Good Life Project - Stop Hiding, Reclaim Your Voice | Alexia Vernon

Episode Date: May 21, 2019

Alexia Vernon (https://alexiavernon.com/) is a transformational speaking and women’s leadership expert, coach and author who shows entrepreneurs, business leaders and change-makers how to develop the mindset and behaviors needed to walk into any room, or onto any stage, and speak with "moxie" - so they can radically (and positively) impact their audiences, businesses and communities. Now, branded a “Moxie Maven” by President Obama’s White House Office of Public Engagement, Vernon is the founder of The Spotlight Speaker Accelerator and Spotlight Speakers Collective and the author of Step Into Your Moxie, (https://amzn.to/2GbwPqz) a rally cry to amplify your voice, visibility and influence the world. -------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alexia Vernon is on a mission to empower people to find and share their voices, especially women. At an early age, after being sexually abused, she spoke up and saw the power of her voice to make a difference. Then, about four years or so later, arriving at school in the old school full-on, braces and headgear, her classmates' cruelty to her really led her to kind of go quiet for a lot of years until she discovered an outlet for her expression in ballet, where she not only studied on full scholarship at the Pacific Northwest Ballet School, she also began to turn out to the world, rediscover different forms of expression, and teach and speak more publicly in high school. That led her to also share her story about her abuse in a public way. And something in her realized that telling her story allowed her to be of service to others,

and that speaking made her come alive. So she picked up that torch and ran with it, becoming Miss Junior America. And we talk about that in our conversation, actually, and how she really feels about it and why she ended up even sort of pursuing it. Landed herself a college scholarship, laid the foundation for work in speaking, advocacy, and empowerment. Now branded a, quote, moxie maven by President Obama's White House Office of Public Engagement for a pretty unique and effective approach to women's empowerment. Alexia is, she's becoming really sought after speaking coach, corporate communication and presentation skills consultant and trainer.

And she's the founder of something called the Spotlight Speaker Accelerator and Spotlight Speakers Collective. And the author of a new book called Step Into Your Moxie, which is a rally cry to amplify your voice, your visibility, and influence the world. Super excited to share this conversation with you. And be sure to keep tuning in

to our special second weekly episode this month as we introduce you to new musicians and singers and songwriters and performers every Thursday throughout the month of May. Super excited to bring this to you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever,

making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised.

The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him.

Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. I'm always fascinated by the journey that brings somebody to a place where this is the work you're doing in the world. Where'd you grow up? Los Angeles and then the Pacific Northwest once my parents divorced outside of Seattle. And what kind of a kid were you? Oh, my God, if you guys could see the smile across her face, it's almost like, where do I go with this? I was a walking dichotomy because I had these moments where I was painfully shy and awkward.

And I talk about this a little bit in the book. I mean, I had headgear, I had glasses, I had braces, a tongue thrust corrector, jaw realigner. I mean, I was 100% that If I could hide behind a character or behind humor, I was good. If I had to be seen as me, that's when stuff got real uncomfortable. Do you have a sense for why? You know, through the process of writing this book, my answer is actually different than what it would have been. So now my answer is that I simply don't think I understood that I could be both parts of me. And so when I would think about putting myself out there, and then I would have this awareness of people are looking at me, and then I would get those tummy butterflies. I didn't

know how to manage that. And then I would go into the story of, I'm not this person who is stepping up and stepping forward. What are you doing? Get back into the wings. But if you'd asked me previously, I would have just said, I'm shy, I'm introverted. And I don't think that's the full story. I'm curious, what would people who knew you back then have said? People who knew me back then and who have read the book have been really surprised. Some of my closest friends, particularly who might have known me, let's say in my late teens or in my 20s, college, graduate school,

have said, you always looked so confident. I had no idea what was going on inside your own head, which I think is typical for most of us. If most people knew what was going on inside our own heads, they would never want to be friends with us. But people who knew me as a kid who may not have seen me blossom have said, I'm so sorry that you didn't understand how to be able to use your sensitivities in a way that made you feel whole. So some teachers or, I mean, a few cases, friends who've been, who've certainly had compassion and empathy, and in many cases related, because it felt very similar to their own journeys, which is probably why I gravitated toward them even as a young person. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting to me also, I've been thinking about this a lot recently that I feel like, especially with each season of our lives, whether it's a couple of months or a

couple of years or decade, the people we tend to interact with on a daily basis develop a sort of a frame for us. Like they're like, this is like, you're this type of person and this is what you're about. And this is the imprint that they have of you. And it happens really quickly. And once it happens, it's really hard to break that pattern. It's like, that is your identity in their mind forever, unless something really dramatic kind of like really changes. So, you know, it's interesting. I went to, a couple of years back, a 30th high school reunion. I was amazed at how quickly I dropped back into what I thought the perception of me was among different groups in high school. And it was really interesting to kind of feel myself shifting gears in the middle of this experience to be like, no, no, no, no, no.

