Heather Hansen's Blog

So many of us find it so hard to ask that question. It can be hard to ask for help and even harder to get it. We struggle with feeling needy and don’t want people to see us as incompetent or dependent on others. So we don’t ask for help, and we don’t get it. Then, we become resentful and frustrated. Even worse, without the help we need, we’re more likely to be incompetent and dependent on others! We get exactly what we’re afraid of. 

But decades of teaching witnesses to talk to juries has given me insight into what works when asking for what you want-including help. Here are three keys you can use when asking for help and getting it. 

Focus on the person you’re asking. 

When we’re asking for help, we’re very focused on ourselves. We’re thinking of our needs, wants, and often our desperation. But the person we’re asking doesn’t care so much about that. They’re more focused on THEIR wants, needs, and desperation. If we can focus on them, we can get the help we need. 

The best way to do this is to find something you share with the person you’re asking. You likely have a shared goal, experience, enemy, or experience. Speak to that as you make the ask. 

They're more likely to care when there’s something you share.

There’s research that shows we feel more empathy for people who are like us. This can lead to implicit bias, a big concern, especially in medicine. For better or worse, it’s part of how our brains work. But we all share something, and when we find it, we can call it to ask for help. Tap into shared wants. 

For example, I recently coached a woman working on a huge project. Her boss ran the team hard, and he wasn’t well-liked. The team had a shared goal–getting the project done. They had a shared enemy-the boss. When my client needed help with her part of the project, she didn’t talk about her late nights, missed family events, or her exhaustion. She spoke to her team about how helping her would help them finish the project sooner. Suddenly, she had more help than she could have imagined. 

See your ask from the perspective of the person you’re asking and you’ll be much more likely to get the help you need. 

Show that you’re trying

Have you ever had a child ask you to help them clean their room, but they haven’t even started trying to clean their room? You know they’re really asking you to do it yourself. 

Don’t be that child. 

Before you ask for help, be ready to show that you’ve put the work in yourself. When I was a partner in my firm, I loved when associates asked for help-after they’d done some work. If I’d asked them to draft an argument and they got started but wanted help fleshing it out, I’d take the time and effort to help them. But if they came to me with a blank screen and a blank stare, I was far less likely to want to help them. 

When you’ve begun, they help get it done. 

But if you haven’t begun and you’re already asking for help, you risk losing credibility and making the person you’re asking far less likely to want to help. 

If Struggling On How To Ask For Help Then Try Asking with Delight!

If you’ve worked with me or followed me for a while, you know my most frequent mantra is “Ask for what you want (here, help) out loud and with delight.”

Too many people ask for help with embarrassment, resentment, frustration, or fear. And the emotion you’re feeling when you ask comes out in your voice. Research shows that you can tell more about a person’s emotion from their tone of voice than their body language and facial expressions combined. 

People who sense you’re embarrassed will likely feel embarrassed for you. They will mirror your resentment or frustration when they hear your resentment or frustration. Human beings are social creatures, and we mirror each other’s emotions. If you ask for help with delight, the other person will likely give you help-with delight! 

How do you get to that feeling of delight? By going back to the first two keys. When you know the help you’re asking for will serve the other person, it’s delightful. And when you know you’ve put in a strong effort and made a dent in the thing you need help with, you feel delighted. Then you can ask for help, out loud and with delight, and get it. 

With these three keys, “Will you help me?” can go from being a question you dread asking to one you know will get you all the help you need. 

If you want help with this, I offer keynotes and training for you and your team to learn the new tools of influence. I also have a concierge coaching practice and the Belief Builders’ Academy. Here’s a link to schedule an appointment with me to determine the best fit for you.

In 2024, I gave a lot of keynotes, teaching audiences how to advocate for their ideas, their value, and themselves. And the most frequent question I got, by far, was, “How can I be confident without bragging?”

You may have the same question. Confidence isn’t your challenge. You know you’re good, smart, experienced, talented, and ready. But you aren’t sure how to communicate it without appearing arrogant, conceited, or bragging. Here are three keys to show confidence without bragging. 

Focus on your solution and not on yourself. 

If you had the cure for cancer, I hope you’d sing it from the mountaintops. I hope you’d interrupt conversations, push your way onto stages, and cold call every hospital you could. You’d be so intent on sharing your solution to an enormous problem that your ego would have no choice but to take the back seat. You’d know this was about your solution–the cure for cancer–and not about you. 

When communicating your confidence, let it be about the solution you provide, not you. This will help you from feeling like you’re bragging. For example, if you’re applying for a job, focus on how your experience and skills solve the employer’s challenges. Instead of saying, “I’m a top performer in sales,” say, “My strategies increased revenue by 25%, solving critical budget shortfalls.” Shift the spotlight to the problem you’re solving and the value you’re bringing—not yourself. 

You may not have the cure for cancer. But you have the cure for someone’s problem, and as long as you focus on how excellent that solution is rather than how amazing you are, you won’t feel like you’re bragging. Let your confidence in the solution shine through; no one will think you’re bragging. They’ll think you’re a hero. 

When Trying to Show Confidence Without Bragging Focus on Credibility, Not Confidence. 

For 20 years, I defended providers in medical malpractice cases. I learned that credibility wins. Without credibility, it didn’t matter how prepared, smart, experienced, or confident my witnesses were. The jury had to believe them for us to earn our win. 

You have a jury, too. They’re anyone you want to influence or persuade. Your jury gives you your wins. And they need you to be credible. Credibility is the sense that someone is believable or trustworthy. Confidence is the sense that they’re self-assured. People want to know they can believe you and trust you. Once that’s true, confidence follows. 

To avoid feeling like you’re bragging, focus more on what makes you believable or trustworthy. It might be your experience, training, or talent. Sometimes, this focus on credibility makes people feel less confident because they don’t have the experience, training, or talent. Then go get it. Confidence won’t make up for a lack of credibility for long, and if you’ve lost someone’s trust, it’s hard to get it back. Credibility leads to confidence, but confidence doesn’t lead to credibility. If you have to choose between the two, credibility always wins. 

Focus on your tone. 

Think about the last time you heard someone brag, and try to hear their voice in your head. What is their tone of voice, and how does it make you feel? 

Now, think about the last time you were with someone truly confident. What was their tone of voice, and how did it make you feel? 

Most of the time when someone is bragging, they actually aren’t feeling very confident at all. In fact, they’re feeling insecure and small and using bragging to feel bigger. It’s a lie, and tone of voice is the greatest lie detector. 

I’m obsessed with tone of voice, and one of my favorite studies (yes, I have favorite studies) is out of Yale. It tells us that you can learn more about a person’s emotion from their tone of voice than from their body language and facial expressions combined. People can hide their emotions from their bodies but not from their voices. 

When you want to appear confident without bragging, check in with yourself. Are you genuinely feeling confident? If you have the experience, training, and talent to back up your words, your voice will sound confident and credible, not conceited or arrogant. People will believe you have the solution to their problem because they hear it in your voice. They’ll trust you’re credible because your voice will tell them so. 

Most of the time, if you’re self-aware enough to worry that you might come across as bragging, you don’t sound like you’re bragging. But you might sound worried and worried doesn’t sound confident. 

Get grounded in your solution and your credibility, and make the case for what you want. 

That’s how you earn your wins. 

You can ask for what you want and get it, over and over again. But first, you need to recognize that you aren’t born with this magical skill. You have to learn it, hone it, and master it. There are tools you need to acquire and practice. But once you do, you can apply this skill in the boardroom, the operating room, the classroom, the pitch room, and even the bedroom. The skill is advocating, It’s the ability to overcome doubts and build beliefs. You use this ability to build belief in yourself and what you want. Then you use it to help others believe that what you want will also be valuable to them.

When you are a leader who knows how to advocate, you build your team’s belief in the change you want to implement. They believe, and then they advocate for you to other team members.

When you’re a salesperson who knows how to advocate, you build your prospect’s belief in your product or service. They believe, they buy and then they become your advocates.

When you’re a woman who knows how to advocate, you build your own belief in yourself so that you ask for those opportunities or that raise. Then you build your boss’s belief, she gives you that opportunity and becomes your greatest advocate.

None of this is a fairy tale. It’s completely within your reach when you know how to advocate. 3 simple steps apply in all of these situations, and in every situation where you are asking for what you want. When you own the power of these three steps, you ask for what you want and you get it. It feels like magic.

