807: How to Develop Confidence, Credibility, and Advocates with Heather Hansen

Pete Mockaitis
Heather, welcome back to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Heather Hansen
Pete, it’s always nice to talk to you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to chat as well, particularly about some of your new insights with credibility that you’re teaching, but, first, we need to hear a little bit about your childhood speedreading backstory. What’s the scoop here?

Heather Hansen
I didn’t know that I was a fast reader when I was a kid. I just read how I read but they started taking me out of class all the time and bringing me to this room where I would sit by myself and it would be dark, and, on the wall, they would put up words and sentences faster and faster and faster until I told them that I couldn’t keep up with what they were putting up on the wall.

And it turned out that I was a really fast reader, and then they would give me tests on whether or not I was actually comprehending what I was reading, and I was for the most part. So, I’ve used that skill, which I didn’t realize that I had, throughout law school. It allowed me to get through the legal briefs a whole lot faster. And now I love to read and I’m really fortunate that I can read a lot of books in a year.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. I’m just imagining this scene like from X-Files with the two-way mirror and people with lab coats, and saying things like, “My God, she’s off the charts.” Was it like that?

Heather Hansen
I don’t know what they were doing in the other room but I know they would give me a box of SnowCaps candy when I was done, so I was a happy camper.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, excellent. You are rewarded. So, do we know what kind of speed we’re talking here in terms of like words per minute rate?

Heather Hansen
I really don’t remember. I just remember that they were quite impressed with the speed at which I read. And I know that now I average about 200 books a year.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s awesome. Wow.

Heather Hansen
Yeah, it’s great. It’s great.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I’m just going to play it out a little bit. So, if you have, like, I don’t know, a 300-page business book, how much time do you spend in knocking that out?

Heather Hansen
See, it really depends because, like I just finished a book that I loved. It was called Golden. Let me think what the subtitle is.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, about silence?

Heather Hansen
It’s “The Power of Silence in a World of Noise” is the subtitle, and I loved that book but I was also underlining it and making a lot of notes in the caption. So, that book probably took me a weekend, and that I was about…I want to say it’s like 400 pages, but lots of footnotes. And then I would go to the footnotes, and sometimes I would look up what was in the footnotes, and I really loved that book. Plus, I had the authors on my podcast.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, we did, too.

Heather Hansen
And so, it was like a little bit of homework. I read a lot of fiction. I read fiction at night on my Kindle, and those I can go through pretty quickly. Sometimes I finish a book a night, depending on the book and depending on how good it is. Again, some of the books you can just rip through. Others are a little bit more time consuming.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, this isn’t even our main topic, but I’m just so fascinated. We talked about speedreading twice before with guests on the matter. It seems like this is just something you did naturally as opposed to a skill or a thing that you learned. But I’m curious, do you actually, I guess they call it subvocalize, read the words inside a voice in your head or not?

Heather Hansen
I think I do. I only know how I read. I never tried to learn this. I know that some speed-readers skim, like they have a certain method of doing it. I think I read the words inside my head but I don’t really know any other way. Even back then, no one ever said, “How do you read?” They were just sort of interested in the pace at which I read, and they didn’t, I think, believe that I was really reading, and that’s why they started testing me in the first place because that comprehension piece was a big deal to them.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, fascinating. Well, that just sets the stage for listeners, that Heather is a super genius.

Heather Hansen
No, no.

Pete Mockaitis
And everything that you’re about to say is golden.

Heather Hansen
Not even close. Not even close. And I’ll tell you something else, so I’ve written two books and I bemoan the fact that I can’t write as well as some of the authors that I like to read. And so, we all have our strengths. Mine is reading, and, hopefully, I hope that one of my strengths is taking what I’ve read and interpreting it for audiences that don’t want to read it, or don’t feel up to reading it, in a way that they can understand. That’s one of the things that I would love to be able to say I do well.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, let’s hear about some of your interpretation summaries and insights when it comes to the topic of credibility. You’ve been doing a lot of work and research on this lately. What’s the scoop in terms of what you’re up to?

Heather Hansen
So, as we discussed in the past, my thing is I teach people how to advocate for their ideas, their businesses, themselves, whether it’s for raises, promotions, new jobs, and to, ultimately, turn the people around them into their advocates. And I do that using what I call the three Cs of an advocate but one of those Cs is credibility.

