Delight in the Limelight: Recent Episodes
Linda Ugelow
In this episode, we explore silence—how societal and internalized pressures stifle our self-expression, and the profound liberation that comes with unlearning these patterns. My guest Elaine Lin Hering talks about the impact of silence on our relationships, and she shares practical advice on how to improve communication, assertiveness, and self-expression.Listen in to learn:- Why we stay silent and how our silence negatively impacts our self-worth and relationships- Practical strategies for speaking up and asserting agency- How to use AI to manage negativity and reframe communicationGet ready to unleash the full power of your voice!Click here to check the full show notes.
What if you could reframe your relationship with awkwardness and learn to manage awkward moments with ease?Join me in this episode of Delight in the Limelight, where I speak to Henna Pryor - Workplace Performance Expert and author of Good Awkward.In this episode, you’ll learn:- What the spotlight effect is and why you shouldn’t trust it.- Strategies for dealing with nervousness and a lack of audience engagement.- Practical examples and benefits of using improv in your speaking.Click here to check the full show notes.
Do you ever wish you could approach speaking with ease and confidence instead of stress and anxiety? Then listen to this episode of Delight in the Limelight where I speak with psychology expert and host of the MINDSET ZONE podcast, Ana Melikian.
Listen to our conversation to learn how to:
- Recognize your limiting beliefs and cultivate a growth mindset
- Harness the power of mindset to unlock your full potential as a speaker
- Reframe your anxiety and respond to stress instead of reacting to it
This is a conversation for speakers, entrepreneurs, and business leaders who want to communicate with greater ease and presence.
Click here to check the full show notes.
How do you learn to be authentically yourself in your public speaking and writing? And how do you deal with the emotional impact of any negative feedback you get?
In this episode of the Delight in the Limelight Podcast, award-winning copywriter and founder of Talking Shrimp, Laura Belgray, joins me to talk about the challenges (and benefits!) of being authentically yourself.
Listen to our conversation to learn:
- What it looks like to truly be yourself
- How to balance authenticity with professionalism in a work environment
- Laura’s approach to handling negative feedback
- One very effective strategy for building your confidence
This is a conversation for anyone who wants to be true to themselves in their work and online.
Click here to check the full show notes.
Just how important is storytelling for public speaking success? According to today’s guest, it’s the key to delivering an engaging and entertaining presentation.
Mike Ganino is a seasoned public speaker, performance coach, and former executive producer of TEDx Cambridge. In this episode of the Delight in the Limelight show, he joins me to discuss the importance of emotionally honest storytelling, drawing on your individual perspective, and incorporating your lived experiences into your presentations.
He also introduces us to his unique approach to public speaking - the Mike Drop Method.
Listen to our conversation to learn:
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Mike’s top strategies for making your presentations more entertaining
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What public speakers can learn from method acting
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How to explore and use your own lived experience in your presentations
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How to talk about data in an engaging and relatable way
This is a conversation for anyone who wants to bring more of themselves to their speaking.
Click here to check the full show notes.
Do you want to draw your audience in more as a speaker, or maybe you want to feel more creative and carefree around your ideas and inspirations?
Join me on Delight in the Limelight Live where I'll be having a conversation with Susie deVille, author of BUOYANT: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Becoming Wildly Successful, Creative, and Free.
What you’ll get in this episode, where Delight meets Buoyant:- Learn how to bring forth the uniquely individual self-expression that draws your market toward you.- How to distinguish what is truly you from everyone else so you can stop caring about what others think.- How to shift into an ultimate energetic state that turns speaking into a peak experience.- An introduction to a whole-brain creative journaling system you can utilize to unlock your brilliant ideas and inspirations.This is a conversation for entrepreneurs, business leaders and speakers who want to unleash their full potential to communicate with freedom and lead their businesses with creativity, confidence, and joy.
Click here to check the full show notes
- Buoyant Speaking — Unlock Your Magnetic Self-ExpressionDo you want to draw your audience in more as a speaker, or maybe you want to feel more creative and carefree around your ideas and inspirations?
Join me on Delight in the Limelight Live where I’ll be having a conversation with Susie deVille, author of BUOYANT: The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Becoming Wildly Successful, Creative, and Free.
What you’ll get in this episode, where Delight meets Buoyant:
- Learn how to bring forth the uniquely individual self-expression that draws your market toward you.
- How to distinguish what is truly you from everyone else so you can stop caring about what others think.
- How to shift into an ultimate energetic state that turns speaking into a peak experience.
- An introduction to a whole-brain creative journaling system you can utilize to unlock your brilliant ideas and inspirations.
This is a conversation for entrepreneurs, business leaders and speakers who want to unleash their full potential to communicate with freedom and lead their businesses with creativity, confidence, and joy.Listen to the Podcast HereWatch The Podcast HereConnect with SusieSusie is an award-winning author, and Founder of the Innovation & Creativity Institute, a coaching firm connecting entrepreneurs and business leaders to their innate capabilities, guiding them to lead from a place of creative confidence.
With her wildly-innovative methodology she is known for creating “rebels” out of entrepreneurs and leaders who gain lighter workloads and higher profits. Her book is called BUOYANT: The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Becoming Wildly Successful, Creative, and Free.
- Website
- Book Connect with Linda* Download your Free Speaker Empowerment Kit with 3 mental rehearsals to pre-pave your speaking confidence whether you’re speaking live, one camera, or introducing yourself in a networking/workshop circle.