It’s not magic. It’s advocating. I learned how to advocate in the courtroom. For 20 years, I asked diverse and often uninterested juries for what I wanted–a win for my clients. And I got it, time and time again. I build the jury’s belief in my client, my case, and in me. I turned jury members into our advocates. Then I realized that the tools I used to do that in the courtroom could be used almost anywhere, and to build belief in almost anything. So I started applying them in my life and I realized dream after dream. I wanted an apartment in NYC and I got it. I wanted to be a TV anchor and I got it. I wanted to write a best seller and start my own successful business. I asked and I got Then I started teaching these tools to others. I taught leaders how to ask for change, buy-in, or support. They got it. I taught salespeople how to ask for sales. They got them. I taught individuals how to ask for support, resources, and money and they got everything they asked for and more. These tools work.

In this piece, I’ll share an overview of the three steps. Each step has nuances and approaches that need to be honed, but you can start advocating today with these three basic steps.

The three steps are 1-Know what you want, 2-Ask for it, out loud and with delight, and 3-Master the art of the ask.

1. Know what you want

The first step, knowing what you want, seems simple. In business, it often is very simple. In the courtroom it certainly was. I knew exactly what I wanted from the jury. I wanted them to mark the verdict sheet in a very specific way. I was clear on what I wanted, and therefore I could be very clear with them.

At work, you may be very clear on what you want. You’re a leader and you want your team to embrace returning to the office. You’re in sales and you want your prospect to buy. You’re going to talk to your boss, and you want a raise. At work, this step can be simple.

But sometimes it’s not as simple. Many of the individuals I coach 1:1 don’t know what they want. I’ve coached many women who want something to change, but aren’t sure whether that’s a new job, a promotion or to start their own business. And they can’t start getting what they want until they know what it is.

One of the reasons we don’t know what we want is because we don’t have practice. If we want to get good at knowing what we want, we have to practice. And we have to be willing to get it wrong before we get it right.

I know I’ve had a lot of practice knowing what I want, and it started with knowing what I didn’t want. I’d been a trial attorney for about fifteen years when I started to go from loving it, to liking it, to not liking it, to hating it. And I became very clear that I didn’t want to be a defense attorney forever. But you can’t advocate for what you don’t want, so I had to find something I did want.

First, I thought I wanted to be a mediator. It seemed less stressful and more flexible. I trained as a mediator at the Strauss Institute, one of the nation’s best programs for dispute resolution. I got certified and I mediated a few cases. And it wasn’t what I wanted. Then I had the opportunity to do legal analysis for TV stations like CNN, Fox News Channel, NBC, and CBS. I thought this was definitely what I wanted to do, so I advocated my way into an anchor job for the Law and Crime Network. And then I found that I didn’t like talking about rapes and murders all day. It wasn’t what I wanted.

I did want to write a book, so I started writing. I loved writing my book The Elegant Warrior, and I love the book but I knew I didn’t want to be a full-time author. I wanted to take the ideas from my undergrad psychology degree, my experience as a trial attorney, my training as a mediator, and my time as a TV anchor and use them to create a curriculum on how to become an exceptional advocate. And that’s when I started doing the work I do today. I give keynotes on these topics. I serve some clients as a coach. And I have a membership where people like you can learn to build belief, ask for what you want, and get it.

Knowing what I wanted took practice. It wasn’t a one-shot deal, and it wasn’t meant to be. Each time I was wrong about what I wanted got me closer to what I want today. And I’m aware that may change in time.

One of the keys to practicing knowing what you want is taking little steps. I didn’t do the whole “leap and the net will appear” thing. Instead, I was creeping from one thing to another. I continued to practice law while I experimented with what I wanted. I made sacrifices and bad choices. But every step took me closer to what I do want.

You might be very clear what on you want. Great–you can move on to the next step. But if you are less clear, remember that knowing what you want is a skill you can only get good at with practice. Give yourself the space to start practicing.

2. Ask for it, out loud and with delight

You have to ask for what you want, and you have to do it with the right energy. Three of the important tools of an advocate are Energy, Evidence, and Empathy, and you can’t win without all three. But energy is the foundation.

As a leader who wants the team to return to the office, you have to ask them to do so. And you will be far more likely to get them on board if you believe that it’s a good move for them and the business. When you’re in full belief, you’ll be much more delighted to make the ask.

As a salesperson who wants a prospect to buy, you have to ask them to do so. If you fully believe it’s the right product or service for the prospect, you’ll be in full belief and ask with delight.

And as an individual who wants support for your innovation or idea, you have to ask for support. When you fully believe in your idea you can step into full belief and ask with delight.

But many times, we don’t ask for what we want out loud, especially as individuals. One of my clients wanted to be on a project at work. She knew she had ideas that would serve the client and her boss. But she didn’t ask for the opportunity. Instead, she did extra work for the person leading the project. She adjusted her schedule so she’d be in the area when the client came in to meet. She put it on her vision board and wrote about it in her journal. As time went on and she didn’t get the opportunity, she became disappointed and then resentful. If she’d asked at that point she would have been asking with bitterness, confusion, and resentment. These are not magnetic energies….

It’s not enough to give what you want to receive. It’s not enough to be available. And it’s not enough to put what you want on your vision board or in your journal. You have to ask for it-out loud from the person who can give it to you. The alternative is just too risky because not only do you not get what you want, but you do get resentful and disappointed. And then when you finally do ask for what you want, your energy is repulsive.

I struggled with this personally with someone I dated. At the beginning of our relationship, I gave him everything I wanted from him. I gave him freedom, support, advice, and ideas. I thought he’d figure out that I wanted the same from him. Isn’t that the idea behind the Golden Rule? Give what you wish to receive. But I wasn’t receiving.

Instead, he just kept asking for more. I’d give more, hoping it would signal that I wanted him to follow my lead. He didn’t. And over time I became angry, bitter, and resentful. It got so bad that I didn’t want to give him anything. I’d given so much that I felt empty and I had nothing more to give. When I finally exploded and expressed all of the things I wanted from the relationship I was demanding, resentful, angry, and judgmental. This is not the energy that gets what it wants.

Now I approach relationships very differently. I ask for what I want, early and often. And I get it–early and often.

When I was advocating to juries, it wasn’t enough to know that I wanted the jury to mark the verdict sheet in a certain spot. I had to ask them, out loud and with full belief that it was the right thing to do. When you’re advocating, it’s not enough to know what you want. You have to ask for it, out loud and with full belief that it serves your “jury”, your business, and you. When you are in full belief you have the energy of delight, confidence, conviction, and credibility. That energy is magnetic, and it wins.

3. Master the art of the ask

This is often the part where most people need help. You can know what you want and ask for it with delight, but you won’t get it if you haven’t mastered the ask. You have to know your jury–the people you’re asking. You have to know what they believe, and what their doubts are. You have to know their pain and their fears.

When you communicate, you share perspectives. When you advocate, you change them. You can’t change someone’s perspective until you understand it. Then you can master the art of the ask.

Many of my 1:1 clients come to me because they want to learn to master the art of the ask. They think they need to learn presentation skills like body language, voice work, and facial expressions. But mastering the ask isn’t about presenting. It’s about receiving.

Mastering the ask means listening to your “jury” of team members, clients, customers, or prospects. It means making them feel seen/heard, safe, and special. It means knowing what energy they need from you and working to provide that energy. If you don’t know how to listen, you’ll never be an extraordinary advocate. Listening allows you to glean what energy and evidence will work best for your situation. Mastering the ask takes empathy.

There are two types of empathy-cognitive and affective. Cognitive empathy is the ability to see what the other person sees. Affective empathy is the ability to feel what they feel. In my TEDx talk, I make the case that cognitive empathy is more important in general. It’s more important when you’re advocating.

When you can see what your jury sees, you can determine what energy is best for them, and what evidence will resonate. You can even see what they might be feeling, without actually feeling it. Feeling what they feel might impact your energy and make you anxious, scared, or angry. Those energies aren’t very compelling and don’t often get you what you want. But when you see what they see you can gauge whether a higher energy of joy, enthusiasm, or fun is going to resonate, or whether you’re better off with strength, confidence, or conviction. You also get a sense of what evidence will most resonate with your jury.

When you’ve mastered the art of the ask, you’re on your way to magic.

Know what you want. Ask for it, out loud and with delight. Master the art of the ask. When you’ve done the work to become an expert in these three steps, you know how to win. And you can collect your wins, over and over again.

Happy advocating!

Schedule A Call With Heather

Subscribe to Heather’s newsletter, connect with her on social media or purchase one of her books.

InstagramLinkedInFacebookTwitterYouTube

You can ask for what you want and get it, over and over again. But first, you need to recognize that you aren’t born with this magical skill. You have to learn it, hone it, and master it. There are tools you need to acquire and practice. But once you do, you can apply this skill in the boardroom, the operating room, the classroom, the pitch room, and even the bedroom. The skill is advocating, It’s the ability to overcome doubts and build beliefs. You use this ability to build belief in yourself and what you want. Then you use it to help others believe that what you want will also be valuable to them.