And wondering how people were seeing me at that moment in time. Like, were they still, were they all snapping back 30 years too? I had the opportunity to go back to my high school twice in the last six to nine months outside of Seattle. And the first time was for a big reunion, 20 years. And everybody knew the book was coming out, had a sense of what my work was. And it was validating how many people were not surprised. They saw something in me. And some of my teachers are still there. They've had these incredible careers at this girl's school, saw it before I did.

And then being able to do a book event at my school in front of all the fifth through twelfth graders, all these young women, was fascinating because the fifth and sixth graders were so in it. They were raising their hands. I got to do a workshop with them. There was an inability to be paralyzed by the insecurity. It was like, I feel it and I'm moving through it. By the time I was talking to a lot of the, I'd say 10th, 11th, even 12th graders, there was this awareness of everything I say matters, it will have impact. And I don't know if I'm ready for that. So it felt like much more of a stretch to get them to, I mean, there was psychological buy-in, but to actually play with the principles. Yeah. I mean, I guess that's the

age where you quote fitting in is everything. It's sort of like, and what's interesting to me is that that's when it lands, I think in so many people's lives. And question is, does that ever leave for a lot of us? And if so, when and how does that happen? Because I think a lot of us for that becomes the primary determinant of so many decisions we make to either step out or retreat back for the rest of our lives. You agree? I agree completely. I had the opportunity to speak at my daughter's school, and it was in front of 7th and 8th graders who were being inducted into the National Junior Honor Society. And in every single case, they read exactly what they were going to say.

And it was incredibly polished. And then my husband had the opportunity to be at the school for a different event in front of the 5th and 6th graders, and they didn going to say. And it was incredibly polished. And then my husband had the opportunity to be at the school for a different event in front of the fifth and sixth graders, and they didn't have notes. And they were magical. They were funny. They were present. And for most of us, we think credibility is going to come from polish, from having the research, from having the evidence. And unless we have the opportunity to recognize that actually our greatest credibility is going to come from our vulnerability, from having moments where something you say that I love, we take it from us and we speak to the conversation that's going on in the

heads of the people who are listening to us, that that's where really transformational communication, that's how it happens, whether it's a speech, whether you're negotiating, or whether you're having a heart-centered conversation with a loved one. Yeah, I mean, I still agree. And it's the foundation of Brene Brown's work as well. And I think so many people resonate with the idea, but resonating with it, understanding it, and then actually embodying it profoundly different things.

And I guess to no small extent, that has been your work in the world. It's like you're an adult out there working with people to find this in themselves. I mean, it's funny, as a speaker, I've gone on that same journey. I have hyper-scripted things and been really precise and delivered exactly the quote value that I wanted to deliver. And then I've gone out and said, you know, I know my story and I just need to tell it with honesty. And, you know, there's one or two ideas that I hope to extract from that. And the reaction is profoundly different. So you end up graduating high school somewhere along the way at like age 19.

Well, let's back out. I think I know what you're going to ask. the end of it when you realize that you had essentially become the butt of everybody's joke. And they have a really unfortunate name that was incredibly hard for you based entirely sort of like on your appearance. And then you fast forward not that many years later at the age of 19 when you're standing on stage and you win. The Miss Junior America competition. Right. It's quite a journey. It's quite a

journey, a relatively short number of years. But also, I mean, what struck me too is that, and I'm curious about what your experience is from the inside out. When I think of those patents, I've never been involved in it. And I know that was actually your one and only time. It always seemed to me like this was all about how you judge the facade of a person. But it seems to me the way you experienced it was more of an inner journey. Totally. When I think back to being called Hairy Beast at Space Camp,

yes, that was painful and it was based on a reality. Greek, Jewish, I've got a lot of hair. But it was also that I unknowingly, of course, contorted myself to be whomever I thought people at that weekend wanted me to be. And as a result, I was always apologizing for being in the space. I was younger than most of the kids because my dad had called up the leaders of the organization and said, my kid tests really well.

You should let her in. So there's also this issue of socially being a little bit younger than everybody else there as well. But my whole experience there was about fitting in. But when I think about what happened with Miss Junior America, for whatever reason, by the time I got there, I had surmised aesthetically, I wasn't going to win. So if I wasn't going to play that game, I had this opportunity to bring out who I was. And at the time I was studying improv. I love to dance. And when I got on that stage, there was actually something about not being able to see the thousands of faces that were there and just seeing lights where I gave myself permission to imagine

I was speaking directly to the people in the room because I didn't actually have to feel their gaze on me. And that emboldened me to speak with them rather than at them. And I've been speaking at people for a long time or holding onto notes. And that was one context where I couldn't hold onto notes, nor could I know exactly what I was going to be asked. So preparation was out the window. And that made all the difference. It also seems like it kind of set the foundation for so much that was about to come your way.