- Download your Free Speaker Preparation Checklist for the practices, rituals, and warmups I use before speaking to ensure I’m clear-headed, grounded, and charged.
- Want to overcome your fear of speaking and become more naturally you so you can delight in the limelight? Private Coaching with Linda to overcome your fear of speaking and delight in the limelight.
- Get the Book: Delight in the Limelight: Overcome your fear of being seen and realize your dreams
Credits – Music: “A Smooth Jazz” by Music Cocktail
Did you have an insight or question that came up while listening to an episode? I’d love to hear it. Leave a voice recording here and we may feature it on the show.
The post 044. Buoyant Speaking — Unlock Your Magnetic Self-Expression appeared first on Linda Ugelow.
- Work Stress/Speaking Confidence ConnectionWhen life is hectic and you’re frazzled, it’s natural that you would bring that same energy to your speaking. Today on the Delight in the Limelight show, I’m joined by Nina Nesdoly a work stress and burnout prevention speaker and researcher. She draws on her interdisciplinary background in Organizational Behavior and Neuroscience to examine work-related stress from both management and physiological perspectives.
We’ll be speaking about how to:
- Set healthy boundaries and manage expectations to reduce pressure and anxiety around public speaking
- Identify high achievement patterns that worsen speaking anxiety
- Get over people pleasing and caring what others think
We also dissect the differences between type-A personalities, people pleasing, and perfectionism.
Listen to the Podcast HereWatch The Podcast HereConnect with NinaNina is a work stress and burnout prevention speaker and researcher. She advocates for work-life balance and believes it is possible to be a high-achiever at work without burning out or letting stress take over. Nina brings years of niche expertise and experience to her work. She draws on her interdisciplinary background in Organizational Behavior (MSc Management) and Neuroscience (BSc) to examine work-related stress from both management and physiological perspectives. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Management.
- Website
- Instagram Connect with Linda* Download your Free Speaker Empowerment Kit with 3 mental rehearsals to pre-pave your speaking confidence whether you’re speaking live, one camera, or introducing yourself in a networking/workshop circle.
- Download your Free Speaker Preparation Checklist for the practices, rituals, and warmups I use before speaking to ensure I’m clear-headed, grounded, and charged.
- Want to overcome your fear of speaking and become more naturally you so you can delight in the limelight? Private Coaching with Linda to overcome your fear of speaking and delight in the limelight.
- Get the Book: Delight in the Limelight: Overcome your fear of being seen and realize your dreams
Credits – Music: “A Smooth Jazz” by Music Cocktail
Did you have an insight or question that came up while listening to an episode? I’d love to hear it. Leave a voice recording here and we may feature it on the show.
The post 043. Work Stress/Speaking Confidence Connection appeared first on Linda Ugelow.
- Speak Up Culture: Making it Safe and Worth itAre you struggling to create a workplace culture where people feel comfortable speaking up?
Join me for this live show with Stephen Shedletsky, author of the upcoming book Speak-Up Culture. You’ll come away with the tools, mindset shifts, and strategies you need to transform your workplace with a feedback-rich culture of open communication.
Listen to the Podcast HereWatch The Podcast HereConnect with StephenStephen Shedletzky, or “Shed” to his friends, is a leader on psychological safety in the workplace. He helps leaders listen to and nurture the voices of others so they feel safe, encouraged, and rewarded to speak up. He is the author of Speak-Up Culture: When Leaders Truly Listen, People Step Up.
- Website
- YouTube
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- Book – Speak-Up Culture Connect with Linda* Download your Free Speaker Empowerment Kit with 3 mental rehearsals to pre-pave your speaking confidence whether you’re speaking live, one camera, or introducing yourself in a networking/workshop circle.
- Download your Free Speaker Preparation Checklist for the practices, rituals, and warmups I use before speaking to ensure I’m clear-headed, grounded, and charged.
- Want to overcome your fear of speaking and become more naturally you so you can delight in the limelight? Private Coaching with Linda to overcome your fear of speaking and delight in the limelight.
- Get the Book: Delight in the Limelight: Overcome your fear of being seen and realize your dreams
Credits – Music: “A Smooth Jazz” by Music Cocktail
Did you have an insight or question that came up while listening to an episode? I’d love to hear it. Leave a voice recording here and we may feature it on the show.
The post 042. Speak Up Culture: Making it Safe and Worth it appeared first on Linda Ugelow.
Conflict. Does it make you want to run and hide?
Imagine learning tools that make conflict less scary, easier to handle, and more productive!
In this episode, I sit down with the brilliant Liane Davey, a renowned organizational psychologist and best-selling author of “The Good Fight.” Liane’s mission is to foster better communication, connection, and contribution within teams and organizations, and she offers invaluable insights on navigating conflicts with confidence.
We discuss the the vital role tension plays in effective teamwork as you learn practical strategies and tools for effective communication that can help you transform conflicts into opportunities for growth and collaboration.
What we cover:
- The important role of values
- Difference between healthy and unhealthy conflict
- Difference between feedback and judgment in communication:
- Emotions as a symptom of an underlying issue, not the issue itself
- Importance of diverse perspectives and stakeholders in effective teamwork For the past 25 years, Liane has researched and advised teams on how to achieve high performance. Known as the “teamwork doctor,” she’s worked with teams from the frontlines to the boardroom, across a variety of industries, and around the globe from Boston to Bangkok. In working with hundreds of teams, including 26 Global Fortune 500 companies (and counting), she has developed a unique perspective on the challenges that teams face – and how to solve them.