When you are a leader who knows how to advocate, you build your team’s belief in the change you want to implement. They believe, and then they advocate for you to other team members.

When you’re a salesperson who knows how to advocate, you build your prospect’s belief in your product or service. They believe, they buy and then they become your advocates.

When you’re a woman who knows how to advocate, you build your own belief in yourself so that you ask for those opportunities or that raise. Then you build your boss’s belief, she gives you that opportunity and becomes your greatest advocate.

None of this is a fairy tale. It’s completely within your reach when you know how to advocate. 3 simple steps apply in all of these situations, and in every situation where you are asking for what you want. When you own the power of these three steps, you ask for what you want and you get it. It feels like magic.

It’s not magic. It’s advocating. I learned how to advocate in the courtroom. For 20 years, I asked diverse and often uninterested juries for what I wanted–a win for my clients. And I got it, time and time again. I build the jury’s belief in my client, my case, and in me. I turned jury members into our advocates. Then I realized that the tools I used to do that in the courtroom could be used almost anywhere, and to build belief in almost anything. So I started applying them in my life and I realized dream after dream. I wanted an apartment in NYC and I got it. I wanted to be a TV anchor and I got it. I wanted to write a best seller and start my own successful business. I asked and I got Then I started teaching these tools to others. I taught leaders how to ask for change, buy-in, or support. They got it. I taught salespeople how to ask for sales. They got them. I taught individuals how to ask for support, resources, and money and they got everything they asked for and more. These tools work.

In this piece, I’ll share an overview of the three steps. Each step has nuances and approaches that need to be honed, but you can start advocating today with these three basic steps.

The three steps are 1-Know what you want, 2-Ask for it, out loud and with delight, and 3-Master the art of the ask.

1. Know what you want

The first step, knowing what you want, seems simple. In business, it often is very simple. In the courtroom it certainly was. I knew exactly what I wanted from the jury. I wanted them to mark the verdict sheet in a very specific way. I was clear on what I wanted, and therefore I could be very clear with them.

At work, you may be very clear on what you want. You’re a leader and you want your team to embrace returning to the office. You’re in sales and you want your prospect to buy. You’re going to talk to your boss, and you want a raise. At work, this step can be simple.

But sometimes it’s not as simple. Many of the individuals I coach 1:1 don’t know what they want. I’ve coached many women who want something to change, but aren’t sure whether that’s a new job, a promotion or to start their own business. And they can’t start getting what they want until they know what it is.

One of the reasons we don’t know what we want is because we don’t have practice. If we want to get good at knowing what we want, we have to practice. And we have to be willing to get it wrong before we get it right.

I know I’ve had a lot of practice knowing what I want, and it started with knowing what I didn’t want. I’d been a trial attorney for about fifteen years when I started to go from loving it, to liking it, to not liking it, to hating it. And I became very clear that I didn’t want to be a defense attorney forever. But you can’t advocate for what you don’t want, so I had to find something I did want.

First, I thought I wanted to be a mediator. It seemed less stressful and more flexible. I trained as a mediator at the Strauss Institute, one of the nation’s best programs for dispute resolution. I got certified and I mediated a few cases. And it wasn’t what I wanted. Then I had the opportunity to do legal analysis for TV stations like CNN, Fox News Channel, NBC, and CBS. I thought this was definitely what I wanted to do, so I advocated my way into an anchor job for the Law and Crime Network. And then I found that I didn’t like talking about rapes and murders all day. It wasn’t what I wanted.

I did want to write a book, so I started writing. I loved writing my book The Elegant Warrior, and I love the book but I knew I didn’t want to be a full-time author. I wanted to take the ideas from my undergrad psychology degree, my experience as a trial attorney, my training as a mediator, and my time as a TV anchor and use them to create a curriculum on how to become an exceptional advocate. And that’s when I started doing the work I do today. I give keynotes on these topics. I serve some clients as a coach. And I have a membership where people like you can learn to build belief, ask for what you want, and get it.

Knowing what I wanted took practice. It wasn’t a one-shot deal, and it wasn’t meant to be. Each time I was wrong about what I wanted got me closer to what I want today. And I’m aware that may change in time.

One of the keys to practicing knowing what you want is taking little steps. I didn’t do the whole “leap and the net will appear” thing. Instead, I was creeping from one thing to another. I continued to practice law while I experimented with what I wanted. I made sacrifices and bad choices. But every step took me closer to what I do want.

You might be very clear what on you want. Great–you can move on to the next step. But if you are less clear, remember that knowing what you want is a skill you can only get good at with practice. Give yourself the space to start practicing.

2. Ask for it, out loud and with delight

You have to ask for what you want, and you have to do it with the right energy. Three of the important tools of an advocate are Energy, Evidence, and Empathy, and you can’t win without all three. But energy is the foundation.

As a leader who wants the team to return to the office, you have to ask them to do so. And you will be far more likely to get them on board if you believe that it’s a good move for them and the business. When you’re in full belief, you’ll be much more delighted to make the ask.

As a salesperson who wants a prospect to buy, you have to ask them to do so. If you fully believe it’s the right product or service for the prospect, you’ll be in full belief and ask with delight.

And as an individual who wants support for your innovation or idea, you have to ask for support. When you fully believe in your idea you can step into full belief and ask with delight.

But many times, we don’t ask for what we want out loud, especially as individuals. One of my clients wanted to be on a project at work. She knew she had ideas that would serve the client and her boss. But she didn’t ask for the opportunity. Instead, she did extra work for the person leading the project. She adjusted her schedule so she’d be in the area when the client came in to meet. She put it on her vision board and wrote about it in her journal. As time went on and she didn’t get the opportunity, she became disappointed and then resentful. If she’d asked at that point she would have been asking with bitterness, confusion, and resentment. These are not magnetic energies….

It’s not enough to give what you want to receive. It’s not enough to be available. And it’s not enough to put what you want on your vision board or in your journal. You have to ask for it-out loud from the person who can give it to you. The alternative is just too risky because not only do you not get what you want, but you do get resentful and disappointed. And then when you finally do ask for what you want, your energy is repulsive.

I struggled with this personally with someone I dated. At the beginning of our relationship, I gave him everything I wanted from him. I gave him freedom, support, advice, and ideas. I thought he’d figure out that I wanted the same from him. Isn’t that the idea behind the Golden Rule? Give what you wish to receive. But I wasn’t receiving.

Instead, he just kept asking for more. I’d give more, hoping it would signal that I wanted him to follow my lead. He didn’t. And over time I became angry, bitter, and resentful. It got so bad that I didn’t want to give him anything. I’d given so much that I felt empty and I had nothing more to give. When I finally exploded and expressed all of the things I wanted from the relationship I was demanding, resentful, angry, and judgmental. This is not the energy that gets what it wants.

Now I approach relationships very differently. I ask for what I want, early and often. And I get it–early and often.

When I was advocating to juries, it wasn’t enough to know that I wanted the jury to mark the verdict sheet in a certain spot. I had to ask them, out loud and with full belief that it was the right thing to do. When you’re advocating, it’s not enough to know what you want. You have to ask for it, out loud and with full belief that it serves your “jury”, your business, and you. When you are in full belief you have the energy of delight, confidence, conviction, and credibility. That energy is magnetic, and it wins.

3. Master the art of the ask

This is often the part where most people need help. You can know what you want and ask for it with delight, but you won’t get it if you haven’t mastered the ask. You have to know your jury–the people you’re asking. You have to know what they believe, and what their doubts are. You have to know their pain and their fears.

When you communicate, you share perspectives. When you advocate, you change them. You can’t change someone’s perspective until you understand it. Then you can master the art of the ask.

Many of my 1:1 clients come to me because they want to learn to master the art of the ask. They think they need to learn presentation skills like body language, voice work, and facial expressions. But mastering the ask isn’t about presenting. It’s about receiving.

Mastering the ask means listening to your “jury” of team members, clients, customers, or prospects. It means making them feel seen/heard, safe, and special. It means knowing what energy they need from you and working to provide that energy. If you don’t know how to listen, you’ll never be an extraordinary advocate. Listening allows you to glean what energy and evidence will work best for your situation. Mastering the ask takes empathy.

There are two types of empathy-cognitive and affective. Cognitive empathy is the ability to see what the other person sees. Affective empathy is the ability to feel what they feel. In my TEDx talk, I make the case that cognitive empathy is more important in general. It’s more important when you’re advocating.

When you can see what your jury sees, you can determine what energy is best for them, and what evidence will resonate. You can even see what they might be feeling, without actually feeling it. Feeling what they feel might impact your energy and make you anxious, scared, or angry. Those energies aren’t very compelling and don’t often get you what you want. But when you see what they see you can gauge whether a higher energy of joy, enthusiasm, or fun is going to resonate, or whether you’re better off with strength, confidence, or conviction. You also get a sense of what evidence will most resonate with your jury.

