Replanting Yourself: A Pivot Story On Transparency, Credibility, And Leadership With Heather Hansen

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Well, I am super stoked to have Heather Hansen on the Change Group Podcast today. She combines her psychology degree, her meditation training, and 20 years of courtroom experience to teach international audiences to advocate for themselves and for their businesses. Her book, The Elegant Warrior, is an Amazon bestseller, and her podcast by the same name, The Elegant Warrior, is consistently in the top 10 business podcasts on Apple. I'm in the mood for learning. I hope you are as well. Let's welcome Heather Hansen. All right, Heather. So you've just heard that, your own bio. It's funny to hear our own bio, right? Whatever that is that sums us up. And yet I don't know about summing things up so neatly. So to you is what's one thing, one thing that is not in your standard introduction or bio that you would love for people to know about you?

I think the most important thing with respect to this conversation is that I was a terrible advocate for myself for a very long time. So as a lawyer, as a trial And I know that's your background as well. It was my job to advocate for others, and I was phenomenal at it. And now I teach people to advocate, but I wasn't able to do that until I learned that I had to start advocating for myself, that no one could do it better than I could. And most importantly, that it was a skill that I used in the courtroom, and I could use the same skill and the same tools outside of the courtroom. But that took a little bit of work on what I call my inner jury to start advocating for myself just as strongly as I did for others.

Oh my God. This is one of those Jerry Maguire moments where it would be like, you had me at— no, you really, oh my goodness. I wasn't expecting you to say that. And I want to follow that further. I want to dig in. I'm sure people that'll listen to this right now and go, yeah, we got to get into that. But I'm going to come from a very personal place. I don't know how we have obviously lawyers that are listening and all that kind of thing, but, and so many lawyers will get in touch with me or law firms will get Well, the lawyers will get in touch with me to say, all right. Resilience. It's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And in times of massive change and disruption, the kind of rapid change that we're all experiencing as leaders, as business owners, as entrepreneurs, we have to learn how to not only increase our own resilience, but that of our teams. So right now, we have a powerful opportunity for you to find out just how resilient you are. Some years ago, my team and I created the resilience assessment, That more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilience leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. Right. You gotta help me. How can I enjoy what I'm doing more than I'm enjoying what I'm doing? Sometimes people need to leave the profession, or they think they do. We can kind of track that. Do we need to leave? Do lawyers need to leave in droves because there's something systemically broken in that system that is the law, which we can take up? But I want to start with, with this idea that you were not a great advocate for yourself, because I feel like the same. It's to be able to do it for other people. I could be not fearless, but I had a lot of I had a lot of courage for someone else's cause. For my own, not so much. So will you say a little bit more about what that looked like for you?

Yeah, I could talk about what it looked like for me, and I can also talk about why I think that happens—the science behind it. But let's start about with the personal. I can tell you the exact day. So I defended doctors in medical malpractice cases, and on this particular case, it was a young female. surgeon who reminded me a lot of myself. And that makes— studies show that when someone reminds you of yourself, you tend to have even more empathy for them. So I was even more invested in her case. And she called me the day before openings and said her boss had just told her that if we lost the case, she was going to lose her job. And Adam, I could see my lips in my periphery getting bigger and bigger. I was having an allergic reaction to my own stress hormones, and I ended up in the emergency room. And there's a lot of things I learned from that, but relevant to this conversation, I recognized that I was trying too many cases. I was not doing enough of the things that I loved. I lived in Philadelphia. My partner at the time, he lived in Connecticut. He did not come to support me when I was on trial. So I didn't have support from my significant other, my partners, my— even my friends and family. But the thing is, I didn't ask for it. I didn't advocate for myself. The way that I talk about advocating, there's a couple of definitions, but one of them is asking for what you want. in a way that makes you likely to get it. And I can do that in the jury. I say to the jury, I want you to give me a defense verdict. I'm very clear about it.

Yes.

But I didn't say— I tried to infer, or with my partner, for example, I would go to him when he needed me and then assumed that he must know that I needed him to come to me when things were stressful. And I would continue to do more and more at the firm, and I would assume that they would know that I would want the same for me. But I never opened my mouth and asked for it, much less collected collected evidence and told stories and built credibility and asked questions and all of the skills that would help me to advocate for myself. And I realized when I was sitting in the emergency room watching the steroids and Benadryl drip that I needed to change something. And for me, it was easier to externalize it, and we can get back to the science on that, and to start using the tools in the courtroom and pretending like I was my own client.

Yeah. You said so much there. I want to unpack it for myself a little bit too, is this idea of advocacy starts with clarity or being clear about your desire, your intention, if you want to call it that. Like to just simply say, and I spent 18 years in the legal profession, so I know what it's like to stand in front of the— in court, in front of a judge or a jury and simply say, here's what I want. Not for myself, because that's the interesting thing about being a lawyer. It's never about us. We never did it for the money. We never did it for the, the power or the, or the feeling of how important we were in the moment. I know that. I'm really self-aware about that, right? But to stand there and go, look, Your Honor, or look, jury, my client's been harmed, or my client didn't create that harm, et cetera. It's so easy to be clear. So that first thing you just said, I think is so powerful that when it comes to our own advocacy, and this is the question, not the statement. Do you think we more often than not just pretty much expect everybody else in our world to be mind readers?

