#BeYourSelfOnPurpose: Five words packed full of meaning. Andrea shares the power of developing your strong unique personal brand by doing two things: 1) being yourself, 2) on purpose. You’ll also learn three specific contexts when you can put this mantra into action. CONNECT WITH ANDREA  Website: TalkAboutTalk.com LinkedIn – Andrea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ LinkedIn Talk About Talk:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/talkabouttalk/ Newsletter:  https://www.talkabouttalk.com/newsletter/ YouTube Channel:  https://www.youtube.com/@talkabouttalkyoutube/   TRANSCRIPT Recently, I hosted a live virtual webinar on personal branding—and I have to say, it went really well. Now, my corporate workshops and webinars usually go great, but this one felt different. I was vibing, and I could tell by the audience’s reactions and questions that they were really getting something valuable out of it. After the webinar, I received a ton of positive feedback. One message stood out: a woman messaged me on LinkedIn almost immediately. She told me she takes her dry erase whiteboard very seriously—it’s where she puts her goals, meeting notes, follow-ups. After the session, she erased everything on it and wrote just five words: Be Your Self On Purpose. Then she sent me a photo. I was floored. A couple hours later, I posted the webinar video on LinkedIn, and a senior executive I deeply respect commented with a hashtag: #BeYourSelfOnPurpose. That’s when I knew—this concept really resonates. It’s clear that being your self on purpose is an idea that sticks. So, in this episode, we’re going to double down on those five powerful words: Be Your Self On Purpose. You’re going to learn what it means, why it matters, and how you can apply it to build a strong, unique personal brand. Welcome to Talk About Talk – Episode #184: Be Your Self On Purpose Hi there! I’m Dr. Andrea Wojnicki. Please just call me Andrea. I’m an executive communication coach at Talk About Talk, where I help ambitious executives communicate with confidence and clarity so they can succeed and reach their career goals. You can learn more about me and all the coaching and resources I offer—one-on-one coaching, small-group bootcamps, corporate workshops, this bi-weekly podcast, and my newsletter—at TalkAboutTalk.com. And if we’re not connected yet on LinkedIn, I’d love to change that. Let’s Talk Personal Branding Before we dive into what it means to Be Your Self On Purpose, I want to briefly revisit the roots of personal branding and share a few definitions. In 1997, when I was a brand manager at Kraft Foods, I received a physical copy of Fast Company magazine. The cover looked like a box of Tide laundry detergent—but instead of “Tide,” it said “You.” The headline: “The Brand Called You” by Tom Peters. This article blew my mind. Peters didn’t invent personal branding, but he brought it into the corporate mainstream. He suggested that everything we apply to marketing products and services—differentiation, target markets, brand values—can and should be applied to ourselves. Personal branding was born. Fast forward to my time teaching MBA students at Rotman. At the end of every branding course, I would dedicate a class to personal branding. Why? Because everything we learned about branding applies directly to you. Another powerful definition comes from Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon: “Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.” That’s a great thought experiment. Ask yourself: what are your stakeholders—your clients, your boss, your team—saying about you when you’re not there? If their perception doesn’t align with how you want to be seen, that just means you’ve got some work to do. That’s what personal branding is for. Then, during a podcast interview with marketing legend Seth Godin, I asked him how he defines personal branding. His response? “Your brand is what people think you’re going to do next.” Another brain explosion moment. This forward-looking definition adds a sense of momentum. It’s not just about your past—it’s about what people expect from you next. Taking Control: You Have Agency What’s missing in both Bezos’ and Godin’s definitions is agency. Yes, your brand is what others perceive—but you have the power to shape that perception. So here’s my definition: Personal branding is about being your self on purpose. Instead of passively going with the flow in your career, it’s about stepping into your power and making intentional choices. It’s about owning your reputation, your professional identity—your brand. Be Your Self. On Purpose. Let’s break it down: Be Your Self This is about being your authentic, whole, and best self. Not a different version of yourself depending on the context, but a strategic filter of what parts of you you choose to share. You are always you—but you emphasize different aspects depending on the situation. On Purpose This is where strategy and discipline come in. You’re not just letting things happen—you are intentionally reinforcing the parts of your brand that align with your goals. You are being thoughtful about how you show up. The Wardrobe Metaphor Here’s a great metaphor I first heard from Ron Tite: Think of your brand like your wardrobe. All your clothes are authentically you. But you choose what to wear depending on the day—movie date, big meeting, networking event. The same is true for your personal brand. You are always you, but you decide what to highlight in each situation. That’s being your self—on purpose. Expansive & Focused This idea might feel messy—and that’s okay. Human beings are complex. You are being expansive by embracing your full identity, and focused by strategically choosing what parts of your brand to share. That balance is where the magic happens. Three Ways to Practice Being Yourself on Purpose 1. Your Self-Introduction This is your chance to communicate who you are, what you’ve done, and where you’re going. Use the present-past-future framework and be strategic about what you share. Don’t just rattle off your job title—own your narrative. 2. Comments in Meetings Whether you’re a CEO or a new hire, how you contribute in meetings matters. Try framing your input like this: “Based on my experience in ___” or “With my expertise in ___.” This reinforces your value and strengthens your brand. 3. The Stories You Tell How you tell your story—especially career transitions—can either strengthen or weaken your brand. Be intentional. Tell the truth, but do it in a way that highlights your leadership style, your strengths, and what sets you apart. Final Thoughts Write these five words down: Be Your Self On Purpose. Put them on a sticky note, on your whiteboard, at the top of your to-do list. Let them remind you to show up as your best, most authentic self—strategically, intentionally, and unapologetically. If you want more coaching on personal branding, head over to TalkAboutTalk.com. You’ll find my podcast archive, my newsletter, and information on coaching and bootcamps. Just search “personal branding” in the search bar. That’s it for episode #184. Now go out there—and Be Your Self On Purpose. Talk soon. The post #BeYourSelfOnPurpose – Be Your Self On Purpose and build a strong personal brand (ep.184) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

What’s your archetype? Knowing your archetype can help you control your narrative, provide you with focus, and boost your confidence. Take the Archetypes Quiz at www.talkabouttalk.com/archetypesquiz. Archetypes are shared, universal patterns that help us understand characters, stories, and even ourselves.     12 PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY ARCHETYPES   CAREGIVER – maternal, comforting, trusted, generous  CREATOR – artist, designer, maker, vibrant  CITIZEN – girl/guy next door, hardworking, friendly, down-to-earth, loyal  EXPLORER – adventurous, innovative, pioneer, investigator, trailblazer HERO – disciplined, inspiring, strong/brave, warrior, champion  OPTIMIST – kind, simple, innocent, pure  JESTER – humorous, comedic, entertainer, playful, light-hearted  IMPASSIONED – focused on senses, relationships, inclusive, passionate, devoted  MAGICIAN – transformer, dreamer, visionary, spiritual guide.  REVOLUTIONARY– radically distinct, bold, rebel, unapologetic  RULER– authoritative, influential, political, sophisticated, ambitious SAGE – learner, teacher, academic, analytical, wise.    TRANSCRIPT   This might be one of the shortest and most impactful podcast episodes you’ve heard in a long time.  I hope so!   Of all the topics I coach people on and that I speak about, I’d say Personal Branding, and helping people articulate or narrate their unique brand makes the biggest impact. Typically I run my coaching clients through several exercises to help them identify their unique brand, including but not limited to: seeking input from others, taking personality tests, creating your personal Venn diagram, running through mental exercises, reviewing formal work feedback and evaluations, completing worksheets that I assign, and lots more.    And of all these personal branding exercises, identifying their archetype is the one that they often tell me is the most helpful.   So I thought I’d spend an episode coaching YOU on how to identify your unique professional identity archetype, and what to do with it to help you be your happiest and most successful self. Sound good?   Welcome to talk about talk podcast episode 183: what’s my archetype. In case we haven’t met my name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki. Please just call me Andrea. I’m an executive communication coach at talk about talk where I coach ambitious executives like you to communicate with confidence and establish credibility so they can achieve their career goals. The topics I cover are all focussed on communication, including things like overcoming imposter syndrome, becoming a great storyteller, listening like a leader, nailing your formal presentation, establishing executive presence, and establishing your unique personal brand.   You can learn from me through private one on one coaching, corporate workshops and keynote speeches, the boot camps that I lead, the archive of this podcast, and through my email newsletter. If you go to talk about talk.com you can sign up for the newsletter there. It’s like getting free coaching from me every two weeks.   While you’re there on the talkabouttalk.com website, I encourage you to take the archetypes quiz. That’s the topic of this weeks episode. I’m going to help you identify which of the 12 professional identity archetypes resonates most with you and what you can do with this insight. Just go to talkabouttalk.com/archetypesquiz.   OK – By the end of this episode: You’ll understand the power of identifying your professional identity archetype and how you can use your archetype to accelerate your career trajectory.   Here’s how this episode will go:    First I’m going to define archetypes for you. Give you the archetypes 101 lecture.  Don’t worry – it’s brief. Then, I’ll share a list of 12 professional identity archetypes.  Your challenge is to identify which 1-2 of these archetypes resonate for you. I encourage you to do this both qualitatively – by listening to my descriptions and thinking about which 1-2 resonate with you.  Then also by taking the archetypes quiz at talkabouttak.com/archetypesquiz. This quiz is kind of like a personality test. It will help you validate which archetype resonates for you.   So Let’s start with this.   What are archetypes? Simply put: ARCHETYPES are UNIVERSAL PATTERNS. Got that? Universal patterns. Universal as in broadly understood – by many or most – as well as universal as in over time.   Many archetype researchers highlight that archetypes, these universal patterns, have been around since stories were told. Think Athenian philosopher Plato, way back in 400 B.C.  Think mythology.   If you consider the etymology of the term archetype, there’s ἀρχή archḗ, which means “beginning or origin”,[4] as in the word archaic.  And then there’s type or τύπος týpos, as in pattern or model.   More recently, just 100 or so years ago, Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung talked about how archetypes relate to our collective unconscious.  (An aside. Carl Jung also developed several other important psychological concepts such as the persona and such as extraversion and introversion. You know, at the end of every Talk About Talk podcast interview, when you hear me ask the guest expert “are you an introvert or an extravert?” Well, that’s Carl Jung too. Anyway, I digress.  But hat tip to Carl Jung.)     So Carl Jung is the scholar who established that archetypes are innate representations that universally exist in our minds. These archetypes, or universal patterns, typically come in the form of two things: characters and/or stories. And these universal patterns are commonly adopted by fiction writers, as a means to help us as readers or audiences members to make sense of the story.   Many of the papers you’ll find about archetypes identify 12 common archetypes. So why should we identify our archetype?    Based on my experience coaching thousands of executives, I can tell you that this can be a powerful exercise. First of all, people love being diagnosed.  Who doesn’t love copleting a personality test, then reading the results and thinking, WOW.  That’s me. To a T.  We feel seen, recognized. That’s a good thing.  But there’s more to this.    Understanding your archetype can help you create your narrative- you can adopt the words and phrases associated with your archetype to describe your leadership style, your personality, your values. And you can do so knowing that this description, this archetype, will make sense to others.  Based on all the research on archetypes, we know this is a universal pattern. It’s not that you’re walking up to people and explicitly declaring: “I am a Magician and a Sage!” But rather, you reference your strengths and passions in these terms/ So Archetypes can help you clarify your narrative.     They can also provide you with focus and direction. It’s not that you won’t evolve or grow, but chances are the themes associated with your archetype will describe your strengths, perhaps things you could focus on and succeed.   And last, people tell me that knowing their archetype provided them with a confidence boost!   Now, let’s get into this. Which archetype resonates for you?  We’re not all Heroes, are we?  I know I’m certainly not a hero.  But I do know which archetype resonates with me.  Do you know yours?   Before I read you the list, I want to share something important with you. For our purposes, I substituted several of the archetype labels to make them more relevant for this professional context. There are some words that, even if they accurately define us, are less suitable for our career context, I mean,.. Imagine being on a job interview and telling the interviewer that you are a “Lover.” Or “Innocent,” or even a “Rebel.” So I changed a few of the labels, without changing the main idea.:     “Lover” became “Impassioned” “Innocent” became “Optimist” “Rebel” became “Revolutionary”   The main theme for each of these remains the same.  Just the labels changed, to make them more relevant for our professional, career context.  OK – To make this easier for you, there’s a list in the shownotes that briefly describes each of these 12 archetypes.  Whether youre watching on Youtube, or listening on Spotify or Apple or wherever, just click on the shownotes and you’ll see the list there. Now I’m going to briefly take you through 12 of the most common archetypes.  And I have a challenge for you.  Listen to the descriptions and think about the extent to which each archetype resonates.     Are you ready?  OK- here’s the list – in alphabetical order:  Caregiver Citizen Creator Explorer Hero Impassioned Jester Magician Optimist Revolutionary Ruler Sage   Im going to read that list again, this time with a brief summary of how you might show up at work if this archetype resonates for you.  In your mind, for each of the 12, I encourage you to decide which of three categories it belongs.  It could be:   YES!  That’s me. Or SORT OF – that describes me sometimes Or NO – that’s not me.  I know those people, I respect those people, but that’s not me.   SO YES, Sort of, Or No.  Again, in alphabetical order:   CAREGIVER – maternal, comforting, trusted, and generous.  I’ve met plenty of physicians and consultants who are caregivers. Certainly, you do not need to be in a vocation where you are literally caring for people to be a caregiver archetype. But it’s true that sometimes our personality can draw us to a particular career. Ask yourself. Compared to others, are you a caregiver? Yes, sort of or no? next. CREATOR – think inventor, artist, designer inventive, unique, maker, and vibrant.  If creativity and expression is your default, you might be a creator. Yes, sort of, or no.  Are you a creator? CITIZEN – girl/guy next door, hardworking, friendly, down-to-earth, and loyal. Whenever I think of the citizen archetype, I always think of Michelle Obama. Think of the person that everyone wants on their team. Is this you? Yes, sort of, or no. EXPLORER – adventurous, innovative, pioneer, investigator, trailblazer, the adventurer. I remember a CEO I coached a few years ago who was definitely an explorer. In every one of his positions over the last 15 years he had pioneer ednew categories, or created new products. He was a trailblazer. What about you? Are you an explorer? Yes, sort of, or no. HERO – disciplined, inspiring, strong/brave, warrior, champion. Hero’s an interesting one. We’d all love to be called a hero, right? But there’s a specific definition here. Are you a warrior, making sacrifices on behalf of a cause? Think about people like Malala or Nelson Mandela. Are you a warrior too? A hero? Yes, sort of, or no. OPTIMIST – kind, simple, pure.  You smile a lot. You bring positive energy to meetings and your optimism is contagious.  Is this you? Yes, sort of, or no.   JESTER – humorous, comedic, an entertainer, playful and light-hearted.  I remember coaching one women who had just received a big promotion to chief of staff at her large global organization.  When we were talking about archetypes, she said “Im probably a jester, but I hide that at work.  It’s not appropriate.”  “HANG ON A SEC!” I said. Didn’t you just get promoted?  Doesn’t your booss know about your sense of humor?  Of course you dongt tell inappropriate jokes.  But having a sense of humour is a strength. You are the one who brings leveity to intenseor dire converstaions.  You know what? She felt so relieved.  I could tell by the look on her face.  And awhile later I got an email from her, saying this had changed everyting for her. She was happier and more successful that she’d ever been, mostly because she was being herself, including being the Jesterr. So are you a jester? Yes, sort of, or no? IMPASSIONED – focused on sense, relationships, memories, and inclusivity. I’ve noticed in my coaching practice that several senior HR executives resonate with this archetype. It’s not surprising. What about you? Yes, sort of or no. MAGICIAN – transformer, dreamer, visionary, an inventor, or even a spiritual guide. Don’t let the word spiritual scare you away. You might be a magician if you are focussed on change and impact. Is this you? Yes, sort of, or no. REVOLUTIONARY– radically distinct, bold, revolutionary, and unapologetic. Whenever I think about this revolutionary archetype. I remember a CEO I coached a few years ago who told me that he purposely wore a black motorcycle jacket to work on his first day. He wanted to reinforce his reputation as a rebel. Are you a revolutionary? Yes, sort of, or no. RULER– authoritative, influential, political, connected, sophisticated, ambitious. I can think of a few friends who are incredibly successful and who are senior leaders who are rulers. I remember during Covid I was running online personal branding workshops with female executives all over the world. When we got to the ruler, archetype one woman raised her hand and said in her beautiful deep voice, I believe I am a ruler! We all laughed. Yes of course she’s a ruler, it’s amazing when you read a description and you know it’s you. SAGE – learner, teacher, academic, analytical and wise. I think I have been a Sage since I was a young kid.  Whenerever we were playing “house” (like who’s the mom, who’s the dad, who’s the baby? Who’s the dog? ,I would say “I want to be the teacher.” What about you? Are you a sage? Yes, sort of, or no.   That’s it! Just 12. Sure, its just 12, but I know it’s a lot. That’s why included the list for you in the shownotes.   I mentioned that I’m a Sage.  Actually, I’m a combination of Sage and Magician. So Sage as in the learner, the teacher, the academic.  Yep. That’s me.  Also known as a nerd.   I’m also a Magician.  .  I hope to help you transform into a confident, exceptional communicator. My best day at work is when someone tells me that I helped them improve or transform.   How you should feel when you’ve effectively identified your 1 or two archetypes:  excited, satisfied,…  Stories should come easy to illustrate you in your role as this archetype This is your happy place. Benefits of identifying your archetype Help you create your narrative- you can adopt the words and phrases associated with your archetype to describe your leadership style, your personality, your values. Provide you with focus and direction Boost your confidence!   Last, I want to share three important things to keep in mind:   There is no hierarchy of archetypes. No one archetype is better than another. The Hero is no better than the Optimist.  And the Sage is no better than the Caregiver. The true power here, lies in identifying which 1-2 archetypes truly, deeply resonate with you and your true essence.  Your purpose.  Your default.  Your essence.   Your goal is to identify which 1 or 2 archetypes resonate for you. No more than two! I used to think identifying your one archetype was the goal.  But witnessed for many clients the powerful identity that can come from the unique intersection of two archetypes (like for me, Magician and Sage). If you narrow it down to 3, then I challenge you to identify which one is primary and which two are secondary. In other words, three primary archetypes is too many. Your goal is to identify your top one or two archetypes.   yes your archetype can change.  I’ve had a few meaningful conversations about this. First with UofT professor Maja Djikic, whom I interviewed in episode 157.  Then more recently with Harvard Professor Jerry Zaltman, who shared his concern with me of pigeon holing people. Yes, we evolve as humans.  We have chapters or seasons in our lives, when particular archetypes might be more resonant. Your archetypes can change.  Got that? So there is noo hierarchy of archetypes. Theyre all good. Your goal is to id 1 or 2 – not more than two archetypes that resonate for you. And yes, your archetype can change.   I should mention 1 more thing. I touched on this briefly when I was describing the 12 archetypes. Sometimes, people with a particular archetype might be drawn to a particular vocation. Like say caregivers might be drawn to nursing.  That’s an obvious example. But you get the idea. But don’t take this to mean you have to conform to succeed.  In fact, being unique can be part of your strength. Some of the most successful people in a certain vocation are successful because of something that makes them stand out relative to their peers.   And that’s the main point of this episode.  Identifying your unique strength can make you more successful and more satisfied than ever.  Identifying your archetype can help you get there.   Take the quiz.  It’s at TAT.com/archetypes quiz.   Please email me and let me know which archetype resonates for you.  And also what you thought about this podcast. I love hearing from you! You can connect with me through the TalkAboutTalk.com website, or you can connect with me on Linkedin and message me there.   Thanks for listening.  And TALK SOON! The post What’s Your ARCHETYPE? (ep.183) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

Learn three ways to control your narrative and steer your professional identity. Andrea will teach you how to introduce yourself with purpose, reframe perceived weaknesses as strengths, and narrate your career transitions and your career journey. There are a million ways to tell the same story.  Why not tell yours in a way that serves you?    CONNECT WITH ANDREA  LinkedIn – Andrea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ LinkedIn Talk About Talk:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/talkabouttalk/ Website: TalkAboutTalk.com Newsletter:  https://www.talkabouttalk.com/newsletter/ YouTube Channel:  https://www.youtube.com/@talkabouttalkyoutube/ Archetypes Quiz: https://talkabouttalk.com/archetypesquiz   TRANSCRIPT At a recent live workshop I led on personal branding, I kicked things off by sharing three definitions of a personal brand—each one packed with meaning and offering a unique perspective. I started with Jeff Bezos’ infamous definition: “A brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.” Think about that for a moment. It’s powerful, isn’t it? Imagine the conversations happening about you—when you’re not there to guide them. Are they speaking about your leadership? Your creativity? Your dependability? That’s your brand.   Then I highlighted the definition that Seth Godin shared with me when I interviewed him for Talk About Talk episode XX. This really struck a chord. Seth says your brand is what people think you’re going to do next. Wow. Let that sink in. Your brand isn’t just what you’ve done or who you are right now—it’s about expectations, trust, and your potential. Here’s a challenge: take out a sheet of paper. In one column, write down what YOU want to do next—your goals and aspirations. In the second column, write down what you think OTHER PEOPLE expect you to do next. Are those two lists aligned? If not, that’s where the real work begins. The gap between those two lists is where your brand needs some serious attention. Back to the definitions of personal branding that I shared in the workshop.  Finally, I shared my own definition of personal branding, which isn’t just about a thought exercise—it’s about action. Here’s how I define it: personal branding is about being yourself on purpose. Being yourself—your true, authentic, unique, and best self. And on purpose—as in unapologetically, deliberately, and strategically managing your brand. It’s about being disciplined and stepping into your story with intention and owning it. One of the most powerful ways to do this is by controlling your narrative.   And that’s exactly what we’re covering today in this episode. I’m going to walk you through three impactful ways to control your narrative and steer your professional identity. Trust me, these strategies can transform the way people perceive you. Ready to get started?   Welcome to Talk About Talk podcast episode #182: “3 Ways to Control Your Narrative and Steer Your Professional Identity.”   Hi there! In case we haven’t met, I’m Dr. Andrea Wojnicki, executive communication coach at Talk About Talk. But please, just call me Andrea. My mission is to coach executives and professionals like you to communicate with confidence, establish credibility, and achieve your career goals. I’m here to help you take charge of your narrative and own your story—and I couldn’t be more excited to share this episode with you.   You can learn more about me and what I do on the talkabouttalk.com website, where you’ll find details about my 1:1 private coaching, small group bootcamps, keynote speeches, and corporate workshops. I’ve also put together some amazing free resources for you, like the Archetypes Quiz and the Personal Brand Self-Assessment. They’re all on the website, and I’ll leave links in the show notes so you can dive in.   Alright, let’s do this! Let’s talk about how to control your narrative and steer your professional identity exactly where you want it to go.   After working with hundreds—maybe thousands—of executives, I’ve identified three specific ways you can take control of your narrative in a disciplined and strategic way. Here they are: Introducing yourself with purpose. Reframing perceived weaknesses as assets. Narrating your career transitions and your career journey.   Let’s break these down, starting with the first one.   Introducing Yourself with Purpose The first and most direct way to control your narrative is by introducing yourself with purpose. Let me be clear: your self-introduction is the cornerstone of your personal brand. It’s the most direct way that you can reinforce your identity.  It’s your words, about you, from you. It’s YOUR chance to own your story and reinforce exactly how you want to be perceived. If there’s one thing you focus on to take control of your narrative, make it your self-introduction. If you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, you probably know that the number one most downloaded episode of this podcast is the one where I explain the three-point self-introduction framework. It’s resonated with so many people because it’s simple, actionable, and effective. In fact, I recently re-released this episode as number XXX, and if you haven’t listened to it yet, I highly recommend it. This framework was also featured in an August 2022 Harvard Business Review hbr.org article, and in 2023, it was one of the top three most downloaded articles on hbr.org. That’s how powerful this topic is—it’s a game-changer.   Here’s a quick recap of the framework. The first step is present—as in present tense. This is where you share your name and what you do. For example: “Hi, my name is Chris, and I’m the Chief Financial Officer at the bank.” Straightforward, right?   The second step is past—as in past tense. This is where you establish credibility. You might talk about how long you’ve been in your role, highlight our credentials, or talk about an award. Think about what reinforces your credibility in that context.   The third and final step is future—as in future tense. This is where you inject some energy and enthusiasm. Share a statement about what you’re looking forward to. For example: “I’m really excited to get to know you better and work together on this project.” Or, if you’re in an interview: “I’m excited to learn more about this position because, based on what I’ve heard and read, I think I’m a great fit.”   The beauty of this framework is that it’s simple, yet endlessly adaptable. And here’s the magic: within each of these three steps, you can weave in elements of your personal brand that you want to highlight. Let me show you how this works with an example.   Imagine you’re trying to establish yourself as a strong people leader. In the present step, you could say: “Hi, my name is Alex, and I lead a team of 26 in the finance department.” In the past step, you could mention a successful program you launched to develop your team’s skills. And in the future step, you could share: “I’m passionate about helping my team members thrive, and I’m looking forward to seeing them achieve even more.” See how this reinforces your strengths at every step?   