When you’ve mastered the art of the ask, you’re on your way to magic.

Know what you want. Ask for it, out loud and with delight. Master the art of the ask. When you’ve done the work to become an expert in these three steps, you know how to win. And you can collect your wins, over and over again.

Happy advocating!

You could build a house. If you had the right tools, the right help, the right attitude, and the right amount of resilience and patience, you could do it. It’s just a matter of using the tools, following the instructions and not giving up when it gets uncomfortable.

You can also build beliefs. With the right tools, instruction and attitude, you can build your own belief in you, your worth, and your potential. Then you can use the same tools in different ways and build the belief of people at work, at home, and everywhere you go.

The ability to build beliefs is a skill you can learn. But no one has ever taught you to do it. No one has given you the tools or the instructions. There is a Blueprint for Building Beliefs. I have it. When you have it, you can change your life.

Your beliefs create your reality. When you change your beliefs, you change your life.

If you believe that you’ll never make more than six figures, you’re unlikely to break that ceiling. But if suddenly, your belief changes, and you see that you can make more money, it is far more likely to happen. If you believe you will never be healthier than you are today, chances are you won’t get much healthier. But if you believe that you could run farther, sleep better, lose weight or get healthier, you’re much more likely to achieve that result.

Over twenty-five years ago I lost 100 pounds. Before I lost it, I didn’t believe it was possible. However, I did believe I could lose ten pounds. So I did. And then I believed I could lose ten more. Once I’d lost 50 pounds I certainly believed I could lose 50 pounds. With the right tools, instruction, and attitude, I lost 100 pounds and have kept it off for over twenty years. My ability to build my belief changed my life.

The same is true in relationships. If you believe you’re never going to find someone, chances are you won’t. If you believe that you’ll find the love of your life, chances are you will. You change your results when you change your beliefs. The power and the ability to change your beliefs and then to change other people’s beliefs is really and truly a power. It’s magic. When you learn it, you have the power and you are the magic.

How do you build the belief? Consider the things you believe. When your alarm goes off in the morning, you believe that it is set to the right time and that it’s actually time to get up. You go to brush your teeth and you believe the toothpaste is going to make your mouth healthier and not less healthy. You drive to work and believe your car is going to get you there. At work, you believe your boss is going to pay you for being there. On the way home, you listen to the radio. And when you turn it on, you believe that you’re actually going to hear something, whether it’s a podcast or music. You make dinner and you believe that the food isn’t going to make you sick. When you go to bed that night, you believe that the alarm you set will wake you up the next morning. You have so many beliefs.

Our lives are completely based on our beliefs. And if we’re going to believe in alarm clocks, toothpaste and cars, bosses, food and radios, why not believe in ourselves?

How did we establish all those beliefs that we just talked about? Well, there were a couple of things that happened. First, there was someone who told you a story about alarm clocks, toothpaste or bosses, or food. You heard a story. Then you collected evidence. They shared some evidence that they had always used an alarm clock and it had gotten them up in the morning. With toothpaste, you might have heard in a TV commercial two out of three dentists recommend this toothpaste. That’s evidence that you’ve been collecting throughout your life. But then, most importantly, you created evidence for yourself. So you tried the alarm clock and it worked. You tried the toothpaste and it worked. Your boss paid you for the work you did. You made the food and you saw that most of the time, it didn’t make you sick. You created evidence for yourself, that proves to you that it actually works for you. Then you repeated it. And the more that you repeated it, the greater the belief became.

Stories, evidence, repetition and the energy of belief. These are the tools you used to build belief in alarm clocks and toothpaste. They’re the same tools you’ll use to build a belief in yourself and then share that belief with other people.

What do you want to believe? What belief might change your life? Recently I believed that I could completely change my identity. I had been an attorney for twenty years and I wanted to let go of that identity and start being an author and a speaker. The belief that I could change my identity scared me. And it was very out of my reach at first. But I began with the blueprint. I started collecting evidence, creating evidence, and repeating evidence. I started to intentionally bring the energy of belief. Most days, I believe that I am here to spend the next 30 years sharing the Blueprint for Beliefs with as many people as possible.

The 3 main tools we use to build beliefs are energy, evidence, and empathy. We’re focused on evidence here. Evidence is anything that you use to prove something. Facts, stories, feelings, thoughts, actions, and words are all evidence. And each story, feeling, thought or action could be evidence of a host of things. Take the action of getting up at 4am. That could be evidence that I’m determined to meditate every day. It could be evidence that I have an early flight. It could be evidence that I’m a morning person. Every action can serve as evidence of many different things, and with practice, you can learn how to use actions as evidence to help you and others believe.

It’s helpful to start with what you want to believe, or what you want others to believe, and work backward. You can ask yourself “What action would be evidence that that thing is true? What feeling would be evidence that that thing is true? What result would be evidence that that thing is true?” You learn to play with facts, actions, feelings, and results so that you can turn them into evidence.

Here’s a fun secret – you are evidence for others. When you eat well and work to stay healthy, you are serving as evidence for your children that it’s good to eat well. When you are kind to your partner, you’re evidence to your partner that kindness is a priority. When you’re good to your staff, and include them and decisions and information and are authentic and transparent with them, you are evidence of what a good leader and a good team member do.

Your vibration is a very strong piece of evidence. I often say “Your vibration is the foundation” of the blueprint for building beliefs. Your vibration is the foundation of their belief. When people see you vibrating at a frequency of love, joy excitement or enthusiasm, that is evidence to them, that they could feel love and joy and enthusiasm and excitement for the thing that you are vibrating about. And if you’re vibrating with frustration, resentment, fear, anxiety, or scarcity, that is evidence for them, that they might need to be vibrating at that same frequency. When you’re trying to build other people’s beliefs and trying to be evidence to them of the things that you want them to believe, you must be really clear on your own vibration. I want my vibration to be evidence for others.

My life’s mission is to be evidence of what could be. I want to be evidence of what could be when you leave a career that you have spent your entire life building to start a completely new career when you’re 50 years old. I want to be evidence that you could build a huge career in your 50s from scratch with no real knowledge of entrepreneurship.

In the past, I wanted to be evidence that you could lose 100 pounds and keep it off. I want to be that evidence for someone who thinks that’s impossible. I wanted to be evidence that it could be that as a woman you can dominate a field like trial law, where there aren’t many very successful women. I wanted to be evidence for young lawyers of that.

I recently talked with a woman who had seen me speak to her law school class years ago. At the end of our call, she told me she’d reached out to many women for advice and I was the only one who responded. I’m so glad I was evidence for her that reaching out is worth it.. I want to be evidence that people who you think are too busy for you aren’t always too busy. I want to be evidence that women want to help women.

Start considering what you want to be evidence of, for your friends, family, colleagues, mentors, and mentees.

But remember that when others look to you for evidence, or you look to others for evidence, that’s collecting evidence. And it’s usually not enough. Usually you have to create evidence as well. There’s a huge difference between the two.

In the book The Garden Within by Dr Anita Phillips, she makes a distinction between hope and faith that I’ve expanded on. Faith is believing something is possible. Hope is believing it is possible for me. When you collect evidence, you build the belief that something is possible. When you create it, you build the belief that it’s possible for YOU.

Creating evidence is harder and riskier, but the return is so much better. You can collect evidence that it’s possible to lose 100 pounds by looking to me and others who have done it. But to create evidence that it’s possible for you, you have to begin. You have to try, fail, and try again. It’s much more uncomfortable. But if you want to build beliefs, it is your greatest tool.

When you know how to build beliefs, you can build your own. Then you have the energy, evidence, and empathy to build others’. You’ll know what you want because you believe in your discernment. You can ask for it, out loud and with delight because you believe in your worth and your resilience. And you can master the art of the ask because you know how to build beliefs. You’ll ask for what you want and get it, time and time again.

Schedule A Call With Heather

Subscribe to Heather’s newsletter, connect with her on social media or purchase one of her books.

InstagramLinkedInFacebookTwitterYouTube

You could build a house. If you had the right tools, the right help, the right attitude, and the right amount of resilience and patience, you could do it. It’s just a matter of using the tools, following the instructions and not giving up when it gets uncomfortable.

You can also build beliefs. With the right tools, instruction and attitude, you can build your own belief in you, your worth, and your potential. Then you can use the same tools in different ways and build the belief of people at work, at home, and everywhere you go.

The ability to build beliefs is a skill you can learn. But no one has ever taught you to do it. No one has given you the tools or the instructions. There is a Blueprint for Building Beliefs. I have it. When you have it, you can change your life.