Absolutely we do. And clarity is such an important tool of an advocate. The more clear we can be with the jury, the more that we can simplify it for them, the more that we can speak in their language and not our own, the more likely we are to win. And that is true when you're advocating to your jury, and I put that word in quotes, your jury of clients, customers, friends, family, partners, children. You want to speak in their language, make it clear, make it simple. And there's that. And there's also this feeling that we have asked with our actions, Adam, rather than coming out and specifically asking with our words. I want you to come to Philadelphia when I'm on trial. God forbid I ask my partner that. He should know. Of course I want him to come. How could he not know? And that's not fair to him or to me because I have resentment and neither of us are happy.

So what are you not saying? Let's use that as an example because I think that's really one that I think a lot of people can relate to through their own, their own context, of course. But when you don't say specifically, hey Joe— I hope his name wasn't Joe— hey Joe, I really want you to come to Philadelphia to support me while I'm on trial, in part because I'm alone, I need that support, I need somebody to remind me to drink water or somehow speak things out before I go to bed so I can sleep at night. You know, whatever the support might look like. Why is it that, that you don't say specifically what you're looking for, but rather expect, if Joe loves me, I'm now projecting here. But if Joe loves me, he'll know that's what I want. And that's what I'm really saying. And that's what I actually need. So it's almost like, like a test. Are you setting Joe up for failure when you do that as much as yourself?

You are, but not on purpose. I just think it's so vulnerable. It's so vulnerable. And it makes— and especially there are studies that show that for women, it makes them feel needy. And the word needy can have a lot of mental attachments to it. But the truth is, I have needs. We have needs. You have needs. And we have needs— food, water, shelter. But we also have needs— love, support, all of those other things. But it feels vulnerable. And I have a different opinion on vulnerability than some do. But I do think when it comes to those relationships, your significant other, your children, your friends, your family, even your partners at your law firm if you're close enough to them, or your partners or your colleagues at work if you're close enough to them, They've earned the right to your vulnerability. And without it, your relationship can't go to that next step. I think that it is vulnerable to say, I need you here. And so instead, we do for the other what we would like and hope that they can read into it that we would like it. And that doesn't work. That's not advocating.

That's so interesting. I want to get your definition of vulnerability, especially since it's been talked about— I don't want to say ad nauseam because I think it's right that it's been spoken about so long. I think Brené Brown really tore the COVID off that thing. She has in so many ways in a lot of different areas, but that one in particular. So let's start there, because I have some other thoughts, but I want to, I want to get right to your definition of vulnerability.

It's not— I— it's not so much a formal definition. The way that I think about it is when a baby's born, they have the soft spot on their head. I think of vulnerability as exposing your soft spots. And that's how I think about it. But I have a different idea about it, because I don't think that we should embrace it in all of the places that people are trying to embrace it. For example, the core I don't want my clients to feel vulnerable when they're going up to testify on the stand. And I don't want them to turn to the jury, and I don't want them to be authentic either, which is another big word that people use.

Mm-hmm.

I don't want them to turn to the jury and say, I am freaking out right now. I am so afraid. I cried this morning. Or, I feel like I'm gonna throw up. I don't really like you. I think that you guys are scary. Like, those things are both vulnerable and authentic, and neither— none of that is helpful when they're before a jury. And so, I think that people— and I think Brené has said this, people need to earn your vulnerability.

Exactly.

And it's important to make that distinction.

People have to earn the right to hear your story. I think that's part of her message. So, I was gonna ask you about this because this concept of vulnerability and power or powerfulness, and I— so, in the context of being a powerful professional, and you knowing this from the standpoint of an attorney and of a female attorney, do you think that it's harder? And I don't wanna turn it into so much a gender conversation about that because, I think this— the principle is universal. Can you be a powerful professional, however you identify, and also be vulnerable? And if so, where does your vulnerability show up that's helpful versus what you just described, which probably would get you to lose a case, or somehow or another, there'd be a malpractice suit against you for saying, hey, by the way, jury, hey, listen, I'm not quite at my best this morning because— I'm

petrified. Right.

I'm petrified. I'm really nervous, even though I shouldn't be, but I am somehow. Don't do that and go, oh, in court. So where's the line, if there is a line that you've determined?

All vulnerable. So it goes without saying, and I think that what you're talking about is professionally. Where do you show that vulnerability professionally? I like to think of it instead as credibility. I think that it is— I don't love authenticity, I don't love vulnerability, I like credibility. And when I teach people how to build credibility quickly, part of that is making promises and keeping them, setting expectations and meeting them. But when you can't, and that's when things start to feel vulnerable, you own it. Owning it is saying, I don't know. Owning it is saying, I broke my promise. Owning it is saying, I didn't meet my expectations. And for some, that's vulnerable, right? Yes. Saying those things is vulnerable. For me, it's a part of credibility. But owning it, being willing to say, I did not show up on time, and I will do it tomorrow, and I promise I will, and then actually doing it, that is a credibility multiplier. Your credibility goes through the roof. In the courtroom, when a witness would say on cross-examination, oh, I agree with you on that, but this is why it doesn't matter. Yes. Or, this is why I still believe that Heather's case is the one that the jury should believe. All of a sudden, the jury's like, this guy was willing to agree with the person cross-examining him. He must be telling the truth. That's owning it. And we can do it in our personal lives. Every time we say, I was wrong, every time we say, I don't know, but I'll find out the answer, we're showing that bit of credibility that some people like to call vulnerability.

