Learn how to speak more powerfully - and achieve what you long for

The first is to share a heartfelt research based experience, related information, tips, support strategies, solutions, all to help you dig deep, discover your right work and illuminate the world with it. That's my world, that's my passion and that's what I focus on in my courses and private coaching and speaking and keynotes and teaching. And you will hear this term an awful lot going forward. The latest passion and focus I have is on how to help you brave up. And by that I mean this. And I explained this a little last week, but I'll talk about it every time. I truly realize that and have experienced this and in working with so many people, I see this every day. That we are not brave enough yet. We are not brave enough. We've forgotten how to be brave and what it feels like and how to soldier through. And I really mean that. Soldier through the challenges that we face to see bravely, speak bravely, ask bravely, connect bravely, and serve bravely. Those are the top five ways. There are 10 more that I'm working on in a book and when we are able to do these 10 powerful brave up actions. But they're also mindsets, they're behaviors, they're the way we think. They reflect our language. When we're able to do that, that's when we pave the way to build a life and career that we long for. And I really am seeing that. The reality is we're not brave enough yet. And we've forgotten how. When we were little, we were brave every minute of the day. We were brave to go make a new friend. We were brave to draw a tree. We were brave to ride our bikes for the first time. We were brave every minute because that's what growth was and we knew it. But as adults, it's kind of gotten either beaten out of us or culturally trained out of us or we've had some trauma. When we've braved up. I had someone say to me, I don't like this brave up thing because when I brave up, then I get some tough consequences. Yeah, that's the part of that's braving up not only being brave one minute, but dealing with the consequences and the repercussions of being brave. So that's what I want to talk about because I've seen that when we can be brave, life changes and sometimes overnight. So today I want to talk about speaking bravely and let me talk about three aspects of that. And again, I would love your live questions. I'm a coach. I'm a trained therapist. This is what I love to do. So type in your questions. Ask me if you don't understand something I'm saying. If you challenge something I'm saying, if you think, no, I'm scared, I don't know how to do this. And what do you mean by this? Ask your questions, type them in, and I will do my best to answer them. Okay. All right. So. So let me talk about speaking bravely. The very first thing about that is. And it also relates to seeing yourself bravely. But you can't speak powerfully, confidently, authoritatively, compellingly, engagingly if you don't know what you're saying and if you don't believe what you're saying. So let's even talk about seeing yourself and speaking about yourself. I would be a millionaire many times over if I had a penny for every time a person, a woman has said to me. I feel like when I speak well of myself or glowingly about myself, I'm bragging or boasting. Those are the words that I hear. I will hear it from CEOs, I'll hear it from millionaires, I'll hear it from entrepreneurial women, I'll hear it from executives, I'll hear it from leaders. And they say, ew, that just feels uncomfortable for me to talk about my achievements or my gifts and talents. So I want to share with you my take on this after being exactly that same way and overcoming it. If you don't know how to speak about yourself glowingly, if you don't know what your special accomplishments and gifts and talents are, no one else will. And it does not have to be bragging. I really want this message to get through. It's not bragging to speak well of yourself. And I want to give you some examples and I want to give you some resources as well. So I think I've mentioned this before, but I have a career path assessment. It's 11 pages of questions I wish someone had asked me 30 years ago or that I had asked myself because if I had, I would not have made the really serious, sorry, there's my phone. Life mistakes that I made. So what Absolutely blows me away. And it happened yesterday, it happened this morning, it happened last week. It happens all the time. That in the questions about what are you gifted at in the career path assessment, if you wanted to, I hope you will take it. Go to Kathy Caprino.com free assessment. Take it. No, it doesn't give you a score. It helps you understand yourself better than you do now. And this is essential before you make any move Whatsoever. So it asks, what are your talents? What are your amazing gifts? What are you known for? I can't tell you how many people either leave it blank, completely blank, question