Maya Angelou said, “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” I think about that a lot. How much of communication is about consideration for people’s feelings? Making people feel bad will not get you what you want, even if it’s unintentional. But neither will being too nice.

I’m Samantha Hartley of Profitable Joyful Consulting. This is part three of my six-part series, The Feminine Advantage. In the first episode, we talked about the value of bringing more feminine energy into our worklife. In the second, we talked about healthy masculine qualities emobodied by the archetypal father to create a safe container for our feminine.

Today we’re diving into effective communication for women, particularly to balance the femine and masculine energies in situations where we want a ceratin outcome, where careful communication is critical, and when things are emotionally charged. You’ll hear from two of my clients and a colleague and walk away with actionable advice you can put into practice today. I’ll help you get started doing so with a coaching question, a journal prompt, and an affirmation, so stick around til the end for those.

Remember when generational differences in the workplace was first talking off as a thing? Back then, I was called in to support a group of young leaders during an offsite retreat. Over a couple of days, they brainstormed a manifesto of ideas—complaints, grievances, and changes they wanted to present to the leadership, mostly Boomers, on how to improve the organization. As they walked me through their process, I found myself agreeing with these millennials. Like many old organizations, there’s was crusty, bureaucratic, hierarchical, and resistant to change. They were ready to present their list of 32 demands to senior leaders, eager to shake things up.

Two things struck me immediately: they were right about almost everything, but if they presented that list, it would be a disaster. So I asked them, “Do you want to be effective or just right? Do you want to make a statement, or do you want real change?”

They were willing to adjust their approach for better results. I advised them to reduce their list to three key items and to present the closest thing to the truth that could still be heard by their audience. Often, we want to be brutally honest or call something out, but it’s crucial to remember that people can’t always hear what we’re saying. It might feel like compromise, but to be effective, we have to consider what our listener is ready and able to take in.

So, here's my first question for you: What's the closest thing to your truth that you can say and still be heard? It's tough to answer. It requires stepping into our listener’s shoes, letting go of our ego, and focusing on the greater good. But in my experience, it’s the most effective way to navigate contentious situations.

I'd love to say that all their demands were met, but those young leaders were eventually subsumed into the organization. Some left, but many are now senior leaders themselves. I hope they’re implementing at least some of those disruptive ideas today.

What are the lessons for women in that experience? Well, the feminine approach to slow down the timing to allow others to come with us, to empathize with the audience, and be willing to find a shared path (or in other words a compromise). Women often have an easier time with these thing, and in this series, I’m inviting you to visit these qualities in yourself and to consider how they make you more effective. My client Leslie says why:

Leslie

I think that's like my feminine energy in the side of me that's like quite maternal and caretaking. And I think that can be a superpower in business because it's really disarming for people. It's really unexpected. I personally work with a lot of women. That's normally the people that are my clients that I'm negotiating with. So I've used, what I would consider feminine attributes such as empathy, vulnerability, creativity in those conversations. And I find that a lot of times it's very fruitful and there's sort of like a leveling of the playing field.

Allowing those aspects in can help us in many situations to be more effective. You'll hear me talk about effectiveness a lot. We can do many things with communication, but if it's not effective, then it doesn't really serve us in business. I talked with my colleague Jennifer Frye, CEO of Appreciated Asset Business Solutions on a key quality she brings to her communications!

Jennnifer

I have always been direct by nature. I really don't have a huge filter between here, my head and my mouth. And sometimes that works beautifully for me and sometimes that is not such a great asset. I think the thing that I'm learning about with getting into the feminine energy is learning how to be curious, because when you can be direct and kind and have great communication. I had someone tell me recently that, you know, being kind without being direct is being manipulative, and that really shifted things for me with, with the way I saw things. But having curiosity rather than writing a story in your head about what someone's thinking, what they're doing, and just making those assumptions… Asking a lot of questions and not yes or no questions, but you know, help me understand, fill in the blank. I'm curious, what does it look like when… fill in the blank? Those are the kind of prompts that I think are really, really helpful in getting the information so that you can then learn how to reply directly and with kindness, but without making assumptions.