When you walked off that stage after that one experience, did you feel in any way changed by the moment? Yes. And I didn't know why. And that's why I had a painful next decade of going back when I would speak to all of my old habits. Like what? Planning every single detail out, seeking to memorize, not telling stories, and instead being a channel for other people's expertise, hiding behind fancy slides. And that's in presentations, but I would certainly do that in my college classes, oftentimes.

Never wanting to disrupt the status quo and say, I have a counter viewpoint here, and here's why. So what brings you back to leading with that? Even though I'd been speaking for a while and having a moderate amount of success, it was the opportunity to be the closing keynote speaker for a social enterprise conference a little over a decade ago. I got to the event a little bit early before the participants pitch fest. And each of the approximately 100 young people who were at this event had a couple of minutes to present their big idea for how they wanted to harness entrepreneurial solutions to solve a big social, economic, or environmental problem. And the

pitches were outstanding. I was in total awe watching. They were bold. They were well-researched. They were full of heart. And at the event, the people who were in attendance can appreciate why when the finalists' names were announced, I was stunned because every single one of them was a young man. Not one woman's voice was picked. And that moment stirred me up on a deep, deep level because I recognized that there was something that was happening to me that was endemic of something that was happening to a lot of women. So whenever I get stirred up like that, I try to ask questions rather than simply rely on my assumptions. And what was interesting was that both the young men and the young women kind of said the same thing. They had voted based on who they saw as the best pitcher or best speaker. In other words, who took up space, who projected confidence, who had a lot of volume, what one

would call a more masculine model of delivery. But yet, when I asked, who were the speakers that you felt most connected to, whose ideas you would want to champion. It was a lot of the women's names who came up because they told stories, they were vulnerable. And sometimes they were so honest, they admitted they still had a lot to learn before they felt like their ideas could be successful in the world. But yet that wasn't seen to be good pitching, good speaking, good influence. And that was when I realized that I had been ping-ponging a lot between what I call being a bit of a bunny, standing back, seeking to please, always apologizing, whether literally apologizing or simply from using words like just or so to

diminish myself. But because there was this other part of me that knew fundamentally I wanted to be visible, I wanted to use my ideas, my voice to make the world a better place, sometimes I would ping pong in the other direction, but then I would be hyper-masculine, what I call a dragon. It didn't feel like it was born out of self-worth. Much like the other stuff I would do, it was always about posturing in some way. And I realized in that moment, some of that was me, but then some of it was what I was picking up on societally in terms of what is a paradigm for empowered female leadership. Even coming out of an all-girls school, I didn't see that in the world very much. And so I was having a hard time

finding my place. And I realized a lot of other women are too. So in that closing keynote speech, I let go of the script, let go of the slides, spoke from the heart, asked questions, told stories, allowed myself to be a little messy. And I realized I'm never going back. I know how to structure a presentation and I'm going to keep structuring presentations, but I'm going to allow for a lot more breath in how I speak and be 100% unapologetically me in service of calling audiences to take action on ideas. After that, there were some people who didn't like what I said and it was liberating because I realized I can survive being unliked. There weren't a lot of people who had ever unliked me up until that point. But I don't know if anyone really liked me either because a lot of people didn't know who I was.

Yeah. I mean, what a powerful lesson, right? how much I think so many of us control our behavior based on the desire to not be disliked or to not be critiqued or just to have the greatest number of people want to be our friends and want to invite us in. And I think it terrifies us. I think it shuts so many of us down. And yet when I think about the most compelling books that I've read, the most compelling talks I've ever heard, the most compelling performances I've ever seen,

a lot of them were provocative. A lot of them came from people who I strongly disagreed with, maybe didn't even like all that much in the moment at least. And yet they stayed with me. They stirred something in me because there was a realness that just, it cut through everything else. So where do you go from there? So you spend the 10 years before that sort of working your way up and being professional. And then you have this moment where you're like, okay, I've been ping-ponging between trying to be accepted, stepping into one or the other, these two different paradigms, and there's something which is completely my own. And I was allowing opportunities in my perception of what other people wanted to define me. I had around that time written my first book on onboarding millennials into the workplace. So that was the message I was supposed to be talking about. What was your actual profession or job, sort of like in the window leading up to that? Coach and consultant. So I'd hung out my shingle

and left working full-time for someone else. And like I said, gotten to a certain okay level of success, but I always felt like once I hit this income goal or once I have X audience, then I want to do something around speaking and voice. And that was the moment where I said, all right, I haven't hit that income goal yet. I haven't hit that following, but I had been teaching public speaking as an adjunct professor for the City University of New York at that time. If not now, then when? I want to pivot. And I did. I didn't look back. It was inconvenient to have a book out and recognize that I need to do some promotion. I'm somebody else now. But I'm not going to continue to generate new opportunities in this direction. I will be in my integrity and honor

the commitments, obviously, that I've created. But that was when I started. I said, I want to coach entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants, executives, change makers in this way of speaking. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum.

Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. I'm curious, when you made that shift, did you have anybody in your world that was sort of saying, Lex, you're really successful. You're doing well.

You've got expertise and you're known for this thing. Just stay in your lane for a while. No, outside of my publisher. Right. Because you got a book, give it a year. That's so interesting to me because I've heard, I think that's unusual. It is. And I acknowledge that 100%. And it's also probably because I want to be really honest. I was okay, but nobody saw me at the pinnacle of my potential. And a lot of people who knew me when I would explain my vision for what this could become would say to me, that's what I need. And fortunately, the people who I keep close to me were always

people who did give honest feedback. But there was this sense, that's what you were born to do. You've had a lot of experiences. And when you look at them in hindsight, they all make sense for this direction that you want to go. So there's probably something there. And I say that to a lot of people who are in the creative coaching consulting world that oftentimes when we're struggling with this question of definition, who am I? What should I do? How should I serve? When we feel confused or stuck, if we look at what are those aha moments we have had, typically that's where the answer lies. Yeah. The famous, you can connect the dots looking back a lot easier than looking forward. So you basically make this major pivot. Now, you are the person who is helping people learn to speak powerfully and find their voice, but also with a focus on women.

Tell me more about that. That pitch fest was profound. There's this room full of women who are exceptional, who are not A, being seen as exceptional in a community of peers, male and female. And to be honest, in many cases, while the quality of their ideas was exceptional, their delivery wasn't. You could feel that there was this, if it wasn't ping-ponging between the bunny and the dragon stuff, it was all dragon. It's my way or the highway. No ability to receive feedback for fear of being critiqued, or on the other side, this playing small business. And having taught public speaking for a couple of years by this point where I was going pretty much off of a standard curriculum, you give your informative

speech, you give your persuasive speech. I saw that all the time happening in the classroom as well. And I wanted to create communities where women felt like they could take risks, they could role play the version of themselves as communicators and as leaders that they might imagine but never take action on. So what does that look like? So at first, it looked like having small communities of eight to 10 women who would work So what does that look like? I do a little bit more of that now. I was often working with men and women, but also holding space for folks, irrespective of their gender, to be able to integrate the masculine and it from a place of vulnerability, using stories, and so forth. And yet, particularly in business climates, that can feel really hard. Yeah. I mean, you've used the difference between speaking at and speaking with a couple of times now. Tell me more about how are those different in your mind? When we are focusing on the ideas

we want to get across, these are my three to five main points, whether it's a presentation or it's interpersonal communication. And typically what we'll do is we'll sculpt what that is in our head. Sometimes we'll ruminate on it. Sometimes we'll practice it out loud, but it's inherently about us. And so whether we have an audience of one, or we have an audience of a hundred or more, our goal is to get through the points and be heard, which is not effective communication. If we pivot to thinking about what do I want to call the person or the people who are listening to action on by the end of the time that I speak, and actually reverse engineer from that final destination and think about what are the three to five main things I need to share that are

responsive to what that person or those people are thinking and address that from a place of humor, from a place of heart, but keep ourselves 100% focused on what those people are thinking on a moment-to-moment basis and speak with that, that's speaking with. I love that distinction. It's interesting as you're sort of speaking, I'm spinning in my head. I'm like, who am I? Where am I on this spectrum? You speak with. But I think it has been, and thank you for saying that, I think it's very much still a journey for me. And it is not something that actually comes naturally. And because I think for me, making the journey from speaking at to or speaking to to speaking

with is a fairly recent thing for me. And there was a very intentional inner dialogue that was similar to what you just shared. For me, I think when I first would start to take a stage, whether I'm in a boardroom with six people or whether I'm on a stage in front of thousands of people, I had this thing in me that said, I want them to know I'm smart. And I don't consider myself overly bright. I just consider myself, I will outwork the next person to figure things out on a high level so there's value. But I realized that there was something inside of me that kept saying, I want to be seen as somebody who's leading in the quality of their thoughts, who has something to offer.

And it was 100% about my ego. Rather than stepping up and saying, let me just assume that I have something of value to offer and think about how do I want, what is the experience that I can create that will allow somebody to feel a certain way? And I switched from how do I want the audience to feel and then what is literally a single thing that I want them to leave thinking about, everything began to shift because it started as a fire hose of facts, which is essentially like, item number one, this is how smart I am. Item number one, A, this is how much smarter I am. And that is very repelling what you end up learning. And when you bridge that gap and it was just like, okay, so we're here together. How do I want you to leave feeling? What is the sort of the journey I want you to go on when we're together? When I'm in the green room before I go on, and if there isn't something I can write, I'll just take a pad. I literally take a mark and I