mark. Or they will write really generic stuff like, I'm funny, I listen well. Right? Which pertains to literally billions of people on this planet. So take the assessment and sit with yourself for a weekend and go deeper than that. You have to begin to know what you're amazing at. And so we talked about that last time and there are ways to do it. Listen to my last week's video. You can ask people, you can ask for testimonials. You can talk to friends and loved ones. What do you see in me that's special? Why do you love me? Why do you like me? Why do you like to hang out with me? How am I different from other people? You must be able to answer that question. All right, now we're talking today about speaking. You have to be able to speak powerfully about how you're great and how what you're doing is important and positive and contributive. So I want to give you a real example of this because I think it illustrates how to do it. So here's the personal example. When someone comes to me, calls me, writes me and says, you know, I'm really interested in working with you or taking your course or, you know, doing a coaching program with you, and let's say they say, you know, what might be a difference in you and another coach? What makes you different? I know the answer to that question and I'm going to tell it to you. And this is not promotion. This is for you to have a model for how to do this for yourself. So when I look at. All right, how am I different from other career coaches? What makes my work, my courses different? This is. This is it. Here it is. Number one, I had an 18 year corporate career and I understand and have lived the challenges of being a high level professional woman. You know, I rose to vice president and I lived with all those challenges. Number two, I'm a trained therapist, so I'm able to see. I have a lens inside into your life in a way that other people don't. I can see things and feel things pretty much five minutes into talking that reveal where you shine and also where you're a little broken down. All right? I call them power gaps. I can feel where people have power gaps and I have a lot of training in that. Number three, I have focused on professional women for 11 years. I have studied them. I've done surveys. Thousands upon thousands of people have taken my survey. 10,000 people have taken my career success readiness quiz. 6,000 have taken my dominant action style quiz. I hope you take all those. I really believe that I understand women vis a vis the working world better than most people on the planet because I've had so many challenges and researched through them and figured out what to do differently. I've written a book on women, Breakdown breakthrough on the 12 hidden crises working women face. And also I'm an entrepreneur, which has required me to brave up in a way that I never could have dreamed of as a corporate professional. Right. So those are what I feel stands me apart from other coaches. Now, I would ask you this. Does that sound like I'm bragging? Type it in. Anybody who's in. Yes. No, I don't feel it's bragging. And I'll tell you why I feel it's fact. I got a master's in therapy. I am trained as a therapist. I'm trained as an energy healer. I wrote a book, do research. These are facts, and I believe you know, they're not stories made up. I believe these facts. I believe in the reality and the power of those statistics and facts. So when I share them, I don't feel like I'm bragging. I feel like I'm telling you, sharing a factual account of what I do and how I'm different. So I would ask you to try this on. What are the facts about who you are? What are the facts about how you've contributed? And what I want you to think about is in every role you've played in your family, as a manager, as a leader, as an entrepreneur, in your nonprofit, in your volunteer work, in your hobbies, how have you approached them? How do you operate in the world in a way that's taken different from anyone else? And you know, the reality is, I know that you're different from everybody else. Every single person on the planet. Why? There is no one that has your literal fingerprint or your mind print or your energy print. You are a special, amazing, unique amalgam of everything that's happened to you. You know, your parents, your narcissistic mother, your amazing achievement as a runner, you, your bout with cancer, everything that you've experienced makes you you. And that's why when you put it together in your special way, no one can be like you. You need to know how you're different. And then you need to start speaking about it. So let's get over the boat. Bragging and boasting this is not, wow, look at me, I'm the best. This is. Here's what I have to offer. Here's how I do it differently. Here's why I do it differently. You know, when I talk about why I give these courses or speak or write and write on Forbes, it all comes from the one thing that I had, an 18 year corporate career and