THE POWER OF CURIOSITY

The power of curiosity. These are excellent questions you can incorporate into your conversations immediately. I love the specifics of them. Jennifer explained how she used the questions recently to discern whether a potential client was a fit for her or not.

Jennifer

I had had some red flags. I wanted more clarity without writing stories, and I was very direct and kind. I just want to get a little clarity around this. Can you help me understand where you are with X, Y, Z? They explained, I was like, oh, that is still not the answer that I needed to hear to move forward. I have all the information now and I don't have to worry that I made the wrong decision. And they also have an action plan. So in order to remove those red flags, there's certain things that they need to get through in their business. And once they do, we absolutely can have that conversation again.

Curiosity, directness and kindness: I love how Jennifer is using these to communicate more effectively.

My client Kara Levy works with C-suite executives and Founders on Communication. We heard from her in episode 2 of this series on how she helped her clients with confidence and boundaries. She talks here about an important goal the leaders who work with her have, which I think is shared by the women I work with and perhaps by you:

INFLUENCE WITHOUT POWER

Kara

One of the most common things that I hear from people is an inability to influence, and particularly an inability to influence without power. So what does that mean? It doesn't just mean winning your arguments. It means sustaining and building relationships that matter to you while helping both you and your counterpart to get more of what you want, more of the outcomes that you want.

We often think of influence as getting people to change their mind, and that feels really difficult and really unauthentic, I think to a lot of the people that I work with. We don't want to go in and start changing people. We just want to help all of us to get to a better outcome.

So there's a couple of different things that we talk about within influence that I think can be a game changer for people's mental model around what it means. It's really hard to completely change someone's mind and get them to come around to your point of view. It's easier to try to get them to investigate their own point of view to see if there might be more nuance in what they believed than there previously was, so that they might be more open to exploration about what other options exist.

So rather than saying, “this is what I think, and this is why I think so,” and there is a place for that kind of argumentation and communication. Instead we want to be asking questions like, tell me about your process. How would we do X, Y, Z? To see if they can encounter like, Hmm, maybe I didn't think through this all the way.

Or maybe there's a place that feels a little bit squishy to me. We might also ask them hypothetical questions about what it might look like if X, Y, Z were true, or if X, Y, Z weren't true. And we might also ask them conditions, setting questions, things like what would it take or What would you need in order to arrive at this place? Or what's getting in the way of arriving at this place?

Coming from a curious mindset rather than an attacking mindset is important here. But these types of question chains are things that my clients and I practice over and over and over to build muscle memory around making it second nature to show up in those meetings. And I think the key to understanding influence is that it really is about empathy. It's not about coming in as the hammer and saying “This is the best way to do it.” It's about saying, “I want to really understand you and what's most important to you, so we can co-create a solution that's gonna get a good outcome.”

Let’s unpack some of the fascinating points Kara makes here. As our series is looking at the feminine advantage, I love how she brings everything here about influence down to empathy.

Influence Requires Empathy and Understanding

Curiosity over persuasion.

Influencing through relationships and not power.

I wish I knew Kara when I was back working with those millennial leaders.

PREPARING FOR HIGH-STRESS CONVERSATIONS

Samantha: So I just heard you say that, um, building muscle memory is really important, but. If I'm in a situation in which I didn't rehearse for that, and I am caught by surprise, to me one of the most difficult things in communications is that when I have an emotional response and I need to manage that, how do you coach your clients or, and how do you yourself, manage your emotions when you're in these high stress situations?

Kara: That's a great question. So I think there's two ways to think about this. One of them is preparation, and one of them is in the moment reaction. So you just talked about a scenario where you didn't have any preparation at all, but I would challenge most of my clients to think about that again. The truth is that most of us do have preparation, maybe not for what's gonna be said or what vibe the conversation is gonna take on, but we generally know what situation we're entering unless we suddenly get trapped in an elevator with our counterpart, for example.

So one of the things that I encourage people to do to manage not only their own emotions, but also the emotions of their counterpart, is to look at their calendar, either the day of or the day before, and identify meetings that feel like they may potentially be higher stakes or with a more sensitive counterpart or more sensitive topic. And ask yourself, by the end of this conversation, how do I want the other person to think, feel? What do I want them to be able to say or do? Is there anything I don't want them to think, feel, say, or do? And what about me and the outcomes I want?