And I have found time and time again, the other two are curiosity and compassion, but if you don’t have credibility, Pete, you can’t win. I was a trial attorney for many years, in the courtroom, if the jury didn’t believe me, I could be prepared, I could be curious, I could be compassionate, I could be nice, they might like me, but if they didn’t believe me, I couldn’t win.

And for every one of your listeners, your “jury,” and I’m putting that in quotes, those people that you need to influence and persuade to get what you want, if they don’t believe you, you can’t win. So, credibility is paramount. It comes before trust. It comes before compassion. It comes before empathy. And I think that it’s something that people don’t focus on enough, and they don’t know that there are skills to help you build it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, let’s dig into some of those skills and how it’s built. And maybe just to get our curiosity salivating, could you share a particularly surprising, counterintuitive, fascinating discovery or nugget you’ve come about in your work and research here?

Heather Hansen
Yeah, I think that the most important thing to recognize is that you can’t prove something until you believe it. So, for example, if one of your listeners is going for a job, they have to believe that they are the best person for this job, that they have the skills and the energy and the enthusiasm and the talent and the experience to do that job before they’re going to make the perspective employer believe. And if you want more resources, if you want a raise, if you want to be on a certain team, the same is true.

In the courtroom, people have often asked me, I defended doctors when their patients sued them, and people would often ask me, “Well, what do you do if you knew the doctor made a mistake?” And the answer to that is, “I would find something I could argue and believe in.” I wouldn’t say the doctor hadn’t made a mistake because the jury would be able to tell that I didn’t believe that.

And so, for your listeners, they need to believe first, and that means that you have to advocate to yourself, decide what it is what you want to believe, and then collect the evidence so that you believe first, and then you can have the energy of that belief and bring that to the people outside of you that need to believe you and that you need to build that credibility with.

Pete Mockaitis
And it really does resonate in terms of I’m just thinking about, in my own entrepreneurial journey, selling stuff in terms of I think there are times, like, “I don’t know if I’d pay that many thousand dollars for me as a keynote speaker. I’m not so sure.” And so, thankfully, the agency did the selling so I didn’t have to be in that tricky position.

But then later, when I had really developed a training program, like, “Oh, my gosh, we’re getting some results here. You’ve got to buy this if you want your team to be effective with the money you’re spending on their salaries. You just got to.”

Heather Hansen
You just absolutely spoke to it, right? When we can’t advocate for ourselves well, we try to outsource it, and that works sometimes. But most of the time, it comes down to us at some point. And so, you saw the difference between when you were sort of maybe lacking with a little bit of belief in that credibility with yourself and when you were full in. And it’s a different energy and the results are different.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And it just feels good even being able to walk away, if necessary, in terms of, it’s like, “Well, hey, they didn’t have the budget and that’s okay. Hoping they can find someone else who fits with their budget,” I gave them some names, and I’m not thinking, “Oh,” I’m not second-guessing myself, like, “Oh, maybe I should’ve…I don’t know.”

Heather Hansen
Yes, absolutely. You’re not worried that the next thing isn’t going to come along because you believe, and that belief takes a little bit of work. We can talk about the way that I coach and teach people to build that belief but it’s not like you’re just going to wake up one day and believe. It takes collecting evidence, which is what you did. You just described it perfectly.

You did some training sessions. You saw that those training sessions worked. You collected evidence. The evidence fed you energy. So, one of the formulas that I use is credibility equals E-squared, and it’s energy times evidence. You collect evidence like you did. That evidence makes you feel that energy of confidence and competence and ability. And then the energy feeds the evidence; the evidence feeds the energy.

So, it’s great when, like you, you have some pretty obvious evidence. Some of your listeners may be thinking, “Well, I don’t have any evidence. What do I do then?” And we can talk about that.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yes, I’m intrigued. So, credibility equals E-squared, which is energy times evidence, and in a way they’re like feeding each other, it sounds like. You get some evidence and then you get more energy, you’re like, “Oh, yeah.” And with that energy, you might go ahead and discover some more evidence.

Heather Hansen
Yeah, you create more evidence with that energy, and you also look at things differently. So, I work with a lot of women who are returning to the workforce or switching jobs, but oftentimes returning to the workforce after having been home with kids. And so, they’ll sometimes say to me, “Well, I don’t have any evidence that I’m qualified for this job, or that my entrepreneurial journey is going to go well.”

And so, we look for evidence everywhere. So, for example, if you’re a stay-at-home mom and you manage the books for the house, well, then you’re good at managing money and you’re good with numbers, and you can manage books. If you have dealt with children, you’re probably really good at handling conflict. You’re probably really good at managing schedules. You’re probably really empathetic. And so, there’s all kinds of ways to take.