I struggled and I couldn't figure out why I struggled and I struggled badly. And I was educated and smart and talented and committed and willing, but I couldn't figure out these challenges from that one. All of this has come. What's your one thing? What's the thing that has made you you? You know, in my career path assessment, there's a question, share with me a pivotal moment, either in your mind, positive or negative, that changed everything for you. Wow. The responses to these are amazing. From a fight I had in middle school, that's a pivotal moment. To my wife leaving me to. I got promoted to run an international division and was scared to death. Great things, things that people perceive are traumas. I lost my mother and father in a car accident. They're powerful. The point is, what makes you you? What makes you you? And then we start speaking about it. Okay? It's not bragging and it's not boasting. It's sharing with the world who you are and the light of who you are. All right, I want to talk to you about the issue of that. This is fact. This is not a guess. This is not a hypothesis. This is fact. Many women who are forceful in our society are punished. There's research study after research study that validates and proves this. And I have lived this. You know, I just did a little photo image about this. Check it out. It's on this page that I am sick and tired of women being called bitches. I'm gonna say that word when they're being forceful, when a man would do the same thing and be applauded for it. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of it. I lived it. I, you know, I have a story for you. I've been called that a bitch. But, you know, even in a positive way before that, I had a boss who said, wow, you're like a buzzsaw. And I said, ooh, what do you mean? I'm not sure that that's what I want to be. He said, no, no, no. You cut through where no one else can get stuff done, you get it done. And he was praising me for that. So that wasn't a bias thing. He loved it. The problem was, and this is not a gender thing. This is my personal way I did it. I left body parts in my wake. Body parts. Anybody resonate with that? If I were on the zoom platform, I'd ask you to raise your hand, but maybe you can say yes or type something in so I know you're listening and it resonates. It's not good to leave body parts because you burn bridges and you hurt people. It's not good. Let me tell you, it's not good. So I'm loving this little piece. This is distracting me. So I want to tell you, I interviewed in my Forbes blog. Check it out. Career bliss. Two behavioral scientists. And they had. They did a shocking study. Check this out. You can just Google it by looking at gender bias, Caprino, Forbes, and you'll find it. What they did was they produced a video with actors, a female actor and a male actor. They were both saying exactly the same words. They were in a meeting and they were indicating that they did not agree with the direction that was being proposed. And they showed it to thousands of people. And you can read it. I don't have the statistics in front of me, but it turns out when a woman is forceful, as she was, her perceived competency drops enormously, as does her perceived value, the dollar amount she should make. Now, interestingly, the man's perceived value goes down, but not nearly to the extent the woman's does. So being forceful to people is a negative. People perceive that negatively. But when a woman does it, she's punished. I mean, I've worked with, as I said, Over 10,000 women and many have said this, that they feel punished when they speak forcefully. And what the behavioral scientists talk about is they tested. Is there anything that can be done that mitigates that negative impact? And what they found was when you say, when you share your intent for why you're about to share a forceful comment, the negative impact is reduced. What they talked about was if you say something like integrity and honesty is very important to me. And that's why I'm going to share with you honestly what I feel about this. And then when both men and women share their perhaps negative response, the impact isn't as negative or punitive. I would go a step further, and this is my tip. This is what I've seen, and I've seen this in the best orators, the best speakers, the most powerful, engaging thought leaders. This is what I think has to happen. I believe that you can say anything if you say it with love, care and Compassion in your heart. And this may sound like a feminine trait. I believe men can do this equally well, and I've seen men do it equally well. If you even look at Martin Luther King, he is taking on an incredibly hateful situation. But he doesn't address it with hate. He doesn't condemn, he doesn't use language of hate, he doesn't tear down. Right? He uplifts. When you listen to him and any other great speaker, you are uplifted. You're not full of hate and rage. So what I would suggest, to