Understanding Their Rules Unleashes Your Voice EYV83

This is the Empower Your Voice podcast, and I am your host, Nancy Bos. Today we're going to get deep, deep, deep, deep on the topic of knowing the rules to be a part of the tribe that you are in and how that impacts empowering your voice. Empowering a person's voice within a group or a team or a tribe, within a career, a company, a corporation, or a family, really is impacted by what the rules of that group are. Do we know how to say what needs to be said? Do we know what rights we have? If we're singing, do we know the rules of the genre? Now I want to tell you a quick little story that I recently got a tattoo, a dragon, and My daughter was with me when I got the tattoo. By the time I got done receiving this tattoo, the tattoo artist didn't really like me very much, which I'm not used to, but it's fine. I don't really care. I just thought I'm on this guy's nerves and I don't know why. So a friend of mine asked my daughter in front of me, or asked me actually, but my daughter answered, what went wrong? Why didn't, why didn't the guy like you? My daughter said, well, you know, tattoo culture. Oh, the guy said. So what they got to in their conversation is that I was just like a chatty middle-aged know-it-all lady asking questions, and that is not tattoo culture. And I did not fit in in that situation and therefore was not accepted by the tattoo artist because I didn't know the rules. Again, this doesn't bother me. This particular situation is no problem for me. But if it was a group that I cared about, if I really If it was important, if it was important for me, even for career, life, and limb, that I could be a member of this tribe and I didn't know the rules of how to converse within this tribe, wouldn't that make me nervous? Absolutely, because there's a lot at stake. Our voices can be disempowered by a lack of understanding of the group's rules and dynamics. The importance of knowing the rules is that being a member of a group or a tribe requires understanding the rules and the expectations. If you don't know the rules of the group and how that can lead to disempowerment and lack of agency with the group, within the group, there are two different ways that you might tackle this. One is you might do what I did to the tattoo artist and just be yourself and steamroll the group. And if they don't like you, c'est la vie, so what, I'm outta here. But the other option is to go silent, to observe and learn the rules. Now that's a pretty— and perhaps temporarily, but that's a disempowered way to do it, to sit back and observe and learn the rules, or find a mentor who can teach you what to say, how to say it, and how to be accepted in this group. I see this happening now as a larger culture, that we are embracing women's empowerment. And frankly, people who identify as men— I've had conversations with guys who are like, I'm, I'm losing my power. You women are taking all of our power. Why would I want to give up my power? A very defensive stance. I've also heard from men who are like, I don't know how to operate in this new world. A man who's a coach, males and females, and he just feels like he's walking on eggshells when it comes to working with the women. If he spends too much time sharing the stories of the men in the group, it gets noticed and shouted out. But if he spends an unequal amount of time sharing the stories of the women in the group, the men now have to sit silently and observe and learn these new rules because they have been chastised about not empowering women. It's so confusing. Just in my lifetime, how this empowerment of women has changed. My dad was a traveling salesman. He sold bank supplies in the Midwest and He knew the power of networking. If the bankers were his friends, they were much more likely to trust him—no like trust—and buy the forms, the rubber bands, the checks, the calculators, everything from my dad. So learning the rules of the game was something my dad was very adept at. When I went into business Managing a Lady Foot Locker. Did you know that I did that? You might have known that I was a manager of a Lady Foot Locker at age 24. I got to open a brand new store, and my dad had a sit-down with me, and he said, now that you're going into business, now that you're playing in the man's world, you're going to have to learn to either drink a whiskey on the rocks or a gin and tonic, because you have to network with these guys. You have to be able to sit down in their social clubs and drink what they're drinking. You can't have wine or 7-Up or anything like that. So we're going to figure this out right now if you're a whiskey on the rocks or if you're a gin and tonic. That was in 1992. Those were the rules of business that my dad very successfully navigated for a fantastic career that fed a family of 5 and established a successful retirement. Those were the rules. It worked where the men were the guys and the women were the gals. Well, I was stepping out of the role of gal and acting like I was one of the guys from his perspective. He loved me and he wanted me to succeed, and so he gave me one of the secrets. Isn't that hard to believe now, 30 years later? Isn't that hard to believe that those were the accepted rules to follow? I don't have to do that anymore. And in fact, men drink wine. That is a