Another example is I was a waitress all through college and law school. The amount of transferrable skills that I could collect as evidence from waitressing, like I’m good with people, I keep things organized, I can think on my feet, I can be fast when I have to, I can manage difficult personalities in the kitchen. All of those things are evidence that I can do the thing that I want to do today. And it’s just looking at the things that you’ve done and playing with it a little bit to allow it to be the evidence you need to feed the energy and then collect more evidence.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’m intrigued here, Heather, I think sometimes, when it comes to evidence, sometimes it’s a matter of the evidence is there, you just don’t see it, and you haven’t taken the time to think about it and look at it, reflect, collect, put it in one place, and go, “Oh, wow, I’ve got loads of experience and evidence.” And other times, I think you might go down that path and realize, “Oh, shoot, it really is in there.” How do we make a prudent distinction and not get sort of sucked into the mental traps as we’re playing this game?

Heather Hansen
I think that you want to find something. In my first book The Elegant Warrior I have a chapter called “Don’t fake it till you make it. Show it till you grow it.” So, there’s always something, there’s always some evidence. It might even be a scintilla of evidence but it allows you to build upon it. So, you’re right, you might have absolutely no experience as an entrepreneur. I didn’t.

In my work as a trial attorney, the cases were assigned to me. They just came in, I didn’t have to do a lot of beating the pavement, or cold-calling, or anything like that. So, when I started my business, I really didn’t have a lot of evidence that I would be a good entrepreneur but I had evidence that I knew how to talk to people, and that I was good at listening. And I knew that those skills were important skills for entrepreneurship, in large part because I read a lot of books about being an entrepreneur.

So, I was able to work with the facts to make them into evidence, which is what we do in the courtroom all the time. Sometimes you’re given really crappy cases, and you have to do what you can with what you have to make some sort of argument to the jury. So, with my clients, Pete, I will often say to my clients, “Pretend you’re the attorney arguing for the fact that you do have something that will make you good for this job. It might not be everything you need,” because we don’t want people out there, pretending they’re ready for things they’re not ready for.

But we do want them to believe in themselves enough to keep going, and that’s where this looking around and really, I tell them to play with the evidence. Look at it from all directions. And one of the main things that I teach people to do is, “How else can I see this? What is another perspective that I can see this thing?” And if you play with things enough, there’s often something there that will allow you to begin, set the foundation for building that mountain of evidence.

Pete Mockaitis
And it’s interesting, as I am conceptualizing this, I’m thinking of almost two different skills. And one is credibility, advocacy, persuasion, and the other is prudent decision-making. Because there are times when we ought not to convince ourselves to jump into something, and there are times that we ought to but we don’t because we’re scared.

And I think I’ve heard it before, it’s like, “Oh, I should really probably get an advanced degree before I do that.” And I’m thinking, “You really don’t need that at all. That is just one clever masquerade of fear and delay that you just don’t need to deal with.” And other times, it’s like, “You know, that is probably the prudent step that needs to precede your masterplan.” And so, Heather, how do we navigate that smoothly without deceiving ourselves?

Heather Hansen
Yeah, and I think that we really need to know what are the true qualifications. And it’s a little bit different for men and women. I’m sure that one of your guests has shared that, I think it was H. Packard. There was a study that showed that when there are certain qualifications for a job, if men only had a small amount of the qualifications, they would still apply, but women thought they needed all of the qualifications in order to apply.

And so, different people lean in different directions. Some people are going to apply for things when they have absolutely no evidence. Other people won’t apply even though they have all of the evidence. We want to be realistic about it. You want to sort of step back. And this is where you need to really weigh what the actual qualifications are. You want to talk to people who have done something similar to see how set in stones those qualifications are. You want to do your research.

You just don’t jump into anything, especially in the courtroom. You want to make sure you know everything that could possibly happen. One of the things that I teach my clients is, “You want to know all of the ways in which you could lose to make you more likely to win.” So, we want to be aware of the ways that we might not meet the mark just yet, that we might have more work to do, that we might have more things to make us as qualified as we need to be. And that’s part of the weighing of the evidence as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. You’ve also got a concept called belief triangles. Can you speak about this and the other super cool tools?