Your beliefs create your reality. When you change your beliefs, you change your life.

If you believe that you’ll never make more than six figures, you’re unlikely to break that ceiling. But if suddenly, your belief changes, and you see that you can make more money, it is far more likely to happen. If you believe you will never be healthier than you are today, chances are you won’t get much healthier. But if you believe that you could run farther, sleep better, lose weight or get healthier, you’re much more likely to achieve that result.

Over twenty-five years ago I lost 100 pounds. Before I lost it, I didn’t believe it was possible. However, I did believe I could lose ten pounds. So I did. And then I believed I could lose ten more. Once I’d lost 50 pounds I certainly believed I could lose 50 pounds. With the right tools, instruction, and attitude, I lost 100 pounds and have kept it off for over twenty years. My ability to build my belief changed my life.

The same is true in relationships. If you believe you’re never going to find someone, chances are you won’t. If you believe that you’ll find the love of your life, chances are you will. You change your results when you change your beliefs. The power and the ability to change your beliefs and then to change other people’s beliefs is really and truly a power. It’s magic. When you learn it, you have the power and you are the magic.

How do you build the belief? Consider the things you believe. When your alarm goes off in the morning, you believe that it is set to the right time and that it’s actually time to get up. You go to brush your teeth and you believe the toothpaste is going to make your mouth healthier and not less healthy. You drive to work and believe your car is going to get you there. At work, you believe your boss is going to pay you for being there. On the way home, you listen to the radio. And when you turn it on, you believe that you’re actually going to hear something, whether it’s a podcast or music. You make dinner and you believe that the food isn’t going to make you sick. When you go to bed that night, you believe that the alarm you set will wake you up the next morning. You have so many beliefs.

Our lives are completely based on our beliefs. And if we’re going to believe in alarm clocks, toothpaste and cars, bosses, food and radios, why not believe in ourselves?

How did we establish all those beliefs that we just talked about? Well, there were a couple of things that happened. First, there was someone who told you a story about alarm clocks, toothpaste or bosses, or food. You heard a story. Then you collected evidence. They shared some evidence that they had always used an alarm clock and it had gotten them up in the morning. With toothpaste, you might have heard in a TV commercial two out of three dentists recommend this toothpaste. That’s evidence that you’ve been collecting throughout your life. But then, most importantly, you created evidence for yourself. So you tried the alarm clock and it worked. You tried the toothpaste and it worked. Your boss paid you for the work you did. You made the food and you saw that most of the time, it didn’t make you sick. You created evidence for yourself, that proves to you that it actually works for you. Then you repeated it. And the more that you repeated it, the greater the belief became.

Stories, evidence, repetition and the energy of belief. These are the tools you used to build belief in alarm clocks and toothpaste. They’re the same tools you’ll use to build a belief in yourself and then share that belief with other people.

What do you want to believe? What belief might change your life? Recently I believed that I could completely change my identity. I had been an attorney for twenty years and I wanted to let go of that identity and start being an author and a speaker. The belief that I could change my identity scared me. And it was very out of my reach at first. But I began with the blueprint. I started collecting evidence, creating evidence, and repeating evidence. I started to intentionally bring the energy of belief. Most days, I believe that I am here to spend the next 30 years sharing the Blueprint for Beliefs with as many people as possible.

The 3 main tools we use to build beliefs are energy, evidence, and empathy. We’re focused on evidence here. Evidence is anything that you use to prove something. Facts, stories, feelings, thoughts, actions, and words are all evidence. And each story, feeling, thought or action could be evidence of a host of things. Take the action of getting up at 4am. That could be evidence that I’m determined to meditate every day. It could be evidence that I have an early flight. It could be evidence that I’m a morning person. Every action can serve as evidence of many different things, and with practice, you can learn how to use actions as evidence to help you and others believe.

It’s helpful to start with what you want to believe, or what you want others to believe, and work backward. You can ask yourself “What action would be evidence that that thing is true? What feeling would be evidence that that thing is true? What result would be evidence that that thing is true?” You learn to play with facts, actions, feelings, and results so that you can turn them into evidence.

Here’s a fun secret – you are evidence for others. When you eat well and work to stay healthy, you are serving as evidence for your children that it’s good to eat well. When you are kind to your partner, you’re evidence to your partner that kindness is a priority. When you’re good to your staff, and include them and decisions and information and are authentic and transparent with them, you are evidence of what a good leader and a good team member do.

Your vibration is a very strong piece of evidence. I often say “Your vibration is the foundation” of the blueprint for building beliefs. Your vibration is the foundation of their belief. When people see you vibrating at a frequency of love, joy excitement or enthusiasm, that is evidence to them, that they could feel love and joy and enthusiasm and excitement for the thing that you are vibrating about. And if you’re vibrating with frustration, resentment, fear, anxiety, or scarcity, that is evidence for them, that they might need to be vibrating at that same frequency. When you’re trying to build other people’s beliefs and trying to be evidence to them of the things that you want them to believe, you must be really clear on your own vibration. I want my vibration to be evidence for others.

My life’s mission is to be evidence of what could be. I want to be evidence of what could be when you leave a career that you have spent your entire life building to start a completely new career when you’re 50 years old. I want to be evidence that you could build a huge career in your 50s from scratch with no real knowledge of entrepreneurship.

In the past, I wanted to be evidence that you could lose 100 pounds and keep it off. I want to be that evidence for someone who thinks that’s impossible. I wanted to be evidence that it could be that as a woman you can dominate a field like trial law, where there aren’t many very successful women. I wanted to be evidence for young lawyers of that.

I recently talked with a woman who had seen me speak to her law school class years ago. At the end of our call, she told me she’d reached out to many women for advice and I was the only one who responded. I’m so glad I was evidence for her that reaching out is worth it.. I want to be evidence that people who you think are too busy for you aren’t always too busy. I want to be evidence that women want to help women.

Start considering what you want to be evidence of, for your friends, family, colleagues, mentors, and mentees.

But remember that when others look to you for evidence, or you look to others for evidence, that’s collecting evidence. And it’s usually not enough. Usually you have to create evidence as well. There’s a huge difference between the two.

In the book The Garden Within by Dr Anita Phillips, she makes a distinction between hope and faith that I’ve expanded on. Faith is believing something is possible. Hope is believing it is possible for me. When you collect evidence, you build the belief that something is possible. When you create it, you build the belief that it’s possible for YOU.

Creating evidence is harder and riskier, but the return is so much better. You can collect evidence that it’s possible to lose 100 pounds by looking to me and others who have done it. But to create evidence that it’s possible for you, you have to begin. You have to try, fail, and try again. It’s much more uncomfortable. But if you want to build beliefs, it is your greatest tool.

When you know how to build beliefs, you can build your own. Then you have the energy, evidence, and empathy to build others’. You’ll know what you want because you believe in your discernment. You can ask for it, out loud and with delight because you believe in your worth and your resilience. And you can master the art of the ask because you know how to build beliefs. You’ll ask for what you want and get it, time and time again.

You are an advocate. I don’t care if you are a leader, a sales professional or a teacher. It doesn’t matter if you’re a founder, an entrepreneur or a parent. You advocate every day.

Advocating is building belief. If you’ve ever told someone they have to watch Ted Lasso, you’re advocating for Ted. You believe in the show, and you want others to believe enough to watch. If you’re a leader who wants the team to return to the office, you’re advocating for change. You believe returning to the office is a good thing, and you want your team to believe as well. Salespeople advocate for their products or services. They believe in what they’re selling, and they want prospects to believe. Founders advocate for their ideas and businesses. They want investors to believe. All of these people are advocates.
The simplest illustration of advocating is when you want a child to eat their broccoli. You believe it’s something the child should eat, and you want them to believe it is something they should eat…You’re advocating for broccoli.

You’re a leader-trying to lead the child to eating broccoli.

You’re selling broccoli.

You’re in “customer experience” – providing the experience of broccoli.

But most of all, you’re advocating. You want the child to believe in broccoli enough to eat it. And ideally, the child will tell their siblings how amazing the broccoli is. When you’re very good at advocating, you turn people around you into advocates.

I know a lot about being an advocate. I was a trial attorney for over 20 years. One of the (nicer) things that people call trial attorneys is “advocates”. We build belief. We lead the jury to making the decision we want them to make. We sell our case, our story and our evidence. We provide an experience for the jury, and we hope that at least one juror will advocate for us and our client as they deliberate.

Providing a good experience to my jurors was very important to me during my trials. I wanted every juror to feel seen, safe and special. And I wanted them to know I valued them and their time. So I talked fast. I tried not to hesitate and look for information but to have it at my fingertips. I thought moving fast was a service and that the jury believed that I wanted to help them. But then a court reporter asked me to slow down, as I spoke so fast it was making his job difficult. And I realized that my speed may be making the jury’s job difficult too.