thing. That is a thing. Back in the '80s and '90s, probably before then, I don't know, men didn't drink wine. It was a woman's drink. Now men are perfectly happy in the world of wine, but that— I digress. That's not the point. The point is the rules have changed. The rules must have been the same, or pretty much the same, for hundreds of years. And now the rules have changed. So if you are trying to find your way in this new world where women and minorities are to be empowered, I don't blame you for feeling confused. I don't blame you for wondering, "Where's my voice in this?" Whether you are a woman or a minority or a man, what are the rules? What are we supposed to be doing? And then of course there's the new rules of social media. How much should I be putting myself out there? Oh, you need to be authentic. People need to know the real you. What are you doing on the weekends? What are your hobbies? What's your dog's name? All of that needs to be out there on your social media. That's the rules of the game right now. But what if I don't feel like sharing my family with the world? What if I don't feel like exposing my private time to social media? What if I simply don't want to spend any time on social media? Am I not playing by the rules? I don't know. How can we help but feel confused and anxious? Am I getting it right? Am I playing the game the way that I can play it the best? You know what we can do now? We can ask ChatGPT. Hey ChatGPT, what are the best ways that I can get more Instagram followers? And you know what? ChatGPT will actually tell you the rules. Not knowing the rules It can lead to a feeling of disempowerment and a lack of agency within your group. What if you are the first female to join your company on a high level? What if you are the first chief officer who's a Black person, who's Native American or Latino in your organization's board? What if you are the only man left standing in the executive level or the board? What if you are middle-level management and you want that promotion in your company, but nobody higher up looks like you? What are the rules? Is it important to know the rules, or can we just make them up as we go along? I will tell you that as an entrepreneur, that is the most satisfying part. I am not having to learn other people's rules. Does that— is that what makes a good entrepreneur? Is somebody who's not great at following the rules, they need to make up their own rules? Because that is certainly, certainly a trait that I enjoy. If you're not so good at working for other people and you enjoy being an entrepreneur, I would love to hear from you and let me know. Is this how you define that you're a great fit for entrepreneur because you don't like rules? But there's others of you listening here who do. You like to know what are the parameters of this job, what is the scope of my career, what is the pathway or the ladder to advancement. Those are all different ways of stating rules. If you're performing on a stage as a speaker or a singer? What are the expectations of this audience? What am I allowed to do? How am I supposed to dress? What should my marketing be like? Am I allowed to pitch, or am I just supposed to toe the line? There's a real importance in identifying and learning the rules of any group or tribe that you're part of. What happens if you don't? What happens if you don't is that you feel unsettled inside. You feel unsure. Unsettled and unsure are both different flavors of the overriding umbrella of fear. That unsettled and unsure, if it becomes very strong, debilitatingly strong, then that shows up as performance anxiety or stage fright. It might show up in an increased stress level in your body. It might be an erratic heart rate, sweaty hands, sweaty face, gut disorder, tension headache, antsy-ness, or lethargy. This type of mild to medium fear can change the trajectory of your life if you decide you want to avoid it You do not want to experience this discomfort, so you make other choices that keep you comfortable. So what are some tips and strategies for identifying the rules of a group? Well, observing group dynamics is one way to do it. How has someone else recently navigated this successfully? You can't look back to 1992, as I just told you. You have to look at somebody who recently navigated it successfully, and you can walk in their footsteps. This is not copying, this is learning. You can identify the rules by asking questions of the right person. Seeking out mentors and guides within what you are doing not only helps you get a leg up in that your know, like, and trust factor goes higher, but perhaps more importantly, if you can trust your mentor to ask vulnerable questions of them, and they will help you understand the rules and not expose you, expose you as somebody who doesn't know what you're doing yet. The benefits of learning the rules include increased confidence, increased agency within the group. You will not only show up more confident, you'll be able to show up as your best self offering what you have better than anyone else. Your increased confidence will pay off in allowing you to start to form some of the group's rules. Your agency within the group, your credibility, the respect that others have for you will increase if you learn the steps that you need to take to be part of this tribe, this company, this