Mmmmm.

Lisa: And within a week she came back to me and said, “Hey, we have an offer for you if you want to make a transition but the offer is for a pretty significant amount less money to come over and make the transition because your responsibilities and the place that you would fit into our org chart is different from where you are on the marketing side of the house.”

So, I stepped up to the negotiation plate and said, “Hey, I am so grateful and so honored that you would think of me and that you would make this possible and I’d love to see if there’s a way that we can make this work for both of us. You know, I would love to be a part of your team but I also want to make sure that it feels like this is whole and this is fair and feels good for both of us.” So, I countered and said, “Hey, you know, I would love to see what else you can do to close the gap on salary and bonus in this new role.”

Jamie: How did you frame that? How did you create the basis for that ask?

Lisa: Well, I said, “I appreciate…” and this is all sort of me trying to recreate the memory, so forgive me if it’s not 100% accurate to how the conversation perfectly played out, but I remember saying something to the effect of “You know, I really appreciate everything that you’ve done for me here. I know that this is a difference in terms of the level of responsibility and the level of management that I would be moving into, but I also know that I have a lot to contribute, I’m really capable, and that there are going to be possibilities for me to really make a difference in this role. And if I come into this role and accept the pay as it is, it’s likely not going to be a sustainable good fit for me in the long term, so I’d love to see if we can find something in the middle that allows for me to feel whole. I’m happy to take a part of paycheck, a pay decrease, a pay cut to make this work but we’ve gotta find a way to get a little bit closer to the middle.”

Jamie: That’s fabulous!

Lisa: Thank you! So, HR and the department head put their heads together and they talked about it and they came back to me with an offer that was $10,000 higher than what they had initially offered me, which was great, but it was still a pay cut.

So, at that point, I said, “Hey, I feel like, I’m so appreciative of everything you’ve done to champion and find a way to make this a win-win. I think we’re almost there. Would you be open to talking about, once I get into the swing of things for this job, being a little bit more flexible on the hours? You know, potentially, instead of doing five 8-hour days, talking about doing four 10s instead. Making sure that I’m still meeting all of the obligations, I’m still serving all the students and clients that we have here and taking really good care of everything that needs to be done but in a way that feels like, again, it’s making me whole in all of this and it feels really fair and like something I’m excited to say yes to.”

Jamie: Excellent, yeah. I love how you brought in the non-monetary component of your work arrangement and it increased the overall value of this opportunity for you.

Lisa: Absolutely, but Jamie, here’s where the story gets interesting is that they agreed verbally that they would definitely be willing to talk about that and see how quickly we could put that into place and they even said things to effect of, “You know, we’d want you in the office five days a week for the first couple of months for training, but then that seems really reasonable and really doable once you are, you’re in good shape and you’ve been trained and you have relationships with all of our clients started.” And so I made the transition into the role and was feeling pretty good about it, but then that two months of time turned into three, turned into six, turned into nine.

Jamie: Mmmm.

Lisa: And I had some pretty frank conversations with my direct supervisor where it became abundantly clear that while he had said that that was something that he was open to, it wasn’t actually something that he had any intention of creating the space to accommodate for. So, it’s an interesting negotiation conversation in that I both was able to really close the gap and make some meaningful differences and compensations in the negotiation package, but that there are always times when sometimes your employer will say certain things or make things feel a way that might make them seem more concrete or more certain or more appealing than they may be when you get in the door and that negotiation is not a one time, you know, you do it and then you wash your hands of it, you’re done kind of thing. But it’s really an ongoing state of mind and an ongoing conversation that you’re having with your employer at all times to take care of yourself.

Jamie: Right. Yeah, what I’m hearing is that negotiation doesn’t end once you sign that agreement. It continues. It’s a series of agreements and you have to continue to ensure that the agreement is implemented and that everyone has the same understanding of what has been agreed to. Like you said, it’s an ongoing process. Thank you so much, this is a really rich lesson, a great success and also really great takeaways. So, you are a Pivot-certified coach and I’m curious to know what that means and would you walk us through what the Pivot Method is?

Lisa: Absolutely. I love talking about it. So the Pivot Method comes from a book written by Jenny Blake who is a fabulous coach and speaker and author. And the idea of a pivot is something that she borrowed from Silicon Valley, you know, because you’ve heard the parlance of if a startup has gotten their seed funding, they’ve entered the market and then they’re realizing that either their business model, the market-product fit, the profitability, something out of the way that they are trying to monetize isn’t quite optimal, isn’t quite getting them to the profit level that they need, then they oftentimes talk about a pivot. Which is their way of taking stock of what they’ve done so far, reorganizing their assets and their capabilities in a way that will likely be more profitable.