Heather Hansen
Yeah. So, the belief triangle, we’ve talked about one part of it, and that’s the believing in yourself or believing in you. So, if you are talking about applying for a job, the employer has to believe in you that you have the skills and the experience and the education and the training to do the thing. That’s one of the sides of the triangle.

The other side is they have to believe you, and that means that when you make a promise, you will keep it; when you set an expectation, you will meet it. And when you can’t, and there’s times when we all can’t because the thing is outside of our control, that is your opportunity to have a huge multiplication in credibility because that is your opportunity to own it, to own that you couldn’t keep your promise, to own that you couldn’t meet your expectation.

There’s research that shows that leaders who say “I don’t know” to their teams learn more from their teams, and, ultimately, have more successful teams. So, that side of the triangle is making promises, keeping them, setting expectations and meeting them. But when you can’t, owning it and being willing to do that. It’s a mix of vulnerability and authenticity, and it’s extremely powerful.

And then the third side of the triangle is the side that people often forget. And that’s that people want to believe that you can help them. So, someone might say, “Well, this person is very qualified for this position, and I trust them when they set an expectation, I think that they’ll meet it, when they make a promise, I think they’ll keep it, but I just don’t think they get me and what I need, and how I need this job to be done.”

And that is probably the most important piece because people don’t really care if they can believe you and if they can believe in you if you’re not able to help them. So, that piece is really important and part that most people skip.

Pete Mockaitis
So, as I understand it, we have credibility in the sense that they believe in you, like, “Okay, you know what you’re doing,” and they believe that you’re truthful, you’re going to do what you say you’re going to do, and yet that’s still insufficient because they don’t believe you understand them. Can you give us some examples of that?

Heather Hansen
Or you have their best interest in mind. So, if we’re talking about, in DEI this happens often. Someone might believe that their employer is truthful. They might believe their employer runs a great company. But they might not believe that their employer sees them for who they are, and is going to support them and give them opportunities and help them, which is that he’ll believe you can help them.

so if I apply for a job, and I come in and I have a great resume, and I seem truthful, I’ll own that I don’t have this particular degree but I do have this thing, which is a transferrable skill, but the employer doesn’t feel as though I really understand their business and that I can bring my skills to their particular business, they don’t believe that I can help them.

It’s so important and it really comes down to one of the other Cs, which is compassion. I describe compassion as seeing things from another’s perspective, and then putting that into action. When you’re talking about believing that you can help them, you want to see things from the other person’s perspective, what they actually need out of the relationship, and to make sure that you speak to that to build that part of your credibility.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, can you give us some examples of scenarios in which this plays out and what that looks, sounds, feels like in practice?

Heather Hansen
Yeah, so one example is I do a lot of work with healthcare practices, and sometimes people will go to doctors, and these doctors have great CVs and tons of experience performing this operation, so there’s belief in you. Great. And the doctor says, “You know, I think I can help you but there’s a 10% risk of this, and there’s a 2% risk of this,” and the patient believes that.

But they, ultimately, don’t believe that the doctor is kind or empathetic, or understands exactly why they want to have this surgery. Now this particular patient, say, just wants to get back to playing with their grandkids, and all the doctor wants to talk about is, “Oh, you’ll be able to ski.” That patient doesn’t feel like this doctor can help them, and so, therefore, there’s a disconnect there.

Another example is I work with a lot of women who are high up in various technology companies. And if they are talking to their employees, and their employees have all of the abilities and all of the experience to serve them on their team, and they make a promise, they say, “I’m going to be able to do this,” and they do it by this date but they don’t seem to really understand what the leader wants and where the leader wants to go in the big picture.

And there’s someone who, no matter how much the leader says, “I’m an early morning person, and I need to have this meeting in the morning,” they continuously try to push for doing things in the afternoon. They don’t see things through their boss’ perspective. There’s a loss of credibility there. So, that last piece really takes seeing things through the other person’s perspective so that you can speak to that perspective as you build that credibility.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s really powerful. And I guess what I’m thinking about right now is carpet.

Heather Hansen
Okay.

Pete Mockaitis
When our first child became a toddler, we thought, “Well, we just need sort a bigger zone in which he can crawl around and fall down, and it’s okay.” So, we went to get some carpet, and as I was chatting, my wife, she’s big in the health and safety things. So, I kept talking about how, I was like, “Oh, we want something that’s really thick and cushy, and this kid can just knock himself over and we don’t even have to worry about it.”

Heather Hansen
Like a wobble meeple.