Beyond her work in the boardroom, Liane is a New York Times Bestselling author of You First: Inspire Your Team to Grow Up, Get Along, and Get Stuff Done and The Good Fight: Use Productive Conflict to Get Your Team and Organization Back on Track. She is also a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review and has been sought by several media outlets for her expertise on increasing productivity, enhancing engagement, developing leaders, and as one client put it, “dealing with the damn drama!”
CONNECT WITH LIANE DAVEYWebsite
Her Book – The Good Fight
Resources Download your Free Speaker Empowerment Kit with 3 mental rehearsals to pre-pave your speaking confidence whether you’re speaking live, one camera, or introducing yourself in a networking/workshop circle. * The Book: Delight in the Limelight: Overcome your fear of being seen and realize your dreams* * Private Coaching with Linda to overcome your fear of speaking and delight in the limelight.
Credits – Music: “A Smooth Jazz” by Music Cocktail
Episode TranscriptLinda: So here we’re talking today about conflict and how to change it also from something you dread or try to avoid into something that, well, maybe not loving know instead, but at least making it something that is more productive. And here to help us reframe the whole idea of conflict and how it can work for you is Lianne Davey. With her PhD in organizational psychology, she uses her deep insight to help teams and organizations get the most from their collaborations and efforts. Her mission is to radically transform the way we communicate, connect, and contribute. I love alliteration communicate, connect, and contribute so we can achieve amazing things together. And isn’t that what we’re after all? So Leanne is also a bestselling author, and her latest book, The Good Fight is fantastic. Use productive conflict to get your team and organization back on track. Welcome, Lianne.
Liane Davey: Thanks, Linda. I’m so excited to be here.
Linda: I’m excited so I can’t express to you because the whole idea of conflict and dealing with conflict and being conflict, avoidant myself and being a peacemaker has nagged me for most of my life. And I think probably a lot of people have that experience. And I’ve been waiting for someone like you to come in and show me how to handle it with more grace and equanimity. So I appreciate all that you put into your fantastic book. I think anyone who comes on here, if you haven’t gotten it yet, you got to go out and get this book because it’s going to change the way you look at conflict. So I want to start with chapter eight actually, because in chapter eight, you give us I love chapter eight.
Liane Davey: You picked my favorite chapter really.
Linda: Well. What I love about it is the metaphors that you describe about how we tend to look at conflict and how we can look at it in a different way. And it’s very visual. So I want you to talk about the crew boat and the okay.
Liane Davey: Okay. So one of the things that makes if you want to set Leanne off and really get me angry, it’s with all of the language and imagery and metaphor for teamwork, which seems to be about rowing. So many people have seen those successories posters with the crew rowing on the calm water and the synchronized ripples. I’m like, I don’t know what team you’re on. I was never on a team that was like that. And the language of that is, we’re all in the same boat, don’t rock the boat. We should all be pulling in the same direction.
Everything that rowing as a metaphor gives us is, don’t fight against the way the team is going. And what a harmful thing to say. We are not on teams because we’re all pulling in the same direction. We are on teams to actually bring our unique perspective, to represent different stakeholders.
So I went searching for what’s a better metaphor. And what I came up with is not a better metaphor. It’s a silly metaphor, but somehow it’s sticky. And it comes from a time many years ago when my husband and I took our girls camping and we’re having a lovely time, and then in comes this big rainstorm, and I’m looking at this little rainfly on our cheap tent and thinking, this isn’t going to go well. So we went into the nearest town and bought a big plastic tarp. We went looking for a big plastic tarp and all we found was one sad little tarp left that had been returned, folded into its package, and it was barely the size of the tent. We bought it, we brought it back to the campsite, tied ropes in each of the four corners and got to work trying to do two things. Take the scarce resource, this small tarp, try and cover as much of the tent as we could. And then secondly, it was already raining by this point. The rain was coming down at a bit of an angle, so we were trying to kind of get the optimal spot to keep us dry. And as this was happening, my husband started pulling a little too hard on his, trying to really trying to make sure it was tight. But of course, our five year old at the time was opposite to him. And he pulled so hard, he pulled the whole tarp off the tent and left her face down in the mud puddle. And while we finally got her cleaned up and back pulling again, the nine year old at this point rolls her eyes and lets go and the corner of the tarp comes flying up, the tent is getting soaked. And this all of a sudden was, okay, this is the metaphor.
So when we are in a team, we have scarce resources, always not enough money, not enough time. We always have a tarp that’s too small, but we’re not pulling in the same direction to really optimize those resources. We’re doing our own jobs, playing our own parts, and trying to balance off so that we optimize the decision and keep all those stakeholders, whether they be shareholders or customers, who are in the tent dry. And so this silly, silly story has become the basis of an exercise. I didn’t tell the story in the article, but I published the exercise in Harvard Business Review and it’s become very useful.
So what we do is we just say, all right, what rope are you pulling? And that’s really a way of saying what’s the unique value you bring to your team? So if you’re the salesperson, you’re thinking about customers and the market and all those sorts of things. If you’re the operations person, you’re thinking about process and efficiency and that sort of thing. So what’s the unique role? Who that’s not in the room are you fighting for? What you’ll find when you do this exercise is that you’re probably fighting for somebody different who’s not in the room than the person across the table from you.