Let me give you another example. This one is  personal. Often, I’m asked to introduce myself to HR leaders who are considering me for executive coaching or workshops. Before I introduce myself, I pause to think: what aspects of my personal brand do I want to emphasize in this context? Maybe it’s my academic background paired with my high energy. So, I might say something like: “People tell me that my workshops are uniquely engaging and impactful, thanks to my academic training and the energy I bring to the stage.” That’s not just an introduction—it’s a narrative that reinforces exactly who I am.   So, here’s your homework: make a list of three to five strengths or superpowers that define you. Then, depending on the context, incorporate them into your self-introduction using the present-past-future framework. Trust me, this simple exercise can do wonders for your personal brand.   Okay, that’s the first way to control your narrative. Let’s move on to the second strategy, and this one’s a game-changer.   REFRAMING PERCEIVED WEAKNESSES AS ASSETS We all have something we perceive as a weakness, don’t we? But here’s the thing: often, those so-called weaknesses can be reframed into strengths. I’ve seen this transformation happen time and again with my clients, and the results can be life-changing.   Let me tell you a story. A while ago, I met a mixed-race gentleman who shared with me how exhausted he was with people constantly asking, “Where are you from?” He was frustrated. “I’m Canadian,” he’d reply. But his grandparents were from four different continents, and that seemed to invite even more questions. Instead of letting that frustration fester, we worked on a new narrative. Now, when people ask him where he’s from, he smiles and says, “My ancestry is a mix of A, B, C, and D. I also travel extensively for work and pleasure, so I bring a truly global perspective to my leadership style.” Powerful, right? He turned what felt like a nuisance into a compelling part of his story.   Here’s another example that hits close to my heart. . I was hosting a big Q&A focussed on personal branding. A brave woman raised her hand and shared that she’s a lawyer and she’s tired of being known as an immigrant. She wanted to change her brand, but wasn’t sure how. Here’s what I said: “based on your accent, am I right in detecting you maybe from India?” “Yes,“ she nodded. “Well here’s the thing. We all have accents. They just become more noticeable when our accent is different from others around us. But your English is very clear and the research shows that as long as we can understand each other, an accent is not a bad thing. And in your case, your accent may actually be an asset” I paused. She raised her eyebrows and looked at me expectantly. I continued. “you said you’re a lawyer. What kind of law? Corporate. Where do you practice law? New York. OK. I thought about it for a moment and then I said, here’s how you can introduce yourself. “I am a corporate lawyer in Manhattan with global experience.” And here’s the thing. Your accent serves as evidence of your global experience. Now, your accent is an asset. How does that sound? I don’t think I’ve seen a bigger smile on anyone’s face. She was thrilled.   And then there’s the story of a CEO I coached. This CEO spoke at warp speed. People struggled to keep up, and they’d often ask for clarification. Instead of seeing this as a flaw, we reframed it. Now, when the CEO introduces themselves, they say, “I think fast, and I speak fast—it’s how my brain works. But please let me know if I need to slow down.” Suddenly, their rapid speech became a reflection of their intelligence and agility.   Here’s a common one: being an introvert. Now, I want to make this clear. Introverts are no worse or better than extroverts.  But I know many people who are introverts who would rather be an extrovert. My answer to that is that we should all be our true, authentic selves. And we should also control our narratives. If youre an introvert, I encourage you to steal these insights. To start, Introverts are typically fantastic listeners. So if youre an introvert, you could make this part of your brand. Or introverts could also reference the fact that while they don’t say much, when they do, people lean in to listen.    Here’s another example – your sense of humor. I’ve had a few clients who told me that they try to hide their sense of humor. One was a global chief of staff and the other was a psychiatrist. One of them referenced their sense of humour as a wicked sense of humor. They both tried to conceal their desire to crack jokes, at least when they were at work. After working with each of these individuals on their personal brand narrative, they both ended up focussing on their unique ability to bring LEVITY to otherwise negative situations and contexts. Of course, they checked their sense of humour at the door when it wasn’t appropriate. But they also had a unique talent for establishing camaraderie, encouraging joy, and like I said, bringing levity to otherwise dire situations. Suddenly, their sense of humour became their superpower. Hmm.  I love it.   Do you see the pattern here? What you perceive as a weakness might actually be your secret weapon. It’s all about reframing. So here’s my challenge for you: think about something you’ve been trying to hide. Could it be turned into an asset? If you’re not sure, talk to someone you trust. Sometimes, it takes an outside perspective to see the potential in what we’ve been holding back.   Narrating Your Career Transitions The final way to control your narrative is by owning your career transitions. Whether you’re meeting someone for coffee, networking, or interviewing for a job, how you tell the story of your career matters—a lot. And let’s face it: transitions can feel tricky. But with a little strategy, you can turn them into powerful moments of connection.   Here’s the framework I teach my clients for narrating career transitions: the 3 Ts. Talent, Timeline, and Tomorrow.   Talent: When sharing the story of their career transition, many people start with the past, and they are often negative. They start listing everything wrong with their last employer, their position, their boss, and their colleagues. Sound familiar?    Instead, start with YOU. Start with your talents and strengths. What makes you unique? What’s your superpower? This anchors your story in who you are, not what happened to you. For example: “I thrive in fast-paced environments where I can lead change.” Or: “I’ve always been known for my ability to build strong, collaborative teams.” Once you’ve established your brand, then you can start to tell the story. That’s step two.   Timeline: Next, share a tight, positive summary of your career journey. Highlight the moments that matter, but don’t dwell on negativity.    Whether you’re gainfully employed and curious about other opportunities, or perhaps you were fired, keep your messaging professional and positive, or at least neutral.  While it’s tempting, avoid blaming and avoid venting.  Do NOT criticize past bosses or colleagues.  Do NOT elaborate on your frustrations, conflicts, or dissatisfaction. And do NOT mention grievances, blame others, or share gossip.   And of course, don’t ever share sensitive or confidential information.   Instead of saying, “I left because my boss was terrible,” try: “I realized I was ready for a new challenge and decided to explore opportunities where I could grow.” Keep it concise, and keep it professional.   So you’ve nailed your Talent, and you’ve shared your Timeline. Now what?    Tomorrow: Finally, end with enthusiasm about the future. (Yes, this might sound familiar if you’ve heard me talk about the 3-point self-introduction framework!)    Share what excites you and where you’re headed next. For instance: “I’m energized about finding a role where I can drive meaningful impact and continue to grow as a leader.” Or: “I’m excited to explore opportunities in [specific field] and see where I can make a difference.”   And there you have it—the 3 Ts framework: Talent, Timeline, and Tomorrow. It’s simple, effective, and helps you own your story with confidence.   One quick note: be intentional about the language you use to describe your transition. Words matter.    The question of how you “label” your transition is significant.    Recently, I was coaching an impressive executive who resigned from his employer of over 20 years to reset and try something completely new. Unfortunately, he created a LinkedIn post announcing he had “retired.” He meant “retired from the firm,” but the hundreds of folks who commented on his post understood he was retiring from work altogether.   Oops. Words matter.   So are you taking a “sabbatical” or a “gap year”? Did you get “downsized” or were you “packaged out”? Are you “re-setting” or making a “career pivot”?  Choose terms that feel authentic but also convey strength and professionalism.   Wrapping It Up   Let’s recap. We talked about three powerful ways to control your narrative and steer your professional identity: Introducing yourself with purpose using the present-past-future framework. Turning your perceived weakness into an asset by reframing it as a strength. Narrating your career transitions with the 3 Ts: Talent, Timeline, and Tomorrow.   I hope these strategies inspire you to take charge of your narrative and step into your story with confidence. Remember, your personal brand is all about being yourself on purpose.   If you found this episode helpful, please subscribe on whatever podcast platform you use – Apple Spotify, YouTube, whatever, and please share Talk About Talk with your friends. Thanks for listening, and TALK SOON! The post 3 Ways To Control Your NARRATIVE & Steer Your Professional Identity (ep.182) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

Explore five dynamic strategies to kickstart your personal brand. Learn how to craft a memorable self-introduction and articulate your unique value. Discover the art of thought leadership and its public versus private aspects. Optimize your LinkedIn presence with actionable tips for customizing your profile. Finally, enhance your networking skills with effective strategies for building quality connections and maintaining professional relationships.

Optimizing your voice means sounding like your best self – not someone else! Andrea talks with vocal coach and voice actor Claire Fry to understand why you should focus on your unique voiceprint—rather than imitating others—and how to support your voice through techniques like deep breathing and smiling. They also cover practical tips for enhancing your voice and presence in online meetings.   CLAIRE FRY LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/loudandclaire/ Website – https://www.vocalconfidencetraining.com/ Website – https://www.loudandclaire.com/ Podcast recommendation: Think Fast Talk Smart with Matt Abrahams   CONNECT WITH ANDREA  LinkedIn – Andrea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ LinkedIn Talk About Talk:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/talkabouttalk/ Website: TalkAboutTalk.com Newsletter:  https://www.talkabouttalk.com/newsletter/ YouTube Channel:  https://www.youtube.com/@talkabouttalkyoutube/ Archetypes Quiz: https://talkabouttalk.com/archetypesquiz   TRANSCRIPT   Are you ready?   Welcome to Talk about Talk podcast episode #180 – Optimizing your Voice with Claire Fry.   Claire is a voice actor and a vocal coach. In addition to having a beautiful voice and expertise on the subject, Claire is also witty and fun. Her linkedin posts often make me chuckle. Like the time she had to get her car towed and she took a selfie of her and the tow truck driver. She posted the photo of the two of them in the front seat of the tow truck, and of course, she shared some life lessons. Anyway, I encourage you to follow Claire.  You can find her coordinates in the shownotes.   You can find my coordinates there too! In case we haven’t met, my name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki and I’m an executive communication coach at Tak About Talk. Please just call me Andrea. I coach executives like you to improve your communication skills so you can communicate with confidence, establish credibility, and ultimately achieve your career goals. That’s our objective. To learn more about me and what I do, head over to talkabouttalk.com where you can read about my 1:1 private coaching, small group bootcamps, keynote speeches, and corporate workshops. Plus there are a bunch of free resources, including my free communication skills coaching newsletter, and the archetypes quiz.    In case you haven’t taken the archetypes quiz yet, I hope you will. This can help you establish your professional identity. Im a Sage and a Magician.  If I had to guess, I’d say Claire is a Citizen or maybe a Caregiver, AND a Jester.    OK – in my conversation with Claire Fry, which you’re about to hear, you’re going to learn how to use your best voice. If youre like many people, you might not think about your voice. But here’s the thing: whether its online, in person or on the phone, your voice says a lot about you.    There are some relatively easy things you can do to optimize the sound of your voice. Yes, of course, there’s the importance of breathing.  Breathing is key. But there’s a lot more to your voice than just breathing, as youre about to hear.    At the end, after the interview, I’ll summarize with three important learnings that I want to reinforce for you. And you will probably be surprised about these learnings. Some mindsets and tactics that will definitely help you use your best voice.    Now, let me introduce Claire and then we’ll get right into this.   Claire Fry is a veteran voice actor with over 20 years experience, and a vocal coach with a talent is for connecting, persuading, and demanding attention with her voice. She teaches people and teams to do the same –connect, persuade, and demand attention with their voices.   Through her firm, Vocal Confidence, Claire conducts webinars, workshops, keynotes and 1:1 coaching. She trains teams and leaders across the globe at organizations including Google, HubSpot, Amazon, Apple, McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, Stanford University…and many more. Her objective is to provide people with the tools to sound amazing and the confidence to sound like themselves. I love it.  – the tools to sound amazing and the confidence to sound like themselves! Here’s Claire.   INTERVIEW   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: thank you so much, Claire, for being here today to talk with me and the talk about talk listeners, about our voices.   Claire Fry: Thank you so much for having me, Andrea. I’m so excited to get into it.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Let’s start. Really, General, I’m wondering if you can share with us what you think. Some of the most important things are that we can do to improve the sound of our voices.   Claire Fry: Support, we can support our voices. So this is something that I think is so key, and people come to me because they say I want to sound more confident, or I want to sound more powerful, or I want my voice to sound deeper, and what it actually all comes down to is breath support.   So if I start from a nice deep breath, you can hear how rich and full and supported my voice sounds if I keep talking for a while you’ll hear how it starts to thin out a little bit, and now you’re getting not quite as much of my voice, and if I keep going I’ll end up in my vocal fry down here at the bottom. So that vocal fry is that telltale sign that I don’t have enough breath support for full phonation. You’re not getting my full voice. so I think so many of the things that people associate with having a good voice, a powerful voice, a confident voice. What they really mean is a supported voice. So that’s 1 of the 1st things that I work on with people is. hey? Your voice sounds different when you’ve got some breath behind it. So let’s learn how to do that.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So supporting your voice is is synonymous with putting breath behind it.   Does that just mean taking a deep breath? I’m sure it’s more than that.   Claire Fry: It’s taking a deep breath, but it’s also grounding your voice right? So a lot of the time, especially when we’re nervous. We’re kind of speaking from our throat. You can hear where I’m pushing from my throat. And sometimes when people want to achieve volume, they push from there as well. Right. We get kind of a little bit of a yelling sound, and it’s all coming from the throat versus if I put it down in my belly and use that diaphragm for support.   This is the kind of volume and power you can get from there. But it’s a much freer, more open sound. So it’s definitely about taking that time to fill up with breath beforehand. But it’s also about moving that center of gravity down into the belly, so that we’re not all up here in our throat or breathing from our chest, but everything’s sort of down and grounded and powerful.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So I’m just going to take a second and say to the listeners, if you’re not watching us on Youtube. I suggest you switch over to Youtube. So you can see what Claire’s doing. She’s pointing to her throat. She’s pointing to her chest and her lungs right.   Just if you could coach us just for a minute, because, as you’re going through this, I’m thinking, well, maybe you can coach me on this right like, how do I think about my diaphragm.   Claire Fry: Let’s do it together. You want to take a few seconds. Yeah. So one hand on your belly and one hand on the small of your back, Andrea, and what we’re going to do is we’re going to breathe in, and we’re going to try and move both of those hands outward.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay.   Claire Fry: So I’m gonna be vulnerable and show you my tummy for a second. Just so you can see what I’m talking about.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I love this.   Claire Fry: Hand on the belly, hand on the back. We’re breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth. and you can see how both of those hands are moving as we do it, right.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yep.   Claire Fry: So now let’s kind of connect that to speech, Andrea. If I told you you’re walking along the street, and you see a friend across the street. You see me across the street, and you    recognize me, and you just yell to get my attention, you might say, Oh, hey, Claire.  give that a try. Just do that out loud.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Hey! Claire.   Claire Fry: Yeah, yeah. So where did you feel that when you just did it.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Well, I think because I was conscious of my belly, I felt my belly expand, and then I definitely felt it up here.   Claire Fry: So even just. And I’m so glad you said that, because even just doing this once, just taking the breath in gives us that consciousness of oh, wait! I’ve got all that support down there. I’ve got all that capacity down there. So when we yell, we tend to go here we tend to go, hey, Claire? So I’m going to have you do it again. But this time really focus on you can even use your hands like you’re squeezing an accordion.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay.   Claire Fry: Pushing the breath from below. So it’s more like, Hey, Claire.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Hey! Claire.   Claire Fry: Oh, nice Andrea! Nice! Did you feel that difference in how you’re using your instrument? There.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I definitely did. I was pushing my abdomen in and my back in at the same time with my 2 hands. I also felt like I might have cheated a little bit, and tried to make it sound deeper.   Claire Fry: Did you catch? I did catch that. And that’s a very, very common thing to do, especially for women who, I think, are conditioned, socialized to think of deeper voices as being associated with authority. So if you think about the voice that we put on when someone says, Oh, I want you to sound really serious, like, okay, this is my serious voice, right? Like we associate deeper voices. And and so does everybody. That’s what the studies show. Right. We associate deeper voices with authority, credibility all these things.   Claire Fry: So I’m so glad you brought that up because one of the things I work on with women is. I don’t want to pick on her specifically, but not pulling in Elizabeth Holmes right? Not doing that thing where we do like a fake deep voice to sound a little more like a dude, but instead, to keep our voice at the pitch where it wants to be, but have more support behind it right, have more of that grounding, have more of that power behind it, so that we are supporting our voice in its natural placement, and not squashing it down.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So just to paraphrase, would you agree that we can maintain our natural pitch. but improve the credibility of the sound of our voice by being more supported by thinking about about our diaphragm. and and what and what else do I need to do to to?   It’s not coming from my throat. Right? It’s coming from my abdomen.   Claire Fry: Yeah. And it doesn’t have to be about doing it in the moment. I don’t want people trying to do their job and also thinking about their diaphragm at the same time. That’s that’s a pretty heavy lift. But even just getting in the habit of taking that deep breath into the belly before the meeting. so I always say, do it on the transitions, do it before the podcast interview, do it before you press, join on the zoom, call before you step out on stage. That’s your moment to okay, right? That’s where my breath is. That’s where my voice is. And then.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Let it.   Claire Fry: Go. But we’ll kind of automatically make that adjustment.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay, so this is a 1. i’m going to move my camera back up to my face and not my abdomen. This is a wonderful, I think habit for us all to acquire and adopt. before every important meeting, before I press record to record a podcast before I go into a keynote speech or a workshop, even a coaching session. Wherever you’re going into, maybe a high stakes meeting or presentation.   I already encourage people to do slow, deep breathing, and I say, particularly on the exhale. This is what the research that I’ve been hearing is inhale completely and then slow exhale. And now I will just add to that, put your hands on your belly and your lower back, and feel the expansion as you’re inhaling, and then lengthen your exhale and research shows that this actually changes your blood chemistry. Right? It makes you less fight flight, or freeze before these high stakes moments. So I’m going to try that. And I’m going to encourage everyone to do that, too.   I have another question that’s really a bit tactical, but it’s something that I, speaking of, you know, when I’m recording a podcast. I’ve heard that if you smile when you’re talking. even though it might seem silly, I’m talking into a microphone and and recording a podcast episode by myself. There’s no one else in the room that it changes the sound of your voice is that true.   Claire Fry: Yes, it’s true. You can hear it right? You can hear it on the phone with your mom, or talking to your partner from the other room like you can hear smile in the voice. It it’s the the way that the muscles engage changes the way that the voice interacts right and expresses itself so. Yes, we can hear smile where I always think we want to be careful. Especially working with women in the workplace. Is this idea of smile more. If you want people to like you to listen to you, to engage with you. Right? So smile shows up in voice. It’s not, however, the only way to in voice over we’d call it warming up your voice right? So it’s not the only way to warm up your voice. It doesn’t have to be a giant smile on your face. Some of this can be even just the vocabulary we use. We can warm up our vocabulary if we don’t feel like having a giant smile plastered on our face all the time. and it’s very easy to over index on smile really easy. So this is something I discovered Andrea when I 1st started doing voiceover because one of my 1st voiceover classes I was there in the studio and there was a group of us, and we were all doing a pampers. Commercial and person after person would get in the booth, and the director would say, Okay, now do it and smile right. This is a pampers. We need more smile great. So that’s my turn, and I get in the booth. And I put on this giant smile, and I’m like when your baby needs the best care. And it was way too much. because my voice already has smile in it. Even when I’m not smiling. That’s just part of my voice print. My voice is warm, it does have smile that’s not good or bad. There’s no value judgment there, that’s just a descriptor of what my voice has in it. So I have to be careful about not over indexing on smile, because it can get to be way too much. Really fast, right? If I add, smile on top of smiles like putting a hat on a hat. Yeah.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: It’s actually part of your personal brand is not just the fact that you’re a voice coach, but that your voice sounds happy, and you are generally a positive and happy person, so we’ll get into the personal branding. But I want to go back. You said the word warm up, and I wanted to clarify. You don’t mean warm up, as in preparing or warming up, you mean warm up as in sounding warm.   Claire Fry: That’s exactly what I mean. So like a painter would add a little bit of orange or red to warm up the tones in a painting locally. I’m talking about the things that we do, and we don’t need to get too down the rabbit hole. But there are various muscles that we use. Some of it could just be crinkling, the eyes, crinkling our eyes up creates a warmth as well as smile as well as different ways. We use it. So God, we’re talking about creating warmth in the voice.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay, okay. so you were talking about the impact. That smiling, turning, literally turning, or physically, I suppose, turning up the corners of your mouth affects how your, how your voice sounds, of course, because it changes the physical structure of where your voice is coming through. That’s the non technical way of.   Claire Fry: No, this is perfect. That’s exactly it. Okay.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So I want to talk about the difference between how your voice may show up, and we could get into equipment. We could get into all sorts of things online versus in person.   Claire Fry: And the smiling thing really, really made me think about this.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I watched a video of me being interviewed by someone a couple years ago, and I was like, I really don’t look very friendly.When I looked at myself really carefully, when I slowed it down, and really looked at myself carefully, which, by the way, is very painful. I was like, it’s not that I’m scowling, but I’m not smiling. And then I had this conversation with a couple of other people online. There’s the the. It’s almost like the camera reduces the the happiness of of your appearance. It makes you. It downgrades your emotional tone visually so. And I was talking to a senior executive a couple weeks ago, and he told me that his communication team told him, when you’re on camera, even when you’re not speaking. You need to be ear to ear, smiling, because otherwise you look like you’re not happy. And I said, That’s what I noticed of myself on screen as well. So I mean, that’s more of a physical appearance. Difference between on person in person versus virtually. But what about our voices in person versus virtually.   Claire Fry: No, I think that’s a direct analog. I love that. It’s a flattening medium. right? So it’s flattening in terms of visual presentation. And it’s flattening in terms of vocal presentation as well, especially if people are using second 3rd rate equipment, which is not picking up all of the tones and gradations in voice, the way that we would be able to do if we were in the room together.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay.   Claire Fry: Absolutely. I want to come back to the looking at yourself on screen thing in one second. But I’ll say for voice. people can be so much louder than they think they can. So part of that is that any piece of video software you’re using, whether that’s zoom Google meet teams, any of it all has built in limiters. which is just a way of saying it’s automatically bringing down the peaks of your voice right? So you can get so much louder than you think. It’s often louder than you would if you were in the room with these people. And the way it translates over video is as energy.   It translates as passion, engagement, excitement, right? Like all these positive things. So we feel like we’re being way, too. I feel like I’m being way too loud right now. I bet it doesn’t sound.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Not allowed no.   Claire Fry: You.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: No, it sounds like you’re excited and enthusiastic. Yes.   Claire Fry: So the software is bringing it all down. So I think people really need to understand that because I think it feels so vulnerable in some ways.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: When we’re in video calls and people just.   Claire Fry: Shrink everything about themselves right to be as neutral as possible because it does feel so vulnerable. But actually, we need to get bigger. We need to use more notes, more melody, more.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: He does.   Claire Fry: And what blessing that will be to the people who are listening to us.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Ok, so back to the point that you made before about you can always go too far. Right? You can go too far in trying to make your voice deeper in whatever we’re recommending here. That said, I. Just want to say, Claire, this insight is huge.   Thank you. So the fact that the screen and in virtual meetings, basically every way that you’re communicating, which is, I guess, auditory and visual things are flattened. So your facial expression is flattened. So smile more.   I’ve even heard that if you’re on screen you should wear more makeup than you would if right, I’m I’m seeing you nod. Okay. So, whatever whatever you normally do, you need to amplify and in terms of your voice. So this is, I guess, a segue into some recommendations that you can give to us. I’ve heard that to optimize the sound of our voice, one of the things that we can seek is variation, variation in pitch, in tone in cadence, and so on. And and I would hypothesize that you would suggest that we should do that even more. So when we’re virtual or online as opposed to when we’re in person.   Claire Fry: Absolutely cadence, intonation, just the number of notes that we are using. And again, our 1st instinct seems to be to shrink. All of that when you ask people, or when more accurately, when someone is telling themselves in their mental script, I need to sound professional. The 1st thing to go is the notes.   