So I think this is where the rub is, and it's the rub for obvious reasons. And I think it just doesn't get spoken about enough, where the person who's being professional and understands that you don't, in hyperbole, Bolic terms, don't wear your heart on your sleeve in open court necessarily. But yet that same individual goes home at night, and now is that guarded or let's say guarded person at home, which is something I talked about during my TED Talk was how this concept of having my guard up all the time as an attorney, but I learned it before that. This idea of protecting being out there in a lot of ways, not a lot of ways. You're out there alone. Let's just call it for what it is. From the moment you were born to. The moment you move on, you are alone in this world. You have lots of people around you, hopefully a lot of people that you can connect to and love and be loved by, but it's a solo journey. You are a lone— you have a beautiful podcast called The Elegant Warrior. This, you're like a lone warrior. Lawyers understand that. Tennis players understand that. Lots of people get it, right? Mm-hmm. So there's a sort of a, a way that you put your armor on to get into battle for those particular things. But then when you come home or in that conversation with the fictional Joe about what you need, there's an issue, right? What is that? What is that issue, Heather?

I think there's 2 ways to do it, right? You can be defensive in every relationship that you have. And some of us do that, right?

That is a choice. Yes,

it is a choice. And it's— and if you're trained that way, if you're spending your days being defensive— I was a defense attorney. Oh, I got very good at being defensive. And so that is definitely one way to go. The other way, the way that I went, was to lay down and not fight any of the fights in my personal life. I was so tired of fighting and putting on my armor to go to work every day that when it came to my personal life, on those rare occasions when I would say, why don't you come to Philadelphia? And he said, no, I'd say, okay, because I just didn't want to fight anymore. All of my fight was used up on my clients. And so, I think that either way, for professionals who go into their— and a lot of people who aren't even professionals, Some people who are dealing with very difficult children, and they feel like they have to put on their armor in order to deal with their children. The ability to find someone who has earned your vulnerability so that you can show them your soft spots, I think, is an important part of being human and is going to make you a whole lot happier and healthier in the long term.

Yeah. I wanna come back to that in a second. I'll just say that in the courtroom, one of the things that, that, that I wish I had known then, 'cause honestly, I was a decent attorney. I won a fair amount of my cases. I was a pretty strong advocate. 'Cause I'm pretty tenacious. I think the greatest compliment I got, and it's funny the way lawyers take these things as compliments, 'cause I'm gonna now share what made me feel really good about myself at the time. I was in a bunch of federal court cases with a very large law firm that happened to be defending the same corporate defendant I was pursuing on behalf of clients that had been allegedly discriminated against, both on gender and race and a number of other things. And I was just barraging this big law firm with paper. Like the way we know how to do. That's the equivalent of the punch in the ring would be the, the service of papers and more paper and lots of trees falling down because I'm gonna win a case here. And at one point he called the office on a Saturday and I was the only one there. I picked the phone. I think he was probably my wife or somebody. I was like, whatever. And it was him. And he goes, oh, I knew it was you. I just knew you were in the office. I knew you were, you're probably going to the post office, aren't you today to postmark something for me? And I said, yep, John, that's the plan. He goes, you are relentless. And that was it. We resolved all those cases in the end. But, but that was a compliment, this relentlessness, which was exhausting emotionally, physically. It was, I had nothing left from that standpoint to fight. When I left that office, I wasn't gonna fight with anybody. Yeah. When in any other arena. So I know I completely I understand what you're talking about. So your boundaries get just moved and whatever. When I was standing in court, a thing I didn't know then, but since having so much in my pivot career become a speaker and traveling the world to talk about these kinds of things, luckily I've had lots of stage time and things go wrong just like they do in court. That exhibit or that whatever thing that you plan for can just go sideways. I've had things go sideways. Too many times to count on a stage in front of a few people or in front of a few thousand people. And the thing I learned in the speaking realm is that you earn the trust of your audience when you don't pretend that thing didn't just happen.

Yeah.

And that's a big freaking deal. If for the lawyers out there that didn't— haven't learned this lesson, this is a freebie right here. Don't pretend that the judge or the jury didn't just Just notice what just occurred, and you, as is it, you utilize it if you can. Is that— I know we're off that topic we started with, Heather, a little bit, but does that make sense to you as well?

Totally. It's the own it piece. Own it. If something has broken down, own it. If something is not working, own it. I just today did legal— and you have to own it. You have to own that something broke down. I just did legal analysis for one of the TV stations about a big trial that's in the news right now. And the defense attorney— we were watching some of the trial and then talking about it on television. And the defense attorney said to the judge and the jury, Your Honor, I'm terrible with technology. I'm trying to figure this out. I apologize. He spoke to the elephant in the room. He was taking forever with the technology and probably annoying everyone in the courtroom. But now the jury probably feels a little bit bad for him. He's an older guy struggling with the technology. You gain so much credibility. When you own it with your friends, with your family, on a big stage, when you're giving a keynote, in a courtroom, everywhere that you go, you are advocating, and owning it is boosting your credibility through the roof.

Yeah. You just tied that up so lovely. Because, and to connect the dots here, you could use the word vulnerability, which gets used a lot. You could use authenticity, which has bothered me for a while, that word. There's this concept of being transparent. Which is another thing. But this idea of just utilize— using what is, utilizing what is, owning what is, owning it, that creates credibility among other people, with other people. Yeah. That is a very healthy and smart, I would say, an intelligent way to, to utilize that concept of vulnerability in, in a more professional setting.

I agree with you. And I think also, I don't think most people want to aspire to vulnerability. But we all should aspire to credibility. The root of the word credible is to believe. Who doesn't want to be believed?