And while, in the world of Silicon Valley, that’s really seen as a product of failure and a negative thing to have to make a pivot, Jenny wanted to reclaim that phrasing and that ideology in a way that’s really empowering and really exciting for individuals. As a way to essentially take what’s working about who you are and what you’re doing and parlay that into mapping out what could be next for you.

So, the framework that she thinks about and that I coach and teach in my work has four different elements to it. Number one, it has what she calls the plant stage, and that is where you are trying to figure out what could be next and you start by taking stock of exactly where you are, who you are, and what’s working for you right now because if you don’t ground yourself in what’s already working and what you know to be true, it’s going to be really, really challenging to map out what could be next in a way that doesn’t accidentally having you, say, throwing out the baby with the bathwater or feeling like you’re starting from scratch and starting completely over. So, you start out in the plant stage to get your grounding, get your sea legs, and get a sense for where you could potentially go.

Then, once you’ve planted, the second part of the Pivot Method is to scan and take a look at the marketplace, your environment, your surroundings, to see what else is out there and evaluate the possibilities. Jenny often describes it as thinking about a basketball player, you know, you’re dribbling down the court and then when you’re about to make a pass, you stop and get your plant foot that keeps you grounded in one place, but then visually, you’re scanning down the court to see who’s open, who’s moving, what the different defensive and offensive possibilities look like.

So, it’s really doing the same thing with your own career. So, thinking about what trends are coming up in the marketplace that you could take advantage of and that excite you. Who are the people that you’re seeing out there as movers and shakers in the sort of role you want to move into, are in the industry that you’re curious about that you could draft off of or you could use maybe some of that professional envy in a really positive, productive way to sort of reverse engineer their path and their success to figure out what pieces from that you might be able to use?

Jamie: So, plant and then pivot…

Lisa: Well, plant and then scan.

Jamie: Oh, okay, I’m sorry.

Lisa: I know! There’s a lot of terminology! So, you start with your plant. Then you do the scan. Then you figure out what your pilot is going to be.

Jamie: Oh!

Lisa: So, your pilot is a pretty common piece of language for a way to do a test drive. What is your pilot program? What’s your beta test? How do you dip your pinky toe into the water of what might be next so that rather than going straight from the idea to jumping right into your pivot, you’re doing some risk management work to make sure that whatever feels good for you next doesn’t just feel good in the dream but it also feels good for you in the reality.

Jamie: Mmmm-hmmm.

Lisa: And then, once you run that pilot program and see how it feels and see what data you’re bringing back from that about what you want to do next, then if you are piloting in a direction that feels great, then you go ahead and you can make your official pivot where you commit, you go full-throttle towards the goal and you put together your strategy for how to do market entry into whatever the new role is, the new project is, the new organization is, to make that happen for yourself as efficiently and effectively and safely as it can.

Jamie: Hmm. That’s interesting. So, you...I find it really interesting that you use the word safe because it is a risk that you’re taking, no?

Lisa: Oh, absolutely! I think that’s a really important point that you’re bringing up because I don’t mean safe to mean comfortable and complacent and known. I mean safe in the way of you’re putting yourself out there and you’re taking risks and you are trying something that requires a lot of courage but doing it in the way that’s the smartest and most managed so that you will keep moving forward and sort of feeling the fear and feeling that uncertainty and yet taking action anyways, as opposed to getting to the point where you are excited about some future possibility, but it feels so far away and so different and so overwhelming that you end up totally stuck in analysis paralysis or in one of those perfectionistic, you know, brain holes that doesn’t allow for you to actually explore what it is that you’re curious about.

Jamie: Yeah, that’s excellent, because you specialize in working with ambitious and analytical people and as an ambitious and rather analytical person myself, I know that in my experience, when I do risk assessment, there is always that underlying fear of failing and you mentioned courage as a component of this and people often seek out coaches like you and like myself because they want to feel confident in the process of changing their jobs, in the process of negotiating a new offer. So, I wonder if there’s a distinction here that you can help draw for us. What is the difference in being courageous as opposed to simply confident?

Lisa: Absolutely. I’d love to go into that. And I want to come at it from a bit of an angle around perfectionism and I know, I remember back in Episode 3 of your podcast, you talk all about perfectionism and the Itty Bitty Shouldy Committee, which is so great and so memorable.