The 1st thing they start doing is using fewer notes and saying, This is my professional voice. This is my buttoned down, giving it to you straight. Kind of what? Right? Because it’s safe. You’re safe there. You feel safe there. But actually, it’s such a barrier to people being able to hear you follow you and engage with you because you’re not giving all those verbal signals that roadmap that helps people to follow you when you’re speaking. So we flatten it out. And it’s the worst thing that we could do. and we over. So I’m sure this is something that you’ve come across as well. This idea of negativity bias in communication.   So when we hear someone speaking and we’re not getting clues from them. From their tone of voice.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: We don’t know.   Claire Fry: They’re happy. We don’t know if they’re sad. We don’t know if they’re excited, we automatically assign negative qualities. We go. Oh, well, they’re mad at me. Oh, they’re frustrated! Oh, they’re bored, or they’re whatever right. So we need to be sending that really strong signal all the time. And I think that’s true for face as well.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay.   Claire Fry: That we need to be sending that signal all the time.   There was an interesting study that came out last year. I don’t know if you came across this that we over attribute emotionality to our own neutral face when we see ourselves on screen. Yeah, I’ve memorized that that because I wanted to get it exactly.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Say it again, say it again we.   Claire Fry: When we yeah. So when we see our own face on screen, when we’re looking at our own face, we over attribute emotionality to our own neutral face. So even when our face is actually neutral in expression we read it as emotional and usually negative.   So this is that thing where we go. Oh, why do I look like I’m mad, or why do I look like right? Right? But it’s it’s it’s a little bit in our heads, because we always have this negativity bias when it comes.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: And it might be amplified, or the effect might be exaggerated. If it’s online. Right? Was the research virtual.   Claire Fry: Yes, exactly. It was entirely virtual. And it’s why I always tell people. If they’re speaking, they should have their self view off online always.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: That’s a big tip. That’s a big one, Claire.   Claire Fry: Always, always, always. Because if you see your own face 1st of all, it’s the most distracting thing you could possibly have on your screen. I don’t care what your relationship is with your face. It doesn’t matter. You’re always looking at it right? You’re flicking over. You’re checking in. That’s taking you out of connection with your audience, which is where that attention should be. And we’re judging ourselves. We’re doing this over attributing of emotionality. We’re doing all these things, and it makes us feel like we’re on stage. It lights up the same part of your brain as if you were performing. So these are all impediments to communication. Yeah, I think.   Turn off the self view. Take you don’t need it. You’ve never walked into a conference room, sat down, pulled out a mirror, and stared at yourself.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: True. True. So so, Claire, I always adjust my, the, you know the Zoom screen or the Microsoft teams screen, whatever it is. so that I’m on the bottom, and the people the other people are at the top closer to the camera, and I and I don’t look at myself. But you’re saying, take it to the next level and just remove yourself from your view. Okay. Claire Fry: It’s easy to do. It’s just a click of a button, and everyone can see you. But you can’t see yourself but what you’re doing. Andrea is so smart when you always want to put your audience as close to that camera as possible. Right? So we get that eye contact.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah. Your face right now is right below the camera.   Claire Fry: This, too. It’s almost like we thought about this check.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: That’s amazing. Okay, I’d love to dig a little bit more into gender differences. You mentioned that women in particular may try to make their voices sound deeper. I would guess men probably do too, like you said. We all hear this anecdotally in society, and it’s reinforced that we attribute deep voices to power, status, authority, all of those leadership qualities.   Right? What? What gender differences do you come across in your work with your clients that you might want to mention here.   Claire Fry: Hmm, interesting. Yeah, it’s not. It’s not a crazy thing to do right. Which is why I said before, I don’t. There’s plenty of reasons to rag on Elizabeth Holmes, but lowering her voice, is not one of them that’s completely understandable, especially if you’re working in a male dominated field because it’s true people prefer, I think, in the last 20 Presidential races we’ve elected the person with the deeper voice every time. But one or something like that, right like this is just a thing. This is a thing that we do.   So what’s a woman to do right? And you know, as you said, there are certainly men with higher pitched voices who, I’m sure, are as aware of this. But I’m going to talk specifically about people who are assigned female at birth. and therefore have smaller larynxes, smaller voice boxes. and voices that are higher pitched. So, generally speaking, there’s a little less of a resonating chamber. so we the voices don’t have quite as much power to them. We don’t have quite as much resonance to them, and we have that that slightly higher pitch. So I’m I don’t want to be boring, but I have to go back to the breath part right? Because here’s the thing. It’s it’s understandable to want to lower your voice, but it doesn’t.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: We’re.   Claire Fry: Because it’s just not how your instrument is put together. It’s trying to make flute sound like an oboe right? Like it’s it’s just not the way that it’s constructed so ultimately the thing that is going to best serve us in terms of getting heard, in taking up space with our voices, and having a level playing field with the men. is putting a little more energy behind it, a little more breath behind it. And hey, maybe get a really good microphone.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.   Claire Fry: Right, because your virtual meetings, if you have a good microphone that’s gonna automatically bring your voice higher in the mix. So now it’s going to be more present in people’s ears? And why not take every advantage you possibly can?   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.   Claire Fry: Yeah, in voice over, we call it cut through that quality of making people sit up and pay attention when you speak. So let’s let’s use everything like everything in our arsenal.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, I’ve been in plenty of meetings where you know I there say, there’s 5 people in the meeting and 3 people talk. And then the 4th person speaks for the 1st time, and you’re like what your brain you you just sit up and pay attention right like snap to it because. And then you say, they’re the one that has the professional. Whatever podcasting equipment, it doesn’t have to be professional podcasting equipment like, you can get a little microphone that sits on your desk on a tiny little tripod, right? And and it’ll make all the difference in the world. So that’s a great point. Yeah. so true. And I don’t think it’s as much of investment as people think right. I’m using.   Claire Fry: This is an audio technica 2020. It’s $79, and it plugs directly into the USB port of my computer, right? This is not some gigantic and no one’s dropping thousands of dollars on a Neumann professional microphone right? Like.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.   Claire Fry: Just something simple, something.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: It’s a little thing that can make a big difference.   Claire Fry: It really does, and then it cuts down on the amount of echo in your room. Because I think this is the other thing people don’t realize it’s not about the microphone just boosting your voice. It’s about directionality. So when people are using the microphones that are built into their laptops that microphone is picking up your voice, but it’s also picking up every reflection. every echo of your voice, as it bounces around your room, and it makes it sound like we’re underwater a little bit, you know, because you work in audio as well right know exactly what I’m talking about. I’m sure you’ve had guests where you had to deal with that to some extent or another, because people don’t realize how those reflections build up so something closer to your mouth just eliminates that whole issue.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So I want to shift now to personal branding, and you made the comment that your voice sounds. I think you said as if you’re smiling, it’s warm because it sounds like you’re smiling. You have a natural smile in your voice. So do you want to talk a little bit about the unique sounds of our voices, how they can reinforce our personal brand and vice versa. If we think about our personal brand and then reverse engineer.   You know the process that I take my clients through step one is articulating or creating their personal brand. So coming up with 12 to 15 themes that really resonate with them their expertise, their passions, all different types of of themes. but that are positive and unique to them. And then we shift to communication, and I talk about virtually and in person, directly and indirectly, we are constantly reinforcing, or maybe contradicting these elements of our personal brand that we’ve identified. So maybe we’ll start there. Imagine that you’ve created this brand, and you want to be seen as a strong people leader. And you have a real growth mindset. And you’re also encouraging that in others. and then you’re and then I say, well, there, there’s direct or explicit ways that you can reinforce, that when you’re introducing yourself when you’re talking about your strengths. There’s also implicit ways like your voice. Right? So how can we think about this.   Claire Fry: I think what we’re talking about here is tone. So I’ll ask you if it’s okay. I’ll ask you a question, because this will come back around, I promise.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay.   Claire Fry: One of the things that I think people think of when they think of personal brand, among other things is their visual presentation of self things like their wardrobe, and what they wear right.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: We call this, how you show up.   How you show up.   Claire Fry: I love that we need a verbal equivalent of that. How you, how you sound up, how you hear! We’ll figure.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Somebody sent me an article today that they said, What is your verbal brand? And I was like, that’s just the implicit communication that we talk about in my boot camps, and coaching all the time related to your voice.   Claire Fry: oh, I love that. I love that. So if someone were to come, to you with you know they’d, they’d gone through and created a collage of this visual style that really resonated for them. And it was extremely sleek Japanese inspired minimalist. But it wasn’t a good fit for their body type. for example, right? So there’s the brand we want. And then there’s sort of the raw material that we’re working with. I’m curious. What what advice would you give under those circumstances.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So I would have gone back a step, and I would have said, You know, what are the themes? Right? So it it can include your geography. It it can include your, you know. As I said, your strengths and your passions, so I can’t imagine that you would end up identifying themes that are inconsistent with your physicality. Actually. So. So, by the way, your very question directly illustrates one of the biggest mistakes that I see people making, and it’s trying to communicate their brand before they’ve done the work of articulating it. And right they they go. They’re basically, if if you’re coming to me with your brand style guide. and you haven’t done the work of identifying what your what your brand is. You’re going to end up in trouble right? Because it may be like you, said an aspirational visual aesthetic. That really is just something that you think is beautiful, but it has nothing to do with your unique brand.   Claire Fry: Oh, that is so cool! What a cool pro! I wanna go through that process with.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, let’s do it.   Claire Fry: Quiet. Let’s do it. Let’s do it. Let’s do it at some point that sounds amazing.   So I think, similarly. what I think the equivalent here is that sometimes people come to me and they send me Youtube videos of Ceos. Ted speakers and say, I want to sound like that.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Hmm.   Claire Fry: Well. that belongs to them. That’s their verbal style. We cannot take that and transplant that on yours, because there are. There’s your instrument. There are physical limitations. There are all of these parts of our voice print right, and that might be things something like natural smile, or directness, or softness, or breathiness that could be an accent that could be the depth of your voice, the height of your voice, right like. There are all of these things about your voice. So rather than trying to make your voice do something like you, I always go back to the source which is the intention behind it.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Beautiful.   Claire Fry: Because what we find is that when you’re asking the right questions questions about who is my audience?   Who am I talking to? What’s my relationship to them. And what’s the main message I want to get across.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.   Claire Fry: Your tone will follow every single time. So it’s not about creating some tone right to your point. This sort of external focused. This is what I want to sound like. It’s this is how I serve this message for these people.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yes.   Claire Fry: That’s going to be the most effective way every time. So we want to work from the inside out, not the outside in.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yes.   Claire Fry: Yeah, which I think resonates very much with what you were.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Very much, very much, Claire. I think you and I need to collaborate on this. There’s so much opportunity here. I feel like the sound of your voice, of your you keep saying instrument, the sound of your instrument as a voice could actually be, input to step one which is creating your brand. But then it also is part of step 2, right? Which is the communication. So it’s step one and step 2. I love that. That’s a that’s a big insight. There are probably other elements of your brand that are that way, too. Yeah, wow. So for example, your physical stature, right?   It is an input to your brand themes. But it also is then how you can reinforce and communicate your brand theme. So okay.   Claire Fry: And I think this speaks so much to this idea of authenticity that I think we’re always circling around in communication because people say, what’s okay? Well, what’s my authentic voice? Is that how I sound with my best girlfriends when we’re hanging out drinking wine together, and your authentic voice is not your lowest energy voice.   Do you know what I mean? Like those are not the same thing. So the metaphor I always use with people is, imagine your wardrobe so ideally. Everything in your wardrobe is something chosen by you that reflects to use your language that reflects your brand. But you’re going to pick different things for different occasions. So if you know you’re giving a keynote, you’re picking a different outfit than if you’re spending a day at the beach or going out to a concert with friends. Those are different outfits, but they come from the same wardrobe.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Beautiful.   Claire Fry: Same with voice. Right? We are using different aspects of voice that are suitable for different occasions. But it’s not inauthentic, right? That doesn’t make it fake that we’re switching our voice, depending on the context. That’s just picking the best tool for the job.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I love this metaphor. I have to be honest with you, Claire. It’s the second time I’ve heard the metaphor from a guest that I respected very much. The 1st time I heard this was from Ron Tite the author of this book think, do, say, and and other books as well. He brought that up when we were talking about personal branding. I love it in the context of using your voice.    Claire Fry: I love it well, 1st of all, I need to listen to that episode because I love it right like that means there’s something true. There, if a few of us are running around and have independently come to this idea because I’m a voice actor, I use the word modulated. So it’s modulating your voice for different.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Notifications.   Claire Fry: One example would be in voiceover, we treat radio scripts really differently from TV scripts. because in television or any visual medium. our voice is there to support the visuals? We are not the main attraction, but if it’s a radio spot. our voice is the whole shebang right? Like it’s the entirety of the delivery mechanism for the message. So the way you modulate your voice is really different for those 2 media.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay, before we get to the 3 rapid fire questions, I just want to conclude here by asking what I’m guessing a lot of people would would ask you in a coaching session, which is what’s the best way to prepare for a high stakes event where I’m going to be on stage. I’m saying this in in air quotes it could be literally on stage behind a podium with a mic, or it might just be standing up in front of a group. Or it might even be. you know, when you’re called on in a really important meeting with important stakeholders around. what can we do to improve or optimize the sound of our voice when we’re in particular feeling nervous and anxious.   Claire Fry: Take a deep breath.   No, I know I no, I know like trying to find. I need to go to the Thesaurus and find other ways to say, Take but take a deep. It’s that especially so. I’m going to say this. I’m going to say there’s 2 different things here. One is that if it’s something that you’re preparing for, if you are going out on, if you’re giving a presentation, warm up your voice. do a voice Warmup, do some lip trills.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Hey!   Claire Fry: Do some yawns because you’ve got your content. You’ve got your slides. It does not benefit you to keep going over it over and over again. So take a break from all of that, and just do something to get in your body and get in your voice and know you’re doing something that’s going to help you sound better.   How great is that? That’s that’s like a that’s doing 2 for the price of one when we are on the spot when we’re asked a question. You know this fight flight or freeze right? The 1st thing that happens is we feel pressure to start talking right away. And what we have to learn to do is to fight that impulse.   Hmm, okay. we feel like, Oh, someone just asked me a question. And now I have to start talking right away, or I’m gonna look like I don’t know what I’m talking about, and we end up using more words with less impact instead of taking that beat and waiting to start talking until we feel ready. So yeah, taking the beat, taking the breath and warming up your voice whenever you have a chance to do so.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I love that. Okay? So take a deep breath. Trills yawns. You didn’t say, take a sip of water. I’m going to guess you assumed we were already well hydrated.   Claire Fry: I’m making that assumption. Yes.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay? And then when we when we’re in the moment, the power of pausing. And you know, I talked with someone about this recently, I said, there’s you know, this. This idea of the power pausing has become sort of a like a common thing that that people are sharing because we race to fill the silence. As you said, right, someone. All eyes are on you, and you feel like you need to fill that silence right away. Otherwise people are going to make assumptions that you don’t know what you’re saying. Blah blah! Right?   Actually, you will appear more confident if you nod and take a moment, and then people will like lean in. What is she going to say? Right.   Claire Fry: That’s the power move it really is. And then pausing at the end in voiceover we call it letting the dust settle. You know what that is, because you’ve heard it a million times. There are some things money can’t buy for everything else.   There’s mastercard right, and you give up. It’s the moment. Right? It’s that moment. And it’s so effective. And yeah, just give giving your words the weight that they deserve.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay, my friends at Mastercard are going to love that. You shared that, Claire. Amazing? All right, I’m going to move on to the 5 rapid fire questions. Now, are you ready?   Claire Fry: I’m ready.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Question number one, are you an introvert or an extrovert?   Claire Fry: Oh, I’m such an extrovert, but I’m an extrovert who doesn’t love talking about myself. I’m just endlessly curious about other people, so my husband will tell you I’m a nightmare to bring to a cocktail party, because I will. Just. My favorite place is a cocktail party, where I don’t know a single person there. I just walk up to people, and I just start asking questions. It’s it’s my favorite.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay. So, Claire, I’m also an extrovert. And and most people on the podcast usually tell me that they are an introvert, but they have become more extroverted that it’s this whole thing, anyway. I love that you are. I am an extrovert.   You also, I think, have a superpower based on what you just shared, because there’s research that shows that introverts are better listeners. But you shared that. You have this innate curiosity about people. So if you’re an extrovert. You’re you’re socially comfortable. You’re getting energized by being around people, and you’re probably asking them questions and listening. Amazing.   Claire Fry: I like that framing. I’ll take that.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Tell your husband, you have a superpower. Okay.   Claire Fry: Ha! Ha! It’s true, honey, I’m not a nightmare to bring to cocktail party.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: You can never.   Claire Fry: Get me out of there right? That’s the problem.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, that’s awesome. Okay? Question number 2, what are your communication? Pet? Peeves?   Claire Fry: I really do not like it when people read something that has been written and they throw it away. So I, for example, if you. You would never do this. But if someone gave you their introduction to read, and you’re like. so Claire Fry is a communications coach who has worked with executives from lots of right. That reedy tone of voice, instead of putting in that little extra effort to bring it to life to make it sound like your words. Yeah, it drives me crazy when people don’t put in the effort to do that and just throw it away like it’s that Yada Yada kind of cadence.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So, Claire, you’re reminding me of a question that I get a lot that I have an opinion about. But I’d love to hear yours. It’s a little bit off topic from your voice per se. But what do you say about cue cards generally.   Claire Fry: I always encourage people to work off bullet points and not word for word scripts, and this is because I am a trained professional who has been doing this for 20 years, and it’s still hard for me to make a written script sound like a real person talking. That is a hard thing to do. so I encourage people to set themselves up for a scenario where they can stay on track where they have guidance, but they can use their own words and their own attunement to the audience to deliver the message the way it’s going to best be heard.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: You have no idea how happy that makes me, because that is exactly the answer that I say to the goal is not to get rid of the cue card. It’s to have the outline in front of you that you can reference if you need to. Yes, okay, okay. That wasn’t very rapid fire. But I’m really glad we went there. The 3rd and last rapid fire question, is there a book or a podcast or maybe both, that you find yourself recommending lately.   Claire Fry: Oh, that’s funny. People ask me this all the time, because everything everyone thinks I should not should have a podcast. But it’s strange that I don’t given that my medium is audio, and I do coaching. But I say, Matt, Abrahams is already making the podcast that I would make if I were to make one. So I just send people to him. So yes, the Matt Abrahams. I think it’s talk. Think fast, talk smart, yeah. fast talk smart. I just think there’s a i don’t agree with everyone he has on. I don’t even agree with everything that he says, but I just think it’s such an interesting and eclectic group of people talking about communication.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I got to get him on my podcast.    Okay, amazing.    And before I let you go, I just want to ask Claire, is there anything else you want to share with the talk about talk listeners, about optimizing the sounds of their voices.   Claire Fry: You know less about optimizing the sound of their voices, and more just an exhortation for people to sound like themselves. Hmm! Feel like that is the thing that I learned from doing voiceover training that inspired me to start this coaching practice. To begin with, which is your voice, is enough. It’s enough it is. You have everything that you need for it to do the job. You need it to do. So get out of your head. Stop worrying about what you’re supposed to sound like or what you think. Someone with this expertise should sound like and sound like yourself. but supported and strong and intentional.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Beautiful. Thank you so much, Claire. I learned a lot, and I had fun. Thank you.   Claire Fry: Oh, thank you so much for having me, Andrea. This was such a delight.   CLOSING   Isn’t Claire great?  I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did.     OK – let me summarize now by reinforcing three main learnings that I hope you’ll take away with you from our conversation.   The first is the point that your best voice is YOUR best voice. (Not someone else’s) Think about your voice print – the unique elements of your voice. Your voiceprint includes your pitch, your accent, your natural smile, your directness, your softness, your breathiness, the depth of your voice, the height of your voice, and a lot more. (Claire talked about how her voice print has a natural smile in her voice) When it comes to our voice, we want to work from the inside out, not the outside in. Instead of trying to sound like someone else, we should focus on sounding like our best self.  Hmm.  Sounds familiar.  This is exactly what I tell my clients when we’re working on their unique personal brand. Instead of copying others, focus on identifying YOUR unique strengths and passions. SO for example, when it comes to your voice, If you’re a small person, your voice will sound different than someone with a barrel chest. As Claire says: consider your instrument – don’t try to make a flute sound like an oboe.   So that’s the first thing – instead of trying to sound like someone else, we should seek to optimize our own best voice.   How do you do that?  This is the second point. Claire talked a lot about SUPPORTING our voice. This, of course, is attained through our breathe. Deep breathing. Using your diaphragm.   And depending on the context, also by smiling. People can hear your smile. You can warm up your voice with a smile. But of course, be careful you dont go too far.  Claire talked about how you can over-index on things – there’s a happy medium.    As an aside – that goes for just about all the communication skills advice you’ll hear  Sometimes it’s easy to over-index.   So that’s the second point – supporting your voice, primarily through breathe, and with other things like smiling.   The third and last point I want to reinforce is about optimizing your voice and your presence online. This was probably my favorite insight from my conversation with Claire.  We discussed several things you can do to warm up, to optimize your voice when youre in an online meeting.   The main thing to consider here is that online is a flattening medium. When we’re online,things look and sound flat. Mediocre. Audio software brings down the peaks. In other words, it makes us monotone – and that goes for both audio and video.  So – what should you do? You should amplify everything youre saying or doing online.  For example: use your voice – talk louder. Increase your personal volume. outside the context of your voice, there’s also your facial expression – Online, we sometimes read neutral facial expression as as negative.  SO what do we do?  Replace your neutral face with a smile. That’s an easy fix!!!   We also referenced a few other online meeting hacks for you: Invest in a microphone – the mic will pickup the nuance in your voice and help filter out all the other sounds around you.  This is about optimizing the sound of your voice. turn off our self-view – I LOVE Claire’s point here.  Your self-view is distracting and not necessary.  When’s the last time you walked into a meeting room and pulled out a mirror so you could watch yourself talk?  Never.  Exactly. SO turn of self-view.  Focus on others. When youre in an online meeting, put the audience (or speaker) as close to the camera as possible.  If youre on a laptop, cenre the other person or the speak\er right below the camera light on your screen.,  That way it looks more like youre maintaining eye contact.  Another easy fix!   And that is everything for this episode! Thanks again to Claire Fry.  You can find all of Claire’s coordinates in the shownotes for this episode.  And my coordinates are there too!    I’d love to hear from you. Please connect with me on LinkedIn and send me a DM there.  Or you can conta0ct me through my website – talkabouttalk,com.   If you enjoyed this Talk About Talk podcast, please make sure you subscribe. And don’t forget – you can also WATCH Talk About Talk on our YouTube channel – yes, you can WATCH the Talk about Talk podcast!     Whether youre watching or listening, I want to say thank you for being here.  Talk soon! The post Optimizing Your VOICE with Claire Fry (ep.180) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