And so the last question is just therefore, what do you need to fight for? What is the tension you need to put on the conversation? So this getting away from we all need to pull in the same direction and getting into a no, what we need to do is understand our obligation to conflict, know what we’re fighting for and take these scarce resources and with different perspectives and empathy and understanding and really good deliberation to kind of get to the optimal decision to keep everybody sleeping in the tent dry. So that’s been a fun exercise and story to play with.
Linda: Yeah. Yes. And it’s very helpful because it creates a different picture of what we are doing as a team. As you say, we have different functions, we have different perspectives, we have different needs. In fact, with today’s attention on diversity and diversity of all kinds of perspective, as well as the people who are in the company, when you have different perspectives, you have different perspectives. So we’re kind of like we’re asking for it, but we don’t have the tools to handle it.
Liane Davey: We don’t have the conversation scaffolding, we don’t have the structure to know. And so one of the things we love about this exercise is then people actually go seeking out, oh, we haven’t heard, nobody’s pulled this rope yet. And instead of being frustrated and annoyed and experiencing that as friction, once you understand that that’s tension that you need to deliberate effectively, you go seeking it out, it completely turns conflict on its head. We haven’t had enough yet, we haven’t heard from this perspective yet. So it is quite magical when we do this exercise.
Linda: So I just want to point out, what you just said is we haven’t had enough yet. Like, you are known for saying we need more conflict and you’re not saying we need to argue more, you’re saying something else. You are saying, yeah.
Liane Davey: So people ask me all the time, what’s the difference between healthy and unhealthy conflict? So trying to keep my metaphors per minute rate nice and high, I’m going to say healthy conflict for me is tension. That tarp metaphor. And so I talk about it, it’s still uncomfortable.
So at no point am I saying that conflict, even if it’s healthy conflict, is comfortable. It’s not. And that’s why I use the word conflict. A lot of people are like, could we just call it a discussion? I’m like, well, that doesn’t give the appropriate mindset. This is going to be uncomfortable, but it’s worth it.
So the metaphor I use for healthy tension is like yoga. So yoga, it’s a stretch and it is uncomfortable, but you know, it’s uncomfortable in the service of better agility, becoming stronger, all of those things. So that’s healthy conflict, tension should feel like doing yoga, not comfy, but feels great afterward.
On the other side, unhealthy conflict feels like friction. It feels like nobody’s listening. We’re not getting anywhere. We’re getting slower instead of faster. And I equate that to having a Blister. And there is nothing good about a Blister. It’s excruciating, it slows you down. It doesn’t feel better after. It’s still there, rubbing away. So that’s how I think about it.
So what I’m advocating for is way more tension. Way more tension. Our teams have absolutely insufficient tension. We don’t like it, we avoid it. And then as little friction as possible. We have lots of friction right now and little tension. We want to change that balance. Lots of tension, little friction.
Linda: What’s interesting, I’m a dancer in my background and dance therapy, and I use movement as a way to develop leadership, even. And the idea of the tension, there’s connection there. You’re feeling it in order to it’s like you said, if you let go, then the other person goes flying. Exactly. It’s about feeling into that and not shying away from it. But it’s a kind of engagement, and.
Liane Davey: Using it right like that creates interest in the partnership in dance. Right. My daughter’s a contemporary dancer and watching how they partner and use that tension, that’s how they stay up.
Linda: Exactly. That’s right. So it’s kind of like you talk a lot about changing the mindsets, and that’s what we’re talking about now. It’s like, how do you get into that mindset? But I think in order to think about switching your mindset, you have to figure out, well, what mindset do I have right now? And what I love in your chapter three is how you talk about the messages that we’ve absorbed, and you talk about three particular messages that influence how we view conflict, and that may be at work in our subconscious mind. And I think it’s so important that you bring it up early on in the book, because I do the same in my book, Delight in the Limelight. I like to get to the root cause, because unless you know what the root cause is, you will act it out. You have to bring it up to the light and look at it in.
Liane Davey: Order to ground again, right?
Linda: Yeah. So talk about the three different messages that you find hinder us from productive.
Liane Davey: So since I wrote the book, I’ve actually learned a couple new things, which I’d love to add because I think they’re really fun. So when people talk about why am I conflict avoidant, I learned a new piece of information from Margaret Mead, the anthropologist, reading her work. And they asked about where was this first evidence that humans cooperated and collaborated as a way of us evolving and surviving?
She said, well, it comes from a 15,000 year old femur bone where they have evidence that the femur fully broke and fully healed. She said, So that means 15,000 years ago there was somebody at least six weeks where that person was protected by other people, where other people got them food and all those sorts of things. So if you’re conflict, avoidant, like I am, I always say, cut yourself some slack if 15,000 years of evolution has made you conflict, avoidant. Because that was our advantage in the animal kingdom, was that we were harmonious and got along and cooperated. So that was interesting.
The stuff I talk about in the book is from the time we’re born in our socialization and the messages we get around conflict. If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. That’s a big one. You should just smile. And I’m canadian. So this passive aggressiveness is our national this is our national pastime. I used to say my grandma would say, if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. But of course, in Canada, if you can’t say anything nice, wait till we’re in the like it’s a passive aggressiveness.