That's killer, Heather. I think you just people are nodding up and down, going, "Wow, man! That's that I can use. That I can use, right?" Because the vulnerability thing is really strange. People don't really want to be perceived as weak, and they don't want to be like I tell the story about when I ended up in the hospital like you. I was still a lawyer at the time. I was really just having trouble dialing my feelings in the morning, especially starting the day, having difficulty. I don't know if people out there can relate to this, just trouble in the morning. I'd have trouble going to sleep at night too, wake up at 3 o'clock in the morning thinking about cases or clients or whatever, couldn't get back to sleep, all that whole— did— first of all, did you ever have that difficulty, Heather, sleeping or getting up?

Yes, especially on trial. I would get up, I would crash at the end of a trial day, but then I'd wake up at 2 AM and I'd be up for the day. I'd just get up because the case is in your head and it's running through. And so I would just get up and start prepping for The day ahead. Yes, been there.

And one of these mornings for me ended up—I ended up in the emergency room. I guess similar to you, I ended up there. Electrodes, the whole nine yards. They're doing echocardiograms and stuff like this, and I'm sweating. Literally just couldn't stop sweating, and my my mind is racing, and I'm both upset with what's going on, but I'm also so freaking pissed at myself. Like it's self-loathing on top of the palpitations, and ultimately the doctor came in and gave us. The good— wow, the pace of change over the last couple of years has been rapid. And if you're a leader, a business owner, an entrepreneur, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Every day it's something different and something new. But the one thing that I've learned in performing at the height of all of those roles has been that we must be resilient. In fact, it's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about, and it's The reason why my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilient leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So, Go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. Good news, which was that my heart was fine. It wasn't having an event like that, but I was having something else, which you probably know what I was having, right? Everybody knows what I was having. Yes. A panic attack, right? So first one I ever had, and not the last one, but ever since then, I haven't— I've— whenever I've had Angst, feelings of intense anxiety. I know what it is now, and I have process method to deal with it, which is easy. It doesn't seem easy, but it actually is because it's all originating from our thoughts, or at least from my thoughts. But in that moment, I was just so devastated by what that was because there was nobody for me to tell. I was relieved. I cried. My wife and I cried together. I went home and I hugged our 4 kids, hugged I wouldn't let 'em go. But 2 weeks later, I was back to being a workaholic. I was back to just ignoring because I didn't know what to do with it. And there was no one I was going to tell. Like, there was— I was embarrassed. I was ashamed. And I certainly wasn't going to give that as some sort of an edge to my opponents, whether they were other lawyers I collaborated with or lawyers that I was up against. I was never going to tell anybody that. And what I come to realize 12 years later is that there was a moment where I could have been really transparent with people I worked with, at a minimum, other attorneys that were around me, to ask for what I needed, or to at least just tell them where I was coming from. That would have enabled— would have created far greater trust and credibility, to use your word, in that moment, had I had the courage. And I lacked the courage to do that at that time. I was afraid, and so it's a cocktail of negative. I don't even want to call it negative, but just other ways of seeing things. I was framing it as I have to keep this private. I have to keep this away from people. I can't let anybody use it against me. I have to stay guarded. That was my frame, and that was obviously you when you ended up in the hospital when you were feeling that way. What was your frame, and when did it change?

My frame was just. I remember right before I ended up in the hospital, I was on the phone with my best friend and I said, I just want someone to help me. I just want someone to help me. But I didn't know what help I wanted and I didn't know who that person could be and I didn't know how they would help me. And I really had the realization that it had to be me. But everyone who's listening has been through these types of moments. They may not have hopefully ended up in the emergency room, but we've all been through those moments where we've been like, I want someone to advocate for me, to ask for what I want, to get me what I want. And I do want I wanna give, because I hate to be talking about all the issues without giving some proposal for a solution. And there's a lot of science behind what I ultimately did. If you externalize it, Adam, there's a really good book called Shatter by Ethan Kross. He's at the University of Michigan. He's a psychologist there, and he talks about the voices in our head. And he talks about this idea of illyism, and he's not the first one to bring this up. I talk about it in my book, Advocate to Win, as well, but he has a great conversation about it. Illyism is the practice of talking about yourself in the third person. Men do this more often than women do. LeBron James famously, during a press conference, said, LeBron James is going to do what's best for LeBron. Trump often talked about himself in the third person. Pelé, the soccer player, Andre Agassi has done it. Bob Dole has done it. Salvador Dalí did it. So, there's a lot of examples of men who do this. But the reason that it's helpful, especially in these situations, is you're externalizing yourself. If you were to say Adam needs help here, it doesn't feel as personal. It doesn't feel like as much like it's you. Now, in my research, I couldn't find a lot of women who did this. So for the women listening, what might be more powerful for you is an alter ego. Mm-hmm. Beyoncé had Sasha Fierce. Originally when she started, she would be Sasha Fierce when she was on stage. Pink, Madonna, Lady Gaga, these are all alter egos. But all of these are ways to externalize, almost as if you're advocating for, asking on behalf of someone else. And I did that for myself. I made it so that I said, this is going to be a separate person who wants to do things different than lawyer Heather does. I wanted to do more television. I wanted to write my books. I wanted to start a podcast. And I, lawyer Heather, am going to start advocating for her. And thinking about it that way, externalizing it, made it easier for me, and it might do the same for some of the listeners.