Jamie: Yeah.

Lisa: But what I often see is that people who tend to identify with a little streak of perfectionism, shall we say, get themselves into a certain way of thinking that is very black and white, right and wrong.

Jamie: Yep.

Lisa: And typically, this is not a thing you did to yourself on purpose. This is not a thing you did conscientiously. It often goes back to the way that you were socialized and you were affirmed growing up. So, Carol Dweck is a research psychologist who went to Barnard, just like I did, which is sort of a fun thing.

Jamie: I just picked up her book!

Lisa: Did you?

Jamie: It’s amazing!

Lisa: Oh, yeah.

Jamie: It’s an amazing book. I want to recommend Mindset by Carol S. Dweck to everyone who’s listening. It’s phenomenal. I’m sorry for the interruption, please continue.

Lisa: Well, if you’re gonna put some things in the notes from today’s conversation, you could also link to her TED Talk, which is also a fabulous resource and a good sort of appetizer teaser before you buy the book.

Jamie: Mmmm. I will watch it, thank you for that tip.

Lisa: Yeah, absolutely! So, Carol has these two different mindsets that she identified in children and students. One is a growth mindset, which is where you’re really focused on progress and action-taking and the process and the other is a fixed mindset, where you’re very focused on the outcome and really sort of the identity of who you are relative to that outcome. So, I think about this, you know, when you were a child and you think about the way that people would remark on what you were doing and who you were, would you get the sort of feedback about, “Wow, look at you reading! You are doing so much reading over there.”

Jamie: I got that. I got that.

Lisa: Yeah, well that type of feedback tended to be associated with growth mindsets. But the other type of feedback that people might have gotten was, “Look at you over there. You’re such a good reader. You must be so smart!” And it is ever so subtle in the difference in the way that that was posed to you. But if you’re getting the feedback of, “You’re a good reader,” somebody has just put a qualitative judgment on your activity and your action to make it good or bad.

Jamie: Mmm. Can I add something to that?

Lisa: Yes, please!

Jamie: I’m definitely a recovering perfectionist and I used to get straight As for most of the time and I remember feeling like such a failure when I got an A- or a B. And so I wonder if there was a lot of times in my very early childhood where I was praised for doing things well. Like, “Oh, that was good! You did it right! You got the right answer! That’s good. You didn’t get the right answer. That’s bad.”

Lisa: Yeah, oh, absolutely. And nobody does it maliciously and nobody does it intentionally but we all received that sort of feedback and especially high performers, you know, the type of people who seek you out as a coach and the type of people I meet, too, tend to have gotten a lot of feedback of,  “You must be very smart. You must be a great reader!”

That then not only puts a value judgment on the action, so the action can’t just exist in the beauty of the action itself, it has to have a label that it’s good or bad. But it also then becomes a part of your identity. When somebody says, “You know, you’re really smart,” then you internalize that you are smart and that any information that may challenge that or expand that or change that definition of who you are becomes a psychological threat.

Jamie: If you try things, that might make you look dumb.

Lisa: Right. One hundred percent. This is where the intersection point between perfectionism and courage comes in. Because if you have a fixed mindset about work, writ large in your life, whatever it is, you tend to be very fearful about the identity pieces. You know, I’ve always identified as a digital marketer, I’ve always identified as a technical project manager, I’ve always identified as whatever. And the possibility of expanding yourself to grow in a different direction feels like a threat to that identity because if you try it and you’re not immediately successful, then all of a sudden, it comes into conflict with who you had thought that you were.

Jamie: Yeah.

Lisa: And so confidence tends to come from that validation and that certainty of knowing what you’re doing and knowing that whatever you’re going to do is going to turn out well. So, perfectionistic people tend to be pretty confident when they’re in their own swim lane, but they tend to have a very difficult time summoning up the courage to try something new at which they might fail or they might be rejected. And I reject the word fail, writ large, because I really don’t think that that is something that exists but to try something that you don’t get the results you were hoping for from.

Jamie: Well, I also have experienced people define failure as when things don’t go as expected or as planned. And I mean, things almost always go as unexpected. We have plans and then other things happen all the time, right? So what do you call that?

Lisa: I think that’s exactly right. I think that life intervenes in all kinds of different ways that we could not have foreseen or foretold but that rather than looking for outcomes as you expect, like  for certain things to happen, I think it can be really helpful to focus on how you want something to feel.

Jamie: Mmm.