I think the other big one is we get a lot of mind your own business, don’t get involved. We get fearing power like be good and stay out of trouble. All of those sorts of things. So we have a lot of baggage that makes us conflict of Earth. So if it’s not bad enough that we’ve got 15,000 years of evolution doing this, we also in our life and then come into organizations and people have brass plaques of values on the wall. And it says teamwork. And somehow teamwork is those rowers. And so people, you get 360 feedback.
So there’s so much coming at us that makes us conflict avoidant. It’s a big issue, and it’s a lifetime of work for me. I am naturally very conflict avoidant. I’m not good at it. So it is a practice, like yoga for me, trying to be better at it.
Linda: From reading your book, it doesn’t feel like you avoid it. It feels like you bring a sense of curiosity.
Liane Davey: Well, that’s what I’m working on. So I always say that just count on me to make all the mistakes in life that I can then write about and try and help other people.
So everything in the book is a mistake I made. So my favorite part of the book was deciding to write the Try This At Home bonus chapter, which, when I drafted it, it started with a scene of my husband and me in the psychologist’s office having marital therapy.
And I wrote the draft and I showed it to him like, how do you feel about me publishing? And he was like, yes, go for it. I was like, thank you. So it really is from me, having made the mistakes, I think for the most part, I’m kind to myself about the mistakes. And that allows you to then be curious about how do I do better? And that sort of thing. But every single person listening who’s thinking, OOH, I’m with you. I still think OOH as well.
Linda: Yeah. I know that for many years I had difficulty even having simple conversations with people who didn’t share my views.
Liane Davey: I find that’s getting hard again.
Linda: Yeah. It is getting hard again.
Liane Davey: Yeah.
Linda: So I just want to point out that about these messages, one way that I have found helpful to handle what these messages were is that we’re in a process through our culture, we’re evolving. Things that were of the norm 50 years ago are no longer. We’ve got new norms. And there has been an evolution, I think, of consciousness and awareness and mindfulness. And I feel that with all those messages, like, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. I sort of feel that must have been in a movie or something and everybody picked up on it.
Liane Davey: It was in the Zeitgeist, wasn’t it?
Linda: Right. And so it’s not like it’s a bad thing, but it’s just limited and it’s misguided in its impact because people were I do value kindness. I know you do, too.
Liane Davey: Yeah. So if you have to say something not nice, say it kindly.
Linda: Exactly. So I love your distinction in the book about that. It is kind to speak up.
Liane Davey: Absolutely. My friend Stephen Shedletsky has a book coming out called Speak Up and he’s talking about, in organizations, The Risk. The first chapter is really exciting because it gets into the Boeing 787 Max story of what happens when that if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all, becomes an organizational crisis that leads to loss of life and that sort of thing. We know.
That’s how I first got into industrial organizational psychology. I was a second year undergraduate student and I lucked into a class on Ioppsychology and we were studying this space shuttle Challenger disaster. And how did people in NASA know that those orings were not safe and that space shuttle still take off on the launch pad? That so you know when you get to Speak Up and Stephen’s book really pulls this out. If we aren’t good at conflict, the stakes can be extremely high. Extremely high.
Linda: Yes. And by the way, I am going to have Stepehn on or Shed.
Liane Davey: I’ve known Shed since he was 21, since before he was Shed. So he’s still Stephen to me. But, yeah, he’s going to be on the show. That’s amazing.
Linda: Yes. I don’t have my calendar in front of me, but soon keep your eyes open for that.
And I want to circle back to these three mindsets. One is, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. The second one is don’t butt into other people’s business. And what I appreciate about this is that I think a lot of people do see conflict. We see bullying, let’s say in school, or we see kids, other kids, doing things we’re not comfortable with. We don’t say anything because we don’t have the words to say it.
Liane Davey: The bullying is a great example. So in my private time, I’m on the board of a children’s mental health charity. So we’ve been following the bullying research, and it turns out that, of course, bullying is not really about the bully or the bullied. It’s about the bystander. And without the bystander to become aroused and give feedback to the bully, bullying doesn’t happen. And so Deb Pepler does this amazing research where they actually had cameras on school playgrounds so they could monitor these things. And it turns out if somebody says something as simple as don’t do that bullying, I think it was like 76% of bullying episodes are done within 15 seconds. If somebody is willing to just say, don’t do that. You don’t even have to have fancy words. You just have like, no, stop. But we just are so socialized to stay out of it, to try and stay safe, so there’s such an opportunity to do a better job. So with that issue of mind your own business, I just say, what does it say on your business card and what does it say on theirs? Looks to me like it is your business. Get involved.
Linda: That’s right. You’re in the same business. I like that. I love that. Yeah, we work for the same company. It is my business. Absolutely. Yeah. And the third piece that you talk about in that chapter is the New Mindset chapter three. What chapter is that? I can’t remember. Whatever. Yeah, it’s around there. It could be. The following one is about how we handle emotions or how we think about emotions. Say more about that.
Liane Davey: So I think one of the other things that really holds us back from having productive conflict is we fear. And I used to talk about it always as we fear making somebody else emotional.