be forceful and not to be negatively punished and judged. Take out condemnation, take out the hatred. You know, I used to do market research and there was a woman, Ann Dobbs, who I learned so much from, really a huge mentor of mine. And in every focus group, she would start the group and say, okay, these are the ground rules. Every idea has value. Every idea has value. There is no cutting down of other people here. I won't allow it. If you want to build on an idea, say, ah, thank you, Michelle. Thank you so much for being here. If you want to build on an idea, build on it. Say, thank you, Fred. I appreciate that idea. I would like to build on that. I think that's absolutely beautiful. And what I want to encourage folks to think is literally every idea has value. You may think it's the worst idea in the world. You may violently oppose it. You may think it's hateful and odious and hurtful. I mean, look at what's going on in our society today on the political platform. I got a lot of thoughts about what's going on, right? And there's so much hate and hate bubbles up. If a world power like us reveals hate in our language, in the way we treat people, hate will bubble up in other parts of the world. It's just the way it is. So what I recommend is when you're going to be forceful, take away the hate, take away the condemnation, don't try to tear down. Understand that every idea has value. Even if it's the most odious idea to you, it has value because it incited you to be forceful. It incited you to do something that means that idea had value. When you do this, I believe that you will be able to speak more engagingly, more powerfully. You will generate supporters and a tribe of people that love what you have to say because you uplift them and you don't tear down other people on the way up. There it is, folks. So please, I would ask you to leave this video with one Idea. The world needs your talents. The world needs your gifts. And the world needs to know what those gifts are in order for opportunities to come your way. For the universe to give you open doors and opportunities for you to shine that light. But first, you got to dig deep and discover who you are and what your amazing talents and gifts are, and then start speaking about them. All right, anybody have any questions? I've got 11 people on. I think I would love to answer some questions. I got five minutes. Anybody have anything? You know, people, People say, oh, I love the likes. Thank you. In my talks. Let me share this. I just did a talk in Southern California and it was amazing. And we were talking, among other things. It was a two hour workshop on the power of networking. And I gotta say, I gotta tell you, I'm not loving the word networking anymore. I find it cold, sterile. I don't even, I don't even want to use it anymore. Although I, you know, my dear friend Judy Robinette wrote an incredible book about networking. It's called how to Be a Power Connector. But see, she doesn't even use the word for the title. Networking. I think it's connecting. Connecting from your heart, your spirit. But people call it networking, meeting new people, meeting strangers, you know, and talking about going to meetups and industry associations, going on LinkedIn and talking to people, strangers. And I said to the audience, okay, who here has a real hard time with that? And who, who has a hard time speaking about themselves in, in a way that's glowing? And this lovely woman stood up and I said, would you mind sharing a bit of your story? And she said, I don't think I'm a not confident person. I just, I'm really not comfortable speaking positively about what I've done or my accomplishments. So, you know, the feeling that rose up in me was there's something from childhood here, and sometimes I'll get, often I'll get feelings. And I said, what did your parents say to you? Did they suppress you? Did they, did they say negative things? She said, no, not at all. I had wonderfully supportive parents, so that wasn't it. And I said, okay, tell me this. As a child, were you free to talk lovingly or was there someone that would get upset about that? And the answer was, there was a sibling that would get jealous, a sibling that was struggling, and that sibling would. Would find it hard. And what happened was the whole ecosystem of the family subconsciously told this woman or let her know or gave her the impression, don't shine too brightly. It's going to upset your sibling. How many people have had that? How many people have had that? Thousands. Millions. So we do have to do a little internal work on ourselves. Peel the onion. Peel the onion. Peel the onion. If it's not comfortable for you to speak up, why was there suppression? Speak up about yourself. Speak up forcefully. Speak up about your ideas. Many people I'm working with now are children of narcissists, adult children of narcissists. I have a Facebook group thriving after narcissism. Join it. We have free