Lisa: And I think that this ties into another concept that I know, Jamie, you and I were talking about before we had gotten on the recording today about the idea of a beginner’s mindset. Because when you’re trying out something new and trying out an experiment and you’re not totally sure how things are going to end up, if you’re not used to that feeling of being a beginner and being experimental and creative and being okay with things not turning out as you had hoped, it can feel really, really painful to try something new.

Jamie: Yeah.

Lisa: But if you make that ever so slight, ever so nuanced, and ever so powerful mindset shift to say, “Well, I’m gonna try this as a beginner and see if I enjoy it, see what happens,” and you let yourself be really present in the experience and play with the craft and the process of whatever it is that you’re trying to do, there is so much potential for enjoyment and joy.

Jamie: And learning.

Lisa: And learning! And the beautiful, lovely, almost addictive rush of learning something new and feeling like you have this new knowledge, this new insight, this new wisdom about how things work in the world.

Jamie: Yeah, absolutely. Some of my most successful clients, they take that approach that every opportunity, every conversation, every interview is an opportunity to learn, right? As opposed to an opportunity to prove themselves as smart and successful, they go into that conversation with an attitude of curiosity and that can really transform not just the nature and the result, but the outcome of that conversation. And I think you’re touching on something really big, which is that we have the power to choose how we feel about anything.

Lisa: Yeah, absolutely. And I’d love to actually let you speak on that a little bit because I remember that one of the things that I noticed about you and your coaching which is such a gift that you’re giving to the universe is that you’re really able to help people peel apart the difference between an outcome and the story that they tell themselves, that they make that outcome mean about who they are, what they’re capable of, what is out there in the market for them.

Jamie: Right. And this is something that you, me, and Carol S. Dweck will all agree upon, which is that what we believe, what we think and believe about any given circumstance will have the impact on how we feel, on how we react or respond, and the result that we get. So, as you were saying, if we believe that we must be seen as smart to be successful, then you fall into the fixed mindset trap. But if you believe that you’re here to learn and that you can learn by trying and even if things don’t go as planned, even if the outcomes are not what you hoped for, there’s always room for more learning, because, as you said, you approach it with a beginner’s mind, then everything can be a joy. Even when you don’t get the job, you’re like, oh, that was a great opportunity for me to learn what not to do at a job interview. That was a really great opportunity for me to realize that, you know, I have more value to offer, etc.

Lisa: Oh, absolutely, and one of my favorite quotes from Marie Forleo is that “Everything is figure-out-able.” And if you walk into any situation, any interview, any possibility, any new skill-building opportunity with that mantra, that will inevitably lead you down the growth path because you will constantly trust in yourself and your own ability to figure things out, to use Google, to use your resources and not to put the pressure on yourself that you have to have all the answers and you have to be smart and you have to be perfect and you have to be right, but to allow for much more space for playfulness and creativity and learning and growth and for many different outcomes to come as the fruits of your labors.

Jamie: Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. So, I so appreciate your wisdom, your insight, you expertise, and you’re a very eloquent speaker, Lisa. I so enjoyed having you on the podcast. I think many of our listeners would also enjoy learning more about you and your services, so where can people go to learn more about you and what you do?

Lisa: Well, I appreciate getting to speak to your amazing audience. I mean the sort of person who’s going to be listening to you is probably already really hungry for growth and improvement and advancement and opportunity and it’s a joy to get to be a part of that conversation. But if you’re listening to this and you’re interested in learning more, you can find me at my website which is lisalewiscareers.com.

Jamie: Wonderful. Do you have any upcoming events that you want to share with the audience or workshops or…

Lisa: I don’t have anything that is scheduled at this very moment to share, but I do have a brand new, what I’m sort of calling my white-hot paper on the four career fulfillment pillars that I see over and over again can lead to the difference between feeling like you made a move into a role that fits who you are versus making a move into an opportunity which looks shiny and seductive on the outside but actually isn’t in alignment with your values.

Jamie: Ooooh!

Lisa: It’s at the very bottom of my website and I’m just starting to share that gospel around and I feel so strongly about it that I would be honored to get to have any of your listeners go and check it out and give it a read.

Jamie: It’s a white-hot paper. I love that!

Lisa: Thank you!

Jamie: Well, Lisa, it’s been a pleasure, as always. Thank you so much for being on the podcast and sharing your insights. I will talk to you soon.

Lisa: Sounds great! Thank you again.

Jamie: Alright, have a good one!

Lisa: You too. Bye bye!

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!