I think increasingly now, as we’re just so stressed out and burned out, we’re also worried about saying something, making ourselves emotional. So I was doing a session on feedback for a big accountancy yesterday, and somebody said, okay, but what if people get emotional? And I said, I have lots of tips and tactics and strategies, but can we just stop for a moment and say that the people who I can guarantee you will not get emotional at work are the people who don’t care? So can we just start by saying, if somebody gets emotional at work, can we change our mindset?
Okay, they obviously care about this enough that it’s upsetting them. You know what? This day and age good because Gallup keeps telling us how people are less and less engaged. If you’re disengaged, you’re not getting emotional about getting feedback. So I think we need to first just say emotions are how our body works. We know that we learn more when things are emotionally salient. Our memory kicks in more effectively when things are emotional. So we’re built to use emotions as a tool.
So let’s stop talking about somebody getting emotional as unprofessional or whatever we think. So if we can start there and then we can say the other thing that I think folks get wrong is that they think the emotion is the issue and the emotion is never the issue. So I say think about emotion kind of like pain. So it’s a symptom of an injury, but it’s not the injury. And I think for a lot of folks, especially in leadership management people, they think the emotion is the injury.
And so if we can say, okay, no, it’s just the pain. So what that they care about? What that they value is being injured in this? Is it their sense of confidence? Is it their sense of contribution or belonging or any of these other things? So really, if we’re afraid of emotion, we’re not going to get to the root of issues.
So one of the quotes that I love most from the book is facts don’t solve fights. And oh my goodness, through COVID. It was so painful watching Facebook be this place where people were like, you need to wear a mask. And this study says, wear a mask. Well, my aunt was wearing a mask in a room and she stood like, okay, let’s stop throwing studies and facts at one another because what’s happening is actually there’s an injury being done to something we value, whether that’s freedom or liberty or collective interest or whatever.
So I think if we fear emotions, we’re never going to be good at productive conflict because facts don’t solve fights. We got to get through the emotions down to what’s the actual injury and that’s where we’re going to have breakthroughs. So, yeah, it’s such an important topic.
And another interesting thing I’m finding now is for a long time I was trying to help people deal with if they saw emotion in the form of tears and how not to freak out and phone 911 if someone was crying. But interestingly, I think we’ve moved the needle on that a fair bit.
But now what’s interesting is we’re very uncomfortable if someone yells. And I said, well, why is it if we’re trying to get to a more humane workplace where emotions are part of the mix, why is it okay for one version of a hormonal override emotion to be tolerable and another one not to be? And this is Testy Waters. I’ve done this with a few keynote audiences and they’re like but I do think it’s an important question so that we’ve got a lot of work to do.
Linda: Yeah, it is an important question and worthy of investigation and not shying away from. And what I think that I got from the book and I’d like to get into some of the actual things that people can do is you’re there as a facilitator. I love when you would say, like, someone would get upset and you’d say, okay, now this is good.
Liane Davey: This is the good stuff.
Linda: This is the good stuff. Now we’re onto something. This is important. Tell us why this is important and how you use these different layers of whether it’s facts or emotions to get down to the values and to put them out what you call as truths.
Everyone agrees that of course we want our customers to feel taken care of. Everyone agrees we want people to be able to speak up or work more productively or no, these things are not the issue. And that when we get to that place of understanding and just that we have different ways of going about it according to our perspective or values or stakeholders or function. We tend to put all of our attention in certain areas and forget about others.
And that’s why it’s important that they’re there to put that tension and attention onto that rope that we spoke about earlier in the service or the idea of we can all become the facilitator. That’s why I feel like you’re saying to us is you can learn these tools. I’m doing it here because that’s my job. But you can do this too. So what are some of the kinds of questions that we can ask when there’s, like, stalemate or.
Liane Davey: Let’s tie the two together. Let’s tie the emotions coming up and good questions. So I have three questions I really love. If somebody’s getting really emotional and you’re like, how do I help them kind of move through? So one of the things we see is people get angry or frustrated or upset and they’ll talk about all that’s not working. If we did that, this would go wrong. And this would go wrong. Is it right?
And my favorite little tiny question, just what do you need? Because people will often tell us all that they hate and despise and those sorts of things, but not give us any clues about how we could make things better for them.
So that super short little question just what do you need? And then the person often will sort of stop in their tracks when I use that question, people are like, oh, that’s an excellent question. What do I need? And then they start to take some ownership for, oh, okay, I have to own my own emotions, and I need to do something. So I love that one.
If the person is stuck in the past with an old grudge or resentment or whatever else, my favorite question then is, Where from here? And I use that question all the time. Well, and then she said this. And then in 1992, we tried, okay, where from here? And where from here is great because I’m not going to fight with them about whether what they’re saying in their grievance is true. I’m just going to say, okay, even if it is true, where are we going next? How do we get forward momentum? That’s a good one. And if you get somebody who’s in the butt, I love, okay, what do we still need to solve for?
And so these short little questions, and everybody listening can use these questions, sprinkle them into and it really can be that easy. Just little ways of making people feel heard, making them feel acknowledged, but just that little hand on the back to just be like, okay, let’s keep yeah.
Linda: So we have a question here from Kim. Isn’t it kind to provide compassionate, honest, candid feedback?
Liane Davey: Kim and I were talking on another post. Yes. Yes, it is. But here’s the work that I’ve been doing lately, and this was the session I was doing with the accountancy yesterday. What most people think is feedback is only judgment.
