Advocate for Yourself - Highlight Reel

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When you think about self advocacy, what does that mean for you?

So, yeah, so self advocacy is very plain and simply teaching people how to treat you. That's what self advocacy is. It's teaching them, I am Sabine, and this is how you need to treat me. That means setting boundaries, setting expectations, helping them understand what it is you need, helping them understand what your requirements are, what kind of support you're going to need in order to perform effectively at work, for example. So it's, you know, communicating those things and helping them understand that you as the bean, how should they be supporting you? So it's really self advocacy is teaching people how to treat you.

So self advocacy simply means that you are expressing, explicitly saying, asking for what you want in your career. And that can look like asking for a promotion, that can look like saying hard things, sending a tough email where you have to express opposing opinion or even deliver bad news by saying no.

And so it seems kind of obvious, right? If there's something that you want or a barrier or boundary that you want to set, you should let somebody know, just say it, right? And so it seems simple, but there's something that often holds people back. And so in your experience as a coach, what are those things that hold people back from engaging in this self advocacy at work?

So I specialize in working with smart women, and I have seen that for many smart women. And I know this also happens for men too. Women are not alone in this, but it's just that my specialty is coaching women. Women often over commit, over deliver, under, communicate their wants and wins. And it feels comfortable in a certain way, in a certain familiar way that under communicating their wants and wins feels comfortable and familiar, but in the long run, it doesn't create the result that they want in their career. And the reason for this is really simple. Just like it's like negotiation, right? In that it feels uncomfortable, right? So in the parlance, or in the negotiation world, we call this anchoring, right? Telling people what you want and it feels like you might die.

You're right.

You're right. It's so funny, Jamie, that you say that, because in my book I talk about that fear of rejection that people have. And so when you think about the fear of rejection from an evolutionary psychology perspective, it becomes really fascinating because when you think about it today, if we're rejected, if we make a request and somebody says no, life goes on. In the majority of cases, everything goes swimmingly the rest of your day, nothing bad really happens. You just take that loss and then you can move on in the majority of cases. But then if you think about early humans, back when we were in tribes for survival, social rejection meant death because you could not survive by yourself. And so the humans that had that fear of rejection were more likely to survive because it promoted pro social and collaborative behavior, because you know what happens if you get rejected. But now we're in a stage where that same rejection doesn't mean death, but it can feel like death, and that's what holds people back.

Yeah, it's totally normal.

Exactly.

It's totally normal because we. And that's because, like you said, we have a human brain that evolved over a long time, and a part of us still is in that mindset of, like, if I step out of the cave, if I say something different, if I say something that asserts my individual want and need, then I'm gonna be told no. And this can mean, in a way, a social death, which psychologists have uncovered can feel even more painful than physical pain.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. This is great.

You know that's right. I think something is totally missed. In our society, we're all hyper focused on our job titles, but I truly believe that your work is not your worth. When you're born in this world, you deserve love and attention and affection and food and shelter and education just because you were born. But so often we think it's all about what's my job title and where do I work and what kind of car do I drive. And so I fundamentally believe humanity just deserves all these good things in the world. And because of that, I don't identify with my career. And I've learned this idea of detachment, and I want to teach that to other people so that they can create, go to work and behave with integrity and do a job worth doing because it's worth doing well, and then come home and live a life of purpose and meaning. So it's all about that intersection of purpose and meaning for me.

Absolutely. And one of the things that I've realized over the years of doing the podcast and doing the trainings and everything is that, yes, I can teach people how to negotiate, but that's only half the battle. Because if the people are afraid of taking the step and actually having the negotiation, they're not going to do what they need to do. And one of the things that we talked about just in our prep was the idea of de risking negotiation. How can we make it seem a little bit less risky so we can then have the conversations that we need to have in order to live the life that we want to live. So let's just start off with talking about the reality of fear and then we can talk about how we can de risk that negotiation process.

Well, you know, fear is often based in a story we tell ourselves. I'm not Brene Brown, I'm not anybody, you know, who's like a self help author here. But it's just a fact that fear is often a perspective. Fear is not reality based. And so to really understand that and to act on that are two different things. So when I talk about fear, when I teach people about fear, I just kind of skip over the self help stuff and I go straight to action because people aren't really interested anymore in the psychology of it. They want to know how to break that fear down. So I teach them a technique called the pre mortem. And I don't know, have you ever heard of the pre mortem? Do you know what that is?

