Boom.

And so you may be asking yourself, oh my God, like what's going to happen? Are you like these women? Have you experienced backlash because how you communicate?

We know that this is not made up. This is something that a lot of women go through all the time. Okay Kisha, like what do we do with this?

Before we go into like how these things show up, I want to really highlight to you, a lot of times people say, learn to be more confident. And look, I'm a confidence coach. I talk about your power unleashed and owning your power, and all of that.

A lot of times it's actually misdiagnosed. It's not a lack of confidence that causes us to diminish and use soft language and not speak up boldly and courageously.

We don't even realise that it's an unconscious competence that we've developed on learning how to navigate an organisation, a structure, a system that was not designed for us to win in.

These structures were not designed for us to win in. So we have to learn to be palatable and acceptable to those in power. And this is why we use the diminishing language that I'm going to talk about next.

We've strategically figured out, even if you don't realise it, how to survive in a culture that we will experience backlash if we go too far.

How We Use Coping Mechanisms (with Examples!)

What are these coping mechanisms? Well, they are diminishing language, rambling and fast speech. Now here's the thing, we engage in these languages to cope.

They allow us to survive, but they don't allow us to thrive and they cause us to remain invisible and not credible at work, all right? So I want to talk about how what they are first before we talk about how we fix them.

Diminishing Language & What it Looks Like

The first one, diminishing language. What does this look like? Diminishing language looks like, using language that downplays your ideas. You say things like, I think, I believe if it's not too much to ask, I don't want to bother you.

You know what the result is, your ideas end up seeming small. Here's an example.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how credible would you think I am if I showed up talking like this?

I have a YouTube channel and when I just started, my first YouTube video was horrendous because I just wasn't good at it. If you ever record yourself and listen to yourself talking sometimes, you would be amazed and maybe shocked how many of these language patterns we include.

Rambling & What it Looks Like

The next one is going to be rambling. Rambling looks like overexplaining. Sometimes when we're nervous we tend to overexplain things.

We provide too much excessive context and content as well, because sometimes it's coming from a place of wanting to prove yourself and show that you know your stuff.

That's a unconscious way a lot of times of dealing with microaggressions because you're trying to prove yourself that you belong and you work, you are worth it, The result is, a lack of clarity, is that your message is diluted and you become less influential.

What does this look like? Imagine a HR officer saying,

What was my main point? Does anybody get my main point? Shin says, no. Holly says, I have no idea what you were talking about. I literally have no idea what I was talking about.

A lot of times when we show up talking, it's like diarrhoea of the mouth and we don't have a clear message that we want to put across.

Fast-Paced Speech & What it Looks Like

Then the third piece that we'll talk about is fast-paced speech. That looks like racing through your points, losing your breath, being hard to follow, and having less clarity.

Because when you're talking too fast, people really can't understand you and you're really incomprehensible.

What does this look like? Okay, so let's go.

Were you able to keep up with me? Nope, only by reading along. So most people are saying, I wish…, not a chance…
Imagine if I didn't have the words on the screen, you probably would even less be able to keep up.

As I said before, both Naomi and I share, in our experience, I shared some of the root causes of why we didn't communicate. But I want you to be thinking about for yourself, how does this apply to you?

Take a step back as I go through the next couple of slides and think about what causes you to shrink when you do, and not show up in your power from a communication standpoint.

What are the Root Causes for our Coping Mechanisms (with Examples!)

Here's some of the root causes. If you heard our story, a lot of it is social conditioning. Women are socialised to prioritise being nice, over asserting themselves.

One of the recent stories in pop-culture, I remember of a female artist, her name is Megan Thee Stallion, she's a rapper, and she was basically shot in the foot and had to go to the hospital.

She didn't press charges against the perpetrator because she knew there would be backlash. She knew she would've been criticised.

Luckily for her, the state of California doesn't wait for people who are attacked to actually press charges. The City of Los Angeles pressed charges for her.

And it looks like her assessment was right because even though she didn't press charges, she was attacked viciously by media, the bloggers, the influencers, the media folks.

She's just one example. There are women of many different backgrounds that this has happened to. But you know, the message that this sends us is that if people like her with the money, the resources that she has and she has fame, people don't believe her or there's a backlash for speaking up for yourself.

I mean, for protecting your own life. What does that tell the rest of us that don't have the finances that she does or the fame, or the celebrity?

It's not just when we're growing up, it's even in society, social conditioning, what we see on the media that does not really create an environment for women to express themself and to advocate for themselves.

When we think about at work, we talked about it before, there's negative perception, that's what the study said. We feel like we don't have a choice, right? You're looked at as bossy, right? As Naomi was called. Angry, as basically I was called or bitchy and aggressive.

The penalties end up you saw less $15,000 less in your worth, right? You're less liked, you're less respected and frankly, there can be a financial impact to your compensation as well.