write the sentence, I'm here to serve. Just to remind myself to get out of like the ego-driven side of this and to get out of any sort of predefined paradigm that I have in my head. And just like, my job is to be present. I know my stuff. You made me realize that like you, that was my primary goal for a long time. I want to be smart. I want to be credible. I want to be trusted because I'm smart, because I have access to knowledge. And initially, it was somewhat self-serving, somewhat after that pitch fest I was talking about where I realized I'm going to go in with a different goal, which is I want them to see I am just like them. And it's self-serving initially because that's what gets me away from feeling

held back by all that sensation I didn't know how to process. If I'm aspiring to be just like them, then I get to be me, I get to be raw, and I want them to see that I'm just like them. And I figured out how to get out of my own way more times than not. I have some pearls from my lived experience that I can share because I make the assumption. So when I was growing up, there was a period of time where I thought I wanted to be a dancer and everyone around me wanted to be a dancer. Then there was a period of time where I wanted to be an actor and everyone around me wanted to be an actor. And maybe it's the company that I keep, but these days I feel like everyone around me wants to use their voice in a more powerful way,

whether on their bucket list it's TED Talk or whether they simply want to speak more truth to the stuff I'm recommending rather than hear it, nod their heads. And then the minute I'm done default right back to what they've known. Yeah. Cognitively, I'm nodding along and emotionally, I'm like, still working my way through this. You offered a phrase also, when you bring groups together in organizations or individuals or your own groups to hold space is the phrase I use. And it's a phrase that I use also. And I realized that when I use that phrase, a lot of people in this sort of mainstream organizational world roll their eyes. What do you mean by that? And how do you do it? It's interesting that you say in the mainstream world, people roll their eyes because I oftentimes wind up using vocabulary from my

clients. And I had an executive coach client who was wanting to step out in more of a speaker role. And she really shifted the way I think about holding space because as somebody who came out of the nonprofit social change sector, everyone used that terminology. And they typically meant holding space and making it safe for people to have difficult conversations and to be able to share alternative truths. And I don't disagree that that's what holding space is. But she was the first person to tell me that not everyone wants space to be held like that for them. The common denominator for me and for her was when you hold space how do you take yourself out of the mix and simply listen and give people the space to speak what oftentimes they have never

said now that might sound really similar to what I said before but before there was a little bit of ego attached meaning as I'm holding space, I'm facilitating. I'm making the magic happen. And for a long time, I was very hands-on as a facilitator. And I had an experience, I don't think you know about this, last spring when hosting a three-day event where I got an upper respiratory infection and I had complete laryngitis. Like nothing was coming out. And fortunately, when I host this event, the people who've done one of my programs are always coaching facilitators. They have their own coaching circles and they do some speaking. And I had to take almost three-fourths of one day off from speaking and stand back and trust that they

could lead this event until I recaptured something of my voice. And it was one of the most powerful experiences of leadership I'd ever had because I had trained these folks. I had held space for them to do, but now I needed to get out of the way and let them lead. And it showed me that as I hold space, I don't need to talk so much. I can be a lot more quiet and listen. Yeah, it's a subtle distinction, but I think powerful. When I think about the phrase also, and you kind of alluded to this, the central experience of that for me is safety. It's like the feeling of safety. And because people won't step out, people won't reveal what they're really thinking, who they really are, how they're really feeling,

and lessen until they feel safe. And as you said, right now, I mean, we're in an interesting time. People are feeling a lot and thinking a lot, and they desperately want to say a lot. But at the same time, so many people are terrified to open their mouths. Because the stakes have never felt higher. I think most of us have this awareness, my voice is needed now more than ever. And if I put it out there and I don't get it 100% right, are people going to attack me and shut me down? And then my voice may never come out again. Yeah. How do you deal with that? I mean, what's, because I think a lot of people would just listen to exactly what you just said and they're like, yeah, that's me. But, but now what? Yeah. I lead with stories that show, I understand that firsthand and that there have been moments where I have spoken up and it has been liberating and it has emboldened me to bring more of myself into all facets of my life. And I tell stories of moments where I was in my integrity,

I spoke my truth, and it didn't go the way that I intended and it sucked and was difficult and brought me to my knees and made me question everything. And while I may not have known it in the moment with a little bit of critical distance, even those moments didn't happen to me. They happened for me. They helped me step into my next level of service, of influence, of voice. And for me, as you know, many of those moments have happened in my family. Nothing that the world could ever throw at me was worse than some of the stuff that happened from the people who were closest to me. And yet when we think about what is our worst fear and actually name it, like I love going through and asking people, so if that happened and your worst fear happened, then what would happen? And then they name it and then what would happen and

then what would happen? And in every single case, not only do people usually recognize that it would be survivable, but they ultimately get to the place where they realize if that thing that has felt like it has been a noose around my neck, that thing that felt like it was keeping me from expression happened and I survived, then I would probably never play small again. And that is usually the case. Yeah, so great. So powerful. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming,

or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday.