So it's a bit— so we're saying it's a bit of a hack, right? Because it's a way to grease the wheels, as Laurence Tribe once described the entire profession, legal profession, that is. And hacks, if they work, they're great. What comes up for me is that when I hear LeBron say that, while he's one of the greats, but not to me the greatest, so send me all your hate mail, all right? I'm gonna say Michael Jordan's the greatest of all time, and that's it. That sport anyway, and Kobe might be second. But regardless of my opinion there, it feels, it feels like when LeBron says LeBron's got to take care of LeBron, I feel, I hear ego. But the fact of the matter is that we have no trouble often advocating for others. Women, this has been documented, where their children are in danger, can literally pick up a car. Like, they have superhuman strength for their children. But women will often stay in abusive relationships or otherwise not advocate for themselves. And so you got to go, what's the— there's a dichotomy there. There's absolutely something where, yeah, if it's easier to simply look at it almost like from a neurolinguistic programming standpoint where it's not directly asking on your behalf, but you're advocating it in the third person for yourself. Let's do it. Let's do it if it helps us to create and hold boundaries that don't allow others to abuse us or don't— Or simply leave our requests or our desires unstated.

Well, that's it. That's it. You can't leave this earth not asking for what you want. You can, but that would be a very tragic thing. And so any way that works for you to start doing it more often and better. It's when I first started talking about this work, I would ask people, are you someone who asks for what they want very easily but never gets it? Are you someone who never asks for what they want and therefore never gets it? Or do you ask and get it? And most people fell into one of those first 2. Some people are asking, but they're just not asking. So it's not— advocating is not just asking. You can go around and ask people for all kinds of things. You've got to ask in order to optimize your chances of getting the thing you're asking for.

That's the skilled attorney in you, because that's part of the training, right? That's one thing. Like, I have never wanted our kids to go to law. We have 4 kids and they're all doing really beautifully in the world and all that. I probably dissuaded them from being attorneys, as it, as it turns out. Not really so much intentionally, but I guess so. I guess I was like, you know what? I want to, I want to correct my own self there in saying that there's something really powerful about spending 3 years in a, in the study of advocacy. And then, of course, law school didn't really teach you how to advocate too much anyway.

I was going to say, it's not school, it's experience.

But then 5 years or 10 years into doing it, you really have a sense of, as you say, this elegance. How do you elegantly advocate? Because that's a part of when you say The Elegant Warrior, you're not talking about getting in there like a barbarian and just with a club wielding to get what you want. So could you give us a— because that's your latest book, right? The 8 to Win is a book of yours, but you also have The Elegant Warrior. That's the newest one. Is that correct? Yeah.

The Elegant Warrior was first. Advocate to Win is the more recent one. But The Elegant Warrior is the one that has resonated most thoroughly with the most amount of, the largest amount of people.

So tell us about the elegance. I love, it's a beautiful word.

So I am big into words. In fact, in my second book, there's a whole chapter on words, and I think the words that we use really matter. And so I often, when I hear a word, will look up the root of the word to find out where the magic is. I don't know if you've heard this before, but the word abracadabra means I create as And so I do think that our words create our reality. So the root of the word elegance is to choose. And so I believe that elegance is the ability to choose, to respond rather than react. And in the courtroom, that's a really important thing, to be able to respond rather than react. But you get to choose how you're going to be in this life. It might be the only power you have. And you get to choose how you're going to advocate and how you're going to deal with asking and how you're going to deal with conflict. And whether you're going to— there's 2 ways to have the biggest building in town. You can knock them all down or build your own. That's a choice. And so for me, elegance is the choice that I make every day to advocate in a way that I can be proud of and look at myself in the mirror at the end of the day.

That's just beautiful. Your latest book is Advocate to Win. I want to get into that as well. My latest book is called Change Proof, which is a book about resilience, leveraging the power of uncertainty to build resilience is the through line of it. And the book before that was called Pivot. So I wanna ask you about your pivot story because you didn't go from that defense attorney working, God knows, we won't even say how many hours we ultimately put in those days. But what's the story? What's the pivot story of you going from full-time defense attorney in the work to the work you're doing currently?

It's really interesting. So that moment in the emergency room was where the pivot began. They say leap and the net will appear. That's not the way I did it. I did it. I had heard early in my career a Lee Iacocca quote where he said that every few years, you should replant yourself. And I wanted to do that, but I was afraid. So I say, like, I was— instead of leaping, I was creeping. Like, I started doing more and more of the other things that I wanted to do and asking for more and more support at the same time. So I started doing more and more television, which brought me to New York more and more. I loved being in Manhattan. I was living in Philadelphia. So, I got an apartment in Manhattan, but still had my apartment in Philadelphia, and was doing more TV. And then I started doing the work. I wrote The Elegant Warrior while I was still a full-time attorney, but I was cutting back on my cases. So, it was very much like creeping from one pot to another rather than leaping from one pot to another. Until ultimately, I am still at my firm. I still have— I am still a partner there. I still have my finger in a few cases. But the majority of my time is spent training and teaching and sharing the ideas of advocacy and how to advocate for yourself and your client and your teams. So it wasn't this— it wasn't a very drastic pivot. It was over time. And for me, that allowed me to— it wasn't as sexy, but it allowed me to feel comfortable that I could take care of myself, that I was financially going to be okay, that I wasn't leaving my clients in the lurch, that I would still be there for them. And I was still able to do all the things that I wanted to do. And some of that takes even now I'm writing a novel, and I get up and first thing in the morning I've promised myself that I'll write every day. And so you do have to prioritize when you're going to do multiple things. But for me, it to have multiple outlets for my creativity and for my energy.

We're so simpatico; it's just ridiculous. I didn't. I wasn't. I'm not a jump ship guy. I wasn't going to leave my clients in the lurch or create. some really heightened insecurity on the part of, of our family financially or whatever. Yeah. The pivot for me was not about tearing down a bridge. It was about building another bridge. And it sounds like you're able to travel over those 2 bridges together now, and you didn't even have to ever tear down the first one. You just changed it. And those are great pivots. That's an el— I would use your word for that, Heather. That's an elegant pivot. Yeah. Because so often it is that people think in, in terms of either or, which is Someone once shared with me very much scarcity-based thinking, this idea of it's either this or it's that. And when you can apply the theory and in practice that it's both, and that's what you've created is a both world, that's really elegant.