This is actually a tool called Leading with Intent that I developed based on the work of some other coaches and scholars in this area. And the idea behind it is that the more transparent we can be with ourselves and other people, the more easily we can get some of those outcomes we want, including the way we want to feel. When we know how we hope we and other people will feel, it's actually easier for us to choose our words in the moment because we're not just trying to recover, we're trying to figure out what content is going to get me back on track toward that goal?

And at a minimum, what we can say in that moment where we're totally flabbergasted and we've been caught off guard is “okay, so one thing I really want you to know by the end of our conversation, I really want you to leave feeling X, Y, Z, or being able to know or appreciate or understand A, B, C,” and zooming back out to the hope for goals, even the emotional ones, is a very effective way to recover for both parties.

So brilliant. I LOVE using the calendar, of all things, as a tool to help us prepare for these tough conversations which will help us to be more responsive in the moment as well. We’re going to hear more about leading with intent but first I wanted to talk about one of the highest stress situations we find ourselves in in bsuisnes which is giving and receiving tough feedback.

NO MORE COMPLIMENT SANDWICH

Here’s Jennifer again…

I don't like the whole compliment sandwich. I think that's manipulative. So with that said, and I guess I'm just realizing this without realizing I was doing this, I always give positive feedback when I have it immediately so that when I do have feedback that is not positive, I don't have to fabricate stuff around designing a conversation.

We built people up and shape behavior with positive feedback, and the ratio is no longer 2:1 like in the old sandwich model, bread/filling/bread but more like 5:1. And negative feedback can be super demotivating so I work a lot with clients to ensure it doesn't do more harm than good. Here’s how Jennifer handled a recent conversation with a client, an especially delicate situation as you can imagine:

Jennifer: What I did was I started by saying, Look, here is our goal. In order to reach that goal, we need this, this, and this in place. We do this. You are doing this, and then we're doing this part together. Okay? We have done our part. There's things that are slipping through the cracks. And after more than one source of feedback, I now know, 'cause sometimes you get one piece of feedback that's not necessarily accurate, right? We need to make some changes here in order to be successful 'cause that's the goal. And with things as they are, we will not hit that. And then what I've done is I offered extra support, more time together to get this fixed, which is really above and beyond like our agreement and our scope of work. But their success is our success and we're committed to making that happen. And if they are all in and willing to lean into that process, then we are there to see them through it.

Jennifer brought empathy and support along with that directness she talked about earlier.

Samantha: hear a wonderfully blended approach and how you did that.

Jennifer: Well, thank you. I think that you have to be direct with certain things because they have to hear it. You know, what I find a lot of times is people are gonna hear what they want to hear. There's that selective hearing and you have to make sure that what you are sharing is being received. That's really important. And sometimes when you do too much of the floral talk around it, all they're hearing is the good stuff and they don't hear and really needs to be communicated.

Sam: I totally agree. And what about when you have received negative feedback? How do you process that or work with that?

Jennifer: Like fetal position. No, I'm just kidding. (laughs) I get curious. Same thing. I get curious. So I always start with what was my intention? Was my intention to do this or that? My intentions, I know me, anyone who knows me knows my intentions are always good and honorable. And then I go into where could I take accountability here?

Because you can get feedback. it doesn't necessarily mean it's all true either, ight? So where was my accountability? Was that misaligned expectations or was that that truly we did not deliver? I did not deliver. I did not do… A great example, I am not the best communicator with email. I'm just not. I'm getting better at it, but it's really not my preferred, form of communication. I'd rather grab the phone and have a quick chat. but there's people who just prefer email and there's certain things you need documented, and I do get that. And so I have to look at me and say, okay, you don't love this fine. Like, take the accountability that when someone emails you, you have to respond, and you have to respond in the format that they have communicated with you as well.

And that's something that I have been working on. It's just, it's out of my Zone of Genius and I'm typically so task heavy during the day and in so many meetings that the idea of that when I can just shoot off a quick text or a voice message… I'm just trying to be efficient, but at the same time, I want to respect what my clients want from me as well.

