Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan - #104: How to AVOID This FATAL Communication Mistake with Heather!

Episode Date: April 14, 2021

This mistake is so common! And everyone from my Harvard students to CEOs mess this up. Today I talk to YOU about communication and how to avoid making decisions for other people before they even get the chance. Don’t pre-reject yourself on the behalf of others and definitely don’t assume you know why people do what they do. It’s about honesty, putting yourself in the shoes of others, and getting your message across. It’s time to answer your questions and communicate better! Rate, Review, and Subscribe to the podcast here! To inquire about my coaching program opportunity visit https://mentorship.heathermonahan.com/    Review this podcast on Apple Podcast using this LINK and when you DM me the screen shot, I buy you my $299 video course as a thank you!    My book Confidence Creator is available now! get it right HERE   If you are looking for more tips you can download my free E-book at my website and thank you! https://heathermonahan.com    *If you'd like to ask a question and be featured during the wrap up segment of Creating Confidence, contact Heather Monahan directly through her website and don’t forget to subscribe to the mailing list so you don’t skip a beat to all things Confidence Creating!     See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Come on this journey with me. Each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals. We'll overcome adversity and set you up for a better tomorrow. I'm ready for my close-up. Hi, and welcome back. I hope you loved getting to meet David Nurse this week. He was such an unbelievable guest, super positive, great energy, so interesting and generally such a nice person. just fantastic. So I'm so glad that you've got to meet him and hopefully check out his book, Pivot, and go and check him out on social media. He's just a great guide to be around. And I knew you'd love him. Okay. So a couple of stories that I need to share with you today. You know that I've been teaching at Harvard

every Monday. And this week, something really interesting happened that I had to share with you. I'm also in charge of a social media team, which is a portion of the class, not the whole class. So after we finish class each Monday, most Mondays we jump on a second follow-up meeting, which is just a social media team. And like anything, there's very specific goals, we call them KPI's and key performance indicators, that we've mapped out at the beginning of semester that the team needs to achieve in order to obtain an A, right? They're getting a grade for this. And so one of the goals that they had was, I believe was a thousand members of this Harvard LinkedIn. group on social media. And so they've been doing a great job with it. Engagement was part of it. And they've increased engagement. And they are achieving their KPIs. But the one they were falling

short on was the amount of members in the group. So cut to Monday. We're on this meeting or in this meeting after class. And one of my students says, hey, can everybody go ahead. And when we disconnect from this meeting, go onto social media and post about. the LinkedIn group and ask people to engage sign up because we're just five, I don't know, maybe it was 50 members short or something. And I had never even thought about it, right? So I said, oh, yeah, sure, no problem. And it wasn't, she didn't direct it at me. You know, there was a number of us on the call. So I got off that meeting and went to LinkedIn. I put up a post saying, hey, if you've ever wanted to know what it's like being in a class at Harvard.

professional sailing into sales leadership, we have a group. And if you love sales, you love peeking behind the curtain at Harvard and seeing what goes on and you want to learn more about sales and sales leadership, join our LinkedIn community. Just tell them Heather sent you or something like that. No big deal, right? And all of a sudden, the same group that meet on the social team, we also have a private WhatsApp chat so that we can support one another there in real time. And all of a sudden, the WhatsApp is blowing up. And so I go over to it. And all the students are freaking out. We far surpassed our goal because I put that post up.

Well, here's what's interesting and relevant to you and what I want you to know is that I literally hadn't thought about it. I never thought, oh, I could help them achieve their goals by doing a post, right? I just never, it never crossed my mind. I was so happy to do it when they asked me. So now we're on the WhatsApp chat thread. And the woman that originally asked, I said, thank you for asking. I had never thought of doing it. It just didn't cross my mind. And so she writes back, thank you so much. You helped us achieve our final goal. This is amazing. And I said, well,

thanks for letting me help, right? So it was this interesting exchange where I could have been adding value, but I never even thought about it. I'm busy in my life. Just never crossed my mind. This young woman raised a hand and said, you know, can everyone please go do this? We need help to achieve our goal. She asked for help. And I said, yes. Cut to. another woman in class joins in the conversation and says, Heather, I've been thinking about asking you every single week, but I decided against it because I thought it was overstepping my bound. I replied back, what are you talking about? And she said, you've worked so hard at creating a personal brand and I know that you do brand endorsements and get paid for it. So I figured it was really out of line as one of your students to ask you to post. And I came out of hard on this. And I want you to remember this. This is what I told our, I said, it's not your job to determine or anticipate what I'm going to say think or feel. Please give me that opportunity to make my own decisions, to process my own thoughts. You have no idea how I'm going to respond.