These are very steep root causes at the end of the day. Here's the thing, again, I said it before and I'm going to reiterate it. You're going to hear over and over again that you should really work on building your confidence.

It's not because a lack of confidence or a sign of weakness that we utilise these coping mechanisms and fade into background, it's because we have figured out how to survive and work. Brilliantly figured out how to navigate a work environment that was not designed for us to win.

The question I have is, at the end of the day, in light of all this, should we continue to self-silence, shrink and conform? What do you guys say? No, Shaya says no. I see at least one no in the chat. Awesome. I was waiting on the nos because I wasn't going to go further without the nos my friend.

The answer is no. And why? Because as I said before, there are implications, there are negative implications when we don't learn to speak up and communicate with power and impact, even though there's backlash in one way, we actually don't get the recognition that we deserve.

People end up speaking over you, they take credit for your work, you don't get visibility and it limits your ability to get promoted and rewarded for the results that you're even bringing to the organisation.

Instead of trying to survive, sometimes the things that we need to do is to challenge the workplace and the culture in which that we're working in so that we can encourage the organization, and force the organisation to create a culture that women can thrive in.
And so, what do I say based on this quote by Joan C. Williams?

How to Take Your Power Back

How do you take your power back? This is what we're going to be working on now. We talked about the fact that diminishing language is definitely not effective. Instead of using diminishing language, I'm going to say flex your communication style.

I want to address this upfront that most times when you hear people say, "Oh, like a woman should not use diminishing language, she needs to learn to be more assertive and confident in the way in which she communicates."

There is some truth to that. But as you see from flexing your communications that assertiveness is not the only thing, it's not the only way to influence.

As a matter of fact, there's an article by Harvard Business Review called "What's Your Influencing Style?" And it talks about five different ways that you can adapt to influence a room.

Imagine you are all left-brained people, right? Imagine you have 20% of the population that is influenced by assertiveness, 20% on inspiring, 20% on negotiation, and the rest.

If you only use one style, let's just say, you are the rationalising person. Rationalising person is someone that puts your arguments in front of you with a lot of data to back up.

If you're working with engineers and you know people in that kind of field, or in finance, you might be able to influence them with data. But here's a challenge.

A lot of times I actually see that they have the data and they hide behind the data. They actually don't share their perspective and what they think. They just share the information. If you do that, you're actually not going to be able to influence very effectively.

So what I say to people, sometimes you do need to give the data, but sometimes you need to present the data with a level of assertion. You need to just be more inspiring in how you communicate.

And by being inspiring, it can get people to take the action that you want to take or they feel more connected and bought into you as a person. They're going to do whatever you say.

From Diminishing Language to Flexing Your Communication Style

That's the takeaway here, you want to flex your style. However, let's address the assertiveness piece because diminishing language is a lack of assertiveness.

If you want to correct the language that we talked about before, is instead of saying "I think", or "I believe", you can preface it, your statements by saying, "My recommendation is..."

Instead of saying "Maybe", you might be able to say, "Here's another option."

Instead of saying, oh my gosh, I do this all the time, "Does that make sense?" This is the one that I work on the most. I don't say, I think, I believe, or maybe anymore, but I'm always, I have to catch myself from saying, "Does that make sense?" It's, "Let me know if you have any questions."

From Rambling to Speaking in Bullet Points

The next one you want to correct is rambling, but instead of rambling, you want to correct that to be speaking in bullet points. So how do you do that? What does that mean?

First of all, you identify 2 to 4 key points. I like to say three because three is just so easy to follow. People are able to remember three points really well.

You want to not just give people all this information, but you want to provide only the necessary context because people are only going to remember so much, especially living in a world where there's so much data coming at us.

If you're presenting something at work, you have all the extra research and information as a backup. If the person that you're talking to wants more detail, you can provide it for them.

Definitely you want to be prepared for them. Dig in deeper, but don't overwhelm people with too much information. One way to do this is the third point is use headlines.

I was coaching a C-suite leader in one organization, and I met with the board member of this woman, he said, "You need to coach her to speak in headlines and not in paragraphs." I love that quote.

If you think of a billboard, what it does, it uses attention-grabbing language that captures you, but it's not, you know, lost in all the sauce, I'm sorry, lost in all the details.

The third thing for me is you want to tailor your message to the audience. Some feedback that I get from people a lot, especially from people who work at mid-level and junior levels in organisations because managers and individual contributors are really buried in data and it's really hard for them to lift their head above the data and talk about themes, and trends and the main message.

Iif you're presenting to like an executive level or C-suite leader, you're going to want to take up the most important thing and ask yourself, what's in it for them? What do they really care about?

If it's finance people, they're going to care about the numbers. If's they’re strategy people, it's how does this actually relate to the organisation goal and strategy? So always ask yourself not what do I care about my presentation, not what do I want to present, but what does your audience care about?

Remember that HR leader that we didn't know what they were talking about, here we go. What if they had started off it like this? This would've been a better way.