There is a great point about the power of curiosity again to help open people up when they might want to shut down. Earlier, it was in the context of making assumptions and here it’s to understand others better - their feedback and their intentions.

GIVING AND RECEIVING FEEDBACK

Let’s go back to Kara and the topic of intentions. I asked her how she helps her clients handle tough feedback:

Kara: So this is actually a great topic to talk about on the heels of the Leading with Intent tool because this is also really valuable in a potentially charged conversation like that. When we go into a feedback situation where we're the one giving the feedback, we always need to have a really clear intent in mind. We're not just giving the feedback for the sake of it. We're doing it because there's a particular outcome that we want, and usually there should be some benefit to the outcome for the person who's receiving the feedback.

Kara: So my recommendation is to enter the conversation by letting them know, letting your counterpart know, what you want them to walk out, being able to do or think or feel. So let's say I've noticed that you are late to every meeting. That is not true for those listening, Samantha is always on time or early to every meeting. But let's just say in a hypothetical world, you were late. I'm not gonna come in and say, Samantha, I've noticed you're late and I need you to be on time. That's, first of all, just not gonna motivate you to do it. I might come in and say, Hey, Samantha, I wanted to chat with you about something so that by the end of our chat, you're empowered to make sure that you give people maximum value from the meetings that you attend, and that people see you as a polished consultant that I know you are. Or whatever it might be, right? So I'm telling you something that you're immediately inclined to be able to listen to and use, and I'm showing you care.

So if you've read Kim Scott, Radical Candor; a lot of what she talks about is being direct and showing care. And that piece about sharing your intent, demonstrates the care piece and also the thoughtfulness.

The next thing after you share your intent is usually to state an observation or a problem and then to suggest a solution. So then I might say, I've noticed that in the majority of meetings, you tend to arrive a few minutes late and the outcome of that is that you're not able to share as much of your wisdom as you otherwise would, and sometimes it can even be detrimental to others' perception of how detail oriented you are. So a solution I've thought of that you might experiment with is for you to try coming to meetings one or two minutes early, just so that you have the time to set up and do what you need. Do you think there's anything getting in the way of you doing that? So that last part that I tacked on there, rather than saying, what do you think? Or sound good? which is what many of us will say and the other person is just gonna go okay, yeah, I've heard you. Is to say, let's actually make this actionable and think about what you would need to meet this condition or what's getting in the way of it so that we can think about what your next steps will be to take action.

Samantha: Fantastic. It’s really fantastic because the beginning of it sounded like you were doing some sandwich feedback. But it's not what you did specifically. It sounded like, oh, here's the part where she's saying something good, but you did it with intent, right? This isn't my intention for saying this good thing is I'm saying a particular good thing because it's gonna help me get to t the outcome that I want up.

Kara: That's exactly it. That's the distinction. So sandwich feedback, I think is generally not effective because we've all heard it so many times that as soon as we hear the compliment, we're like, yeah, yeah, yeah get to the thing you're here to tell me. The intent is not a compliment. It's not something that you're calling out about something someone's done well, it's what you want them to feel or do as a result of the thing that you're about to say. It's the job that that feedback should be doing. And that's the major distinction that I think makes it more effective.

Samantha: Mm-Hmm. And super helpful for me 'cause that first way that you were modeling, doing feedback is usually the way I do it. (laugh)

Kara: That's a thing that I hear a lot is when I really push clients to talk about what they worry about with feedback, sometimes the first thing they say is that the person isn't gonna respond to it, but more often the first thing they say is, I don't want them to hate me, or I don't want them to think that I'm hypocritical because I have shortcomings myself.

So the intent piece I think can also be valuable here. There may sometimes be outcomes that are likely that you want to avoid. So for example, let's say I'm giving you that feedback and you're a flight risk at my company, and I'm worried that you might leave as a result, I might say, I don't want anything I say here today to encourage you to think about looking elsewhere, because your presence on this team is unbelievably important to me. I do want you to leave here feeling like you are resourced to show up to maximum effect of your, you know, X, Y, Z, whatever it might be. So sometimes it's valuable to actually articulate the outcomes you don't want as well.