You can't determine that ahead of time in your siloed world. You have to give other people the chance. So if you don't ask, you truly are never going to know. But this woman had created her own story that she thought I would be upset. So in the end, luckily, another woman did ask. I was happy to help. I couldn't believe I actually never thought of it. And it made me feel happy to help them.

So it ended up being a win-win for everyone. I was happy to put a post up and share that opportunity with my community on LinkedIn. And they were happy to accept and come in the group and learn. It was just, it was a win all the way around. And I'm pointing out the way that one woman felt because I do understand her point. Right. And I've done that myself. We've all done that.

Right. We've all said, well, I can't ask them that. They'll get pissed off. Or I can't ask them that. That you don't know that person. It's just not going to know. We've got to stop making decisions for other people. And that's kind of how I laid it out to this one woman from class. I said, now, from now on, you need to always remember this situation. And you need to ask for anything and everything and never make decisions for other people. I'm a big girl. I can say yes or no when I choose to. I just want the ability and option to be able to say yes or no. Please ask me. So think about that the next time you're in a situation and you start having a conversation in your head where you're trying to decide for other people what they may or may not say and pump the brakes right there and give them the chance to decide for themselves. It's so important. You always need to raise your hands and ask. And this turned out such a great example of that. Okay.

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to the jackets, they're all incredible luxury high-end products without the high-end price. Refresh your wardrobe with quince. Don't wait. Go to quince.com slash confidence for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada. too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash confidence to get free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash confidence. Oh, gosh, I have so many stories for you. But another one I wanted to share from, I have this weekly coaching program. It's a group coaching program every Friday at one.

For one hour, I'm on a Zoom with my team. And this week, one of the young women on my team was sharing such an interesting story, two-part story. one that her company had just moved to a new office right when pandemic hit. And so then everyone went to remote operations, but now people are starting to go back to the office. And she went into the office and saw her boss who made a comment to her, oh, wow, it's so amazing to see you here again. You know, I figured you were just in a rut of staying at home and just didn't want to come back anymore. And she said, that's why you think I haven't been coming into the office?

And he said, yes. And she said, no, actually, let me explain something to you. And she said, I guess I should have mentioned this to you prior to this. But before pandemic, she had been put in a big bullpen type area where she couldn't find a place to plug her computer in. She didn't have a screen set up. There was really no place for her. And her boss and some of the other people all had these nice offices and their own space.

And, you know, it really felt like they were important. And she was sort of just in the way. And she thought she was making the smart decision by removing herself from an environment that she didn't really feel included in. And so she shared that with her boss who had no idea. That's why she wasn't coming in and immediately said he was going to take care of it and make sure she felt included. So super great example about communication and again, how sometimes people try to decide for others. You know, her boss had decided for her that she was staying home because she was in a rut. When that wasn't it at all, she wanted to be in the office.

She just wanted to feel included. So I thought that was a great learning lesson and just a reminder. Always communicate how you feel. Communicate your thoughts so you can find out the other persons too. We might very often be telling ourselves a story that just doesn't exist. All right. Hang on. We are going to be right back and I'll be answering a few of your questions. Okay, I got a couple of great questions on LinkedIn, one on Instagram.

Always send me any questions that you have that you want me to answer here on the show. I never share people's names. Just happy to get your questions answered. All right, here's the first one. Hey, Heather, I see your post and you're inspiring. Thank you. So I thought I'd reach out and ask your opinion. I have an interview today for a job similar to what I'm doing now, but I will be making $13,000 more dollars a year if I get the new job. I've not been able to sleep, not because of my interview, but because I love where I work. My boss and coworkers are amazing. Oh, my gosh, I'm really struggling right now. I do not want to be held back financially. I want to provide for my family, but I love where I work. Any advice?