organization, this method, the currently accepted standards. I can't say anymore without acknowledging that some rules within a group or a tribe may be harmful or disempowering to certain members or to people outside the group. You have to be conscious that not everything that you're going to be expected to do will fit with your understanding of how you want to live your life. These rules may benefit someone higher up and hurt someone lower down. These rules might also help to solidify the walls of this tribe so that others can't get in— exclusion rather than inclusion. Keep your eyes wide open For which of these rules work for you? And then of course that's where the strategy comes in. How much do you play by the rules and risk being inauthentic or damaging? How much do you think the rules are important for your success? Can you twist them? Can you bend them? Can you gain enough power that you make up the new rules. Some strategies for navigating is speaking up and advocating for change within the group. Believe it or not, once you are in the group, if you can start to speak up and advocate for change, if this is a group that is worthy of you, they will hear your passion and your authenticity, and they will respect what you have to say. If you cannot speak up and advocate for change within the group, this group is not for you. You are bending too far. Another strategy for navigating the rules is finding alternative groups or tribes. Is there a group adjacent? For instance, in college I was in a sorority. It wasn't the sorority that maybe would have launched me in my academic career the most successfully. But honestly, that sorority had practices that I was uncomfortable with, and I was instead in a sorority that was more inclusive, with looser rules, where I could be more authentic, and I was perfectly happy being there. And then once you're within the group, you become a respected member, perhaps even a leader, and then you create new rules within that group. How does this apply to being on the stage or feeling unempowered about your voice? Let's take just speaking up at a board meeting. If you're speaking up at a meeting and you are unsure if what you're about to say is going to get you booted out of that meeting, wouldn't it be nice to have a mentor to run this by first, or to observe someone else doing something similar and see what happens to them? But if neither of those is possible, then you have to be true to you in that situation, and you have to state your truth and hopefully graciously, gently open their minds to something new. Now that's talking about a board, so you're talking to maybe 10 people. Is it any different when you're talking to 1,000 people? Is it any different when you're talking to 6,000 people? If you can watch how another speaker successfully navigated this similar territory, fantastic. If you have a coach or a mentor who can say, "Yeah, this will work. I've seen this work. This is a good idea," or "That might turn people off a little bit too much," that's a fantastic way to learn how to be successful on that stage. And of course, from my own experience as a professional singer, learning the rules of classical music when I had never even been exposed to it until I was 18 was one of my biggest challenges with my stage fright. My performance anxiety was like, I don't know the rules. I don't know how to play this game. Once I switched over to singing folk and rock and musical theater, those rules, I got those rules. I knew that music. And suddenly I was more empowered on the stage. I would encourage you to identify the rules within the groups or the tribes or the organizations that you want to succeed in. Take steps to empower your voice within those contexts. Does this feel like you're cheating or trying to squeeze through? You know, We have one life to live. We are not given any rules as infants coming into this world. The rules are handed to us by our parents, our families, our culture, society as a whole, and our history. All of these rules are part of this world. All of these rules are very changeable. We see that year after year as the world changes. We can empower ourselves by knowing that we are not stuck. We make choices every day on which rules to follow and which rules to make our own. Empower your voice by understanding the track that will get you where you are meant to be. I'm going to be heading out in 6 weeks on the Empower Your Voice tour. I'm going to be spending the last part of June through part of August traveling the West Coast of the United States and some other far-flung places to be announced later, asking people how they've empowered their voices. If you are in Seattle, the Puget Sound area, Western Oregon, San Diego, Las Vegas, anywhere along that route, I want to hear from you. I will be giving talks, signing books, but most importantly, holding meetup groups, holding groups of people together where we can talk in person about empowering your voice. I would love to have you reach out to me. info@studioboss is the best place to do that. Info, I-N-F-O, @studioboss.com. That's how you're going to reach me regarding the Empower Your Voice Tour 2023. I hope that I get to see you on the road, and if not, reach out for a way that I can come to you and talk to you about your stories of empowering your voice. That's all for now. Bye-bye.