I changed my perspective on the way to provide the best experience and I became a better advocate. You want to do the same as you’re advocating. You have a jury too. Your jury is the person who has to believe in order for you to win.

Leaders – it is your team
Sales professionals – it is your prospects.
Customer experience professionals – it is your clients/customers.
Parents – it is your children.

A good advocate tries to see the world from their jury’s perspective and is willing to ask questions to understand that perspective more thoroughly. Then they are willing to make changes as their understanding of their “jury’s” perspective changes.

When you’re advocating, you’re leading, selling and providing an experience. And you do all three all the time. If you’ve ever read Daniel Pink’s To Sell Is Human, you know he makes the case that we are all in sales. He’s right. You’re selling your ideas, your products, your innovations and your broccoli.

But leading is also human, and you’re always leading. If you want your boss to give you a raise, you’re trying to lead them to that decision. When you want someone to go on a date with you, you’re leading them to believe that date will be worth their time. Leading and selling are ways of building belief, and they are human.

So is serving, or creating an experience. You want to create an experience of broccoli for your child so they’ll keep eating it. You want to create an experience of dating you for that potential partner, so they’ll go out with you again.

Advocating is leading, selling and serving on steroids. It’s all of those things, to the nth degree. Because when you get good at building belief, you have a lot of power. And when you’re very good, you turn your “jury” into your advocates. This was one of my goals in the courtroom. It saved me from a loss in one of my cases.

I defended doctors in medical malpractice cases in Philadelphia, and we had 12 jurors in our cases. Civil cases don’t need to be unanimous. We need to have ten of the twelve jurors agree in order to win. But in one of my cases, they couldn’t reach that number. That means we had a mistrial. Sometimes, when there’s a mistrial, the judge asks us to talk to the jury and in this case she did. The jury told us that when they first started deliberating, nine of them wanted to find for the patient. That would mean I’d lose. But then the three who believed in me, my client and our cases started advocating for us.

They started pointing out evidence I’d shown the jury. They told stories I’d told. And over time they persuaded one juror, and then another. Ultimately the jury was tied – six believed the patient had won, and six believed we had won. The jurors who believed in me and my case saved me from a loss that day. And when we retried the case – we won.

You can turn the people around you into your advocates as well. If you are a leader, and you are advocating for change, you are much more likely to get that change if the people on your team become your advocates. If you’re in sales, and you turn a prospect or client or customer into an advocate, then they send other business to you. And if you’re in a customer experience or service role, you want people to stay and you want them to refer other businesses. When you teach people how to advocate for you by advocating effectively to them, and giving them stories and evidence to advocate for you, you turn them into your advocates.

But what do you have to do in order to build belief and turn others into your advocates? It’s three steps. It is knowing what you want, asking for it out loud and with delight, and mastering the art of the ask.

Most of the time in a business setting you know what you want. You want the sale, you want the client, you want the customer, you want the positive review. You want the person to go out and advocate for you. If you’re a leader you want that change to happen and to happen in a way that the team is supportive of and even delighted about it.

And then you ask with delight. Now that part of the advocacy, three steps, is really making sure that you are in full belief. When it comes to belief, you go first. A leader must believe in the change they advocate for. A salesperson must believe in the product or service. A customer experience professional must believe in the service. And that is where that second step comes in. It’s your belief, your delight.

The third step is mastering the art of the ask. This is where facts become evidence that actually proves something to someone. Facts are never enough to build belief. In the courtroom, everyone in the room has the same facts. But we use it to turn it into evidence in different ways to prove different things. The same is true with stories. In the courtroom we told stories of what had happened in different ways and from different perspectives, in order to influence our juries.

You have your juries too. And if you can learn how to master the art of the ask, that’s where you become a strong advocate and you start getting what you want.

That’s why I always say facts tell stories sell. But advocates win. Because storytelling isn’t enough. Storytelling is a vital skill in business. But when there’s an opposing story – broccoli versus brownies, change that a leader wants versus staying the same, your product versus a competitor’s product, your experience versus someone else’s experience – storytelling isn’t enough. You’ve got to learn to advocate to turn stories into proof and facts into evidence.

And that begins with seeing things from the other person’s perspective. You must learn to see things from your jury’s perspective, the people that you’re serving, the people you are leading, the people you are selling to, you need to see things from their perspective.

Communicating is sharing perspectives. Advocating is changing them.But you can’t change someone’s perspective until you really know their perspective and where it comes from. And until you understand that there are different perspectives, there are different ways of seeing this.

So mastering the art of the ask is seeing things from different perspectives and then speaking to that perspective. Because when you do that, your jury, your team, your clients or customers, the people you serve, they will advocate for you. They will know what you want,and they will be delighted to ask for it on your behalf because they believe in you. And you will have given them the assets, the evidence, the stories that they can take out and advocate for you.

Ultimately, it’s all about building belief. An advocate knows how to build belief, first our own, so that we can ask with delight, and then others’, those we lead, those we sell to, those we serve and those we want to eat their broccoli.

When you do this, people advocate for you in ways you’d never imagine. It happened to me in the courtroom.

I was a very young attorney, and this was a big case. I represented a very well known and respected surgeon, and I was determined to be the best possible advocate for him. I had prepared for the cross examination of the other side’s expert for months. And I was ready. When it came time to cross examine that expert, I was in flow. Time had no meaning. I put down my notes, I put down my legal pad and I just remembered. Everything that I had read and reviewed, page numbers of depositions, articles, they were just at the top of my head.

It was a moment that I will never forget. The expert was squirming. He was embarrassing himself, trying to distance himself from things he’d said and written. I knew it was coming to lunchtime but I didn’t have that much more to go. I wanted to finish my cross exam before the lunch break so that I would leave the jury with the memory of me really eviscerating this witness before lunch. And I was getting there. Then the judge looked at the clock. She said, “You know, it’s coming time for a lunch break.” As an advocate, I’m always aware of the jury’s experience. I would never say “Oh, Judge, I’m almost done. Please let me finish.” Because what if one of the jurors is starving? What if one of the jurors really has to go to the bathroom? And then they resent me for the rest of the trial because I stopped them from what they needed. So I nodded my head.

But one of the jurors yelled out to the judge “Let her finish!” And then the Judge asked them “Do you want to finish cross examination before lunch?”

They all nodded, so she let me continue.

That juror advocated for me.She made me feel like I was doing a good job and reinforced what I already believed. She made me believe in my case even more, and I finished my cross examination.

It was the best cross examination I have ever given. And we won that case. That juror became my advocate because she believed. I had built belief in her.

You can do this too. This is not the job of an attorney. It’s the job of a parent trying to get their child to eat broccoli. And all you need to do is to recognize that advocating is a skill and that you can learn it. You can practice it and master it. And you will win.

Schedule A Call With Heather

Subscribe to Heather’s newsletter, connect with her on social media or purchase one of her books.

InstagramLinkedInFacebookTwitterYouTube

You are an advocate. I don’t care if you are a leader, a sales professional or a teacher. It doesn’t matter if you’re a founder, an entrepreneur or a parent. You advocate every day.

Advocating is building belief. If you’ve ever told someone they have to watch Ted Lasso, you’re advocating for Ted. You believe in the show, and you want others to believe enough to watch. If you’re a leader who wants the team to return to the office, you’re advocating for change. You believe returning to the office is a good thing, and you want your team to believe as well. Salespeople advocate for their products or services. They believe in what they’re selling, and they want prospects to believe. Founders advocate for their ideas and businesses. They want investors to believe. All of these people are advocates.The simplest illustration of advocating is when you want a child to eat their broccoli. You believe it’s something the child should eat, and you want them to believe it is something they should eat…You’re advocating for broccoli.

You’re a leader-trying to lead the child to eating broccoli.

You’re selling broccoli.

You’re in “customer experience” – providing the experience of broccoli.

But most of all, you’re advocating. You want the child to believe in broccoli enough to eat it. And ideally, the child will tell their siblings how amazing the broccoli is. When you’re very good at advocating, you turn people around you into advocates.

I know a lot about being an advocate. I was a trial attorney for over 20 years. One of the (nicer) things that people call trial attorneys is “advocates”. We build belief. We lead the jury to making the decision we want them to make. We sell our case, our story and our evidence. We provide an experience for the jury, and we hope that at least one juror will advocate for us and our client as they deliberate.