We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot.

Flight risk. I'm thinking about people that I've seen in the online space where, you know, it is this petri dish of people testing. How public do I go? How specific do I go? How directed do I go with what's on my mind and how I feel? And granted, I'm in there testing as well, although not nearly as aggressively as so many people. But I've seen, and it was interesting recently, I saw one person who's got a massive following in social media, who's very much out there as a social justice activist and make a major misstep. And with right intention, but execution that caused harm. immediately was called to task in a very public way and immediately owned it and said, I just did something that was from my heart really intended to do good. And without realizing what I was doing, I did harm. And I'm sorry. And I understand now,

like the process, I understand what happened and I'm going to work on this and think about it and figure out how to step back into a public conversation, again, with the intention to do good and try a different way, a more informed way. And while it was brutal and this has hurt, thank you. I have gratitude to those who stepped up to help show me what I wasn't seeing. And I thought to myself, man, if that were me, I would hope I would be able to find the fortitude to act with that level of openness and grace, but I don't know. There have been a lot of examples over the last year of, for lack of a better word, influencers, folks with a public identity who serve a lot of people trying things.

Sometimes they have landed the way that they've intended. Sometimes they haven't. In my experience, when folks take full ownership, when they have caused harm, whether that was intended or not, usually it's easier to recalibrate. Usually the people who are truly our audience will forgive. And sometimes there are people who might have been hurt so deeply that don't. I think for the most part, what we're terrified of is that people will disagree with us. And that is the thing that for most is scarier than the fear of, am I going to hurt someone? Because when we are acting from a place of true service, of wanting to support, wanting to help, sometimes we can get it wrong, but for the most part,

people typically feel the energy behind that. Now I'm kind of curious when you say that people, like the thing we fear more than anything else is actually people disagreeing with us. And disliking us as a result. And disliking. I mean, is that the deeper fear? Or is it that the ideas that we hold dear might be invalidated and then we're kind of adrift again? I think it can be both, but I think the first is scarier, particularly for women. Tell me more. so badly to be liked. And that is something that happens from a young age because the first feedback we typically get gender-wise is about our appearance or about how we're making other people feel rather than about our ideas. And when you asked that question, I realized gender-wise, I think it's different. I think if you asked most men that question, I realized gender-wise, I think it's different.

I think if you asked most men that question, they would say, I want people to like my ideas. I care about that. If they don't like me as a person, meh. But I don't think most women would answer that way. I think the fear of being disliked, and maybe sometimes there's not even an awareness that that's what's at play, but that that's what is at the source nonetheless. So where do we go with that? I mean, we need everybody's voice in the conversation more than ever right now. We need people to feel like they can step out, they can share what's on their mind, whether it's fully formed or not,

and whether people are going to agree with them or not, simply because we need a diversity of voices in the conversation at the table. And so that it can become a conversation. And through the conversation, we can move more towards resolution that is informed by more voices rather than just the loudest ones. Where do we go with this at this point? Especially if you've got this really different experience of, you know, gender-based experience of how we interact with that social dynamic. I do think in our workplaces and in our families is where some of the steepest work can happen and needs to happen. Oftentimes, those who are privileged to be in the entrepreneurial creative space get

to do this work with like-minded people. And we have a responsibility to make sure that we bring this work into other arenas. So in the workplace right now, it's probably more difficult than in any other period of time in our lives to have daring conversations about any marker of identity, whether it's race, whether it's class, whether it's gender, whether it's asking questions about what does and does not constitute sexual harassment. And a quick but important aside, I had the opportunity to give a presentation at a big marketing event not too long ago. And kudos to this particular event for bringing in a diversity of speakers who were having

difficult segwaying into daring conversations about a lot of these issues. But one of the themes that came up again and again from some of the female speakers was, yes, we need to change our workplaces, but men need to know what is sexual assault. Men need to know what sexual harassment is. We need to talk about how to heal. And I actually take a different approach. We might argue that there are certain things that everybody should know, but most of life is lived in the gray space, the gray underutilized space between what is black

and what is white. And in my particular session, which was about how do organizations champion the voices of their women post Me Too and Time's Up, I was pleasantly surprised there were men in the room, not as many as I would have liked, but that the line to speak to me afterwards was more male than female because I had made it safe for them to ask questions and not feel like they were a moron or feel like they were insensitive because they didn't know, am I still allowed to date in the workplace? If I find that a female colleague looks good, can I say that without being offensive? Like to be able to ask questions without fear of retribution for being curious and admitting there's a lot that I don't know. To me, that is one of the most important places to start, is to give people permission to ask