monthly webinars about all of these issues about narcissism. But even if you were raised around another kind of emotional manipulator, often you couldn't speak your truth. You couldn't speak up. So I'd ask you to think about what could be holding you back. If you're not comfortable speaking about yourself glowingly, there's a reason. And the quicker we can help you get to the bottom, the quicker you can start sharing your light, because the world needs you to. I hope that's helpful. Let me look. Are there any questions? Oh, thank you. Thank. Thank you for joining me, Cheryl. And thank you, Michelle. Appreciate it. So again, folks, join me Tuesdays at noon. I'm going to do that as much as I can. Love. I love seeing those. Those are so nice. It's nice to spend to people and not just speak into a video camera. You know, I've done some TV where you're literally speaking directly to a camera and there's no one there, but you're having to act like there is. It's crazy hard. So thank you. Now what do we have? And Patty, thank you for joining. Oh, I'm glad you found it moving. I really do appreciate that. I believe in this work. I am so passionate about helping people brave up because I wasted 18 years and didn't brave up. You'll hear this in my TED Talk. I did think I was brave. I did think I was confident. I did think I was assertive. But I wasn't. And so wasting that amount of time hurts. And I hope that all of you will not waste one more minute. Okay, Michelle, I'm going to answer your question. And about that not wasting your time, go to Kathy Caprino.com timetoshine and watch a quick video. I wrote it and I still cry, so I hope it moves you too. All right, we got a question. Michelle, how would you suggest starting the process? Oh, starting the process of speaking? No, I wouldn't jump to Toastmasters right away. Tons of people have told me they found it incredibly helpful. But I would take an internal step first. Figure out what you want to talk about. Figure out the topic that you want to share that excites you, that engages you, that makes you mad. Right. Did you watch the debate yesterday and something that was said makes you want to scream or want to jump for joy? What do you want to talk about? Write it out. You know, let me give you this tip as I'm writing my ted talk. It's 18 minutes and Ted Talks are designed to be short, powerful, compelling, with a lot of takeaways. Wow. Shorter talks are hard. They're hard because you gotta, as we say as writers, you gotta kill your babies, kill your darlings. Because the things that you think are so fantastic sometimes are just not even that useful to share. So write it out. Pretend that you are about to do a TED Talk. Write out an 18 minute talk. Or, you know, it depends, Michelle, on what kind of talking you want to do. Are we talking about I just want to be able to talk about myself or I do want to be a public speaker and I want to be a motivational speaker. Start with writing your own talk and then give it. Do a Facebook live. Do this. It's crazy, right? The first time I ever was on television, I did not want to watch that clip. And I waited about three days. I was scared to death. I don't want to see myself on television. Oh, but I did. And I saw what I didn't like. I saw what I never wanted to do again. I saw how some language I used was powerful. Others wasn't. Others weren't. So that's how I would begin. First, you know, do the exercises I shared. Take my career path assessment, know how you're amazing and start speaking about that. Oh, and put that on LinkedIn. I can read a person's LinkedIn profile and in about three minutes. I know so much more about you than you know I know about you. Most people don't know how to speak powerfully on LinkedIn. Let me give you a tip. Do not use your headline as your job title. Aren't you much more than your job? Much more than your job? So start there. I hope that's helpful. Thanks. I love having questions to answer. Anybody else? Anybody else have a question? All right, my friends, I so appreciate you being here. These are all, of course, going to be posted on my timeline here, so I hope it's helpful. And join me next Tuesday at noon Eastern. I can't wait to see you. Aw. Connie. Connie. My friend Connie from millions of years ago. High school. Connie, thank you for being here. And I think it's so inspiring what you're doing. You reinvented yourself. And listen, everybody. Share who you are on my page. Say hi, introduce yourself, and if narcissism speaks to you, join my Thriving After Narcissism Facebook group. Also, I hope you'll check out my weekly podcast with Maureen Mo Fall called Best Work, Best Life. And you can find that@kathyandmo.com and join that Facebook group. It's all about the Facebook. And that is Kathy and Mo. That's a group called Kathy and Mo. And I hope you'll follow me on LinkedIn too, and check out my Forbes blogs. Okay, everybody, love ya. See you next week. Thanks for coming. Bye. Bye.