Providing a good experience to my jurors was very important to me during my trials. I wanted every juror to feel seen, safe and special. And I wanted them to know I valued them and their time. So I talked fast. I tried not to hesitate and look for information but to have it at my fingertips. I thought moving fast was a service and that the jury believed that I wanted to help them. But then a court reporter asked me to slow down, as I spoke so fast it was making his job difficult. And I realized that my speed may be making the jury’s job difficult too.

I changed my perspective on the way to provide the best experience and I became a better advocate. You want to do the same as you’re advocating. You have a jury too. Your jury is the person who has to believe in order for you to win.

Leaders – it is your teamSales professionals – it is your prospects.Customer experience professionals – it is your clients/customers.Parents – it is your children.

A good advocate tries to see the world from their jury’s perspective and is willing to ask questions to understand that perspective more thoroughly. Then they are willing to make changes as their understanding of their “jury’s” perspective changes.

When you’re advocating, you’re leading, selling and providing an experience. And you do all three all the time. If you’ve ever read Daniel Pink’s To Sell Is Human, you know he makes the case that we are all in sales. He’s right. You’re selling your ideas, your products, your innovations and your broccoli.

But leading is also human, and you’re always leading. If you want your boss to give you a raise, you’re trying to lead them to that decision. When you want someone to go on a date with you, you’re leading them to believe that date will be worth their time. Leading and selling are ways of building belief, and they are human.

So is serving, or creating an experience. You want to create an experience of broccoli for your child so they’ll keep eating it. You want to create an experience of dating you for that potential partner, so they’ll go out with you again.

Advocating is leading, selling and serving on steroids. It’s all of those things, to the nth degree. Because when you get good at building belief, you have a lot of power. And when you’re very good, you turn your “jury” into your advocates. This was one of my goals in the courtroom. It saved me from a loss in one of my cases.

I defended doctors in medical malpractice cases in Philadelphia, and we had 12 jurors in our cases. Civil cases don’t need to be unanimous. We need to have ten of the twelve jurors agree in order to win. But in one of my cases, they couldn’t reach that number. That means we had a mistrial. Sometimes, when there’s a mistrial, the judge asks us to talk to the jury and in this case she did. The jury told us that when they first started deliberating, nine of them wanted to find for the patient. That would mean I’d lose. But then the three who believed in me, my client and our cases started advocating for us.

They started pointing out evidence I’d shown the jury. They told stories I’d told. And over time they persuaded one juror, and then another. Ultimately the jury was tied – six believed the patient had won, and six believed we had won. The jurors who believed in me and my case saved me from a loss that day. And when we retried the case – we won.

You can turn the people around you into your advocates as well. If you are a leader, and you are advocating for change, you are much more likely to get that change if the people on your team become your advocates. If you’re in sales, and you turn a prospect or client or customer into an advocate, then they send other business to you. And if you’re in a customer experience or service role, you want people to stay and you want them to refer other businesses. When you teach people how to advocate for you by advocating effectively to them, and giving them stories and evidence to advocate for you, you turn them into your advocates.

But what do you have to do in order to build belief and turn others into your advocates? It’s three steps. It is knowing what you want, asking for it out loud and with delight, and mastering the art of the ask.

Most of the time in a business setting you know what you want. You want the sale, you want the client, you want the customer, you want the positive review. You want the person to go out and advocate for you. If you’re a leader you want that change to happen and to happen in a way that the team is supportive of and even delighted about it.

And then you ask with delight. Now that part of the advocacy, three steps, is really making sure that you are in full belief. When it comes to belief, you go first. A leader must believe in the change they advocate for. A salesperson must believe in the product or service. A customer experience professional must believe in the service. And that is where that second step comes in. It’s your belief, your delight.

The third step is mastering the art of the ask. This is where facts become evidence that actually proves something to someone. Facts are never enough to build belief. In the courtroom, everyone in the room has the same facts. But we use it to turn it into evidence in different ways to prove different things. The same is true with stories. In the courtroom we told stories of what had happened in different ways and from different perspectives, in order to influence our juries.

You have your juries too. And if you can learn how to master the art of the ask, that’s where you become a strong advocate and you start getting what you want.

That’s why I always say facts tell stories sell. But advocates win. Because storytelling isn’t enough. Storytelling is a vital skill in business. But when there’s an opposing story – broccoli versus brownies, change that a leader wants versus staying the same, your product versus a competitor’s product, your experience versus someone else’s experience – storytelling isn’t enough. You’ve got to learn to advocate to turn stories into proof and facts into evidence.

And that begins with seeing things from the other person’s perspective. You must learn to see things from your jury’s perspective, the people that you’re serving, the people you are leading, the people you are selling to, you need to see things from their perspective.

Communicating is sharing perspectives. Advocating is changing them.But you can’t change someone’s perspective until you really know their perspective and where it comes from. And until you understand that there are different perspectives, there are different ways of seeing this.

So mastering the art of the ask is seeing things from different perspectives and then speaking to that perspective. Because when you do that, your jury, your team, your clients or customers, the people you serve, they will advocate for you. They will know what you want,and they will be delighted to ask for it on your behalf because they believe in you. And you will have given them the assets, the evidence, the stories that they can take out and advocate for you.

Ultimately, it’s all about building belief. An advocate knows how to build belief, first our own, so that we can ask with delight, and then others’, those we lead, those we sell to, those we serve and those we want to eat their broccoli.

When you do this, people advocate for you in ways you’d never imagine. It happened to me in the courtroom.

I was a very young attorney, and this was a big case. I represented a very well known and respected surgeon, and I was determined to be the best possible advocate for him. I had prepared for the cross examination of the other side’s expert for months. And I was ready. When it came time to cross examine that expert, I was in flow. Time had no meaning. I put down my notes, I put down my legal pad and I just remembered. Everything that I had read and reviewed, page numbers of depositions, articles, they were just at the top of my head.

It was a moment that I will never forget. The expert was squirming. He was embarrassing himself, trying to distance himself from things he’d said and written. I knew it was coming to lunchtime but I didn’t have that much more to go. I wanted to finish my cross exam before the lunch break so that I would leave the jury with the memory of me really eviscerating this witness before lunch. And I was getting there. Then the judge looked at the clock. She said, “You know, it’s coming time for a lunch break.” As an advocate, I’m always aware of the jury’s experience. I would never say “Oh, Judge, I’m almost done. Please let me finish.” Because what if one of the jurors is starving? What if one of the jurors really has to go to the bathroom? And then they resent me for the rest of the trial because I stopped them from what they needed. So I nodded my head.

But one of the jurors yelled out to the judge “Let her finish!” And then the Judge asked them “Do you want to finish cross examination before lunch?”

They all nodded, so she let me continue.

That juror advocated for me.She made me feel like I was doing a good job and reinforced what I already believed. She made me believe in my case even more, and I finished my cross examination.

It was the best cross examination I have ever given. And we won that case. That juror became my advocate because she believed. I had built belief in her.

You can do this too. This is not the job of an attorney. It’s the job of a parent trying to get their child to eat broccoli. And all you need to do is to recognize that advocating is a skill and that you can learn it. You can practice it and master it. And you will win.

Schedule A Call With Heather

Subscribe to Heather’s newsletter, connect with her on social media or purchase one of her books.

Instagram

LinkedIn

Facebook

Twitter

YouTube

#belief #advocate #sales #customerexperience #leadership

When you’re advocating for something important to you, your emotions can run high. Whether you are a leader advocating for change you really believe in, a salesperson advocating for a product you know will work for your client, or a founder advocating for your idea that will change the world, it’s emotional. And if you’re advocating for yourself, your ideas and your potential it’s impossible not to feel that deep in your bones.

An advocate needs to know how to manage their own emotions. And they collect more wins when they’re tuned into others’.

In my work I always say first you advocate TO yourself, then you advocate FOR yourself (your ideas, products, services or potential). In the first part your jury is you. You are the person you want to persuade or influence. Then, your jury is your team, clients, customers, investors, bosses, friends or family. Both juries have emotions, and the better you understand them the more likely you are to win.

I just finished the book Energy Rising: The Neuroscience of Leading With Emotional Power by Dr Julia DiGangi. I really enjoyed this book and the insights it provided on how to use emotions to become a stronger advocate. Here are three ways emotions impact your ability to advocate.

1. “Your brain runs on energy, not strategy.” Dr Julia DiGangi

Your brain runs on energy. That means that if you don’t have a handle on your energy/emotions, you don’t have a handle on your brain.

This is why I meditate. Meditating allows me to find the space between a stimulus and a response. In the courtroom, the stimulus might have been a witness lying about my client. My immediate emotion was anger, frustration and injustice. Your immediate emotions don’t always resonate with your “jury” – the people you want to persuade and influence. So I’d use that space to decide which emotions would serve me in that setting, and find beliefs that could engender those emotions.