So we throw judgment at one another all the time. Your presentation was too rushed. Your work is sloppy, or even just, oh, my God, you’re so great. All of that is judgment. None of it is feedback. So I think feedback and so I’m going to define feedback as feedback is giving somebody novel information about the impact of their behavior on you. That’s feedback. So there is nothing new or scary about the other person’s behavior in feedback. All of the novel information and feedback should be about you and your response.
So the candor that Kim is talking about is, I’m going to be vulnerable by telling you what story your behavior got me telling. Here’s a great example. You’re on a zoom call, and just as you start presenting, your colleague turns off their camera. So what a lot of people would do is you were pretty disengaged this morning. That’s judgment.
But if I said, when I started my presentation, you turned off your camera, no new information for them there. I started telling myself a story that my presentation was boring. It kind of threw me off my game. I lost my mojo. That’s the difference.
So if we can learn to stop judging people, don’t share your judgment of them, but instead translate from judgment into, here was your objective behavior, and here was how it impacted me that. Candor is so generous. It’s so useful. It’s kind, it’s amazing. But the big problem is that most people think that what they’re giving is feedback, when really what they’re giving is judgment.
Linda: Yeah. Or at least opinion.
Liane Davey: Yeah. Same.
Linda: I love what you brought up about how we interpret things. Someone will do something, and we have an interpretation of it. It’s all we’re always doing that. That’s what we do. And I think it’s important for us to become aware that we are doing that so that we can be open to that. There can be different interpretations for the same.
Liane Davey: Yeah. So you alluded earlier to the Two truths in chapter six, right? The Two Truths strategy is to not fight like we’re on the last chair of musical chairs and there’s only one thing that can be right, but instead to get to helping the other person articulate their truth.
For me, this is really about making sure our customers understand the new product. They’re excited about it. Okay, great. So I might go right to the whiteboard and write, okay.
Our customers need to understand and be excited about the launch. I can then add to that with my truth. My truth is I’m not even thinking about the customers yet. I don’t think our sales force is yet excited or knowledgeable or ready to make a compelling case.
So I know you’re thinking about a customer event. I’m still back on thinking about how do we make sure our sales team is there? Both of those things can be true at the same time. Then all we’re doing is algebra. We got your equation and my equation, and we got to solve for the unknown. All right. What’s a plan that would allow us to take both of these truths into account. So that two truth strategy in the Conflict Strategies for Nice People chapter is a really important one.
Linda: It really is. And I feel like what you’re talking about is what is true communication.
Liane Davey: Oh, I love great prompt, Linda. So communication comes from the Latin commune to make common. And so here’s the big problem. We think that we can communicate at people. So you send an email and you’re like, okay, I’ve communicated that check. No, you haven’t. You have disseminated it. You have transmitted it. You have no idea if it was received or what was received. So you can only communicate with someone. You cannot communicate to them or at them or any of these things that suggest unidirectionality.
So conflict is about and feedback. I talk about this. Feedback is about two truths. So when you say in this morning’s meeting, when you turned off your camera, I started feeling like my presentation wasn’t interesting. That’s only the first three steps.
The final step is to say what was going on? What made you turn off your camera? Because I’ve given you my truth. But I still need to hear your truth. We’ve only communicated when we’ve kind of made comments. So great feedback is about getting both truths into the equation. So, yeah, you can’t communicate at people.
One of the fun things I got at the book launch was these great coasters for meeting rooms so that when you’re in your meeting room and you pick up your coffee, you see the message, and one of them is you can’t communicate at people. I think we often try to communicate at people, not with them.
Linda: Yeah. Well, I think that everyone should who avoids conflict or is uncomfortable around it needs to get the book and read all the suggestions that you have for different ways to engage in communication in different situations. And I know I’m going to be going back and studying up because, of course, as you know, it’s relevant to companies and the meeting room, but it’s also relevant to us in all of our lives because that’s why I wrote that.
Liane Davey: Try this at home chapter.
Linda: Yeah. I mean, it’s everywhere. And the better communication speaking. I always say speaking is our human design. If we don’t feel comfortable speaking somewhere, let’s find out why and let’s make a change.
Liane Davey: Yeah.
Linda: So thank you so much for helping us look at conflict in this new way. I think that this is a great and growing edge for us as society. It’s always been timely. It’s really timely now.
Liane Davey: It is. We need a lot more conflict where we’re communicating with each other in our society right now. We’ve gone to our echo chambers, and it’s just a great example of where when we don’t have conflict as a verb, something that we get through to the other side of. I think we’re suffering from that. Right.
Linda: So again, Leanne’s book is called The Good Fight. And you can tell us where people can find you.
Liane Davey: Yeah, the best place to find me is just Lianedavey.com or on, I always say LinkedIn. I’m trying to make my LinkedIn comments the coolest couch on the Internet. If you want to talk about the most important workplace issues. So come hang out on my LinkedIn couch. Connect with me on LinkedIn. But Leanedavy.com has, I think, now, 600 articles, free resources, tools you can download. So if you’re trying to apply this, Leanedavey.com is where you’re going to find all the good stuff.
Linda: That’s great. Thank you so much for coming on. I think I’m going to have you back. There’s so much more to talk about.
Did you have an insight, memory, or question that came up while listening to an episode? I’d love to hear it. Leave a voice recording here and we may feature it on the show.
Linda UgelowAuthor, speaker, podcast host, and speaking confidence coach.