Thank you. I take that as a huge compliment. And I do think that when we try to break things down into good and bad, left and right, red and blue, all of those things, that duality doesn't serve us. And so the more that we can recognize that it's always and all the places where it And I think that it does serve. And I also understand that for some people— I was listening, Steve Harvey was on a podcast, and I love Steve Harvey. I think he's funny. And for him, he said, I couldn't have an option B because I would have had to put some energy into option B, and I was always going all in on option A. And I get that. That makes sense to me. Mm-hmm. I think that for some of the listeners, you might be that kind of a personality. For me, it was more making sure that I had my bases covered and that things were covered. And that worked for me. But I think that some people do need to leap in order to go all in, and I understand that as well.

Yeah. It's the burning the ships. There's a chapter in here. I talk about the sunk cost fallacy and, you know, burning the ships as a, as a commitment device, which people know, right? Yeah. So some, for, this is so individualized. If you are the kind of person that has to burn the ships in order to do something new, then by all means, burn the It's your life, as you said. Yeah.

And you have to know yourself and you have to be willing to like iterate and see, and then go back and say, that didn't work. And maybe if I try it this way. And so it takes something that I'm terrible at, Adam. It takes patience.

Oh my God. You again, just kin now. We're just like literally, yeah. I've learned, I've had to learn patience. I'm much more patient than I used to be. That's kids will do that, I think. And, and other things. But, but I want to, I want to say that there's a There's a through line for me. I wanna see if it's the same for you. In the book Pivot, which is all about this idea of how you reinvent, or as Lee Iacocca said, how you replant yourself. That could have been a, a great endorsement. I'm gonna go back now and do that again. Yeah. We're on the second edition of this thing, but it's really art and science of reinvention, personal and career-wise. And there's a chapter in the book about resilience. This latest book for me is called Change Proof. It's really more about the concept of resilience. That's what, when I'm asked to speak more often than Not today. My keynote speaking is either resilience keynote speaking, or it's work-life balance keynote speaking, or it's mental health or stress management. Those are the kinda areas of wellbeingness in the workplace that I get asked to come in and talk about. But in, in my life, what I realize is that the book is not a book about pivoting with a chapter about resilience. The book, for me, my life story is a book of resilience that has a chapter it about pivoting. I want to find out about what resilience looks like for you, how important it is. How is it that you've developed it? Did you— were you born with it? Are you strengthening it? Like, give us your chapter and verse if you could, Heather, about resilience.

I don't think that I was— well, I don't know. Was I born with it? I'm not sure. But I know that it is something that I have had to work as a muscle and grow, and I have grown it. I was lucky enough to be about 100 pounds overweight when I was in high school. And I say lucky enough without any hyperbole or sarcasm there because I was able— I lost that weight when I was in college. And I think it took resilience to be that heavy in high school. It's hard. Kids are— it's tough. And just not to be going to prom and all of those things, that was tough. But it took resilience to get up and be happy and go through my days and not allow it to beat me down. And having lost the weight allowed me to gain a whole lot of credibility in myself and belief in myself that I could do hard things, which then made me more resilient so that it wasn't just the suffering, the hard part of going through the worst of it, but also having overcome it. Both sides gave me resilience. And those things have continued to happen in my life and they will continue to happen. One thing I know for sure is life is 50/50. There are always going to be those bad parts that make it seem like I don't want to get up tomorrow, and then there's going to be that part of me that is resilient, that is going to get up tomorrow and figure out a way to figure out the problems. So I think that the resilience is inherent, and I worked it like a muscle.

Yeah, that resonates really well for me. It's fitting with any of the sports kind of analogies that we've even talked about earlier—that performance—you have to perform resilience, which means you have to all performance. As I was reminded in a. I have a book of daily readings that, that I check out every morning from Emmet Fox, which is a really, really cool metaphysician that's been gone a long time, but his work remains, which is lovely. And he was talking about proficiency, that to be proficient in anything, it requires practice. So why shouldn't something like being resilient be a thing you practice so that you can perform it when it's needed? That's the thing. Our research— we've done a lot of research on that topic of resilience. Yeah. The one thing that's clear is that you have to, you have to develop it before you need it. People want to be resilient, but only when there's a crisis, right? Then when it's hitting the fan, that's when they want to count on their resilience. They want to count on their faith. They want to count on other people when it's chaos. But the time to be developing the network of people you can count on and your faith and your resiliency is before you actually are required to have it. Does that also seem to be true for you?

Absolutely. And it resonates so thoroughly. Think these words that we use, resilience, advocacy. We use these words and people throw out these words all over the place, but they're both skills. Resilience is a skill. You have to learn how to do it. You don't just wake up resilient. And with your teaching, with your help, people can figure out what tools are gonna help me to be more resilient when this stuff happens. How am I going to focus on this and work on this and build and grow this skill. And then it takes practice. It's not enough just to learn it from Adam, though you need that foundation in order to do the thing, but it takes practice. And advocating is the same way. It is a skill. There are specific tools that you can use to get better at it, and it takes practice. So I think that both of these— resilience is most certainly something that is a skill that entails tools. There are specific tools you can use to be more resilient, and then you have got to practice it. And I would suspect That you would encourage people to look for ways to practice it so that when the big thing happens, they're not just knocked off their feet.