And then I would go on, if needed, and I would give some additional points on each bullet.

Now let's take overall employee satisfaction and turn over as an example and then I would give all the details that would back up the evidence or the data that supported that main point.

Isn't that much clearer and much better to follow versus what we were talking about?

From Fast-Paced Speech to Slowing Down with Confidence

The last one is around using fast-paced speech. We correct that by literally just slowing down. The first thing that we want to talk about here is, it looks like deliberate pacing. Deliberate pacing is, you're pacing your words, you're slowing down so that people can keep up with your words.

One, it just allows you to be calmer because a lot of times we are rushing through things because we're nervous and anxious and deliberate pacing allows you to emphasise certain points and it also requires you to have a level of courage, because there's going to be silence in between.

Talking about silence, pregnant pauses is an extended amount of silence. That definitely projects an air of confidence because it shows that you are comfortable with silence. A lot of people are not comfortable with silence.

When you use pregnant pauses, it allows you to be to give the statements that you make, air to land and breathe in your listener, and it allows your listener to fully keep up and digest and internalise what it is you're saying.

I love this one because in doing this, it allows you to be a master communicator as it projects authority, it projects a sense of confidence and being in control.

The third one, and I'll do that now, is breathing.

Just breathe.

Sometimes if you're talking so quickly, like when I was rushing through the fast-paced speech slide, which is a tongue twister, I myself, was feeling out of breath.

When you breathe, it causes your body to go into rest and digest mode. It activates your parasympathetic nervous system and it helps you to calm down. By calming down, everything slows down instead of being so accelerated.

Verbal highlights is another one that I emphasise a lot. I love it because it is another great tool that helps you to highlight different parts of what you're saying. That brings clarity, it increases engagement.

For example, if you want to command somebody's attention, you speak louder and that commands attention. Now if you're yelling for your own speech, then you're just going to annoy people, so you don't want to be yelling your whole speech.

Then there are times when you lower your voices, so instead of commanding attention, you actually draw people in because you're like, oh, what are they saying? And they listen a little bit harder.

So that's another good strategy.

You can speed up your words at time, not all the time, but it allows you to insert a little bit of energy in what you're saying. But you also have to balance it with slowing it down, to really emphasise some important points you want to make.

Verbal highlights are great because they create this cadence and a rhythm, which is like a sort of verbal dance between you and your audience and it just keeps everyone engaged.

Finally, there's enunciating and articulating. It is literally taking the time to pronounce your words so that people can keep up with you. If you speak English as a second language, it's not about changing your accent or anything like that.

I'm all about being authentic with who you are, but I find that it helps people to understand you a little bit clearer when you just pronounce and enunciate and articulate your words.

Slowing it down would look like me saying,

What was that like compared to when I was rushing through it before? What was the impact of me reading it at this pace? Much better. Awesome. Applause. Truly confident, calm, clear. Okay, I love that you said the clear, the clarity was there.

How to Counteract Assertiveness Backlash

Remember this fun little study about how women's perceived competency dropped when they're equally as assertive and forceful as their male colleagues? It dropped by 35% and their dollar amount in terms of their value dropped by 15,000.

You may be saying to yourself, okay Kisha, we want to speak up confidently, but if we're going to be getting backlash, how do we deal with this?

I'm so glad you asked because the second part of that study, was an experiment where they did a bunch of interviews where if you use 4-second framing statement before you stated, and you gave the information that you wanted to give in an assertive way or in a direct way, using these 4-second framing statements could reduce the backlash by up to 27%.

So I would say these are savvy mechanisms that you can put in place so you don't have to shrink back from owning your voice. You're using a savvy mechanism to prepare your audience for what is coming up.

The Behaviour Frame

I'll share two of them with you now. The first one is the behaviour frame and it says,

"I'm going to express my opinion very directly. I'll be as specific as possible."

That reduced backlash by 10% because the person expressed their intent before the content of what they were saying.

And what I didn't say before is that why this works, is because a lot of the times when you are very direct and adamant in how you speak, the backlash happens because people think you have lost control.

Unfortunately, they end up thinking that women have lost control of the situation, meaning they lost their temper or they quote-unquote, "are very emotional."

But if you use these behaviour frames, it signals to the listener that I'm actually being very intentional right here. I haven't lost control; my temper is not gone. I'm intentional about what I'm doing.

The Value Frame

The second behaviour frame, I love this one because it's called the value frame. It ties back to the behaviour that you're saying or the directness, it ties it back to a value. So here it says,

"I see it as a matter of honesty and integrity, so it is important for me to be very clear about where I stand.”

It shows you here that the value that they're harping on is honesty and integrity and a big win-win could be you tying it back to the organisational values.

You're going to guarantee that you're going to be getting buy-in if you tie back what you're saying to an organisational value. That value frame reduced backlash by about 16%.

In Summary

Summing up, here are three ways that you go from invisible to credible.