It has been a while. It has been a while. But you are the expert, so I want to make sure you shine on this.

Sure, no problem. Well, a pre mortem is the opposite of a postmortem. So when we're lawyers or accountants or human resources professionals, we're, we're very well versed in the post mortem because we do something and it fails and we blame people. And then we write it all down and maybe we put it in a digital folder or even a real binder and put it on the shelf. And when we go to do that thing, we never look at that binder again. We're just like, oh, last time it failed, but this time it's going to be different. So the pre mortem flips the script and instead of looking back retrospectively and going, oh, things are going to be fine. What you do is you take a minute, just a minute, and you ask yourself, how is the thing I'm about to do going to fail? Not how might it fail, not how could it fail, but how will it fail? And this is rooted in, of course, the philosophy of the Stoics, but it's taught at universities. At Cornell, at Stanford, at University of Michigan. Dr. Gary Klein has brought this to NASA, IBM, Cisco. The pre mortem is this tool where people sit down and just for a little bit go, how is this thing we're about to do going to fail? They make a list, the good, the bad, the ugly. And when the timer goes up, they talk about it and they tick the things off and Figure out how they're going to fix it. If you proactively fix the things that are going to go wrong that you know about, you improve your chance of success by over 30%. It's a huge competitive advantage. And, Kwame, it gives you opportunity to fail in new in more interesting ways. So that's why I love the pre mortem. And I teach it for people who are negotiating a new position at work. They're negotiating their way through a difficult interview, or they're even just trying to figure out, like, where do I want to go on vacation? How is this going to fail? My husband and I used it when we decided to remodel our kitchen. We asked ourselves, how is this going to fail? And it turns out I can't stick to a budget. So we never remodeled the kitchen, and we're still married. It's been 20 years. We're good. The pre mortem is a tool that's so flexible, so agile, and I absolutely love it.

Everything is going to be digital. It already was. But even more so now, someone is going to be Googling you, whether it's for a new job, whether it's for you're running a business and you're looking for a new client. It could even be someone looking to date you. Someone's Googling you, and the results that they find will more or less leave them inclined to do business with you, to hire you, or to date you. And so I think we have to take time to think about our online presence and our personal brand. And our personal brand isn't something that's static. Right. It's a dynamic, iterative process to address different sides of whether we're talking about brand identity and the visual elements of your brand and. Or the things that relate to the messaging and things that influence your credibility and trust, both online and offline.

Yeah, man. And you know what's funny is that I've recognized this for myself, too, because in addition to the negotiation trainings that we do here at the American Negotiation Institute, I still practice because I want to make sure that my skills stay sharp, you know? You know, I don't want to be that negotiation trainer who's pulling out stories from decades ago. So I've recognized in my negotiations, people do their research, and they say, oh, I noticed you have the podcast. I noticed you have the TED Talk. I did the research on you, and it gives me kind of a leg up because I don't need to prove myself. They don't need to ask, oh, is Kwame legitimate? Does he know what he's talking about. They do the research and they can see that. So it carries a bit of the persuasive burden. And yeah, I was just going to.

Expand on what you're saying, you know, so as a marketer, we are trained as marketers, that the very first thing that happens with marketing your brand, whether we're talking about a big business or even right now as we're talking about a personal brand, is awareness. You have to be able to drive attention and awareness. That then leads to interest and engagement and then leads to that quote, unquote, conversion of whether you're landing a job or a client again. And so the very first thing is that you have to be able to amplify your identity again online through things you've done, such as TedX or some of the other speaking engagements that you have, and making sure that following you, getting off of a stage, off of a TED stage or after you've launched your book, that there's somewhere else there. You've now made yourself memorable. But where are you leading people to from that point out? Right? Are you leading them to a website? Are you guiding them to your social platform? Is that gonna leave them with a certain measure of credibility and trust? You, for one, are amazing at creating really valuable content on an ongoing basis in Linked. And so over time, over the last couple years that you've been creating that content, you've been able to develop that credibility and trust, right?