“The Portfolio Life” – Have you ever considered your personal interests and activities to be a portfolio?  A portfolio worth assessing and diversifying? In this interview with author Christina Wallace, you’ll learn about the four pillars of creating a portfolio life, how they might inform your personal brand, and three exercises to help you be more purposeful in your life – beyond what’s on your business card.   CHRISTINA WALLACE Book “The Portfolio Life” – https://amzn.to/3DxUd0U LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinawallace/ Website – https://christinawallace.com/ Christina’s recommendations: The Anxious Achiever by Morra Aarons Mele – https://amzn.to/3VJ58ew The Perfect Story by Karen Eber – https://amzn.to/4iJcs3A   CONNECT WITH ANDREA  LinkedIn – Andrea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ LinkedIn – Talk About Talk:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/talkabouttalk/ Website: https://www.TalkAboutTalk.com Newsletter:  https://www.talkabouttalk.com/newsletter/ YouTube Channel:  https://www.youtube.com/@talkabouttalkyoutube/   TRANSCRIPT   Have you ever considered this?  If you are 100% focused on your job and you lose your job, then of course you lose everything.  YIKES.   That voice, by the way, belongs to Christina Wallace, the author of a book I highly recommend, called “The Portfolio Life.”  I met Chistina a few months ago at a conference, where she gave a talk about her book. The exercises that Christina outlines in her book can change your life. This is definitely not an understatement.  Are you ready to learn more?   Welcome to Talk about Talk podcast episode #179,  “The Portfolio Life and Your Personal Brand with Christina Wallace”   You’re about to hear my conversation with Christina, where you will learn about a framework and several exercises that will help you identify your personal priorities. You’ll also hear the full spectrum of emotion – from crying about my lost friend, to laughing out loud.    Here’s an excerpt from her the book jacket fr “The Portfolio Life” that I think you’ll find compelling. Here’s what it says:  Whether you’re sick of being told you’re worth is inextricably tied to your work, or that setting boundaries and protecting your personal life means you aren’t all in, this book will walk you step-by-step through the process of designing a strategy for the long-haul. Because you deserve rest, relationships, and a rewarding career – not someday, but today. After all, you only live once.   Yes, that’s pretty compelling   Of course, I always see these things through the lens of our respective personal brands. These exercise provide powerful insight into our true brands.  As you’ll hear me I admit to Christina, I assigned one of her exercises in a personal branding bootcamp that I ran recently. And it went exactly as she forecasted: the first part was easy.  Simple.  But then it got very difficult,  And of course, that where the magic happens.    Let’s dive in. I’m going to interview Christina and then we’ll get right to the interview. After the interview as always, I will summarize with three main learnings that I want to reinforce for you. This time it will be three exercises that I hope you’ll try. Are you ready? A self-described “human Venn diagram”, Christina Wallace has crafted a career at the intersection of business, technology, and the arts. She is currently a Senior Lecturer of entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School, an active angel investor, and a co-producer of Broadway musicals. Her latest book called “The Portfolio Life: How to Future-Proof Your Career, Avoid Burnout, and Build A Life Bigger Than Your Business Card” was published in 2023.  This is the book we reference in our conversation that you’re about to hear. You can find the link to this book in the shownotes for this episode.  A serial entrepreneur, Christina has built businesses in ecommerce, edtech, and media. In 2019, she also co-authored, “New To Big: How Companies Can Create Like Entrepreneurs, Invest Like VCs, and Install a Permanent Operating System for Growth,”  and was the co-host of “The Limit Does Not Exist”, an iHeart podcast with millions of downloads over 3 seasons and 125 episodes. In her free time, Christina sings with various chamber choirs, embarks on adventure travel, and is a mediocre endurance athlete. Yes, those are her words. Christina lives in Cambridge Massachusetts with her husband and their two children.   INTERVIEW   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Thank you so much, Christina, for being here today to talk to us about the portfolio life.   Christina Wallace: Thank you for having me. I’m thrilled to be here.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So when I looked at the table of contents, Christina, I loved how you structured the book. You’ve got the 3 parts, the why we’re doing this, the what we’re doing and the how we’re doing it. And then you also present the 4 pillars. So I was wondering if you could start by sharing with the listeners what each of the 4 pillars represents.   Christina Wallace: Sure, when I was trying to ground this model in sort of a structure of like. what is it giving you right like you think about this from startup pitches all the time, or any sort of product like, stop telling me about the features.   Tell me about what problem it solves what it gives. You know the person who’s thinking about it. That’s how I came to these 4 pillars. It effectively says, here is why and how the portfolio. Life delivers on what it does for you. Number one.    And I have experienced this. It was incredibly destabilizing, and I think because of that, many people stay in jobs longer than they would want to. They stay in entire career paths because they can’t imagine a version where they might have to reinvent themselves. And it’s just very, very like narrowing as you get older. And so it starts with this notion of like, how could you build an identity, define an identity even that it isn’t about how you monetize your time. And instead is based on these components of, like the world you live in the skills you have access to the networks you’re a part of, and build this out via a Venn diagram, as you see, sort of those intersections is where you have a unique perspective. and once you have that understanding of your identity, you can see that I’m more than one thing that gives you optionality pillar, 2 which says, like, you can always do more than one thing. You never are stuck.   If you can see that you have options and those options can be really small. They can be like, Hey, let’s find a different context for doing this work. You love the work you hate the company. Let’s find a different place and define very positively. What are you going toward? Not what are you running away from? But in many other cases it’s bigger options. It’s you did this 1st season of life that was great. And now let’s zigzag. Let’s pull something else out of your Venn diagram and drive with that for the next decade. And so really understanding that like, basically, unless you’re on your deathbed, you still have options that you can pursue. But you have to see them right. And this becomes a lot about the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.   And that brings us to the 3rd pillar, which is diversification.   That’s actually where I started the entire model. The portfolio life is very much based on this idea of a financial portfolio. Right? We think about how we diversify our financial portfolio. and we can allocate our assets and allowing us to take some risk. because you have to have risk in order to get returns.   But you can mitigate that risk through diversification by thinking about how can I?   Can? I, you know, invest here that won’t be correlated with that thing over there, and if one thing falls apart, the whole portfolio doesn’t fall apart. It’s the same way with our lives that the only way to survive the amount of disruption we are currently facing is to be diversified. There are so many moving pieces that we can’t foresee. We can’t plan for that. You can’t be linear about your strategy. So instead, how do you think about? Are there hobbies? And again, networks, relationships, side hustles, whatever that is. that both gives you something on a day-to-day basis. You’re not doing everything just because of doomsday. but by having sort of that diversified a base of activities and people and skills.   If and when disaster befalls your industry, your geography, your relationship, whatever you have other irons in the fire that you can, you can access. and ultimately that brings us to the 4th pillar. The point of this entire model is flexibility.   The generations that came before us, our parents, our grandparents.   On the one hand, they might have had it quote easier, right? A slightly less disruptive world, a slightly more predictable place, but I think they also were stuck on a linear path, whether they wanted to or not. You picked a thing, and then you did it for 40 years.   And I see the moments where I think my family would have really appreciated the idea, to reinvent themselves, or to take a different path for a different chapter of life, but that wasn’t an option for them. So as much as it can be annoying that we’re like everything is getting thrown up in the air every few years or every few weeks, even right like the world is changing and we can’t. We can’t ever have nice things at the same time it offers us this huge amount of flexibility.   That means we can build for a season of life. and when that season shifts, when the thing that we’ve built no longer serves us. You know we’ve got new friction that wasn’t there before rebalance your portfolio, so you can think about what’s that season when I have small children. That’s the season I’m in right now, or the season where I need to take care of my parents, or where I have a major health issue that I need to address or or I’m burnt out. And I need a sabbatical right? It allows us to bit really creative and flexible, about meeting our needs and allowing our goals and motives to change, which is just human nature.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I love your term seasons. I think it’s I think it’s almost empowering right, because people might think, you know I’ve reached this. you know, pinnacle in my career. And then something happens. And they, I know they freak out people. I get these emails from people. Andrea, my professional brand. My identity is changing. Help, help. And I say. 1st of all congratulations, a breath, you’re going to be okay.   Christina Wallace: Oh, yeah.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I think it’s fantastic. So with these 4 pillars, I’m hearing a couple things that that the benefit is personal in terms of your life satisfaction definitely, your career satisfaction, and probably even your life satisfaction. Right? So it is a shame that our parents weren’t thinking this way in previous generations.   Christina Wallace: Yeah, I mean, I have a lot of empathy for them where you’re kind of like you had to pick a thing at 16 or 22.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right.   Christina Wallace: And the version of you at that stage maybe even wanted that thing deeply. And then you turned out to be moderately good at that thing in the best case scenario, and that thing is all you ever got to be. And you know I see the joy in many cases of my mother-in-law getting to retirement after a fabulous career as an executive, and realizing that, like A, she’s not dead yet. and has a ton to offer. And B. There was this whole piece of her that she hadn’t really been in touch with. Since college, which was art, art, history, and Spanish. She had studied them in college, she hadn’t touched them for her entire career, and now, at 70 something is retired and is like, I’m going to go. Be a docent at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and I’m going to give tours in Spanish to tourists. There’s this whole piece of me that that had to be at a 0% allocation for a really long time. But I’m existing in this same world today and the world today, says I still have another season ahead, so I think as frustrating as it may have been for them in those seasons where they didn’t have that.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Flexible.   Christina Wallace: The joy is, they’re still here, and this applies to them, too. And so, you know, I see a lot of people thinking this book is really applicable, for, you know, young graduates or people reaching new parent status or going through those transitions. But I think it’s just as relevant for folks at any stage of transition across a career.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So speaking of this transition, I’m thinking there are catalysts that may happen like retirement, or like being told.   You know you’ve kind of reached your cap in this organization.   Christina Wallace: Yeah.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Or your family role change, you become a parent, or you become an empty nester. There’s these catalysts that happen. But there’s also an opportunity, I think, for people when they read the portfolio life and really internalize it and act on it. To be proactive and to and to, you know, take advantage of this opportunity when you were talking about your mother-in-law, I was thinking I had a very. very dire conversation with a friend of mine that was dying of brain cancer.   Christina Wallace: Hmm.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: And he said to me, I asked him if he had any advice for me, and he said. I, I just hope that before you are in the stage that I’m in, Andrea, that you will live your life and not have any regrets, and if there’s something right now that in the back of your mind. You’re thinking you should do.   Go do it for me, Andrea, and for you. Please do it. And I was like right away. I thought. you’re going to make me cry. No, you know. But you know what the thing was, though, Christina I had to paint. I literally went home and signed up for a painting class.   Christina Wallace: Yup!   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So many of it. So, for your mother-in-law was painting for me. It was.   Christina Wallace: Also fainting.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: But we most of us have things.   Christina Wallace: Yes.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: That we are.   Christina Wallace: Yes.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: What’s the word we’re hiding? We’re ignoring.   Christina Wallace: Yeah, I talk about the work of excavating right? There’s so much of who we are that has been there from the beginning. Right once you see these things about yourself, then you go back and you’re like.   Oh, I have a story from when I was 6 that my mom used to always tell. That is a perfect example of this exact thing. And you’re like, Oh, I’ve always been who I’ve always been. But as we grow up it’s good thing I’m not wearing mascara today.   As we grow up, we feel like, and in some cases are explicitly told. But in many cases this is self editing.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: We feel like we have to put those things away so that we can be serious and grow up.   Christina Wallace: And pick the things that are appropriate for the level of education, ambition, etc., that that we aspire to. and many of those things we put away as childish things, and what we, what we lose in doing that is, while it may be true. You were never going to have a career as a painter. I don’t know. I haven’t seen your work. There’s something brilliant that you get out of the act of painting that is separate from the value of the finished object. and when you decide that the value of the finished object you can’t monetize enough to pay your mortgage. you get rid of the entire practice of.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Oh!   Christina Wallace: And you lose something in that process. Which is why I think many of us, when we get to this, like, you know, sort of midlife crisis era. It’s because we have lost so many like limbs and attributes and elements of who we are, simply because in capitalism the outputs of that work wasn’t valuable.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Wow! You have no idea. Actually, you probably do have some idea of how much that resonates with me. And I can. I can hear, you know, my coaching clients saying, Yes, yes.   So in the work that I do with my clients on personal branding. This is a similar way of saying some of saying what you’re saying. I think I encourage them to really think deeply about their unique identity and not to follow the expected path. And I’ve said this like I feel like a million times, you can be a very strong B plus by copying others and following the expected path. But if you really want to knock it out of the park, if you really want to be successful and happy.   Then think deeply about your unique interests. So of the 4 pillars, I’d really like to focus on identity, because I think we can get. We can get some traction here.   Can you describe your Venn diagram and also what? What? Generally your I guess portfolio Venn diagram could or should look like.   Christina Wallace: Yes, absolutely. So. The Venn diagram I talk about sort of these 2. I love circles. All sorts of circles. So the Venn diagram, we obviously know, is like the intersection of various sets from set theory, intersection of various circles. I think of this as who you are and your portfolio is what you do.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay.   Christina Wallace: So your Venn diagram, on the whole, is pretty static now. It can change over time. Certainly, as you develop new interests, they might show up in different ways, or as you start to see the expression of some of this work, you see, like, Oh, wow! This is actually part of a bigger picture. Let me kind of reframe. What’s in those buckets, those circles? But it’s pretty steady over time. Now. There are pieces of your Venn diagram you might not be using day in and day out. They might be at a 0% allocation in your portfolio. But it doesn’t change that. They are part of you. So I hear a lot of people in my I say in the very simplified version of my Venn diagram.   I’ve built a career at the intersection of business technology and the arts. So you go back and you look at I was a music, a very serious musician, a classical musician. And then I added theater as an actor and director, and now a producer to that, and tried some arts management. And then I went off to business school and got into the tech world. And I did startups and investing right like on the surface. The linear, you know, chronology makes no sense. But when you look at it in sort of these categories, you’re like, okay, I can see where those intersections gave you this. And these intersections gave you that and the joy of that is, you can start to see where there are intersections that you haven’t played in yet.   We were like, oh, maybe there’s opportunity there for me to take this information and that network and like find something interesting. So it can also point out opportunity that you haven’t considered. But I think in a broader, slightly less simplified Venn diagram. You know, I have industries. But I also have skills like storytelling.   You could argue. That’s part of arts. But I think it’s just part of communicating and communicating through story that I have found to be deeply relevant to who I am and how I experience the world and what I offer a room.   And that storytelling is written, it’s performative, it’s live. It’s recorded in all these different formats. And so, as a result, that actually makes me a pretty decent marketer. Right? So you can see how like the skill plus the business and the technology is like, oh, you could fit in in a marketing role at a startup.   But then there are also other things like, I’m a mediocre athlete, and I’m really quite serious about that. I’m a mediocre athlete. I’m not good, but I keep trying. I’m 6 feet tall. I should have been an athlete, and I just wasn’t for a lot of reasons, and for a long time I internalized again the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.   I internalize this as like. I am not an athlete. I shouldn’t even try. And then, after my 1st startup failed and I was facing this crisis of identity.   I was like, you know what screw it. I am so bad at being bad at things like I won’t even try something if I think I’m going to be bad at it. That I’m going to just force myself to do something. I know I’m bad at which is running.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: And so I took up long distance, running.   Christina Wallace: And I. You can’t escape the fact that you’re bad for a very you just one step in front of the other, and you’re like, oh, this sucks! This is taking forever! I’m exhausted, and I still to this day I’m a terrible runner. I’ll run marathons. They take 5 and a half hours. That’s nothing to brag about. But I keep doing it. And by continuing to show up 2 things happened. Number one, I actually started to get a little better. and I started to recognize all the ways in which investing in my body and my health and my movement really mattered for my overall happiness. Certainly, as I think about some of my longer term goals in life, a lot of that rests on staying in good health. and it’s not something you can take it like for granted at 40, the way you can at 25.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right.   Christina Wallace: But the other thing it taught me was like I could change that story from I’m someone who succeeds to. I’m someone who shows up and works really hard. and that opens up a lot of worlds to me. It allows me to be an amateur at 41, when otherwise I would say, well, the boat has sailed. If I haven’t become an expert, I’m never going to right like a lot of these beliefs about who we are self imposed.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right.   Christina Wallace: And sometimes they’re based on, you know, data from a childhood moment, or a teacher or a comment a partner had. Right? Like, I’m not saying we invented it whole cloth. but I would argue that a lot of this case the data has expired.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: And we talk about this in startup world all the time. Right? How old is the data.   Christina Wallace: Have you refresh the data to make current conclusions. And so in a lot of cases, when I hear people say, Well, I’m not that. Oh, I’d be. I’d be terrible at that like, I can’t even think about that. I’m like, How do you know?   Yeah, how recent? Only have you tried.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.   Christina Wallace: Would you like to go? Run some experiments and see if that’s still true?   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah. So this sounds like a growth mindset, right? But it’s not just okay. I’m going to try and learn this. It’s changing your mind from. I can’t do that to. I’m at least going to give it a shot. and you just made me think of thing of something that again, personally that happened to me. 3 degrees in business.   I’ve taken plenty, of course.   Christina Wallace: Slight overachiever there. No day.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Well, it’s all business commerce, Mba. Doctorate in business, and you know, of course, over that time I took several courses on entrepreneurship. I always admired people who were entrepreneurs, and I always said explicitly, directly, I said, I don’t have an entrepreneurial bone in my body. And then I came across this passion of coaching executives, and now I’ve built a business around it, and my friends are like, Oh, my goodness, Andrea, like what have you done? And I’m like.   I know I’m reading. I’m listening and reading to books about building businesses all the time now, and it’s like my identity it went from. I am not that kind of person to. This is something that I’m going for like and spending. Talk about my portfolio like a significant amount of my time on it.   Christina Wallace: Of course.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.   Christina Wallace: But I think a big part of that, too. I mean, I love that you are so focused on communication. And how do you think about. You know who you are and how you share that and what that looks like when you show up in the world. Because a lot of this is also relevant to like.   Well, what do you when you say, entrepreneur? What’s in your head? Is it a 25 year old Harvard dropout white dude in a hoodie in Silicon Valley, raising Vc. Funding and building something that goes to a billion dollars.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yes.   Christina Wallace: Like. That’s what most of us think, and that is one flavor of an entrepreneur. There are so many types of businesses, there are so many types of things. And so part of this is like changing what you see yourself as right. The stories you tell yourself, and the other part is like being sure that you’re seeing the world accurately like when we use these words. What does that mean? And are there versions of this that that might be more relevant to you than not. And how might this fit into your life? Right you go, go into that with like that design, thinking phrase of like. How might we? Rather than like I can’t. I shouldn’t I won’t it won’t. It won’t work, you know, and I think so much of that is like, we have these understandably. So we have these shortcuts, these proxies.   For how we understand people and roles and industries and spaces and geographies. because the world is so complex that we.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right.   Christina Wallace: Possibly take in all the information every single minute, and be able to make the judgment calls we have to make right. This is evolutionary brain.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, we have to. Otherwise we wouldn’t survive or never mind thrive. Right? Yeah.   Christina Wallace: And 2 things can be true. My favorite parenting phrase.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.   Christina Wallace: And those proxies, those shortcuts that we’ve used to understand. The world might be out of date. and we need to refresh them with current data and see.   Is that still what I think it is, and is it still not relevant to me the way I thought it wasn’t.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, you’re reminding me of a conversation I had very recently actually with Professor Jerry Zaltman. He’s emeritus from Hbs. And we were talking about archetypes. And so my clients love being diagnosed with what of the 12 professional identity archetypes do? What resonates the most, and then how that can provide me with direction and focus. I think it might be similar to. I guess you could say diagnosing what your Venn diagram looks like right. And Jerry was cautioning me to also caution my clients that that you know your archetype can certainly, and probably should change over time. Don’t get stuck. Yeah, right. This is the flexibility pillar, I think.   Huge. Yeah, I mean, I think even one very sort of simple version of that right now, as a professor.   Christina Wallace: I’m not managing anyone right. No one reports to me. I report to no one. Academia is a very strange place. It is and for someone who built a career as a leader and a manager.   To take a role for a big season of life where I’m not managing. Anyone can feel, you know, contradictory. You’re kind of like. Well, that’s not for me. Right like I’ve specialized in this other thing. And so those moments where you say that that gut reaction that’s not for me. I am blank. Those are exactly the moments where I want you to freeze and write down those statements. and then, like, break them apart. pull back the layers and say, like, is this true? Must this be true? What is it about being a manager that’s so crucial to my identity? Is it about the power and the prestige.   Is it about the impact, the scale of my hour? It’s not just a 1 to one like an individual contributor. Well, I get scale as a professor. I get 90 students, a semester, and they’re going to go on to become some of the biggest leaders in the world like that’s pretty good for a multiple on my hour of work. So as you start pulling that apart, you realize that, like the elements of what I’m getting out of this. What I’m interested in can be met through a huge again, the optionality, a huge set of options. But it requires just a little bit of more nuanced thinking than I think. Many of us give ourselves the time for when we’re sort of living in a world where you’re making snap judgments and having to make decisions every 30 min.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So when I heard you at the summit, live giving the presentation about your book, and then when I read it, and now again, when I’m talking to you, I’m thinking about. If you could think of it as a continuum or a spectrum.   Ranging from the thesis of the book range  right where I can’t remember the author’s name, talks about how the most successful folks are the ones that have diversification and variety in their background versus the whole. You know 30,000 touches of the ball is the only thing that’s going to get you there, and you need to be laser focused right? And it sounds like you are not necessarily prescribing a certain place on the continuum. But you’re encouraging people to be open to the range. Thesis of diversification, diversification.   Christina Wallace: Yeah, I mean, I think 2 things can be true. I think it is absolutely true that there is a whole host of worlds where specialization 30 touches on the ball, whatever that looks like is super relevant. And I’m not saying, go half ass everything and put 2% of your portfolio into 50 things right like that’s not a good portfolio.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Great.   Christina Wallace: At the same time. whether you are becoming an expert neurosurgeon or professional basketball player or artist, or anything. you literally cannot do it 24 HA day.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.   Christina Wallace: And that’s where we see burnout. That’s where we see. Because, in addition to like, you need to rest a underestimated thing among high performing people. Sometimes, in addition to that, even the most fulfilling work  doesn’t meet all of your needs. Right? So if you think about this, you start this model from like, what do I need? I have financial needs. Sure. Those are probably front of mind and easiest to quantify. But then there are things like, I have growth needs, I have creative needs. I have needs around community and relationship. I have needs around impact. And knowing that my work matters, no matter what you do. It is unlikely that it is meeting all of your needs.   