WHEN THERE’S CRYING IN BASEBALL

One of the outcomes we don’t want: big emotion. I'm afraid they might cry. I'm afraid I might cry. How many times have you avoided a difficult conversation bc you were afraid of doing what so many women fear - crying at work?

Kara: Yeah, so the crying thing is very interesting, actually. I've had a number of female-identifying clients come to me and say, I want you to teach me how to not cry when I'm in a situation like that. And again, there's two forks in the road that we can take. One of them is to reframe the crying to actually make it work for you if it does happen. And the second are some physiological techniques that you can use to try to forestall the crying. So we can get into those physiological techniques but one thing that I encourage them to think about.

First of all, if you've done the Leading with Intent tool, you might think about how you want to feel and be perceived, which gives you something to think about other than your emotions. But let's say you do end up crying in a meeting, you get emotional and it just happens. One of the things I encourage them to do is, first of all, not to apologize for it, but to claim it as a part of the way that you are experiencing and leading through the moment. So you might say something like, you're observing that I'm getting emotional here.The reason that that's happening is because I care about the outcome of this a lot. I think that if we're able to do X, Y, Z, it can make an impact on these communities in this way. And you're seeing that from me right now because this is an investment worth making.

So to actually point to it and talk about why it's coming up for you, not in a way that is private, but in a way that demonstrates your personal connection to the concept at hand, I think can be very powerful.

Do not apologize for crying.

Wow! What an incredible way to reframe crying (this supposed weakness) as a strength tied to a business outcome like “an investment worth making.” I love love love that.

Don’t avoid things; name them and claim them. Yes, you’ll notice I’m crying and here’s why.

Kara: There are some scenarios in which just because of our institutional bias against this type of thing, it's just not gonna work for you like that. In that case, we talk about some of those physiological tools that people can use to try to keep tears and other sort of escalated emotional reactions at bay.

Samantha: Mm-Hmm. What's a quick one of those?

Kara: Quick one. Um, pressing your tongue against the roof of your mouth

Samantha: That's how I prevent sneezes, by the way.

Kara: Yes. So that can be very helpful. The other thing I think that can also be helpful is just to give yourself something else to focus on from a physical standpoint. So if you have something hot or cold nearby, like a cup of tea or a cup of water, to do that. Um, another thing can be to give yourself a physical cue that you start to associate with doing or not doing in action. So, for example, for a client I had who was particularly prone to tears, one of the things that we decided on was that when she felt tears coming on, it was feet flat on the floor. So she would immediately change her position so that she was making physical the intention that she had not to cry. And she did that on top of some of the mindset work that we did around this too.

Kara’s point perfectly aligns with what I’m emphasizing in this episode and throughout the series: tools and mindset work are both essential, but neither is sufficient on its own. Tools can equip you, and mindset can prepare you, but it’s the combination of both of those that truly sets you up for success. And wow, Kara has brilliantly condensed years of experience and expertise into these bullion cubes of advice for us.

Kara: The good news for us is that in the short term, there are things that we can try even as soon as the moment after we hear the tip to see if we can get a different outcome. And then the trick of it is if these are things that you want to internalize over a longer period of time, to examine them more deeply and practice them more. But the fact that they're available to us in these short little bullion cubes, I think is a good thing for everyone.

Totally. Totally. And I think they're just fantastic. And for me, some of this stuff is like completely revolutionary and new idea and hopefully for our listeners too.

I want to thank Leslie, Jennifer and Kara for modeling balanced masculine and feminine in themselves and for sharing what is working for them and their clients to communicate effectively.

EXERCISE

Let’s conclude with a coaching question:

How can you use curiosity to be more effective in communicating with others as well as understanding what others are communicating to you?

Journal prompt:

Think about a difficult situation recently when you had to manage your emotions at work and how that went for you. What did you learn?

Affirmation:

I communicate effectively by using directness, curiosity and kindness, even in difficult situations.

To find more tools for growing your consulting business, visit SamanthaHartley.com/super. I especially recommend the Definitive Guide to Winning Six Figure Clients, which you can download on that page. And with that, I’m wishing you a Profitable and Joyful Consulting business.