Absolutely. And those two terms, you said it now twice. Credibility and trust. And those two things are incredibly powerful during your negotiation. So let's focus now on the various things that people can do to build that credibility and trust with their personal brand.

It always begins, first and foremost with understanding and knowing your why. Right. In terms of building a solid brand foundation, a lot of people immediately hear the word personal brand and they default to the brand identity and the visual. And they're thinking of a logo, they're thinking of the visual elements. That's very important. But before we start defining what the visual elements look like, let me ask the listener or the viewer of this video and this conversation, do you understand what it is that you're doing, what you're offering, why you're offering it? Do you understand who you're serving? Do you have clarity on your audience that you're serving? Those things are critical because it impacts the messaging, it impacts the visual, it impacts everything else that you're going to develop. I always say, from a messaging standpoint especially, I am not going to. I'm not Speaking to everyone, or I'm going to lose. In the messaging, you are speaking to a very specific professional nine times out of 10. But from a personal standpoint, if I'm communicating one message to my mom, to my wife, and to my daughter, that one message is too broad. But if I'm gearing a particular messaging specifically to my wife, my daughter can't receive that. In the same way, you have to be very clear on who it is you're serving. Talking about persuasion, the more clear you are about who you're speaking to means that you understand not only who they are in terms of the demographic data. That I'm speaking to a woman who's in her mid-30s, who has children, who earns X and does X, but I also begin to understand the challenges that this person is facing. The psychographic data, what's keeping them up at night. If I understand that group, if I'm able to then group like challenges and values, and I understand exactly how to frame that messaging. And it's not general. I'm not speaking to everybody with the same message now. I'm able to really capture their attention again. I'm building that awareness initially, but I want to move from awareness to interest. And I want them to be able to engage with me in a way that they won't engage with anyone else. And that's all coming back to personal branding. So the foundation starts with understanding who you're serving for that very reason. Because when you understand who you're serving, then you're able to clarify your message. And I say, if you confuse, you lose. You want to make sure you're able to communicate and clarify that message so that you can persuade in that negotiation of whatever it is that you're offering up. And then comes that brand identity piece. Then we start to define how are you going to brand yourself. Are you branding yourself Kwame Christian, or are you branding yourself American Negotiation Institute? Then we start talking about the different online elements of your brand, your domain name, your social handles. We start to look at things like your color palette, which sounds fluffy, but Kwame has listened to me talk about color a number of times over, and people actually make a subconscious judgment based on color alone within the first 90 seconds of seeing your brand. And so things like color, your fonts, your photography. Right. Your graphics, all of these things come into play.

I've got a quick story for you. So I was at this keynote, and I talked to a listener, and he said, kwame, I love the podcast, but my favorite part, man, I love those commercials.

And I said, I don't think this.

Is a true story. And now let me tell you about Negotiate Anything Premium, where you can listen to your favorite Negotiate Anything episodes ad free. With a subscription to Premium, you can get access to more insights from your favorite experts and ad free listening and extended episodes. Bonus, you'll also get access to exclusive episodes and personalized advice from yours truly. If you've been looking for an easy and affordable way to level up your skills and negotiate more of the best things in life, join our Premium community Now for that gentleman in that fictional story.

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And I think one of the biggest challenges that people have in self advocacy is in the fear of rejection or loss or reprimand for communicating. And so they'll say, well, I don't want to get in trouble at work for asking for help. I don't want to get any kind of pushback or feel like they have a negative connotation of me because I voiced a concern or because I have said no to something. And we can talk about the importance of saying no a little later because this is something I'm extremely passionate about saying no. But it's exactly what you said. It's a verb. And where people go wrong is either A, they don't realize it's something that they're supposed to do for themselves. That's why it's called self advocacy. You need to teach. Right. And B, if people do realize that it's something that they need to do, that they need to communicate, they're scared to do it for a number of reasons.

This is great. Yeah, you're spot on. One of the things I mentioned in my book one time was the fact that a lot of people utilize hope based strategies for persuasion and negotiation. They, instead of actually saying something, they hope that people just do the right thing. And so we might have these expectations for the people around us where we say, ah, yeah, they didn't treat me right in this situation. I'm sure they'll get it. They'll be self aware enough to recognize it. But that holds them back when it comes to the act of teaching like you described.