Oh my gosh, this is so easy. Number one, you need to go have a conversation with your boss, right? So yet again, we're making decisions. You're deciding that your current company can't pay you more, and that's not your place to make that decision. I personally, here's how I would handle it, and you might not agree, but this is what I would do. I would call a meeting with your boss. I would say just what you said to me right here. I love working here. I love you. You're amazing. The best boss, I've ever had. The team is amazing. I love what I do. However, I do need to care from my family and support my family. And I have been pursued by another company who's offering me $13,000 more than I make here. I don't want to leave, but I need to pay my bills and support my family. I am hopeful that you would be able to match the same

offer so that I can stay where I love, keep adding value here, but be able to take care of my family. Is there any way you can help me make this happen? I would go in. 100% honest and just disclose exactly the situation. Now, some people will say this to you. And it's a fair point. Don't disclose that you have another offer or some way leverage or threaten another offer unless you're ready to leave. And I will say this. I did this once in my career. It worked out beautifully. I walked into my old boss and I said, I've got another job offer. It's for a lot more money. If you don't give me the promotion that I want that I deserve, with the comp that I've asked for, I'm out. And I was 100% committed to leaving if he didn't give it to me.

I just realized if he doesn't see the value within me, he's never going to. And so I really went in just balls to the wall and told him, like I told him 100% the truth. And I was ready to leave. He knew it. He saw it. And he ended up promoting me, giving me the comp plan that I wanted. So this one's a little different because you don't want to leave, right? So you've got to work through your own mind how you tee that up. But the first thing I would do is I would put myself in your boss's shoes. I always try to stand in those shoes. What does that matter to that person? Does that person love working with you? Does that person hate change? Does that person hate turnover? Does that person care about family? You really want to tailor your pitch and conversation around

the things that matter to them. Bring it back to them so they feel heard. They feel included. they feel cared for and understood and come at it from their perspective. That's the best advice I can give someone. It works 99.9% of the times. Okay, next question. I just want to let you know. For the past few months, I took your advice. I started my own side hustle.

All right. And currently have one client, which is great. That is so fantastic. You know, just having that one client makes it real. And you know that you will build momentum and grow that business from there. So congratulations. I still am not at the point where I can leave my, day job, but hoping that will happen at some point as I continue to grind it out here.

The hard work is paying off. Congrats. It does. I had a question that I'm sure someone pays you a lot of money to answer, but I don't know how to contact you, so I will ask you for the help. I need. I have a pitch this week with an old client that I had about five years ago that was spending a significant amount of dollars in media.

I just wondered, as I am making a pitch to them, if you have any words of wisdom or thoughts on how to win business or make a solid pitch to someone to entice them that you know already. You've already done business with them. It doesn't appear they have been advertising recently, so I may be hitting them at the right time. Any thoughts I would like to know. Okay, so again, the first thing I'm going to suggest is put yourself in the shoes of the person you're pitching. Research them, Google their industry, find out everything and anything that's going on. Knowledge is power and you've got to prop yourself up with as much info as possible. For example, and I'm making this up, let's say this person is in the construction business, and you know they're super competitive and they're so focused on their competition and what they're doing and they're really insecure and reactionary, right?

So you're going to want to approach the conversation with the key points that are of interest and matter to that potential client. You also, if you know that the person is big into loyalty and relationships, you're going to say, you know, Jim, as you and I have worked together over. over the years, and we've seen so many people come and go by the wayside. It's so nice to sit with someone who is an ethical, honorable, trustworthy businessman. I'm really happy to be sitting at the table again with you. Right. So come at it from the things that matter to them and leverage the history that you have. Find the key takeaways in the past stories that you guys have together and bring those key pieces to the table now. They're going to help you connect the dots to the business that's ahead of you. So, you know, again, again,

you've got to first think of what matters to this person, pull from the stories and experiences you already have together to leverage and connect the dots to the new story that you're forming. And if it is that this person's competitive, you're going to bring up, hey, you know, Jim, I know that your business has been exploding. I've been so proud of you watching on the sidelines and just cheering you on from afar. I'm really excited to be sitting with you, though, today because I heard so-and-so down the street just opened another location. and is getting into growth mode. So I've been strategizing about how you and I can work together to make sure we take their

market share and render them obsolete in your industry. Are you in? Right. So put yourself in their shoes. Understand what's important to them. Leverage that past information that you have to connect the dots and go after the future business. Go get this deal done.

And ask for the order. You always need to ask. Don't ever forget that one. Don't make decisions for other people. don't, you know, presume that you know what they're going to say. Ask them if they want it. Ask them if they want to do it and have that conversation. But it all starts with asking.

Hope this helped. Can't wait to see you next week. As always, if you could post, review, subscribe, leave a rating a review. It means the world to me. Until next week, I will be right here creating confidence and hoping that you are too. See you then.