Exactly. One of the ways that I practice is through reading, and you and I have this in common as well. We love words. We're word people. We're lifelong learners. I'm looking at you and I'm going, you're so a lifelong learner. I want to ask you, this is a final question here, and by the way, just parenthetically, I want to tell everybody Because maybe it's their first episode listening. We have full show notes, and in those show notes, you can get not only to areas of this conversation that you might wanna share with other people or you wanna relisten to, et cetera, but you'll find more information about Heather's books so that you can click on links and simply be able to get access to books that I think are a big part of this. In fact, this Advocate to Win, when we think about how it is you advocate for yourself, so I'm gonna click and get a copy of this book as well. Is that a book that people can use as a tool to practice what we've been talking about today?

Yes. In fact, there's 10— the subtitle is 10 Tools to Ask for What You Want and Get It. And there's 10 tools. There are some of the things we've talked about today. One of the tools is credibility. One is evidence. One is perspective. One is questions. One is negotiation. One is argument. One is presentation, facial expressions, body language, all of that. So, yes, that book is the tools. It's your tool chest. If you want to get out there and start advocating for yourself tomorrow, you can pick up one of those tools today.

Terrific. And you guys also can just go straight to Amazon, of course. I wanna ask you this question as a way for us to bring our conversation to a pause, not to a— an end, 'cause I, I really wanna continue with you on another show. So, skill and practice. There's this really wonderful relationship between these 2 things. To develop skills, you have to practice. There's no shortcut that I'm aware of. I don't care who you're talking about. Let's go back to LeBron James. I dissed him a little earlier, so I'm gonna say something else now, which is that for him to become as great as he is and has been, The only way that he got there, in addition to his natural skills and talents and his parents and whatever else supported him along the way, he has practiced tirelessly to become one of, if not the greatest in his sport. That's a fact. So I want to know what one skill, one skill, Heather, you practice on a routine basis, whether it's to develop your resilience, to develop your self-advocacy, or anything else that's super important to you, like even your spiritual What's one skill that you practice on a regular, even daily basis?

It is something that encompasses everything you just mentioned. I have a very strong spiritual life, and this is part of that. It's perspective-taking. It's the ability to see things from different perspectives. I challenge myself to do that. I think that it is key to being a strong advocate, to being a resilient person, and it allows you— your spirituality supports it, and it allows you to step further into your spirituality. So what one example of this is, is anytime that I have something going wrong in my life, I will challenge myself, specifically a conflict with someone else. I'll challenge myself to say, okay, where am I the victim here? And I can pretty easily tell the story of where I'm the victim when I'm in a conflict, right?

Yeah.

But now I make myself tell the story, where am I the villain? And I will actually write it out as if it's a short story where these are all the villainous things that Heather did and her evil laugh as she did this specific And then I'll write it out again as if I'm the victor. And I— it allows me to see that there's always another perspective, and there's probably more that I could write out. But just doing that gives me the skill of seeing things from different perspectives. I also think that I got very good at this as a trial attorney because I always had to see the case from the other side in order to defend against it. Yes. And so, I started to recognize how important it was and how practice made you better at it. And so, now it's something that I really do try to practice. practice every day, and I do it for myself and say to myself, how does Source see this? I call it God. Some people call it love, the universe, whatever. But how would— how does God see this person? What's a different perspective? And what's the biggest perspective, the best perspective? And that's a challenge that I give myself that really seems to support me in being resilient, being a strong advocate, being a better human.

Just love that thinking. Right thinking would be the word that I— that term right thinking in and perspective to me are so synonymous. And I feel like we should be cueing. So here to the post-production folks, cue the Both Sides Now version of Joni Mitchell's great classic.

That's exactly it. That's exactly it. Great song.

Awesome. Heather, I have so loved this conversation, and, and I know other people for sure have, and they'll be advocating for themselves and for others more effectively because Because we got to talk today. So

thank you. I hope so. I've been so excited about this. I love your podcast. You're doing great work. And so thank you for having me.

Thank you. Okay, everybody out there, of course we want other people to enjoy this. Just so how do we do that? For one thing, if you wanna write to us and let us know what it meant to you, go to adamarkel.com/podcast, leave a comment. I'll be the one to return that message. It won't be a bot or another person. It's me. So thank you for doing that. Of course, the algorithm, I don't know how it works. I'll be vulnerable. I have no clue how it works. I don't know if anybody does. But the mothership knows how or is programmed to know how. So it's simple. If you leave us a rating of 5 stars, other people will get access to this because it'll just magically appear in their feed or whatever the whole thing is. So we appreciate that. Self-serving, but we so appreciate it. And lastly, if you've not gotten your own resilience assessment, if you haven't figured out in this moment, in snapshot in time, how resilient you are right now, mentally, emotionally, physically, And very much on point with what Heather said, spiritually speaking, whatever that means to you, you can simply go to rankmyresilience.com and get your free assessment. Takes just 3 minutes, which is way cool as well. Heather, thank you again so much for your time today.

Thank you, Adam. It was my pleasure.