And hope is not a strategy, Kwame. Hope is not a strategy. Stop hoping for things. It's not a strategy. Hope is not a strategy.

Exactly, exactly. Self advocacy is an act of service. And what does that mean to you?

Yeah, so this is something that I arrived at in my own journey as a working woman. I just want to give you a Little bit of a backstory. I feel like I've had a lifelong training in helping women advocate for what they want. And that's because as an immigrant myself, my single mother, who ended up raising three daughters by herself when we arrived in America 30 years ago, she would always be telling me, jamie, you got to speak up. You got to ask for what you want. She was my Monday morning quarterback when it came to these everyday little negotiations. She's like, all of this matters. You got to speak up. You got to ask. You got to be a little sassy, right? And growing up, I pushed back. I didn't like that. I didn't accept. I didn't incorporate her coaching into my own life because I wanted to be liked, right? I didn't want to experience the social debt, right? I wanted to be not considered the loud, aggressive vipch or whatever. And there is this common misconception that you asking for what you want is greedy. It's selfish. It's selfish to ask for what you want. And this holds a lot of women and men back from negotiation, power from self advocacy, effective self advocacy. And once I realized in the working world that my mother was absolutely right and that because I hadn't asked for what I wanted, I hadn't advocated, I was earning less than the average employee, that's when the light bulb went off and I realized, oh, I really have to learn how to communicate more effectively, advocate more effectively, negotiate more effectively. And over time, I realized that, right? I don't want to do it just for me. If I had to just ask for money, ask for a raise, ask for a promotion, because it serves me, yeah, I might not want to do it because I'm like, I don't really need it. I don't want to experience the social death. But as a woman, I realized I needed to walk. The talk I give to other women about, hey, you deserve more. Hey, you can do better, you can get promoted. Because I was the. I became my mother, and I started telling all of my girlfriends, hey, you gotta ask for that raise. You gotta go for that promotion.

Now.

It's my life.

It's my job. And I realized, yeah, self advocacy is an act of service. Because this is how I learned to incorporate the coaching my mother gave me and become who I am now. But I also saw it from a larger perspective when my clients, when women asked for what they want, their bosses were thanking them. They were like, thank you for advocating for yourself this way. You made my job easier. Now I know what you want. Now I know how to Support you. Now you've set an example of what is possible for other women and other women of color. Several of my clients are women of color. What is possible? This is great. Your self advocacy is serving us, serving me, your boss, and serving other women. So, yeah, I totally believe that self advocacy is an act of service. If you think it's selfish, just consider how it might be serving you and therefore others.

What are some other tools that you've utilized to help people to overcome that fear and take the step to have those tough conversations?

Well, you know, I'm going to say something that is a little controversial, especially as a coach. But a lot of times coaches will pretend to be the be all and all to their clients. And I have a writer in my coaching contract that says at any point if I feel you need to talk to someone, a therapist, a counselor, an advisor, you will, or we do not continue on in our coaching relationship. And I have invoked that, especially during COVID because I feel like so many people bring their family of origin trauma to work into negotiation. They bring their issues with their parents, they bring their issues with their partners and their spouses. All the chaos in the world, all of the imposter syndrome, and they expect a coach to have answers. And this is a journey of a lifetime. And also, I'm not licensed in this area. So for me, the best recommendation I have learned to make, and this is something I have had to learn how to do for my clients, is to say, we need to stop right here and you need to go talk to somebody. And, you know, from my background in human resources, I know the EAP is one of the most underutilized benefits in all of corporations. Like, it's got a utilization rate of under 20%. People just don't use it. And often, if you have an employee assistance program, you get at least three free sessions per incident. You call a 1-800-number. It's confidential, and it's like therapy light. It's like dealing with something in the moment, and then they can make recommendations on where to go from there. But it's a good entryway to talk about who you are and what's bothering you in this world. Because on the other side of fear, like behind the scenes of fear, is often issues related to your family or issues related to your childhood. And if you bring those into the negotiation, you're gonna lose. So it's up to you. You can deal with them in therapy, or you can lose at negotiation. I don't know what you want to do, but for me, I would rather deal with, with those with a licensed therapist. So that's my recommendation.