So, as you specialize on that thing you might recognize like, Hey, I love this thing I’m doing. and I need to have this hobby that meets this one little piece, this painting hobby. I’m not any good at it, but it gives me the meditation.   It allows me to sort of de-stress and process and be active with my hands, so I can’t get sucked into technology. and. you know, create something, and just like, let those thoughts out of my head so that that everything else has space.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.   Christina Wallace: Right, and that makes me better at this other thing I’m doing. And I see you see this in the stories, in the literature. Even that supports this idea, that, like people who have something else, whatever that something else is, makes them better at the 1st thing right?   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: The term consilience. I keep thinking right.   Christina Wallace: Yes, because you’re both like you get new information by stepping out into a different space. Right? We know this from like second and 3rd order network nodes are more valuable than 1st order network nodes, because they have access to new information as opposed to in our direct network. We’re all talking to the same people, reading the same things, talking, you know, about the same ideas, but in addition to that, like stepping away from something actually gives space for the 1st thing to marinate. And so I want my neurosurgeon to have a hobby I want right? I want. And they’re a big part of that is, it makes them better at what they’re doing. But the other piece of it is that it means that on the day that they’re no longer loving what they’re doing.   They won’t force themselves to do it for a single day longer than that, because they have something else that brings. So I love that that gives them identity. And I think that’s a piece that we can certainly see in society right now a whole generation that was never allowed to have anything else other than their jobs, and now they are holding on to power for far longer than they should.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Hmm.   Christina Wallace: Because who are they? If not the name on their business card? Right? And so I agree with specialization. Certainly there are fields that necessitate that. But I also agree with range. I believe that you can’t just be one thing no one is. We’re all 3 dimensional. And so, recognizing what are all of those other elements of me? I think about this, like the O’Hare snow in Airport test, which is like on hour 5 of being stranded at the airport. What are we talking about? Because at that point we’ve covered the basics we’ve covered politics. We’ve covered Taylor Swift. We’ve covered, you know what you’re thinking about for Q. 4. At that point we’re down a rabbit hole.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.   Christina Wallace: And I am probably telling you about some random Broadway production that Mary Zimmerman directed in 1998. And you’re probably telling me about whatever, and those are the things that you’re like. Oh, that’s what lights you up.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right? Okay, so this is a beautiful segue to one of the exercises that I learned about when I was listening to your presentation that I stole and prescribed to a personal branding boot camp that I just a couple weeks ago I challenged the folks in the boot camp to do your 100 wishes for your life exercise, and I think it’s similar to what you were just saying. Right after an hour you get to.  So do you want to describe that exercise.   Christina Wallace: I love this exercise, and I even got it from a wonderful ux designer who has written quite extensively about this work. And so it’s all sort of. I attribute this to like the best of the Internet. When we all just build on each other’s ideas, open source, Internet world 100 wishes. The idea is we’re not talking about goals. Goals are things you achieve. Wishes are a little bit different.   And you think about on your deathbed. We want to get all nice and sappy. What are the things that you want to leave behind.   What is the imprint that your life has had? And so that’s everything from like the artifacts, the organizations, the work, the paintings, the whatever that will outlast you, but also. who do you want to have loved? And what do you want to have seen and experience? What are the stories that you’re telling in that moment right? Like, what is the measure of your life?   And I put sort of like the 100 100 feels insane because you start writing. You’re like 100. Can’t be that hard. You get to like 30, and you’re like I have to do 100.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Got to 30, Christina. I got to 30, and I I know I know my mind was playing with me a little bit. said at about 30 to 35. It got really hard.   Christina Wallace: I know I.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Then.   Christina Wallace: You’ve got.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: The magic happens.   Christina Wallace: Grab a glass of wine, grab some something, and go take a walk and keep thinking. And that’s where the magic happens, because after 30. You get through the obvious resume stuff and the easy stuff like, I want to have a family and you get to. You’re like, what does that even mean, what does that mean? It forces you to start getting really specific. I got like, I want to have a relationship with my adult children where we are still actively in each other’s lives.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Hmm.   Christina Wallace: That requires a huge investment in the relationship we build from childhood onward.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right.   Christina Wallace: Because that’s not guaranteed. You don’t just show up, and you both live long enough, and you get to be in each other’s lives as adults. I want to be able to pick up my grandkids when I’m 90. That’s an investment in my health that I have to start making. Now. I want to win a Tony Award.   I wrote that one down 5 years before I started producing Broadway. and it was for me it came. It was surprised me that I was like, really you. You stepped away from a theater career 15 years ago, like interesting. And it wasn’t about the award. I mean. Obviously the award is lovely.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Awards are good. Yeah.   Christina Wallace: It was. It was the notion that, like I’m not done with that part of my life yet I miss it.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I want to be back, and I want to be back in a meaningful way, not like a community theater. Help out with the school play way. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but like I’m talking big leagues.   Christina Wallace: And so when that moment arrived, it was like, Hey, do you want to invest in this Broadway show? Do you want to get involved as a producer. Do you know what that means? I was like? Oh, that’s an easy yes. because I already excavated that part of me and realized. I want it. I want it, even if it seems silly to want it.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: At this age.   Christina Wallace: So you start writing things down, and this is the moment where and then, you know, once you’ve got the long list, you sort of put them into buckets. and it gives you a sense of like. Is there a whole piece of my life that I haven’t been investing in? And I haven’t for a while, which is not uncommon right. You get to midlife. You’ve got a family. You’ve got responsibilities. There might be a whole piece of you that, like kind of has been ignored for a decade.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Are the seasons right?   Christina Wallace: These are the seasons, and there might be a moment where you’re like. Huh! I mean, you can’t pursue all 100 wishes every single day of the week, obviously. But if you’ve got this whole category of wishes you’re like.   I haven’t touched that in a couple of decades. It’s usually a sign that like.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.   Christina Wallace: Maybe you put a 5% allocation on that. You find a way to like slot that in as like a once a week, an hour, a week, something.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.   Christina Wallace: And in doing that work as you realize what needs its meeting, how it’s, it’s contributing to your happiness and your community and your growth and your just whole personness. You might realize, like, actually, I kind of want to dial that up to like 10%. 15%. Maybe this becomes like little side hustle.   Maybe this might be my next season of full-time work, and I want to start laying the groundwork for that before I step away from my day job to sort of de-risk that transition in a really intentional way, right? And, like all of these things could be true, but it allows you, if you like, actually listen to your heart’s desire as silly as that might sound. You know what you want out of your life.   You just got to sit long enough and listen to the things where you’re like. Feel so stupid writing this down.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I can do.   Christina Wallace: It, write it down.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: All right. So listen up. Talk about talk listeners. Here’s what here’s your homework, create your Venn diagram with. I know you said. Usually it’s 3 or more. It could be 5 or.   Christina Wallace: Could be. It could be 5 at about like 6 or 7. You probably want to think about a slightly different way to organize right, find the similarities and categorize a little bit, because, like 7 can feel overwhelming. But yeah, it’s there’s no fixed.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So create your Venn diagram. Look at where it’s overlapping. Think about where you’re spending your time on that Venn diagram and where the opportunities may be, and then take it to the next level and list your 100 wishes for your life.   Christina Wallace: Yes.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: This is the imprint that you want to make the legacy that you want to leave, but also the experiences that you want to have.   I think it’s fair to say that there could be goals in there, but it’s not.   Christina Wallace: For sure.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Not all goals. It’s more experiences. And what do you want to have happen and categorize them? And then and then I think it’s beautiful you can. You can proactively pursue those things, but also just that exercise will keep those themes top of mind. I love your story, Christina, about how, when the opportunity came to you to be a Broadway producer. You were like done. I already know that that’s 1 of the most important things in my life that I need to check off.   Christina Wallace: But I think oh.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Oh, okay.   Christina Wallace: I think this is so relevant as you bring it back to personal brand. I mean, I feel like it always comes back to personal brand, because this is about who you are and how you show up in the world. No, when you have excavated things that matter to you.   The people around. You want to help you right? Everyone in your network. Everyone who works with you and knows you and loves you want to help you, but like no one’s thinking about you most of the time. and so to help you, they need to know what you need, what you want what you’re looking for. And so, having that clarity to say, I’m building this business, I’m interested in this thing. But like also, I’m kind of psyched about anything related to theater like. you know anyone if you come across right like even just saying the words out loud.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yes.   Christina Wallace: Allows the universe to help make it happen.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yes.   Christina Wallace: Because the reason I even got to invest in that Broadway. That very 1st Broadway show is because someone in my network knew that I was a total theater. Geek!   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Nice. Okay.   Christina Wallace: He got the opportunity and couldn’t take it, and said, You know who you should talk to Christina.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Oh! Oh!   Christina Wallace: So like this brings me these things.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Join.   Christina Wallace: Having them. Top of mind is what allows your network to show up for you.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.   Christina Wallace: But you have to be clear on it, and it can’t be all over the place right? This is where, like the buckets, the organization of that story really matters, because most people can remember what 3 things about you so dial it in.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay. So you just said that this, the magic story word I. When I turn to chapter 9, tell your story. I was like, okay. Now it’s time to sit down and get comfortable and devour this and start writing in the margins.   You talk about how to answer the question. Tell me about yourself. You talk about avoiding being the reasons we don’t want to be the qualified quiet.   Christina Wallace: Yes.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: You talk about being your own Cmo chief marketing officer.   Christina Wallace: Yeah.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: And you talk about having your one sentence. So I mean, there’s so much that we can unpack here. I’m just going to say, folks. You got to read the book. It’s amazing. But do you have any other stories about how this you know you do the work up front, and then you end up telling the story, not just to yourself, but sharing it with others, and the impact that that can have.   Christina Wallace: Yeah, I mean, I think ultimately it sort of for me comes down to 2 things, number one. As I said, no one’s thinking about you. And so you have to arm them with the information right? And I think a lot of people really struggle with like, I don’t want to be self promotional. I’m like, it’s literally it’s not. It’s.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I hear it every day, Christina, every day, every.   Christina Wallace: Not so promotional. You’re just literally telling me, who are you like? Arm me with the things I need to know, to understand who you are, and how to help you, but the other piece of it, and that I have found very effective for me, especially as, like a slightly strange path person, a weirdo. And I say that lovingly is, I try to leave breadcrumbs of who I am in the world. And I let those people find me. And so, okay, what the hell does that mean? That means things like writing blog posts or having a sub stack or writing on LinkedIn on a regular basis, having some thought leadership that you put out in the world. I had a podcast for a while same idea, it is being part of communities and sort of showing up to things and raising my hand and making it very clear that, like this is part of who I am, and I’m going to just leave that nugget.   So that even sort of asynchronously, almost, I get inbounds constantly through my website. I have a website you’re like, well, of course you do. You’re a professor and author. I had a website. When I graduated from Harvard Business School, which is insane. I was 26. I had an Mba. And I was like, you know what I need a website. I need to be findable.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Name.   Christina Wallace: And that website has changed so many times over the years. And like the Wayback machine and the Internet Archive can be a Testament to this. It has had so many lives. But the point is, I was out there. I had a front door in the Internet world, and I was findable by the people looking for someone like me.   And almost every opportunity I’ve had up to this point has been inbound. I put my work out there and then other people say, actually, I’m looking for exactly someone like you. Do you want to speak at this event? Do you want to write that book? Do you want to come and teach here, and so like. You don’t have to be blasting your story on a soapbox on the corner, but you can leave artifacts, leave breadcrumbs and then be easily findable.    Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Love it, so be purposeful, be public. I was also just reading and writing and thinking about private versus public thought leadership right? There’s so many advantages to creating a body of public thought leadership. Oh, boy, and avoid being.   Christina Wallace: Truly this book would not exist without my public thought leadership, because part of what told me that there was a book to write, and that convinced my editor that she should buy the book, was getting the comments and the conversation in. I was originally writing articles for Forbes years ago, and seeing the reaction, the responses and the feedback loop 2 specific articles I was like. This isn’t anything. I just need to write it to meet my quota for the month, and then, like it goes viral. And you’re like, Oh. is that? Huh? That’s a unique point of view, right? Like you’re letting the market literally tell you which of your ideas are unique or specific and new and fresh. You don’t have to be right. You just have to put work out there and like literally, let your audience tell you what they want more of.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So this is very compelling evidence, for why we don’t want to be the qualified quiet. But I know many of my clients they’re like, I’m not writing for Forbes. I’m not writing for Hbr, I don’t even have a blog. And I don’t want a blog. Nor do I want a podcast and I think my answer to them is. when you introduce yourself, even as simple as when you introduce yourself at the beginning of a meeting or at a networking event.   You’re not saying that you’re good at everything, but put your stake in the ground and tell them what you’re all about. You know what differentiates me compared to other communication coaches, or what differentiates me compared to other tech executives, is my whatever right.   Christina Wallace: Yeah.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay.   Christina Wallace: Well, and a big part of this, I think, is remembering with any story it starts with, Who’s the audience? And so if you’re in a room of all tech executives.   You could probably give a very high level like, oh, I am the head of product development for blank, and they all understand what that means. You don’t have to get into the details there and then you can provide something else. And you know I’m a silver medalist skier from the Olympics, right? Whatever that thing is like, because you have this shared body of knowledge in one area. You don’t have to go deep there, and you can provide like what is different about me. Based on this room. Now, if you go to a dinner for a whole bunch of Olympians.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.   Christina Wallace: Then, right again, what you have in common is different than what you’re different on right? And so, as I think about this is where the Venn diagram comes into play every time. Yeah, I’m not the best entrepreneur in the world. I’m not the best Broadway producer in the world. I’m not the best business person in the world, but I am the damn well, best entrepreneurial Broadway producer at a business school. So where is that combination for you? Edit your story to that one sentence. Here’s what I have to offer, and here’s where I stand out.    Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Oof you will be quoted on that, Christina, I promise.   Christina Wallace: Excellent.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay. I want to move now to the 3 rapid fire questions. Are you ready.   Christina Wallace: Yes.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Question number one, are you an introvert or an extrovert?   Christina Wallace: I’m an ambivert. I need both. and I know this very explicitly, because, like many performers, I have a ton of energy that I emit when I’m on, and then when I get off stage or out of class, or whatever I go and like, lay on the floor of my office and just stare at the ceiling for an hour. However, you’re like, Okay, that makes you an introvert. No, during the pandemic. when I was inside for like 36 straight days.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Derek.   Christina Wallace: Bring up my 3 month old, which was basically a potato. At that point she had no personality. While my husband was working in the other room. Nonstop. I was like, I need human interaction. This is not going to work for me, so I’m an ambivert. I need a little bit of both.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay, question number 2.   Christina Wallace: Yes.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: What are your communication, pet peeves?   Christina Wallace: Hmm. That throat clearing, and I don’t mean the literal throat clearing. I mean the apologizing for what you’re about to say rather than just saying it or the like. Well, I know I’m not really the expert here or the Internet, and like you, fill up a solid 30 seconds, or however long you’ve been allotted.   Just start saying the things that you want to say, and we don’t have to worry about all of that. We call it throat clearing, especially when you’re writing, and it’s almost always that 1st paragraph, and you just delete the 1st paragraph, and by the second you’ve like gotten into it. Start with the second paragraph.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Oh, very well put. I love that so. No more weak language, no more apologizing, no more posturing.   Christina Wallace: No.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Be direct. Okay. I got the head nod last rapid fire question, is there a podcast or a book, or maybe both, that you find yourself recommending lately.   Christina Wallace: A little bit of both. I have 2 books, and one book is also a. Podcast so I’ll start with that one. It’s called the Anxious Achiever by Maura Aarons Mele. It’s through, I think, LinkedIn Podcasts. And she also has a book related to it that I, freaking love and I love it a ton, and not just because she quoted me in it, but as someone who has been anxious my whole life who’s on medication for anxiety, I I really struggled with, you know, like, how might this hinder my career and all the things? And when I met Maura and we were able to actually talk about this. I realized that so many of my superpowers as a manager, as a communicator actually stem from. My anxiety right like my ability to read the room and notice micro changes in facial expressions when I’m giving a talk, and therefore allow me to adjust how fast I’m going, whether I’m dropping some of the humor that’s not being received, whether I’m pivoting, how I use proxies in my storytelling. All of that comes from like the hyper alertness of anxiety. And so I was like, oh, yes, it’s something to be managed. It’s not. I’m not going to go and encourage everyone to just lean into your anxiety. But it’s also not something to be feared. And it’s not it’s not a shortcoming. It’s just something I can harness for how I show up in the world. So I love that one. The other one is Karen Eber, the perfect story.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay.   Christina Wallace: It is a fantastic book. It just came out last year on literally the art and science of storytelling. She’s a storytelling coach, and it is just a brilliant playbook for anyone who’s never really thought about the mechanics, the structure, and the delivery of storytelling. It’s a whole discipline, and she sort of just lays it out there for you. So those are my 2 things.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I have thought about the mechanics, the structure of storytelling, but I’m not familiar with that book, so I can’t wait to read it.   Christina Wallace: Out!   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I will put links to the podcast and both of those books in the show notes. Is there any last thought that you want to share with the talk about talk listeners about maybe the advantages of the portfolio life, or how to embody it.   Christina Wallace: I mean, I think this is why I’ve put the entire last piece the last 3, rd I would say 3, rd but it’s actually half the book on the how? Because there’s the theory, right? That’s the 1st 3rd and there’s the like, you know why you should do it. And that’s amazing, but the work of actually doing it is like a whole discipline. And so I think, if this is something that is appealing to you. I want to encourage you to actually like. Do the work. You can’t just think about it, and then hope your life will change, which is an obvious thing to say. But like also, you know, I read a lot of great books, and I’m like, that’s interesting. And then I go back and do nothing about incorporating those ideas. And and this is one of those that I think is a meaningful. As you said, like, there are people going through big moments of transitions where there’s an obvious catalyst for this. But there’s also these, these micro moments of like. There’s friction in my life that didn’t used to be there.    Huh! That friction usually means like your needs are not getting met, or the things that used to fill you are no longer filling you, and these are the early signs before the midlife crisis, before the moments of big transition that, like, maybe I just need to tweak my portfolio a little bit, so to the extent that you want to read the book, pull up some of the exercises, grab a friend. I love doing these with friends, and sort of sit down and and like, make this your your project for a couple of weekends. I think you’d be really surprised by how much you might get out of just a couple hours of doing the work.   Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I can tell you that this has already made a big impact on me. And I just want to say, Thank you, Christina. I’ve learned a lot, and I really enjoyed learning even more about the portfolio life. Thank you.   Christina Wallace: Thank you so much for having me.   CLOSING   Wow.  That was an intense conversation. Tears, laughter, the whole gamut. Incredible. Thank you Christina.   Now, as always, I’m going to share with you three key learnings that I hope to reinforce coming out of this conversation with Christina. Actually, it’s more like three exercises that I hope you will try. Even just one of them.  Choose one f these three and see how it goes.  Then try another. And then another.    Because here’s the thing. AT some point, your life is up to you. Let’s do this with our eyes wide open.  These exercises can help.  They can also illuminate some of the themes in our personal brand.   The first exercise is your personal Venn diagram. Maybe limit it to your professional life.  What are the 3-5 themes that represent your passion and your expertise?  For Christina, she said it’s business, technology and theatre.  For me, it’s  brand marketing, teaching or coaching, and communication. Maybe I’d re-label that third one self-expression. I realize that throughout my career, and even personally, I’m kind of obsessed with these three things. Now the fun starts by plotting down my various activities into these circles and where they overlap.  I hope you’ll try the same thing. What are the 3 circles in your personal Venn diagram?   The second exercise is to list the 100 wishes for your life.  Like I said, like Christina said,. The first 30—35 are easy. Then it gets tough.  Uncomfortable even.  But that’s where the magic happens.  Once you’re done your list of 100 wishes, you can start to categorize them.  And make sure you’re leaving breadcrumbs, as Chistina says, and thinking about how you’re allocating your time.   Which leads me to the third exercise.  We didn’t talk about this directly in the interview, although we did talk about it indirectly, And it’s covered in detail in The Portfolio Life Book.  It’s the exercise of allocating your time.  This is about identifying what proportion of your time, what percent you’re spending on your physical health, sleeping, working out, with your family, enjoying the outdoors focused on each of the circles in your Venn diagram, socializing with friends, looking after our children, caring for our parents, and on and on.    I just loved how Christina highlighted how we have different seasons in our lives. SO maybe if you’re in the sandwich generation, you’re looking after your children AND your aging parents, maybe that’s not when you have time to explore your creative side,  But then the seasons change and suddenly you do. I guess the idea here is to be conscious, to be proactive about this. TO be mindful about where you’re spending your time, so you don’t have any regrets.    After I met with Christina, I created my own pie chart of how I currently spend my time. Then one for how I wished I was spending my time. Then a third one for how I’d like to spend my time 5 years from now, when my three kids are gone and I’m an empty nester. This is important stuff.   So those are the 3 exercises that I encourage you to try. Before you embark on these exercises, I encourage you to buy Christina’s book “The Portfolio Life”. There’s a link to the book in the shownotes. I have to tell you this book is interesting.  On one hand, it’s a n easy tread.  As you can gather from our conversation, Christina is very easy to talk to.  She writes the same way that she speaks. SO in a way it’s an easy read.  But if you take her suggestions to heart, this is not at all an easy read.  I mean, creating your personal Venn diagram,. Listing your 100 wishes, and recording how you allocate your time on a pie chart, these are not easy exercises.   But I know you’re up for it and I know you’ll find these exercises valuable. And of course, the insights from these exercises will end up informing your personal brand.  These are important elements of your identity.    And that is everything for this episode! Thanks again to Christina Wallace.  You can find Christina’s coordinates and a link to her book in the shownotes for this episode.  And my coordinates are there too!    You’ll find a link to signup for my free email newsletter.  There’s also a link to my LinkedIn account, so you can follow me there and maybe even send me a DM.    If you enjoyed this Talk About Talk podcast, please make sure you subscribe.  Thank you for listening.  Talk soon! The post The Portfolio Life and your PERSONAL BRAND with Christina Wallace (ep.179) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

Join Martin Buckland, a globally acclaimed executive career coach with a law enforcement background, as he shares vital tips on updating resumes and LinkedIn profiles. Buckland explains the crucial changes brought by ATS and AI in resume writing. He highlights the importance of a clear and optimized format, using the STAR method for achievements, and aligning resumes with LinkedIn profiles. Additionally, he emphasizes lifelong career networking through LinkedIn to boost visibility. This chat is a goldmine for job seekers at any stage!