Helping business owners, authors, and corporate leaders to go from dread to delight in the limelight!
Latest Episodes:
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Lean into Conflict with ConfidenceMost of us avoid conflict because it’s so uncomfortable. What if conflict could be made more comfortable? And what if conflict, handled well, led to better relationships and better teams?
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Boost Your Sales Confidence by Putting the Buyer FirstIn this episode, sales coach Carole Mahoney shares strategies to boost sales confidence by putting the buyer first, emphasizing the importance of mindset, buyer-focused communication, active listening, and self-awareness.
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Unconventional Negotiation to Get What You WantMany people mistakenly believe that being demanding and aggressive leads to successful negotiations. Listen in to learn an uncommon approach that leans on likability, rapport, and relationship building.
The post 030. Lean into Conflict with Confidence appeared first on Linda Ugelow.
In this episode, sales coach Carole Mahoney shares strategies to boost sales confidence by putting the buyer first, emphasizing the importance of mindset, buyer-focused communication, active listening, and self-awareness.
The post 029. Boost Your Sales Confidence by Putting the Buyer First appeared first on Linda Ugelow.
Many people mistakenly believe that being demanding and aggressive leads to successful negotiations. Listen in to learn an uncommon approach that leans on likability, rapport, and relationship building.
The post 028. Unconventional Negotiation to Get What You Want appeared first on Linda Ugelow.
In this episode we’ll take a look at 3 ways to navigate the challenges of comparison, jealousy, and self-discovery.
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Learn how to set the “stage” for a peak experience any time you speak by readying yourself physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.
The post 025. Peak Experience When You Speak appeared first on Linda Ugelow.
When you feel anxious to speak, it’s hard to access what is naturally you. Once you’ve overcome the fear, it’s time to let your natural self-expression shine through.
The post 024. How to Be Naturally, Expressively You When You Speak appeared first on Linda Ugelow.
When you feel anxious to speak, it’s hard to access what is naturally you. Once you’ve overcome the fear, it’s time to let your natural self-expression shine through.
The post 024. How to Be Naturally, Expressively You When You Speak appeared first on Linda Ugelow.
In today's episode, we're going to uncover your vocal potential. Get ready to explore the joy of expressing yourself with clarity of articulation and resonance.
The post 022. Making Memorization Fun appeared first on Linda Ugelow.
In today's episode, we're going to uncover your vocal potential. Get ready to explore the joy of expressing yourself with clarity of articulation and resonance.
The post 022. Making Memorization Fun appeared first on Linda Ugelow.
In today's episode, we're going to uncover your vocal potential. Get ready to explore the joy of expressing yourself with clarity of articulation and resonance.
The post 021. Love the Sound of Your Speaking Voice appeared first on Linda Ugelow.
Discover the power of cultivating a positive relationship with your breath, as this podcast episode guides you to breathe easy, release tension, and find inner freedom when speaking in public.
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In today’s episode, we explore the elements of a confident speaking presence that allows you to feel grounded, centered, focused, and at ease.
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In this episode, we explore the power of positive regard and its profound impact on our self-belief and speaking confidence. Join me as we delve into the art of receiving compliments and overcoming the common tendencies to deflect or downplay them.
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In this episode, you will learn how to handle mistakes when speaking and not let them disrupt your composure, so you feel like making mistakes is not a big deal.
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In this episode, you'll learn a different approach to feeling comfortable on camera than just jumping in and speaking, with tips on how to practice feeling relaxed, grounded, and connected with your audience.
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Learn how to transform your inner critical voice so that you feel safe inside yourself when you speak.
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In this episode, explore how to use forgiveness, dance/movement, creating your own rituals, and other powerful practices to heal the trauma behind the fear of speaking and move towards your confidence and free self-expression.
The post 013. Healing Modalities for Clearing Trauma Part 2 appeared first on Linda Ugelow.
Learn how to transform trauma into personal growth and overcome speaking anxiety with creative, artful, or expressive healing tools in this episode.
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In this episode I dive into the healing journey necessary for moving past speaking anxiety.
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Unlock your speaking potential with The Inner Freedom Framework, a proven framework for building your speaking confidence from the inside out.
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Explore the impact of limiting beliefs on speaking confidence and learn how to recognize them with today's episode.
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There’s a lot of well-intentioned advice out there about the fear of speaking: “Feel the fear and do it anyway. Just do it, Ignore the fear, don’t let it hold you back.” In this episode I’ll explain why this is misleading and can even prolong your fear.
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In today's episode, I share my own personal experiences of awful and scary public speaking and what led me to discover the key to overcome the fear 25 years later.
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Do you dread speaking in public? Would you love to LOVE the limelight? Join me each week, beginning February 14 2023, for processes and expert tips to overcome the anxiety and free up your self-expression.
The post Delight in the Limelight Trailer appeared first on Linda Ugelow.
Do you dread speaking in public? Would you love to LOVE the limelight? Join me each week for processes and expert tips to overcome the anxiety and free up your self-expression. My goal is to excite, motivate, and inspire you along your journey to make speaking something you look forward to.
I’ll also be chatting with guest experts who will share their knowledge and fresh perspectives on all things speaking and visibility to help you become the speaker you dream of, whether at your company, on social media, or on stage. I want you to love speaking in public! And I’m all about the fun, because life is too short for anything else.