There are so many gems here. So let's talk about the general to the specific. So generally I think that this is a great move that you've done and I want to highlight this to the listeners too because what you've done is essentially similar to a pre mortem. You've pre negotiated a potential issue. So instead of down the road where you realize, oh, you know what, you need to see a therapist, now you have a difficult conversation and you have to persuade somebody that way before it becomes an issue, you say, hey, hypothetically, if this becomes an issue, this is how we are going to handle this. And so you avoid that emotional resistance because they say to themselves, hey, okay, fine, no problem, I'll be able to handle contract, right? But now it's in the contract. So once you get to that point, it's not a difficult conversation or as difficult because you're saying, are you going to adhere to this contract that you have signed? So now it's just holding them to their agreement, they've already committed. So I think that's a brilliant negotiation maneuver just in that realm. But then as it relates to the specificity of what you said about the necessity of therapy, I think about therapy like a personal trainer. So I have a body, I am not a personal trainer, I'm not a doctor, right. So even though I've spent 33 years with my body, there are things I don't know about it. So I need to talk to a professional about it. And so it doesn't need to be an acute issue of psychosis or something like that. If you are off see a therapist. I've seen a therapist, I've seen some regularly. I text him all the time and you know what he tells me? You need therapy, you know, and so there's no shame in that. No shame in that. So I appreciate that you're normalizing that because a lot of times the barriers that we face are from the past and to the last point that you made, you said that you could, you could either get therapy or you could lose a negotiation. Here's the scary thing, Lori, because I've seen this happen too. Because if people are not self aware enough to recognize what their troubles are, their challenges are and they hide from that by not getting the help that they need. They could go into the negotiation, they could do a pre mortem, they could go to Ani's website, americannegotiationinstitute.comguide and get the Free negotiation guides and prepare effectively. They can go into the negotiation and do exactly what they wanted to do and get the exact outcome that they wanted and still fail because it's not what they should have been going for. Right? So you have to, you have to really exercise those demons. And there is a, there's a clear pathway, but a lot of people don't take it well.

So well said. You know, I love where you're coming from because you're right. So many people who are not self aware negotiate for something that's not what they really want want in the first place. Truman Capote once said, more tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered prayers. So if you get what you want, you better be careful because you may not want it in the first place. So I think the idea of going to therapy, even if it's just for a short stint, is so helpful for so many people who are at an inflection point, unfortunately, you know, when you're dealing with high powered individuals, executives, leaders, it's very difficult for them to find the time or to feel vulnerable. And I actually had someone say to me just recently, if I even touch that point of vulnerability, I'm afraid of where it's going to go and I need to show up and I need to perform. And I totally get that and I totally respect that. But you're either going to touch it now or you're going to touch it at some point when you can't control it. So it's best to do it in a means in which you choose, through a therapist, through eap, so that it doesn't bubble up when you least expect it and it's not convenient. So, you know, this is a random conversation we're having, but an important one, because if I can say one thing over and over again, it's that I am a huge fan of the employee assistance program. And if your organization doesn't have one, you need one.

When it comes to us who might be the recipients of the bias, right, where we are being labeled aggressive inappropriately. And so we are presented with a situation where we see, okay, this is how people are taking this. Do I adjust my behavior? Then maybe I don't feel authentic, and then, well, do I just keep on doing the same thing and running into the same problem for you based on.

Your experience, how do you approach it?