Do you have an ELEVATOR PITCH? Not a rehearsed script, but a sentence that articulates your unique brand? In this bonus episode, Andrea shares a popular episode of the Under the Influence podcast hosted by epic storyteller Terry O’Reilly, focused on “Elevator Pitches.” TERRY O’REILLY Podcast ”Under the Influence” – https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/under-the-influence-with-terry-oreilly/id493536367 Website – https://terryoreilly.ca/   CONNECT WITH ANDREA LinkedIn – Andrea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ LinkedIn Talk About Talk:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/talkabouttalk/ Website: https://www.talkabouttalk.com/ Email Newsletter: https://www.talkabouttalk.com/newsletter/ YouTube Channel:  https://www.youtube.com/@talkabouttalkyoutube/     TRANSCRIPT Welcome to this bonus episode of the talk about talk podcast. Are you curious what this is all about? This episode was inspired by my conversation about storytelling with Terry O’Reilly a few months ago. Terry is the host of the under the influence podcast, and he’s an epic storyteller.  If you haven’t listened to our conversation yet, I encourage you to go back and listen to Talk About Talk episode 173.   During that interview, Terry and I started talking about Elevator Pitches. That’s when this happened.  Take a listen:   Andrea Wojnicki: My favorite elevator pitch of all time is, you know, the Sigourney Weaver aliens movie. Do you know what the elevator pitch was for? Terry O’Reilly: Jaws in space. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yes, I probably learned that from you, Terry. Terry O’Reilly: Yeah, you may have.   In case it wasn’t clear – I shared with Terry my favorite elevator pitch of all time – It’s the pitch for the movie Aliens.  I can just imagine the writer pitching this Aliens movie to the Hollywood producer. Saying, “what’s this movie all about?  Well, think Jaws in Space.” Three words. “Jaws in Space.”  Beautiful.   As I was sharing that with Terry, it occurred to me – WAIT!  I think I originally learned that story, that elevator pitch, from Terry!  I think I learned that from one of his Under the Influence episodes.  That was pretty funny.  Kind of embarrassing,  But Terry was very gracious.   I subsequently re-listened to Terry’s Under the Influence episode on Elevator Pitches – and it’s fantastic. So – here we are with our bonus episode. Now YOU’re going to hear that episode! You’ll hear Terry describe that elevator pitch for the Aliens movie, and a whole lot more.   Here’s your task: I encourage you to listen to this episode through the lens of improving your personal brand narrative. Based on your unique expertise and passions, based on your superpowers, and based on Terry’s guidance in developing a compelling elevator pitch, is there a phrase you can use when youre introducing yourself?   For those of you who’ve been in my workshops or private coaching, you know that I am not a fan of the rehearsed elevator script. You know, that overly-rehearsed, too long, too generic ramble that you hear people recite when theyre trying to impress you?  That’s not what Im talking about.  Im talking about a few words, a phrase, maybe one sentence, that you can own.  Your “Jaws in Space,” if you will.   OK – here we go.  Here’s Terry.     The post BONUS: “Elevator Pitches” with Terry O’Reilly of Under the Influence appeared first on Talk About Talk.

Gift-giving is a form of communication. Yes, gift-giving can be stressful! Andrea shares the art and science of gift-giving, plus a gift for you – a free one-page summary of gift-giving do’s and don’ts. YOUR GIFT FROM ANDREA Get your one-page summary of gift-giving do’s and don’ts: https://www.talkabouttalk.com/gift-giving CONNECT WITH ANDREA & TALK ABOUT TALK Website: TalkAboutTalk.com Communication Coaching Newsletter:  https://talkabouttalk.com/newsletter LinkedIn Andrea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ LinkedIn TalkAboutTalk: https://www.linkedin.com/company/talkabouttalk/ YouTube Channel: @talkabouttalkyoutube   TRANSCRIPT Well, hello there! Wow – the year is almost over. Can you believe it? It’s such a cliché, but the years really do go by fast. Many of us mark the end of the year with a gift. It could be a personal gift – for a family or friend. Or it might be a professional gift for a client or a colleague. It might be a THANK YOU gift. Or you might be celebrating the Winter Solstice or Saint Nicholas Day, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, … or maybe you’re just celebrating the new calendar year? Chances are you’ve got some gifting to do. Chances are you’re also a bit stressed out Don’t worry – I got you! In the episode, you’re going to learn what the research says about gift-giving. I’m going to share a framework and specific do’s and don’t. I ALSO have a gift for you! Are you ready? Welcome to TAT podcast episode 177 – Gift-Giving Do’s & Don’ts This is a re-release of a previous episode – way back at episode 38. I just re-listened to that episode, I have to tell you, it’s ALL there. You’ll learn a lot – I promise. Certainly, a few things have changed since then. Like the obvious one – there’s AI. Have you tried using AI to help you with your gift giving? I must admit, I have. “Hey Chat GPT, what’s a great gift for a client who’s constantly referring new business to me? Or what’s a great gift for my 17 year old son who’s obsessed with hockey? Of course, the more specific you get about the person you’re gifting, the better the AI recommendations. As with all things AI, the personal human touch is what makes a big difference. Now, before we get into this, I want to give YOU a gift. I know this time of year can be very stressful. It feels like everything’s piling up, right? And on top of everything happening at work and personally, there’s also this added task of gift-giving. As you’ll hear in this episode, there IS reason to be anxious about gift giving. So, to help you with this anxiety, I have a gift for you! It’s this – a one-page summary of the do’s and don’ts of effective gift giving. Stop guessing, and base your gift giving decisions on what the research says. Here’s how you can get the one-pager: go to TAT.com/gift-giving ((((HYPHEN))). Then you can download this Free “Gift-Giving Guide,” a summary of the Dos & Dont’s of gift giving, including what the research says about what to worry LESS about. Yes, you heard me – what you should worry LESS about. You’re welcome. Just go to TAT.com gift-giving (hyphen) right now to get your one pager. Alright let’s do this!  Yes, gift-giving is a form of communication.  A significant one, it turns out.  Gift-giving is prevalent, it is a common phenomenon.  It is also highly symbolic.  The gifts we give and receive communicate a lot of things – about the giver, about the receiver, and about their relationship. My goal for this episode is to help you mostly when you’re gifting someone, but also some things to think about when you’re receiving a gift.  By the end of this episode, you’ll have a list of things to consider, and yes, a few things to stop worrying about when it comes to gift giving. If you guessed by the enthusiasm in my voice that I love this topic of gift-giving, well, you’re right. I first researched gift-giving over 15yrs ago when I was a doctoral student. Those of you who have been listening to previous Talk About Talk podcasts may recall that my main topic of academic research when I was a student was WOM. It occurred to me that WOM (or consumer recommendations about what to buy and warnings about what to avoid) was like a gift from one consumer to another.  So, at the time, I decided to study gift-giving to help me with my WOM research.   Well, I can tell you that that research on gift-giving has stayed with me.  I can’t be in a room when a gift is being opened (whether the gift is from me or to me or whether I’m just an observer), I always go back to thinking about this research. It’s like having a whole different lens through which to observe the gift-giving phenomenon. Are you curious?  I can’t wait to share it with you.   CONTEXT You know that feeling when you give a gift to someone and they absolutely LOVE it? It feels fantastic, doesn’t it?   The opposite is true too though.  Gifting FAILS. Have you ever put a lotta  time and effort into finding an amazing gift for someone, and then – when the person opens it, you realize you bombed?  I can tell you personally that HAS happened to me – more than once.  And it really hurts – especially when the person, the receiver, is important to me and especially when I thought I nailed it.  It makes me question how well I know the person – and all sortsa things.  I’m not sure if you ever considered this before, but gift giving is a form of communication. Have you ever considered that? Well, THAT is why we’re doing this podcast! Gifts communicate things about us as givers, about also what we think about the receiver, and about what we think about our relationship with the receiver.  Layer onto that, gifts are highly susceptible to encoding and decoding errors (Sherry 1979).  In other words, misinterpretations (communication fails) can happen frequently in the gift-giving process. So trust me – this gift-giving stuff is worth knowing.  Some of this research isn’t too surprising. For example, the significance of reciprocity in gift giving. In this podcast, you’ll learn what the research says about gift giving dynamics so that you can become a better gift giver and  a better gift receiver.  Or at least a more informed one.  Let’s start with the significance of gift-giving. SIGNIFICANCE OF GIFT GIVING There is no Q that GIFT GIVING IS SIGNIFICANT.  There are two main reasons for this: the prevalence of gifts and the symbolism associated with gifts.  In other words: gift giving is frequent, and it has deep and multiple meanings. Researchers in the areas of anthropology, economics, sociology, psychology, and consumer behavior have examined the gift-giving phenomenon in detail and concluded that gift giving is a process that integrates a society (Sherry 1983), and that the significance in gift giving is “uncontested in terms of retail sales alone”, accounting or about 10% of retail sales in NA. That is HUGE! In fact, there are even gift stores, right? (Sherry 1983)  (SIGNIFICANCE) We give birthday gifts, teacher gifts, hostess gifts, thank you gifts, I could go on and on.  Clearly gifting is frequent. It’s a significant part of our culture.  Gift-giving is also highly symbolic. Symbolic of the giver, of the giver’s beliefs about the receiver, and about the relationship between the giver and the receiver. Gifts can reinforce important relationships, take them to the next level, or even destroy them. Have you ever noticed how gifts-giving is a common complaint about people after a break-up? It’s true, right? And by the way, If you think that gifts don’t mater, that they aren’t significant, well, there’s symbolism in that too. All this symbolism is probably why gift-giving induces anxiety. Much of the gift-giving research is focused on the premise that the obligation to give and receive might spark tension or anxiety. There’s also a strong evaluative component that exists at every stage of the gift giving process.  Kids compare gifts they got for their birthday or Christmas, don’t they? Even adults – have you ever been involved in a conversation where people are comparing what gifts they received from their partners for Valentine’s Day? Yikes, right?!? Not surprisingly, gift-giving research concludes that inappropriate gifts cause embarrassment, threaten social ties, and leave lasting impressions. That’s a lot of stress when you’re shopping for a gift, isn’t it? Then there’s the stress of receiving a gift. Of course, we don’t want the person who’s gifted us to feel badly. But gifts can produce unwelcome feelings of obligation and guilt. Have you ever received a gift from someone, and you suddenly felt like the relationship was out of balance? That’s partly because gifts are construed as currencies that are exchanged, and they’re also symbolic. THE GIFT ITSELF: COMMUNICATION AND SYMBOLISM As I said before, gifts are a form of communication – gift-giving is symbolic. Gifts impart meaning. When you’re giving a gift you can think of it as being symbolic of three things: your own identity, your beliefs about the receiver, and your relationship with the receiver. Sometimes Gifts “say” what cannot be said in words.  Because of this symbolism, Receivers read into the gift (and the giver knows this!!!) Consider two people who are dating. There’s the symbolism associated with traditional gifts like flowers or chocolate, or when someone insists on paying for a meal.  Or the gift of jewelry. That’s all symbolic communication , right?  Gifts can express all sorts of things, including things like: Interest, power, gratitude, an apology, compatibility (that’s a big one), and gifts can even indicate resources available (or affluence). That’s a lot of pressure to find the right gift, right?  Well, I want to share with you a gift-giving model that can help us think about gifts in a way that might make this all seem slightly more rational. In a paper from 1993, CB researchers Sherry, McGrath & Levy highlighted how you can evaluate gifts across two dimensions: Substance and Sentiment.   The substance is how much cash you spent. It could range from no cost (say, something you made) to something astronomically expensive, right?   The second factor, sentiment, is the thoughtfulness and/or effort associated with the gift. A low sentiment gift could be a random gift card or a generic gift (like say, a teacher’s mug).  Examples of high sentiment gifts are things that are personalized or homemade or that took a lot of effort to procure.  Here’s Professor Russell Belk, the multiple award-winning York University marketing professor who also appeared in Talk About Talk podcast episode #14 where he shared his expertise about how our POSSESSIONS communicate things about us. Professor Belk also has a lot of published research focused on gift-giving.  Here he is describing the sentiment associated with a gift: ”…It used to be insulting and still is to some degree, to give a monetary gift or even a gift card rather than tangible gifts that you’ve actually sought out and thought about and found to be appropriate to the recipient. Emerson said that the true gift should be a part of you. And so, you bring your skills and your interest to bear on the gift, from the receiver’s point of view. So from the recipient’s point of view, you’re more appreciative because it really is a part of that giver. If you send your secretary out to buy a gift for your partner, that’s inappropriate because they [you] haven’t put the time and effort and love and thought into it.” So I know this is tricky because it’s a podcast and I can’t show this to you unless you go to the show notes, but imagine for simplicity’s sake a 2×2 matrix, where you have substance (or cost) on one axis and sentiment on the other.  There are four boxes.  So gifts are either high substance, high sentiment, or hi substance low sentiment or low substance high sentiment, or low substance and low sentiment.   Can you guess which gifts are most appreciated by the receivers?  Well, you might be surprised. If you guessed high substance and high sentiment (the most expensive and most thoughtful gifts, you’re wrong!  Apparently gift receivers experience displeasure at the extremes. Basically this means that if the gift is extremely high or extremely low on either substance or sentiment, then they don’t like that. If the giver was being too cheap or if they spent way too much.  Similarly, if they went to way too much effort – or if it was way too easy (like as Professor Belk said, you ask your secretary to go get a gift for your partner.  That’s too easy!) Another classic example here is the gift of cash.  It’s so easy, right?  Easy? Yes.  But appreciated?  Not so much. (Of course, there are exceptions, depending on the person and the situation!) Can you guess what kind of gift is most appreciated then?  Well, it’s actually the low substance, high sentiment gifts that are the most appreciated.  In other words the cheap but thoughtful gift.  Like the drawing child gives her parent.  Or the homemade meal that a one neighbor makes for another. Most people don’t guess this, but it sounds about right when you think about it, doesn’t it? Personally I find this 2×2 gift-giving matrix fascinating.  Yes, I think about it when I’m giving or receiving or even just observing a gift-giving interaction. It’s a really cool way to examine the whole gift-giving phenomenon.  It’s also a helpful guide when you’re selecting a gift for someone.  All else equal, the sentiment is more important that the substance.  It really is the thought that counts I’ve discovered though that some gift-giving scenarios don’t seem to quite fit into this 2×2. Two of these scenarios are surprise gifts and gifts from gift-registries . First – the surprise gift. Last December I was at home working on my Talk About Talk podcast, when the doorbell rang.  Honestly, I was annoyed by the interruption.  But boy was I in for a pleasant surprise.  At the door was a woman who I met just a year earlier, in a professional context.  We’d definitely hit it off. She was at my door with an unexpected gift for me and my family.  A bunch of jumbo shrimps and high-quality steaks.  Whhhhaaaaat?  I was so overwhelmed with her generosity. It wasn’t the gourmet elements of the gift that impressed me (although trust me, it was very very much appreciated).  Rather, it was the complete surprise of there being any gift at all.  This got me thinking – sometimes the gesture of gifting itself is symbolic.  Regardless of the gift.  Maybe there should be a third dimension on this substance and sentiment two-by-two – or maybe it’s part of sentiment – call it the element of surprise. . The second scenario that doesn’t fit perfectly into our 2×2 substance x sentiment matrix is gift registries. You know, for bar or bat mitzvahs or weddings or for people who are expecting a baby? I read recently that people who create gift registries almost always prefer something from their registry, versus something else.  Meanwhile, the gift giver might be trying to add some sentiment to the gift – some thoughtfulness or effort.  Have you ever done this before? I know I’ve done his before.  For a friend’s’ wedding.  Sure there was a registry, but I had to think of something they might like at least as much and that demonstrated how much I adore them.   But apparently, according to the research,  that was just a waste of time.  People who create registries generally just want stuff on their registry!  So don’t over think it.  Just buy something from the registry.  Got it?  Now we know. THE GIFT-GIVING PROCESS: RITUALS & RECIPROCITY  Researchers have also sought to describe the gift-giving process with models.  Many of these gift-giving models focus on three main steps:  giving-receiving-reciprocating. So as you can imagine, the model or process is circular – it never ends! The GIVING includes choosing the gift, creating or procuring the gift, wrapping it, and presenting it. The RECEIVING includes unwrapping the gift, identifying it, thanking the giver, and displaying the gift The RECIPROCATING includes identifying an obligation and an occasion to start all over again, this time as the GIVER.  In his research, Professor Russell Belk, whom we just heard from, describes gift-giving as a self-perpetuating system of reciprocity.  There are very few exceptions to the universal requirement to reciprocate. (Sherry 1983).  A few examples of people who may be exempt include work subordinates, wait staff, students, monks, and transients.  If you’re not one of these, then sorry to say, but you’re probably obliged to reciprocate. Of course there are rituals associated with each of the elements: Consider the gift wrapping.  How fancy do you go with the wrapping? Do you always remove the price tag?  What about the return receipt?  And what do you do with the gift bag once the gift has been opened?  Is it ok to re-gift the gift bag? Consider thanking the giver.  Is a formal thank you required? Do you have to hand write a thank you or is it ok to text?  And how soon after the gift was given is the thank you expected?    And what about displaying of the gift?   Do you have to wear that shirt your great aunt gave you?  Do you have to display the decorative  pillow that doesn’t match your living room?  And when is it ok to exchange the gift? These subtle but important elements associated with gift giving comprise the important rituals that become our cultural and our family traditions.  They also explain why  gift-giving expectations can be askew and feelings can get hurt. The customs that we grow up with inform our gift-giving expectations as adults, sometimes in ways that we aren’t even aware of.   I asked Professor Russell Belk about this: “Anytime two people get together they have to decide how they’re going to regard especially rituals and the way that we celebrate things and how we eat our dinner. AW: Is a dinner a gift? RB:  Yes, it certainly could be. And even such things as do you serve a [it] family style? Or does someone dish it out for you? It is a different sort of power….” Wow.  Preparing a meal for someone is a gift? I definitely hadn’t thought of that.  See what I mean? But I guess it makes sense.   They say that cooks are giving some of themselves when they present a meal. So there’s a lot to think about in the gifting process. Not just for the giver.  But also in terms of the receiver. RECEIVING  Sometimes the receiver will experience unwelcome feelings of obligation and guilt (Belk & Coon 1991). And sometimes not only these negative feelings, but even the gifts themselves are unwanted.  Sometimes the giver pays more for the item than the recipient values it, which is always awkward.  By the way, this partially explains why people ask for Christmas lists or gift registries.  Despite all this anxiety, obligation and guilt, there is an expectation that the receiver will be gracious.  Here is Professor Belk again –  ”…the worst thing you can do is refuse the gift. To say I don’t want this. So somewhere in between would be re-gifting, where you take the gift to give it to someone else, hopefully not forgetting who was the original giver, giving it back to them. But in that case, this is developing as a more acceptable thing to do.” It’s true. Regifting used to be extremely insulting, but it seems to be more acceptable, right? or at least talked about.  It’s almost a cliché. Nowadays re-gifting is even joked about as being environmentally responsible!  I’ve heard of schoolteachers who put all the teacher gifts they receive into a pile and telling their friends to help themselves. Speaking of teacher gifts – teacher gifts may fall into the category of what we call token gifts.  They are small (ok not all – have you heard about the ridiculous teacher gifts that Manhattan private schools teachers receive from their students? We’re talking little blue boxes with diamond bracelets.  Crazy! Anyway, I digress.) Token gifts are small, they are less personal, and they are often expected or anticipated gifts that symbolize or communicate gratitude. Hostess gifts sometimes fall into this category.  A bottle of wine, some cocktail napkins, some flowers.  A relatively simple gift that communicates gratitude. You can probably imagine giving token gifts like these to someone you don’t know well, right? The relationship between the giver and the receiver is significant here… THE RELATIONSHIP The nature of gift giving changes as relationships change. (Belk & Coon 1991) As relationships progress, gifts can become more costly and more personal. So yes, remember the 2×2 matrix? Well, as relationships progress, gifts typically move from the low substance low sentiment to the high substance high sentiment quadrant.  And of course, people misfire with their gift-giving all the time! Giving too much, too little or too late can strain a relationship (Sherry 1983). Gifts can also signal compatibility or incompatibility (Belk & Coon 1991). Here’s another model or theory to consider in the context of gift-giving: transitivity. DO you remember transitivity or balance theory from school?   (+) x (+) = (+) (+) x (-) = (-) (-) x (-) = (+) So assuming you’re buying a gift for someone you like (that’s a positive) and you choose something that you like (also a positive), you hope and assume they will like it too (another positive).  But if they DON’T, then maybe you don’t know the person? Or (gasp) maybe you don’t want to know the person? It’s about balance between the giver, the receiver, and the gift itself.   Since gifts are so symbolic, they can communicate a desire to alter a relationship trajectory (Ruth Otnes & Brunel 1999) (Wooten 2000).  Imagine an unexpected, incredibly thoughtful and meaningful.  Maybe an intimate gift.  It kind of changes things, doesn’t it?  When we communicate with people, we have our words, we have our tone, we have our body language, and, amongst other things, we also have our gifts. Gifts are significant. SUMMARY Let me summarize now to help you think about gift-giving from a new, more rational perspective. Gift-giving is significant. Simply put, gift-giving has the power to communicate a lot.  Of course, there are token gifts, but there are also not-so-token gifts, especially when the gifting occasion or the tangible gift itself is unexpected. Just understanding the significance of gift-giving can help you with your communication and with your relationships.  And understanding the nuances of gift-giving can help you determine what you should worry about and what you shouldn’t worry about. What should we worry about? Well, we should seriously consider the symbolism of the gift.  But also consider the gift givers’ individual situation – their culture and personal family upbringing. Sometimes we read into gifts unnecessarily when they were intended as tokens.  And sometimes we misinterpret based on divergent cultures or family rituals. I hope you will give some thought to the substance and sentiment gift-giving model with the 2×2 matrix.  Remember that people typically don’t appreciate the extremes, and that the most appreciated gifts are often the low substance high sentiment gifts. What should we worry less about? Well, apparently we should worry less about how much money we spend (it really is the thought that counts!)  And as for those gift registries and wish lists – just buy from them.  Stop trying to go above and beyond.  Just give them what they want! OK – that’s it for this episode. Don’t forget my gift for you. You can download your Free “Gift-Giving Guide,” a summary of the Dos & Dont’s of gift giving, including what t you should worry LESS about. Yes, I’m here to minimize your stress.  Just go to talkabouttalk.com/gift-giving,  And download the 1-pager for free. You’re welcome. Talk soon!   The post Gift-Giving Do’s & Don’ts (ep.177) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