questions rather than be left adrift to figure it out for themselves and either censor themselves for fear of getting it wrong or not be so self-aware and operate the way that they did and hurt people without that intention. In families, the work is a little bit different. It is giving particularly young people, we all are part of families, but particularly our children, opportunities to role play, speaking up and out on behalf of themselves, on behalf of their friends, on behalf of the ideas and issues that matter most to them, so that by the time they find themselves in the workplace, they're not starting this work fresh. Rather, they've already solidified the practice of using their voices in a brave way. That was actually your experience as a kid, that your mom role-played with you at a very young age. Yes, she did. So when I was four years old, I spoke up about the fact that I was

being sexually abused by a family member. And for a long time, I didn't understand why, particularly as a young person who perpetually felt like she was tap dancing on eggshells, as we've discussed. And I wish I could tell you that that time when I spoke to both my mom and my dad about what was happening and when I shared that I didn't want it to happen anymore, that everything was rainbows and cupcakes afterward, but that was most definitely not the case. A lot of people in my family weren't ready for that revelation and felt that they needed to choose sides. And if they chose to empathize and believe me that that would mean turning their backs on another family member who was beloved and did great things in the world, but made some mistakes. And so much like what we have witnessed,

whether we think about the Kavanaugh hearing or we just think about other bold truth-tellers who have shared their stories, there were a lot of people in my family who said, maybe you're not remembering things correctly. Maybe that didn't happen. Or there were others who said maybe that did happen, but maybe you're misremembering who it happened with. And then there were others who would say, I think you're making this up for attention or maybe somebody else in the family brainwashed you. Like I went through all of that, even though there were people like my mom who had my back

and who made sure it didn't happen. And it wasn't until the birth of my daughter almost five years ago when I was going through old memorabilia from my childhood with my mom that we found this article that had been ripped from a parenting magazine. And the article was about how do you talk to your children about what constitutes safe touch? And more importantly, how do you role play with children so that if they were ever touched inappropriately, they would speak up? And there were all these notes in the article in my mom's handwriting indicating that she had had that conversation with me,

that we had practiced what to say and I understood what to say. And so there's no doubt in my mind, I said something, what we know the majority of children do not do as children, let alone oftentimes at any point in their lives, because my mom had given me the words to, how to be honest, how to tell the truth of what's going on when it's really difficult and when there may be social judgment involved in it, like those seeds to have, just to stand in a place where you feel like you can do that, safe enough to do that, get planted at such an early age. And it's interesting to see what happens if they're not planted and then you hit your 30s, your 40s and your 50s. And at that moment, then you're faced with, okay, so now I have to revisit this. It's a much more complex, it's a much harder thing to do. And yet we're in a moment now where there's no avoiding

the need to actually go to that place where we're being frank, we're being honest, we're talking about hard things. And there's also, I think like you said, a lot of people want this to not be a gray issue. A lot of people wanted to just be like, there is a clear this or that in the exact way you have these conversations, you deal with them. The public discourse, you know, how fraught the public discourse is, is a representative of how fraught the actual issues are. Even when the behavior may be crystal clear, inappropriate, what that triggers within people based on their own individual history is much more complex. And our collective desire to make many of these issues black and white is hurting all of us. I know if my family felt that they had a way to be able to talk about what was happening

that would not immediately involve the criminal justice system, that would not brand another family member for life for something as a teenager he had done, our family would be in a very different place. It is our fear that holding people accountable will always be punitive in a way that doesn't necessarily have a bearing on what was actually done, but is sort of just this blanket response, keeps a lot of people from reporting. And it also keeps a lot of people who have perpetrated from taking some of the work I've done organizationally is that a lot of people who have perpetrated from taking some of the work I've done organizationally is that a lot of our zero tolerance policies that look at all complaints the same way rather than really acknowledging what happened in a particular situation and responding in a contextually

appropriate way is preventing a lot of disclosure. Which hurts people all over the place. So as you deepen into your work, as you spend more time and now you're now years into really exploring what does it mean to understand your story, to be willing to step forward and tell it fully and vulnerably and reveal who you are, working largely with women. One of the things that you also talk about, and you write about this, and this kind of fascinated me, is your take on the role of intuition. I'm somebody who has sort of argued for a long time that intuition is data, but it's

viewed as data which is not. And on anywhere near the level of anything you can put in a spreadsheet, I happen to believe the exact opposite. I think it's incredibly powerful data. We just, we discount it because we can't easily quantify it. Tell me more about your lens on intuition. At its most basic level, intuition is having an awareness, a deep knowing that something is the way it is beyond facts alone. And when we are able to recognize the way that our intuition speaks to us, because make no mistake, we all have intuition. The key is, do we know how it speaks to us? And when it does, do we choose to respond and take action from it? But when we are able to, it gives us a way to be able to navigate through the myriad situations we'll encounter where we can't rely on facts or experience alone. Nowhere did I learn more about the power of intuition than earlier in my career when I was doing a lot of work with new nurses. And at the same time, I'd been reading a book, Crucial Conversations, which I talk about in the