I'm so glad you asked because we talked about this on your interview on my podcast. And I do wrestle with it because from an ethical standpoint, you know, we shouldn't have to, as the recipients of injustice, adapt to a biased world. We shouldn't have to do any of this. But when it serves your goals, there's no shame in switching your approach, right? Code switching is something that a lot of us know a lot about, especially if you have parents who speak another language or if you speak in a different way with certain friends versus how you might speak in the boardroom. Especially African American communities are super familiar of code switching to placate and make other people more comfortable. Now, I think Ibram x Kendi would say that that is assimilationism, and I do wrestle with the ethics of whether how we should think about that. But practically speaking, we're all code switching all the time, right? It makes sense to consider when you're trying to strategically communicate, which I know your listeners are all about. And your podcast, from a negotiation standpoint, is all about strategic communic. You've got to consider your goals and your audience. And one key approach, one key difference that I have stumbled upon in the research that can really help disarm people if you are about to be very assertive, if you are about to ask for a raise, if you are about to say, no, I can't make that deadline happen, if you are about to assert yourself in a powerful way. One way is to lead with intent before getting to your assertive content. And so that might sound like explaining why you're asking for what you're asking for before you ask for it. Now, that takes emotional labor, right? That takes cognitive or mental load to actually think about the syntax of your phrasing when naturally speaking, most of us say, hey, here's what I want. Can you turn off the lights? I want to make sure everyone can see the movie. If we're gracious about it, we might explain what we're asking for. But if we pause because this is a really important ask, like, I don't know, for a raise or promotion, and we instead lead with, hey, I want to make sure we're on the same page about my growth trajectory here. I'd love to spend some time talking with you about my future in the organization. Do you have time on Friday to set some time aside to really reflect with me? Then we're giving them context. First of, here's why I'm asking for what I'm asking for before the what I'm asking for. Imagine if instead you said, hey, Kwame, do you have time on Friday to talk with me and reflect on my future at the organization? And you're like, oh God, what Does this mean are they leaving? And you induce panic, right? You induce those stress hormones flowing through your audience's body when instead, if you give them a little context of the why before the what. That is one small adaptation I've really seen work well for my clients and community members at Bossed up who are trying to navigate some contentious conversations when they darn well know that they're going to be mistaken as angry or as aggressive when they're simply trying to be assertive.

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.

So we all have ideal values and shadow values. And what I mean by ideal values, it's those things that we care about that we're proud to say we care about. Things like leadership or customer service or the customer's always first. Those are some examples on the organizational side, on the individual side, our ideal values might be things like adventure or spirituality or healthy living. These are things that we say we care about and that we are proud to say we care about. These are in contrast to what I call shadow values, which are things that we care about that we're not typically proud to say we care about. And the key here is that we not only don't admit these to other people, we often don't admit our shadow values to ourselves. We push them down into the shadow of our consciousness and we pretend that they're not there. The problem is that these shadow values are there and that they often ooze out and drive conflicts with other people. So let me give you an example of what I mean. Oh, and I can give you first some examples of typical shadow values. Things like caring about status or recognition or financial security. So if we go back to the example that I was talking about before about the CEO and his head of sales and he was calling her greedy. When I asked him to identify what were some of his ideal values and shadow values, he thought about it and he realized that he, outwardly to the world, says he cares about collaboration and leadership and entrepreneurialism and risk taking. And yet inside of himself, pushed down in the shadow, were values like authority and financial security, things that he wasn't very proud of. But he, because he had pushed down his own need for authority, he had not been able to say directly to the head of sales what it was that he really felt and what it was he really needed to say, which was, we need to lower your compensation package. Here are the reasons why the business needs the money elsewhere. You've been being paid way above market rates. Instead, he beat around the bush and brought it up in these Informal ways on street corners and in the office, in front of other people. And that led the head of sales to just be beside herself. She couldn't believe that he was bringing these things up in these informal, inappropriate ways. And so it was only when this CEO was able to acknowledge and honor his own value on authority that, look, he's the CEO of this company and at some point he's got the authority he needs to be able to make decisions and let people know decisions are being made. He of course, can ask for input, but he had such a strong value, ideal value of collaboration, that it was running the show and actually making things harder for him. And that the collaboration ideal value and his shadow value of authority were really in tension with one another. So the goal of this work is to enable you people to honor that shadow value. It's there anyway. So us pretending that it doesn't exist doesn't make it go away. It just makes it ooze out in ways that are typically not very helpful. So the work is really to honor it and see how can I, in my actions, in my thoughts or in my words. And it doesn't have to be all three. It could be just in my thoughts I'm honoring. Wow, I need to hold my authority here. And what would that look like for me? How would my conversation be different with this head of sales if I were honoring my own authority?

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

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I'll catch you later.