I recently taught a class on meditation in The Self Advocacy School. I shared the forms of meditation I’ve tried over my 28 years of practice, and how those who don’t want to meditate can still get its benefits. If you’re interested in that class, join SAS here. It’s only $97 a month and you’ll have access to that class and all of the other classes, as well as live coaching every week and a very supportive community. You can cancel anytime, and the doors are closing in February.

When you’re able to harness your emotions and use them to advocate, you are guaranteed to collect more wins.

2. Humiliation takes your power, and worthiness can’t be linked to your activities.

Dr DiGangi has 8 emotional codes in her book, and 3 and 4 resonated most with me. Code 3 talks about humiliation, and the ways it takes our power. I’ve seen that first hand. In the courtroom there’s a winner and a loser, and the results are public. That means there’s a lot of opportunity for advocates to feel humiliation. At the beginning of my career, I wasn’t afraid of losing. My worth was not yet tied to wins (as I didn’t have any yet!). This made me more aggressive, more daring and it made advocating much more fun.

Then I started winning. People started talking about how good I was and how much I won. They started to expect me to win. Suddenly, my worth WAS tied to winning. And I became petrified of losing. I anticipated the humiliation if I didn’t win the case everyone expected me to win, and the risk that I would lose my worth with one courtroom loss. There’s a saying “nothing fails like success’ ‘ and for me that meant that all of my successes set me up for fear of the shame and humiliation of losing. My worth was entirely linked to my wins.

That was dangerous for me, and it’s dangerous for you. You might not be advocating in the courtroom, but your wins may still be public. You’re a leader advocating for change, and your team is rejecting it. You’re a salesperson advocating for your product, and your customer chooses a competitor. You’re a doctor advocating for a surgery, and your patient decides against it. If your worth is tied to the change, the product or the surgery, you’re in trouble. You’ve got to tie your worth to something more stable. (For me, it was a simple change. I tie my worth to the love I give and get).

When your worth is no longer tied to “winning”, you’re much more likely to take chances, enjoy advocating and ultimately, counterintuitively, you are more likely to win.

3. You’ve got to be magnetic.

A strong advocate is magnetic. When I teach people to advocate,it’s three steps. 1: Know what you want. 2: Ask for it, out loud and with delight. 3: Master the art of the ask. The second step is where the magnetism lies. If you ask with delight, others are delighted to give you what you want. If you don’t – watch out.

That means your energy can’t depend on their response to your ask. Dr DiGangi defines codependents as those who don’t know how to regulate their own nervous system so they try to get someone else’s behavior to do it. When you’re advocating for what you want, it’s easy to rest your emotions on whether someone else gives you what you want. But that foundation is far too shaky. You have to embody the emotion you want others to return. For me, that’s always delight. When I ask with delight, I’m far more likely to receive. And when I ask with delight, receiving isn’t as important. I’ve found my delight and often that’s enough.

You are an advocate. Whether you’re asking your kids to eat their vegetables, your partner to do the laundry, your team to come into the office or your customer to buy more products – you are advocating. Harness the energy of your emotions well and your ability to collect your wins will multiply.

I hope that you approach this holiday season with delight if that’s accessible to you. For some, this is a very hard time of year and delight can’t be found. It may be that peace or even patience to get through it is the best you can imagine. Whatever the best is for you, I hope you find it.

Next week the newsletter is on break for the holiday. Then I have a lot of interesting new things coming your way, and a little change to the newsletter is one of those things. Stay tuned for that!

Schedule A Call With Heather

Subscribe to Heather’s newsletter, connect with her on social media or purchase one of her books.

InstagramLinkedInFacebookTwitterYouTube

When you’re advocating for something important to you, your emotions can run high. Whether you are a leader advocating for change you really believe in, a salesperson advocating for a product you know will work for your client, or a founder advocating for your idea that will change the world, it’s emotional. And if you’re advocating for yourself, your ideas and your potential it’s impossible not to feel that deep in your bones.

An advocate needs to know how to manage their own emotions. And they collect more wins when they’re tuned into others’.

In my work I always say first you advocate TO yourself, then you advocate FOR yourself (your ideas, products, services or potential). In the first part your jury is you. You are the person you want to persuade or influence. Then, your jury is your team, clients, customers, investors, bosses, friends or family. Both juries have emotions, and the better you understand them the more likely you are to win.

I just finished the book Energy Rising: The Neuroscience of Leading With Emotional Power by Dr Julia DiGangi. I really enjoyed this book and the insights it provided on how to use emotions to become a stronger advocate. Here are three ways emotions impact your ability to advocate.

1. “Your brain runs on energy, not strategy.” Dr Julia DiGangi

Your brain runs on energy. That means that if you don’t have a handle on your energy/emotions, you don’t have a handle on your brain.

This is why I meditate. Meditating allows me to find the space between a stimulus and a response. In the courtroom, the stimulus might have been a witness lying about my client. My immediate emotion was anger, frustration and injustice. Your immediate emotions don’t always resonate with your “jury” – the people you want to persuade and influence. So I’d use that space to decide which emotions would serve me in that setting, and find beliefs that could engender those emotions.

I recently taught a class on meditation in The Self Advocacy School. I shared the forms of meditation I’ve tried over my 28 years of practice, and how those who don’t want to meditate can still get its benefits. If you’re interested in that class, join SAS here. It’s only $97 a month and you’ll have access to that class and all of the other classes, as well as live coaching every week and a very supportive community. You can cancel anytime, and the doors are closing in February.

When you’re able to harness your emotions and use them to advocate, you are guaranteed to collect more wins.

2. Humiliation takes your power, and worthiness can’t be linked to your activities.

Dr DiGangi has 8 emotional codes in her book, and 3 and 4 resonated most with me. Code 3 talks about humiliation, and the ways it takes our power. I’ve seen that first hand. In the courtroom there’s a winner and a loser, and the results are public. That means there’s a lot of opportunity for advocates to feel humiliation. At the beginning of my career, I wasn’t afraid of losing. My worth was not yet tied to wins (as I didn’t have any yet!). This made me more aggressive, more daring and it made advocating much more fun.

Then I started winning. People started talking about how good I was and how much I won. They started to expect me to win. Suddenly, my worth WAS tied to winning. And I became petrified of losing. I anticipated the humiliation if I didn’t win the case everyone expected me to win, and the risk that I would lose my worth with one courtroom loss. There’s a saying “nothing fails like success’ ‘ and for me that meant that all of my successes set me up for fear of the shame and humiliation of losing. My worth was entirely linked to my wins.

That was dangerous for me, and it’s dangerous for you. You might not be advocating in the courtroom, but your wins may still be public. You’re a leader advocating for change, and your team is rejecting it. You’re a salesperson advocating for your product, and your customer chooses a competitor. You’re a doctor advocating for a surgery, and your patient decides against it. If your worth is tied to the change, the product or the surgery, you’re in trouble. You’ve got to tie your worth to something more stable. (For me, it was a simple change. I tie my worth to the love I give and get).

When your worth is no longer tied to “winning”, you’re much more likely to take chances, enjoy advocating and ultimately, counterintuitively, you are more likely to win.

3. You’ve got to be magnetic.

A strong advocate is magnetic. When I teach people to advocate,it’s three steps. 1: Know what you want. 2: Ask for it, out loud and with delight. 3: Master the art of the ask. The second step is where the magnetism lies. If you ask with delight, others are delighted to give you what you want. If you don’t – watch out.

That means your energy can’t depend on their response to your ask. Dr DiGangi defines codependents as those who don’t know how to regulate their own nervous system so they try to get someone else’s behavior to do it. When you’re advocating for what you want, it’s easy to rest your emotions on whether someone else gives you what you want. But that foundation is far too shaky. You have to embody the emotion you want others to return. For me, that’s always delight. When I ask with delight, I’m far more likely to receive. And when I ask with delight, receiving isn’t as important. I’ve found my delight and often that’s enough.

You are an advocate. Whether you’re asking your kids to eat their vegetables, your partner to do the laundry, your team to come into the office or your customer to buy more products – you are advocating. Harness the energy of your emotions well and your ability to collect your wins will multiply.

I hope that you approach this holiday season with delight if that’s accessible to you. For some, this is a very hard time of year and delight can’t be found. It may be that peace or even patience to get through it is the best you can imagine. Whatever the best is for you, I hope you find it.

Next week the newsletter is on break for the holiday. Then I have a lot of interesting new things coming your way, and a little change to the newsletter is one of those things. Stay tuned for that!

Schedule A Call With Heather

Subscribe to Heather’s newsletter, connect with her on social media or purchase one of her books.

Instagram

LinkedIn

Facebook

Twitter

YouTube

#communication #choices #selfadvocacy #perspective #selfhelp