book, where the writers had done some research around how many nurses would speak up if they saw a doctor who was doing something that they shouldn't. And the vast majority of nurses would say nothing, even if they felt a patient's life would be at risk because they didn't want to usurp authority and so forth. And when I would share this with new nurses, they were always in agreement that that felt pretty specific. And yet when I would ask them, because they were new nurses, they hadn't been in the culture for very long, were there moments when they did speak up and say something? It was stunning how many people, because they didn't have a lot of experience yet, they didn't have a lot of facts to rely on, would sense in their bodies something wasn't right with a fellow nurse,

with a doctor, sometimes simply with a patient. They weren't presenting something that could be documented. And they did speak up. And it did save that person's life. Or maybe not so dramatically, it did make an impact. I know that it's there. I know it's important. You also kind of deconstruct intuition into different types. There is, for a lot of us, cognitive intuition, that aha moment.

We know something, like the thought just appears there and we're not quite sure why. But if that's how we get our hits, it's usually like that aha moment, but we see over the course of our lives that plays out quite a bit. Sometimes it's experiential. It's an experience, right place, right time. When we start to know what our body does. So for me, for example, I usually just get this feeling across my stomach or my chest. It feels like little butterflies. And it would be easy to call that fear. But to me, and qualitatively from the clients I've worked with over the years, when it's fear, it is something that is shrinking us. Versus when it's intuition, it's something we feel deep in our bodies is opening us up, even if it feels a

little scary and we don't know what to do with it. So when I think about that night, Christmas evening, when I made the decision to speak to my parents, I really wasn't sure what I should do because the family member who had been molesting me had asked me to keep a secret. And I was a real rule follower. So on one hand, that felt like what I should do. I don't think I had the awareness at the time. I don't know. It's many years removed that my mom had even had that conversation with me. But I remember as if it were yesterday.

Well, I can't remember a lot of details, that feeling across my chest. Say something, say something. And while I've made no shortage of mistakes in my life, anytime I've gotten that feeling and I've acted from it, it's always been right. Yeah. I feel it on an embodied level as well. Generally, I feel that first and then I ask myself, I'm like, okay, so what's the thought that goes along? What's this actually, what's going on cognitively that I need to respond to? I wonder, and I'm curious because you've worked with so many people over the years, what your experience has been with this. I wonder how much

an unwillingness to recognize and validate intuition actually is deeper in that we become, we live so much from the neck up, we become so disconnected, disembodied to a certain extent that we actually don't even feel it on an embodied level anymore. It's like we've turned off our receptors. And I would take it one step further. We might get a piece of it, and then we do whatever is in our power to get rid of it. Because we don't know how to manage the discomfort that happens from the neck down, whether it's our heart beating rapidly, whether it's our stomach sending us something, whether it's our knees locking, that when our body does tend to speak, depending on your makeup, your habits, whether it's numbing out with watching

television, getting on the phone, alcohol, food, whatever it is, that oftentimes then we start to bury that sensation that was trying to speak for us. That makes sense. So if you think about the work that you're doing right now, why are you doing it? I mean, I get why you started doing it. I get the drivers and it's very personal. And then it became something where you saw something happening in public, especially around the way that women and men were expressing themselves differently and that was causing harm. You're many years into this now and you've expanded on that work. You've worked with so many people. Is the driver the same or has it evolved? It has evolved. Very specifically this weekend. My why when I started the work is much what you just summarized.

Recognizing that there's something that's happening that I've experienced that I'm seeing in the world. And I have a unique lens. I have experiences that make me uniquely poised to be able to do something positive to help a lot of people and simultaneously to transform culture, because I think it's both what can happen at the individual level, but then how can we start to experience cultural shifts that make it easier for all of us to speak our truth? I run a mastermind for female entrepreneurs who want to speak. And over the last three years, I've recognized that significantly more than 50%, let me just say that, of the participants have experienced some form of sexual or physical trauma that has imprinted in their cells in such a way

that it has made it difficult for them to speak their truth, whether they are in any industry, doctors, lawyers, executives, whatever it is. And while speaking may be the medium, to me, it ultimately comes down to healing. And I wouldn't, if you'd asked me even a year ago, say that the work I do is healing. I now know that it is. That the process that one gets to go through to reclaim their voice in all parts of their body after some form of trauma, and sometimes it's little t-traumas. Someone told them that their ideas didn't matter. But what I'm seeing is a lot of the big t-traumas where someone or someones did something to the body and the voice in some way died or got stuck. That the process of undoing that harm and allowing people not always to use that as their platform,

in many cases, that's the healing work to liberate their message, which is very different. But that's what I'm called to do. And that's why I do it. I want to be a part of creating a world for all of us to live in where we can access our voice irrespective of what might have been done to us that sent us the message that our voice doesn't matter. So as we sit here coming full circle in our conversation, if I offer the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? Speaking my truth and showing other people how to speak theirs. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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