Well, that was so enjoyable. Heather Hansen is— she's a superstar. I, I just could listen to her and, and speak to her all day long. So perhaps we'll have her back again, but I just gotta say, I got so much value out of The conversation I was able to be a part of. I hope you got tremendous value, and I want to summarize a couple of things that I think really, really stood out and things that I'm going to continue to noodle on. She talked a lot about how it is that we own what is in our lives, to understand that owning it, the ability not so much to be vulnerable, even though vulnerability is kind of baked into it, and I'm not saying anything against that, that particular term, but I think it's used a lot and we've heard a lot about it. Maybe it's been watered down or diluted in some way by just how often the word gets thrown around. I really loved how Heather framed that. I won't say even reframed it, but she gave us some, some more texture, if you will. She talked about having to— when you own things, when you're transparent about things and you own them, what happens is that you develop credibility with It heightens credibility. And I think that's ultimately in a business context, the way in which we could look at being more transparent in more cases. I don't want to say in every single case, you know, I'm not suggesting or advocating that we walk around sharing, you know, TMI and things, wearing our hearts on our sleeves in ways that aren't actually beneficial. And again, this is a fine line to understand this, but I think we also, that's one extreme doing that. And the other extreme I think more prevalent in that is that people walk around more guarded. I know that's certainly been the case for me, and it's been a work in progress for me to not be on guard. I did a whole TED Talk about the concept of being on guard and where that comes from and how my occupation at the time as an attorney only helped me to live more into that on-guardedness. And the idea that when we're guarded in that way, when we're on guard so frequently, when we're protecting and defending and even creating sort of this impensiveness, impenetrable outer layer, this facade, as it is in some cases too. It is exhausting, to put it mildly. It's depleting when we main— have to maintain that, that security system. We already have a, a 24-hour ADT security system baked into our reptilian brains anyway. So we're already, you know, built for that. But we add these other layers of guardedness, and it's no wonder that we're walking around with a constant cocktail of cortisol coursing through our veins. Yes, that was a lot of Cs, and I like that alliteration. That was fun. I wanna add one other layer to this too, which is that when we are willing to be transparent and we own things, that as we do that, we develop credibility as, as Heather should suggest it. And then from that credibility comes trust, which is the most important thing in any relationship, whether it's a professional relationship or, or it's more personal in nature. I love this discussion we had today about the framing and the reframing, if you will, of the word vulnerability and authenticity and, and things of that I also just loved her pivot story and the way that she talked about pivoting from a different vantage point than a lot of people sometimes think. She didn't quit her job. She didn't quit lawyering, as, you know, many people do. I retired from the practice of law, but I did it slowly. And it was this idea that she shared about Lee Iacocca saying, you know, the goal of all leadership should be that you replant yourself regularly. And I thought, that's great. She said, well, That's like creeping for her was creeping, not leaping. And I'm also same thing. Am I saying I'm a creep? I'm a creeper. Oh my God. Creeper, not a leaper. In the book Pivot, I wrote about creating a plan B and how it is that you create this plan B while your plan A is still operative. Still think that's the, the, the best pivot method I know is to design the, the, the pivot, design your, your change before Change designs for you before the universe designs your change for you. I'd rather be by design than, than by default, if you will. And so often it is, we have to choose change before it chooses us. That's a phrase right out of the book Change Proof on that same, very same topic. So we got to talk about that and how it is that you navigate this, you know, building this plan B or building this second bridge, not burning the first one, not destroying the first one. And we talk about the fact that, you know, for some Burning the bridge or, or, uh, you know, other commitment devices that leave you no, no room for retreat. They're effective. They can be effective, just not the way this particular control freak wants to do it. And maybe you're like me and maybe that's a thing for you too. So slow, the slower process, uh, can, can offer some, uh, some greater certainty, uh, and stability and all that kind of thing. So, uh, so that was wonderful. We talked about a lot of different books. We mentioned the book Chatter. We mentioned how it is that you can advocate to win and what that looks like. That actually is Heather's book. In addition to The Elegant Warrior, she wrote a book called Advocate to Win. That's her latest book, in fact. So I just got so much out of this conversation, including the definition of abracadabra. I don't know if, if that really struck you or if you wrote that down, but abracadabra means I I create as I speak. And I think that is just so on point with both my own spiritual beliefs as well as what, what my own code of conduct leads me and directs me each and every day. I create as I speak. I create as I think and I speak. Abracadabra is a great anchor for that concept. I also left Heather with one question at the end, just one question. What's What's the one skill that you practice daily? I want to ask you all that question now. What is the one skill that you practice daily? You can leave your answer to that question in our comment section, adamarkel.com/podcast. Leave the answer to the question. What's the one skill that you practice daily? If you've also not yet found out how resilient you are in this very moment, it's a snapshot away, just 3 minutes by going to resiliencerank.com, resiliencerank.com, and in 3 minutes— 3 minutes. 2 minutes even. 16 questions later, you're gonna get a snapshot in time of how resilient you are mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually. These 4 important realms of resilience, they change sometimes a little bit here and there on a daily basis, but over periods of weeks and months and even years, they can change pretty dramatically, which is the work that we do in the world. We have used this now with more than 5,000 business leaders globally. If you would like to have your team take the assessment or even perhaps look at your entire organization taking the assessment, getting reevaluated on a quarterly yearly basis with some wonderful things in between. You know, this is a wonderful conversation that we can have, and certainly you can reach out to us and we'll be happy to meet you where you are there. You can just email team@adammarkel.com, team@adammarkel.com, if you want to find out a little bit more about how to deploy the, what we call the RLA, the Resilient Leader Assessment, on behalf of your teams or even perhaps a wider audience across function or geography in your organization. With that, wish you a wonderful rest of your day, your evening, wherever I'm finding you at this Make it a beautiful and a blessed one, and I'll see you soon.

Ciao. Thanks for listening. We hope you now have even more tools and greater insights to build resilience and become change-proof. Remember to leave a review on Apple Podcasts and you may be featured in an upcoming episode. For more resilience tips and strategies, including support for building change-proof teams, visit adammarkel.com. Markel.com. To get your own free resilience assessment, go to rankmyresilience.com.