Extreme opinion seems to be the norm.  How many times have you consciously avoided a conversation about social or political views? “Remaking the Space Between Us” author Dr. Diana McLain Smith shares her insights with Andrea about how to start the conversation in an environment when toxic polarization is standard.   DIANA SMITH Book: “Remaking the Space Between Us: How Citizens Can Work Together to Build a Better Future For Us All“ – https://amzn.to/4hIM1uw Article: Diana Smith & Amy Edmondson “Too Hot to Handle: How to Manage Relationship Conflict”. California Management Review – https://www.iths.org/wp-content/uploads/Too-Hot-to-Handle.pdf University of Toronto Rotman magazine – https://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/news-events-and-ideas/rotman-management-magazine/back-issues/2008/fall-2008—the-future-of-capital-/ Diana’s 3 Recos: Podcast: “The Bullwark”, Sarah Longwell – https://podcast.thebulwark.com/hosts/sarah-longwell Book: “And There was Light” John Meacham – https://amzn.to/3YIImnR Documentary. “I Am Not Your Negro” https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5804038/ DIANA SMITH’S RECOMMENDED RESOURCES: “Ask: Tap Into the Hidden Wisdom of People Around You for Unexpected Breakthroughs In Leadership and Life” Jeff -Wetzler – https://amzn.to/3CnOGtu Sharon Says So (Instagram) – https://www.instagram.com/sharonsaysso/?hl=en Solutions Journalism Network – https://www.solutionsjournalism.org/ Reuters – https://www.reuters.com/ More in Common – https://www.moreincommon.com/ Listen First Project – https://www.listenfirstproject.org/ One Small Step – https://onesmallstep.com/ Starts With Us – https://startswith.us/ CONNECT WITH ANDREA & TALK ABOUT TALK Website: TalkAboutTalk.com Communication Coaching Newsletter:  https://talkabouttalk.com/newsletter LinkedIn Andrea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ LinkedIn TalkAboutTalk: https://www.linkedin.com/company/talkabouttalk/ YouTube Channel: @talkabouttalkyoutube   TRANSCRIPT Meet Dr. Diana McLain Smith. I’ve interviewed a lot of high IQ folks here at the talk about talk podcast. But I have to say, Diana is off the charts. I met Diana when Amy Edmondson recommended that I read Diana’s book, entitled “Re-Making the Space Between Us.” This book is chalk full of relevant history, more current stories, and incredible insight.  In the next 45 minutes, you’re going to hear my conversation with Diana Smith, and my summary of what we can do to help us re-make the space between us.  Welcome to Talk about Talk podcast episode #176 “Talking Extremes – Remaking the space between us with Diana Smith.” My interview with Diana Smith was recorded just before the US presidential election. We decided to wait until after the election to share these insights with you. As November 5 came and went, Diana Smith’s insights, and our conversation were top of mine for me. The next day on November 6, I flew from my home in Toronto to attend a women’s leadership conference in Boston, Massachusetts. Yes, many of my friends said that I was crazy to go to the US. Anyway, when I was at the airport waiting for my flight to board, I started a conversation with a complete stranger. Interesting how this often happens when we’re traveling, doesn’t it? Of course, the election came up, and we explicitly decided not to mention which side of this political divide we support. But over the course of our conversation, it became very evident … she mentioned her son’s request that she not mention the triggering Trump word in the presence of his liberal minded girlfriend. Ah! She’s a trump supporter. Oh dear. We waded into immigration, and things got testy. I remember pausing and thinking to myself, “Andrea! You’re a communication coach! You have Diana’s advice t guide you! You can do this!” And here’s the thing. This woman was a complete stranger. We could’ve both walked away with absolutely no implications. But we kept talking. I asked her questions and she asked me questions. The conversation shifted to bodily autonomy and abortion. I remember saying “that’s interesting” when I disagreed. I also remember the tension notably diminishing as the conversation went on. Our political opinions were mostly diametrical. But we discovered we had a lot more in common, like our love of our almost adult children, and our focus on gender parity. At the end of the conversation, I put my hand on her arm and said “I really enjoyed this conversation. I hope you have a great trip. “ At once I felt relief that the conversating went the way it did, also a sense of hope. Have you had any conversations like this lately? This episode will help you navigate these conversations. OK – I better introduce myself. My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki and I’m an executive communication coach. Please just call me Andrea. At Talk about Talk, I coach ambitious executives to elevate their communication skills so they can communicate with confidence and credibility. To learn more about what I do, head over to talkabouttalk.com where you can read about the coaching and the workshops that I run. Plus there are lots of free resources for you on the TAT website, including all sorts of quizzes, tips sheets, and other resources. The one that I’m most excited about is the brand new TAT archetypes quiz. It’s kind of like a personality test, but instead of evaluating you on personality traits, you can learn which of 12 professional identity archetypes resonates with you. You can find all of these resources, including the archetypes quiz, on the talk abouttalk.com website. Alright Let’s get into this. “Talking Extremes and Remaking the space between us.” Let me introduce Diana, then we’ll get right into the interview. At the end, as always, I’m going to summarize with three learnings that I want to reinforce for you. This summary will be based on insights from a paper that was co-authored by Diana Smith and Amy Edmondson in the California management review and the University of Toronto Rotman magazine. The paper is called “Too Hot to Handle: How to Manage Relationship Conflict”. In this paper, Diana and Amy outline three. Practises for discuss discussing hot topics: one is managing yourself. Two is managing the conversation. And three is managing the relationship. So I’m going to summarize my conversation with Diana by sharing insights sharing her advice in each of these three categories, managing yourself managing the conversation and managing the relationship. I love this. The power of three. Anyway, as I’ve often said you don’t need to take notes because I do that for you. So sit back and listen and I’ll provide a helpful summary for you at the end. Now, Diana. Dr. Diana McLain Smith earned her masters and doctoral degrees from Harvard University. Prior to graduate school, Diana was trained as a family therapist. Today, Diana is a renowned thought leader who has led change efforts in some of America’s most iconic businesses and cutting-edge non-profits. A former partner at the Monitor Group and a former chief executive partner at New Profit, Smith developed an approach to conflict and change called Leading Through Relationships (LTR)™. Diana’s frameworks and tools are captured in dozens of articles and in her books, entitled, “The Elephant in the Room” and “Divide Or Conquer .“ Her insights and expertise have been used around the world to turn intergroup conflict into a powerful force for change. Here we go!   INTERVIEW Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Thank you so much, Diana, for being here today to talk to us about “Remaking the Space Between Us.” Diana Smith: I am delighted to be here, Andrea. I really am excited. I love the questions you sent me, and I think we’re going to have a great conversation. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Me, too. So let’s get right into it. I know from, you know, the outset of reading your book, and then it’s definitely confirmed in the epilogue which I just reread. I know that you feel optimistic about the future, despite all of the, if you want to say it, horrible things that are happening out there. What is your hope for this book? Diana Smith: Well, the hope for the book is actually that it gets in the hands of everybody, because I’m trying to correct for a bias on the part of the media. The media leads with what bleeds. And there was once a wonderful conversation that Judy Woodruff had with Roger Ailes, political operative, and he told her, “Here’s the thing about the media: you get two guys on the stage running for office. One gives you the Middle East peace plan, and the other one falls in the orchestra pit. Who do you think the media is going to cover? The orchestra.” So I’m trying to correct for a profound bias that I think is discouraging everybody and exhausting everybody. It’s— you talk about it in your research— it’s this tendency to focus on the extremes. My hope is that I can help correct for that, so that people have enough energy to get reengaged as citizens and to start to heal the divides that have emerged over the past 50 years. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Oh, beautiful. I mean, that sounds like Utopia, right? It sounds—it’s so—it’s utopic. Perhaps it’s also really, really challenging. I mean, every essay that you wrote in your book, I was like, “Oh, and there’s that!” Oh, and there’s our implicit bias, right? Oh! And you referenced my research. So my doctoral research, which I don’t talk about a lot in my business with Talk About Talk, but my research was on word of mouth, and particularly what motivates people to share their consumption experiences—the services and the products that they’ve consumed. And not surprisingly, there’s an asymmetrical U-shaped relationship between the valence of your experience, or the story for our purposes here, right? And whether or not you’re going to talk about it. In other words, people talk about extremely satisfying or dissatisfying consumption experiences, not the mediocre ones, because there’s nothing novel about them. There’s nothing interesting about a mediocre experience. It’s those experiences on the extremes that we talk about, that we remember. And as I was reading your book, I was thinking, this is exactly the same phenomenon—like we’re being pulled to extremes, which makes it very difficult to remake the space between us, right? Diana Smith: So I’m not looking for Utopia. But let’s come back to that. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Fair enough, yes. Diana Smith: Just to come back to the question you just asked. I don’t much like mediocrity myself. Mediocre experiences. I’m sympathetic to that. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Good job. Diana Smith: With the media, they subscribe to what I call an outrage model of news. Okay? So they’re only focused on the people who go to the restaurant and get served a crappy meal and go, “God! This was awful.” Okay. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: That’s right. Diana Smith: But think about the people who go and they say, “Man, this is the best meal I’ve had forever.” They report on it. Right. Well, there are news outlets out there that are reporting on those “Wow! That’s great news” stories, but you don’t hear about them. It’s not part of the dominant news model, of an emergent news model. And that emergent news model is showing up in places like the Solutions Journalism Network, which I highly recommend your readers check out. You can go there and look at their story tracker and find lots of stories that are the equivalent of a 5-star restaurant meal. Okay? And people will talk about them and exude happiness about them, and so on. The difficulty we have is that we’ve been so cultivated in the outrage model that we carry around in our heads an outrage mindset, which fits like a hand in a glove. Okay, so one of the things I’m hoping to do, partly through the book, why I wanted to get it in everybody’s hands, is I’m trying to cultivate—not only in the news, which I care about, but in people—an engaged mindset. Which looks not just at the problem but at what people are currently doing to solve those problems by working together across divides, because, even though we differ dramatically, we do share common problems. And we actually have a lot of common goals, and more in common. A research organization has demonstrated through endless studies, and I highly recommend people check out More in Common, that suggests that we agree on more things than we disagree on. 67% of us are not in ideological extreme groups, and so those people are absolutely prepared and primed to get great stories that will motivate them to get involved. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Oh, my goodness! I don’t know where to begin with the questions here. I think one of the stories in your book that I think—I told you this before—the interview that really resonated with me was the story about the young boy whose bedroom window was broken. Can you share that story? I think this is really kind of setting the table here. Diana Smith: I mean, there were 3 hate crimes in a row in Billings, Montana, in the 1990s, and this was the beginning of a movement called Not in Our Town. And I found the most poignant one of those crimes to be the 6-year-old boy who put a Menorah in his window at Hanukkah, and somebody threw a rock through it. Prior to that, African Americans attending a church were terrorized by self-proclaimed skinheads, and before that, a Native American home was vandalized—the outside of their home was painted with a Nazi insignia and the word “die.” And the first thing that happened is the Painters Union went and painted that house for free. And when asked why, he said, “Don’t other places come to the help of their neighbors when they’re not doing well? I mean, that’s what we do in Billings.” And then white neighbors escorted the African American congregants to their church. And then perhaps most notable, the local newspaper printed a copy of the Menorah and hundreds of homes put the Menorahs in their windows. There was a woman who I have great respect for, and she did another film recently called Repairing the World about Pittsburgh, after the Tree of Life incident, where 11 people’s lives were taken by a white nationalist. Patrice O’Neal and her colleague, Riam Miller, went to Billings, Montana, back in the 1990s after these hate crimes had occurred to see what the neighborhoods did to respond. And she did a documentary called Not in Our Town, which you can find on PBS. Even though it’s quite old, the film quality isn’t great, it’s still an incredible film. And she showed the film when she got back to Oakland, California, where she’s from, to communities in the Bay Area. And after people came from all over—by the way, it was like law enforcement and faith leaders and educators and regular citizens, and you know, the big auditorium with lots of people there—she showed the film, and then she turned to them and she said, “So, what do you think of Billings, Montana?” And they said, “I don’t want to talk about Billings, Montana. I want to talk about our town.” “Are we creating a sense of belonging sufficient to reduce hatred?” Because they understood that one of the reasons hatred takes root is because people are isolated and are alienated, and people don’t have a role, and they don’t have a place to belong to. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: And so… Diana Smith: Not in Our Town is both about saying we won’t put up with this, but also about educating people about how hate takes root and helping people to become included. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right. We all want to become part of… we have a need to join a collective or a tribe. Right? I know that was a theme in the book as well. I’m sure this has occurred to you a million times, but it just occurred to me right now how sort of meta this is, right? We’re talking about how the media is focused on extreme messages, because that’s the news that sells. But there may be an opportunity for us, for you—starting with you now being on this podcast and other podcasts, and with your book and everything—to use that idea of an extreme message. The downfall, if we don’t do what you’re hoping, what you’re prescribing here—is that it’s an extremely negative outcome. Is that not enough to get people’s attention? Do you know? Diana Smith: I think it has gotten people’s attention. I think Kamala Harris’s campaign—whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican—just from an empirical point of view, I don’t think she could have sparked the enthusiasm she sparked, if it weren’t for how fed up people are with the… It’s not just extremism. This is… it’s negative. Hateful extremism. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right? You can get… Diana Smith: Dream, joy, love, and people solving problems. But what you’re getting here is extreme hatred, and people are tired of it. I read some article that talked about… I think it was Jumping the Shark, which was from an old TV show. The Fonz jumps the shark, and it was a metaphor for when a TV show has gone too far, and people just get fed up with it and sick of it. And so they start doing stupid things like having the Fonz jump the shark. Well, that’s what’s happening to the far right right now. Okay, it’s almost becoming a parody of itself, because people are tired of it. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Hmm, yeah, I love that. That they become a parody of themselves. That’s amazing. So back to the asymmetrical U-shaped relationship I was talking about—the extremes—but it is asymmetrical, right? Where, to your whole point, it’s the negative news that gets attention, that gets published, and then gets the attention, and then is recalled. You know, I remember when I was studying word of mouth, there’s this sort of myth—this kind of common-sense myth—that we’ve all heard, that you know, negative word of mouth travels faster than positive word of mouth. And it was like, actually, no, it’s just that it’s recalled more. So we even recall negative messages more so than positive messages, and definitely more so than neutral messages. Diana Smith: This is really important. And I think the people listening to you are probably saying, “Yeah, that’s right. You know, you’ve got this negative news, and we’re up against so much, what are we gonna do?” And all it does is disempower people. Okay? And there’s no question that for evolutionary reasons, for cognitive reasons, for social reasons, we’re all primed probably to be more responsive to negative messages as a way of defending ourselves from threat. True. So, that’s a given. We really understand that. There are also lots of things that we, as human beings, have learned to self-discipline ourselves, because we know if we follow our instincts… I pick up the guy on the street who looks really cute… people are gonna say that’s inappropriate behavior. I know not to do that. I mean, there’s a whole lot of things that we have learned to socialize out of our responses because it’s detrimental to ourselves and detrimental to others. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Can I just say, at a social level, and also at an individual level? Right. Diana Smith: Exactly. I mean, I’d get arrested. I mean, so yeah, right? And so… This is the kind of thing where I think if people start to reflect on their own internal responses, and there’s been lots of research on this, we… you know, the negative messages target our “hot” systems in our brain, and Michelle, a psychologist, and his colleague, whose name I’m blocking right now, did research on self-control. And they discovered that, you know, we have a hot system which reacts quickly, is emotional, overcomes our rational… it’s reactive. But they’ve learned that people can shift to their “cool” system with practice, and the more they practice it, the quicker they can shift to their cool system, which is reflective, is thoughtful, is mindful… all those kinds of things. So I think what I want to do is put control in the hands of people. And I believe, by the way, if you look at the beginning of my book, I cite 15 citizen movements that have led nations out of darkness. I’m not believing this as a matter of faith. History tells us that we have more power than we are aware of. So I want to focus on what can we control… And we control? We can control how we react to those messages. We can find better news sources, which I’d be glad to recommend later. Okay? We can do lots of things to counter this. So I don’t want to suggest—and I think it’s problematic to suggest—that these forces are so powerful, we are helpless. We are not. We are vulnerable to those forces, but we are not helpless. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So let’s get into what some of your top suggestions are for ways that we can get traction in this quest. As I was, after we had secured or booked this interview, Diana, I was listening to a podcast with Scott Galloway, and he was talking about… he and his new co-host Jessica Tarlov just started a new podcast called Raging Moderates. I just love the title. And he even smiled and joked about the title. So there are big things like you writing this book, like Scott and Jessica hosting this podcast, but what maybe… start with some of the little things that we as individuals can do. I guess proactively—not in the moment when we see a transgression—but I mean, like proactively, what can we do? Diana Smith: Yes. Well, you know, I think the first thing is that we extend to ourselves the grace we wish others would extend to us, and we hope to extend to others. Okay, because… We are going to get triggered. I get triggered all the time. I know you had Amy Edmondson on your show recently. And she’s obviously the thought leader behind psychological safety. But, you know, we can’t always create psychological safety for other people, or be perfect, or react perfectly. I think it’s a natural instinct for us to distance from people who make us uncomfortable. So I think one thing we can do is start to think about… What do we have to gain from interrupting that immediate response to get angry, distant, to run away? And I think one thing is to help ourselves see, and to coach ourselves to see, that as a leader and as a colleague, for us to succeed, we have to have the biggest bandwidth possible for collaborating with people. That is in our interest as a leader and as a colleague. If you can’t deal with a lot of people, you tend not to be successful. So you have to increase your bandwidth anytime you find yourself getting angry, threatened, frustrated, upset. Okay, essentially, what that person is telling you is that you’ve reached the limits of your competence. You’ve reached the limits of your bandwidth. You don’t know how to deal with this person, and therefore, you’re upset because it’s threatening to you. If, instead of seeing it as a threat, you see it as an opportunity to expand your bandwidth, to expand your capabilities, to learn how to reach across divides. So that would mean doing things like reaching out to the person, finding out things you have in common… Getting behind their eyes to see what they see, getting inside their heads to see what they experience. It’s not having a political conversation with them. It’s like, if somebody in a meeting says something inappropriate, you don’t have to call them out in the meeting. Afterwards, you can say, “I was surprised you said that. What’s going on?” Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right. Diana Smith: What’s going on? What are you… what are you going through? Right? What are you experiencing? And then try to help the person see things that you see that they might not. And a great book out now by Jeff Wetzer, I’d recommend him for your podcast, called Ask… And he talks about how the most caring thing you can do for somebody is to get curious. And so, you know, getting curious is really important. And then… You know, the one thing Lincoln said, many brilliant things. But the one thing he said that I think tops them all… Is, “I don’t like that man. I have to get to know him better.” Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Oh, yes, I remember that. I love that. Diana Smith: Okay? And I think if… I think it’s possible to remind ourselves of that. And then… You know, I think in addition to what we can do when we’re face to face with people as leaders and colleagues, I think we can start to educate ourselves on what people are already doing to remake the space between us. There are organizations, and I can name a few, and you might put them in the show notes. There’s an organization called Starts With Us, and they’ll send you an exercise every day to get you to reflect on how you navigate the space between us. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Oh, amazing. Yeah, I’d love to. Diana Smith: It’s amazing. And this is like, you know, a few minutes a day. And then there’s the Listen 1st project, which lists about 150 organizations across the country, literally millions of people working at the local level in nationally connected groups, remaking the space between us by working on common problems together over time. Another internet site that I highly recommend is Sharon says. So it’s on Instagram, and it’s Sharon McMahon’s site. Okay? And it has workshops, it has seminars, and then get in touch with organizations like Not In Our Town. They’re all across the country. So, you know, what you can do… And then there’s another one called One Small Step, which will hook you up with somebody who’s completely different from you for 30 minutes so you can just talk about your life experience. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Oh, yeah. Diana Smith: And then you can make a friend across a demographic or ideological divide. But no matter what… Do not give up. Do not withdraw. Our democracy cannot survive if the people in that 67% give up. We have to keep our heads and our hearts in the game. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, we’re at a majority. And we need to use our numbers. Diana Smith: Exactly. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So in a business context… At the very beginning, when you were answering that question, Diana, you were talking about, to paraphrase, diverse… Groups… You know, the research shows, and I want to really reinforce this: diverse groups are proven to be more effective. So diversity in, particularly senior executives in an organization, organizations that have more diverse boards of directors… You know, are more successful in terms of the metrics, the profit and bottom line that they’re tracking and other key metrics. So another way to think about this, if you want to be really sort of performance-oriented or rational from a business perspective, is… Listening to diverse perspectives and internalizing them, and then maybe even acting on them or collaborating can be a competitive advantage. Diana Smith: Oh, it is a competitive advantage. That’s why I go crazy when people talk about this as woke, or ideological, or, you know, soft or Kumbaya. I’m an extremely practical person, and I’m the most competitive person most of my friends know. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay. Good to know. Good to know. Diana Smith: So I care about doing well. And in order to do well, I need to see things I can’t see. And I can’t do that unless I tap the wisdom and the knowledge and the perspective of others. So it’s a very self-interested point of view, and in some ways, I consider myself a bit of an Imperialist, because I’ll grab any idea that I think is going to help advance something I really care about and get me to a goal, and you’re going to do that best with a diverse group of people. So it’s too bad that that has become an ideological football, because no one’s going to win the game with that attitude. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah. Yeah, it’s like, it’s like the term diversity has become weaponized, which I know is a term you use. Right? It’s become weaponized when, in fact, what you’re talking about is… Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: …just the fact that we’re not all the same, you’re not prescribing a certain way of thinking, you’re actually…encouraging… I’m trying to not use the word diversity. You’re encouraging different perspectives. Diana Smith: Yes, I’m encouraging learning. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So… Diana Smith: …has been my life’s work is organizational learning. You know, we live in a competitive, fast-paced world, and organizations that can’t adapt can’t keep up, and you can’t adapt without learning. And you know, if you’re drinking your own bathwater to use a disgusting image, you’re not going to get very far. So you need to be able to learn, and you need to be able to learn from people who think and experience differently than you, the world differently than you do, and have access to different information. And, by the way, I’ve spent my life and some of it with Amy, and you know, over 30 years looking at groups and organizations, do what we’re watching our nation do. Which is why I wrote the book. Groups discounting each other rather than learning from each other. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right. Diana Smith: And yet the nature of the groups, and how they get divided in organizations is such that they have access to not only different information, but different kinds of information. They have different experiences, they have different competencies. So putting that all together is critical for the organization to survive, same goes for our nation. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, yeah, okay, so I have to… I have to confess, Diana… When we first started this conversation, I did not share your optimism. I’m hopeful, but I was feeling a little bit more pessimistic, I’m just gonna admit, than I am now. With your conviction of being ambitious. So I need… I need to just share this. I know for a fact that the people that listen to this podcast, my clients, and the podcast listeners…Almost a hundred percent of them have two attributes that I admire so much. One is their ambition and the other one is their growth mindset, right? And you were just talking about how you also have those traits and the combination of those two things has got to more of us to do all of the things that you’re talking about, right, to remake the space between us. So… If you could also, just to get really practical here, maybe share some new sources. I know that there’s the one that you mentioned… Diana Smith: Solutions, journalism, network. Better than most of them by far. I think If you want a more balanced news, I think Reuters is probably the most balanced. but in terms of a solutions, orientation solutions. Journalism network is by far the best. But I want to come back to something that it’s a distinction that James Stockdale makes between being an optimist and having hope. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, because words are important. Diana Smith: Yeah, I don’t self-identify as an optimist. So I want to read to you something that he said. First of all, Vice Admiral James Stockdale survived 8 torturous years in a Vietnamese prison camp. Yeah. And so Jim Collins, business writer, Jim Collins, Good to Great, interviewed him, and he said, “How the heck did you survive?” And he said, “You know, I never lost faith in the end of the story.” “I never doubted, not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end, and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which in retrospect I would not trade.” He then went on to say that faith was very different from the optimists. The optimists would say, “We’re going to be out by Christmas.” Then Christmas would come, and then Thanksgiving, and then, you know, Easter, and then Christmas would come again, and they’d set their sights on a date, and the date would pass, and they died of a broken heart. Yeah, this distinction led to what’s called the Stockdale Paradox, which he put this way: “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end, which you can never afford to lose, with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” And you saw in the book I confront some brutal facts in that book. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah. Diana Smith: Yet I never lose faith in the ability of humans to overcome those adversities because we have done so throughout history. The only question in my mind now is because of climate change, we have a time horizon that is imposed on us, and so our ability to climb the learning curve fast is absolutely critical, and the more people who despair and think it’s not possible, the slower we will go up that learning curve. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Hmm. That is a beautiful point. Yeah. Diana Smith: Hope is a political act. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay. So speaking of time constraints… You and I are talking today less than a month away from the U.S. elections. And I know that this episode is going to be released after… But I want to ask you your top-line thinking about where we are and what might happen between now and election day, and maybe to go back to the hope and optimism point, what your hope is. Diana Smith: Yeah. Well, my hope is that no matter what the outcome of this election is, that the millions of people already at work across the country, working to bridge the divides that created this dysfunction we are experiencing… That people will join their ranks, and make sure that this democracy that our founders sacrificed their lives to create, did not… and people in the Civil War died to save, that they did not die in vain. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Whoo. Diana Smith: People join that movement. We’re going to need to do it, regardless of how the election turns out. I think the bigger election, so to speak, is, are we going to vote on ourselves as citizens, and believe in ourselves and do what we need to do to save our democracy and to save our planet and to make this multigroup democracy of ours functional? Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, yeah. So it’s about taking our lens and pulling back, like, what is our ultimate objective here? It’s not just, “I voted for the party” or the “candidate that won” or “that lost.” It’s much bigger picture than that. And really focusing on that. Okay. Diana Smith: It’s about our ability as a multigroup democracy to solve urgent problems as quickly as we can before they trump us. That’s going to require us to work across groups. We have failed at doing that the last… not completely, but we’ve not done well the last 50 years. We’ve done worse and worse. We have to turn that trajectory around. Our elected officials are not going to do it until we, the people, do it because they’re going to cater and pander to the extreme. So we in the 67% have got to stop ceding ground to the extremists, take back our power and our control, join these groups across the country that are working to do that, and turn around what has been a bad trajectory and turn it into a good one. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay. So I am gonna sneak another question in before I get to the four rapid-fire questions, because, you know, before I pressed record again, you and I… I said I want to ask the questions that I know the listeners want to hear. I know what I would want to hear is: what exactly do I say in, you know, it’s the end of November, and I’m in a meeting at work, and I’m in the 66-67%. Someone who’s got an extreme view says something in the moment. Right? So, I mean, the meta-level or the strategic level of advice that you’re giving is to join these movements, to practice media hygiene, to do all of these kind of proactive things. What about when you’re in the moment? Diana Smith: Yeah. Well, we talked a little bit about it earlier, but let me get into it. I came across an article in Dear Eric, which is in the Washington Post in the Life section. Someone wrote to him and said, “I’m in this group of guys that get together on Zoom, and we’ve been together for many years, and sometimes this one guy says things that make me uncomfortable. I sort of don’t say anything and let it pass, but recently, he said he really has a problem with all the brown people coming to the country.” And this fellow thought that was a very— as I would, too— a very problematic statement. And just to be clear, I find it problematic because I think people don’t understand the positive role that immigrants play in coming to our country. But anyway, Eric’s response, I thought, was really good. He said, rather than call him out, call him in. Calling someone in is an invitation to discussion and repair. It’s a way of saying, “It concerns me that you hold this opinion. Would you be open to talking it through?” Now, I would ask a different question than that, but I certainly think that’s perfectly reasonable. I would tend to say, “I’m surprised to hear you say that. What are you worried about?” Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right? Okay. Diana Smith: I want to understand. What is it behind that statement? And then I can imagine saying things like, “Well, you know, I’ve had a different experience. And some of the research I’ve done, because I know immigration is a big issue, I’ve done some inquiry into it. And I’ve discovered that immigration has been actually vital to turning around dying towns, that they’ve added money to coffers, that they play a vital role in industries across the United States.” So what is it that you’re seeing or hearing that leads you to worry? And then just start a conversation, not a fight. We need to build relationships, not cases. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So we’re building relationships, not cases. That said, we can focus on the issue as opposed to pointing fingers at a person and being accusational, right? So there’s a… Diana Smith: Good morning! Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah. Diana Smith: Yeah, but… Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I never thought of that before, because I know some of the most common advice that communication coaches give, you know, on this topic of communicating with difficult people— I’m saying “difficult people” in air quotes— is to focus on the issue, not on the person. Diana Smith: Yeah, yes, exactly. And if you focus on the issue, understanding that people can disagree, but they don’t need to be disagreeable. And through talking about the issues, if you’re genuinely interested in learning what’s going on, not just condemning the person, then through that, you build a relationship of greater trust and openness. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah. Diana Smith: And it’s possible. I mean, in the book, I talk about the transformation of a white nationalist whose experience in college led him to disavow white nationalism. And he did that because of the conversations he had with friends. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, do you wanna share a little bit more about that? Diana Smith: This is an extraordinary story, and it’s… I’m sorry, yeah. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: It is. Diana Smith: It’s one that falsifies the idea that, you know, someone is so far gone that there’s nothing you can do. Okay? So first of all, the story—which I write about in the book—is called Befriending Your Ideological Enemy. It’s based on a book by Eli Saslow called Rising Out of Hatred, and I couldn’t recommend it highly enough. It tells the story about a young guy named Derek Black, 18 years old, and he was the heir apparent to the white nationalist movement in the U.S. He was the son of Don Black, who founded Stormfront, one of the first hate sites on the internet, and godson to the ultra-right-wing politician, David Duke, who’s a neo-Nazi and a conspiracy theorist and a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. So this guy came from a very small, insular white nationalist group. After being homeschooled, he goes off to New College in Florida, and New College is a liberal arts college that has a far-left-leaning student body. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So… Diana Smith: And there, he meets and makes friends with people far outside of the circle that he’d ever encountered. Okay, so you can imagine the cognitive dissonance this guy’s going through. He’s there for about a year, and nobody knows he’s a white nationalist. He meets people, he makes friends, acquaintances, and so on, but after a year, somebody finds out and outs him. And the message board at the college just goes wild. They start saying things like, “You know, Derek’s an idiot, a hatemonger, a Hitler, a fraud. You simply cannot reason with someone like that.” And they said he ought to be expelled or ostracized. There was a very small, diverse group of students that made a different choice. And it was one of Derek’s acquaintances, an Orthodox Jew by the name of Matthew Stevenson, who decided to invite Derek to his weekly Shabbat dinners. A bunch of people dropped out because they didn’t want to be there, but a small group came, and beforehand, Matthew turned to them and said, “Just don’t be assholes. We want him to come back.” And his view was: “This guy has been raised by white nationalists. We’re not going to change his view in one night. Let’s not talk about white nationalism. Let’s just get to know each other.” Also at the table was a Peruvian immigrant by the name of Juan, another Orthodox Jew, Mosh Ashe, whose grandfather had been in a concentration camp in Germany, and then Alison Gornick, who was a leftist feminist. Okay? And over the next 18 months, this small group of friends created a context in which Derek’s very narrow mental space, which had been cultivated in this white nationalist community, started to expand. And he started to reach across this chasmic distance between a white nationalist group and these ultra-liberal students. Okay, imagine how hard that must have been for the guy. And so, after 18 months, he eventually came around. He reexamined his beliefs, mostly with Alison. They’d get on the internet, they’d look up studies to examine the intelligence of different races, to look at the consequences of immigration— they did the whole thing. And so, afterward, he reflected on the process, and he told a reporter: “It was people who disagreed with me who were critical to the process, especially those who were my friends regardless, but who let me know, when we talked about it, that they thought my beliefs were wrong, and took the time to provide evidence and civil arguments. I didn’t always agree with their ideas, but I listened to them, and they listened to me.” It’s amazing to think of the distance this young kid traveled in two years. Okay? Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: It is. Diana Smith: So it shows it is possible. And that’s the point I wanted to make. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So it’s impressive that he went from what many of us would say, like a kid that didn’t have a chance, I mean, given his upbringing, right? Didn’t have a chance. Yeah, he somehow had an open mind. But also the other people who didn’t just reject him. That’s also very impressive. Okay, are you ready for the 3 rapid fire questions. Diana Smith: And. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Question number one: are you an introvert or an extrovert? Diana Smith: I’m an introvert trapped in an extrovert’s body. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Oh! Diana Smith: Meaning, I push myself to be an extrovert, as I am today. Okay. But I recover alone. And the definition of an introvert is usually, where do you recharge? And I recharge alone. Yeah. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Diana, do you know that almost a hundred percent of the people that I interview have an answer, something like what you just said. Diana Smith: Yeah, I can believe it. Because if you’re a leader, you have no choice but to be an extrovert. And it’s exhausting because you’re basically alone. You’re taking on the weight of the organization on your own. I’ve been executives for 40 years. It’s a tough, tough job. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah. Okay. Question number two. This, I’m very curious to hear from you. What are your communication pet peeves? Diana Smith: Well, I’m, you know. I always hate to call them pet peeves, because I’m empathetic with why people do these things, but they can be irritating, and they’re problematic, and they’re not in the interest of the person who uses them. But the incessant use of qualifiers, especially the worst one would be: Let me be honest. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay, so. Diana Smith: Because, like, okay, cause all the other times I haven’t been honest. So watch out. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I say that way more, but I catch myself saying it. Recently, I’ve been—when I’m in the middle of a coaching session or workshop, I’ll say, Well, to be honest, and then I go: Stop. o be clear, I am always honest. What I meant was actually… or I want to emphasize this point exactly. Diana Smith: I think a lot of qualifiers are what an old mentor of mine, Roger Brown, at Harvard called politeness strategies. Okay, we want to mitigate any tension. And so we say, you know, I know this is a sensitive topic. So I want to make sure, you know… And so you’re packing these sentences up with all this superfluous stuff, it’s inefficient. And it—the point gets lost in all the padding, and I think it sends a signal that you’re uncomfortable, that makes other people uncomfortable. It reduces honesty. It reduces learning. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: You and I could do a whole podcast episode, conversation about that topic. I love it. Okay, last question. Is there a podcast or a book that you find yourself recommending a lot lately? Diana Smith: Can I give a podcast, a book, and a documentary? Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Please. Diana Smith: Okay. Podcast: The Focus Group, Sarah Longwell’s podcast on The Bulwark. It’s extraordinary. She gets together with voters, and she asks them what they think about all sorts of things. So you get to hear, unmediated by the press, what people are really thinking, and we need more of that. Excellent book: John Meacham’s And There Was Light: Abe Lincoln and the American Struggle. If you want to see a reality in the United States which is identical to today, read that book. It’s incredible. Documentary: I Am Not Your Negro, which is basically a documentary on James Baldwin. And it’s an extraordinary documentary, and especially for people who are white. It will be an eye-opener, and it’s an important one for people to understand. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay, I will put links to the three of those in the show notes. I’m good. Ask if there’s anything else you want to share with the listeners about Remaking the Space Between Us. Diana Smith: I think it’s the single biggest challenge we face. We have become very insular within our own groups. Recycling the same news, the same beliefs, the same values. And we’ve gotten very distant from groups that are demographically and ideologically different. And so we need to start to… Close those divides. Open up. We have to open up the space within our own group before we can close the distance. So we have to start opening the space within our own group. And then we need to close the distance across groups. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Thank you so much, Diana, for sharing your insights, your suggestions, and your hope for how we can remake the space between us. I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you. Diana Smith: Thank you, Andrea. This has been a lot of fun. CLOSING Thank you so much, Diana! Diana’s knowledge of history, combined with her storytelling, and of course, her strategic acumen provide such a compelling case for us to focus on remaking the space between us. Diana shared many many recommendations of resources that we can explore to help make this a reality. I combed through the transcript and included links to all of these resources. You can find the list at the top of the show notes in whatever podcast app you’re using. Now, let me summarize. As I mentioned at the beginning, I’m going to briefly review Diana’s insights focusing on three categories that I found in a paper she co-authored with Harvard Professor Amy Edmondson. The paper is called “Too Hot to Handle: How to Manage Relationship Conflict”. In this paper, Diana and Amy outline three practises for discuss discussing hot topics: one is managing yourself. Two is managing the conversation. And three is managing the relationship.  Let’s start with managing yourself. An easy place to start here is to explore the resources that Diana mentioned. If you’ve taken the time to fill your brain with neutral information or perhaps information from across the spectrum, you’re better equipped in so many ways. Remember that diversity of thought and opinion can be a competitive adntage – for yourself and for your team. Did you catch Diana’s comment about bathwater?  “if you’re drinking your own bath water, you’re not going to get very far.” That’s pretty visceral.  Hopefully this idea of diversity of thought inspires you to check out a different website or news source from the one you’ve been reading.  Maybe starting with a few that Diana suggests. So that’s tactical. In terms of a mindset, Diana mentioned many times that are focus on learning and curiosity can help. This is what I focussed on in that heated conversation that I had in the airport the day after the election. I remember thinking Diana would encourage me to be curious. So I started asking questions. It works beautifully. Thank you, Diana. That’s managing yourself. The second category of insights is about  Managing the conversation.  Diana aptly said “start a conversation, not a fight. We need to build relationships, not cases.” Let’s start with conversations, then we’ll get into relationships. Imagine you’re in a meeting. It could be one on one where you need to have a conversation with someone about something to build your business or it could be with a large group. Someone might say something inappropriate or perhaps something that you believe is not true. They may be expressing their social and political views. Assuming they’re not Kai bashing the whole meeting, Diana suggests that you address it privately, after the meeting ends. Diana shares a few prompts to get us started the first one is: “ it concerns me that you hold this opinion. Would you be open to talking it through?” The second is: “I’m surprised to hear you say that. What are you worried about?” With both of these prompts, she starts with a non-threatening she starts by stating her opinion, but in a non-threatening way. In the first, she said it concerns me that you hold this opinion and then the second she said I’m surprised you hear to hear you say that. Then she followed that statement up with a question, would you be open to talking it through? Or what are you worried about? This is a great framework for all of us. Start by sharing our concern in a non-threatening way then ask a question. In practice, these prompts are a great idea,. However, in practice, sometimes things get very heated. We get triggered. Diana reminds us to use our self control. To pause. To overcome our hot system, which is reactive and emotional and shift to a cool system, which is more rational. Then we can follow up after pausing with one of these prompts. So that’s managing the conversation.  We’ve covered managing yourself and managing the conversation.  Now , the third and last category is .  Three is managing the relationship This is probably the most important thing isn’t it? Relationships. Diana encourages us to remember that 67% of us are not in ideological extreme groups.  In other words, we might have more in common that e thought, with more people than we thought.  Take my conversation with the woman in the airport that I met the day after the election. She and I were both probably in the middle 67%. Just because we would vote for a different political candidate doesn’t mean we are at extreme odds. Diana also reminded us that it’s a natural instinct for us to distance from people who make us uncomfortable. Instead of pushing those people away, we should focus on remaking t eh space between us. One of the most caring things you can do for someone is to get curious. Do you remember the Lincoln quote that Diana shared? “I don’t like that man. I have to get to know him better.” I think that’s a great place to close. the most caring thing you can do for somebody is to get curious. The next time you’re in a heated conversation with someone, whether it’s a coworker, a family member, a friend or a complete stranger in an airport. I hope you remember these words. The most caring thing you can do is to get curious. Thanks again to Diana. As I said, you can find links to all of Diana’s recommendations and more in the show notes for this episode. My coordinates are there too. Please connect with me anytime. Check out the Talkabouttalk.com website or send me a DM on LinkedIn. I love hearing from you. Talk soon! The post Talk EXTREMES – Remaking the Space Between Us with Dr. Diana McLain Smith (ep.176) appeared first on Talk About Talk.