Pete Mockaitis
“And good and nontoxic.” And so, he kept interpreting my statement of nontoxic as environmentally friendly, and those are kind of different and there’s often a strong overlap. And so, I almost had to over-correct, I was like, “I don’t care if you plunder and harm Mother Earth heinously so long as my child isn’t harmed.” I do care about the environment, listeners, but I kind of had to over-correct in order for it to be… feel like I was being heard, and I felt a little silly because it’s not what I believe in my heart of hearts.

Heather Hansen
It’s a great example. That’s a great example, Pete, because if that salesperson had said to you, “I have a child,” or, “I have a niece and nephew, and I know exactly what it is that you’re talking about. I see the world from your perspective. You’re less concerned about the damage to the environment and more concerned about the damage to your child.”

“And I have been there, I understand it, and here’s the perfect carpet for you.” Now, they will have built that last piece of credibility.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. And it’s interesting when you call it credibility. It feels right in terms of these three levers. Well, Heather, let’s hear your official definition of credibility, shall we?

Heather Hansen
So, I am a huge freak about words, go back to the reading, and so I always look at “What is the root of the word? Where did the word actually come from?” So, a lot of people in business like to talk about trust, and the root of the word trust is strong. And I think trust is fabulous and it creates strength in a relationship, and trust should be strong, but strength takes time.

Credibility, on the other hand, the root of that word is to believe. And so, I believe that credibility is building belief. And that belief makes the difference, and it’s not only what it allows you to advocate successfully, but, really importantly, it’s what allows you to turn the people around you into advocates for you.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, that’s excellent, and it really gets you thinking in terms of it takes a lot of hard work to develop strong competence and expertise into you’d be responsive and own your commitments and follow through greatly. And, yet, it doesn’t take that much work to convey that you’re listening, you hear people, you relate to them, and, yet, it really is often missing.

Heather Hansen
It’s missing more. It is the thing that is missing most often. So, I’ll give you another example that’s probably the best example that I just skipped over. I have the curse of knowledge on this. In the courtroom. I want the jury to believe in me, to know that I am competent, that I am going to give them the proper evidence, and the proper way, and the judge don’t yell at me, and there’s not a lot of objections and all that stuff.

So, I want them to believe in me and I want them to believe me. I will purposely make promises in my opening that I know I can keep during the course of the trial so that they can say, “I can believe her,” but believe that I can help the jury. That means, Pete, I don’t dilly-dally with my witnesses. I know they want to get home. I know, for example, sometimes I’m in the middle of a cross, and it’s lunchtime, and the judge says, “Counsel, do you want to finish?” and I look over at the jury, and they’re squirming, and I say, “No, your honor, I’d like to take my lunch break.”

I am trying to help them. And, most importantly, I also try to help them with the way that I communicate with language. So, my case, as I mentioned, were medical cases, and because I was on the defense side, I always went second. So, if the patient’s attorney got up and started talking about osteomyelitis, I would see the jury’s eyes glaze over, and I knew that he or she was losing the jury. I would talk about bone infection because I wanted them to believe that I could help them to understand the case, that I saw the case from their perspective, not mine.

Osteomyelitis is a bone infection, but they’re thinking, “I don’t understand what a word he’s saying. I shouldn’t be here. I don’t know anything about this stuff.” But when I say bone infection, all of a sudden, they’re like, “I can trust this lady, and she makes me believe in myself that I can actually handle this case.” And so, that’s that believe I can help them get through this case, and actually do what they have sworn to do as jurors.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s really good. And it’s so funny, because as I imagine a courtroom, I haven’t spent a lot of time in them, thankfully, myself.

Heather Hansen
Yeah, you’re lucky.

Pete Mockaitis
Not that that’s not awesome for lawyers. But if you’re not a lawyer, you don’t want to be in a courtroom very often.

Heather Hansen
No, absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, it’s intriguing because you’re not at liberty to bribe the jurors, that’s pretty basic. And, yet, you, providing consideration for what word will they appreciate hearing, what is their food timing they would like, like these little opportunities you have to, in a way, become a hero to them, and they’re just going to like you, and that goes a long way.

Heather Hansen
It goes such a long way. And the thing is, it is the key to advocating because I am advocating to the jury on behalf of my clients. And because the jurors have that connection with me, ideally, when they go back into the jury deliberation room, if there are some people who aren’t so much down with what I’ve been arguing, they’re advocating for me. They’re saying, “Remember how Heather showed us this piece of evidence? And remember she said this about this?” That is what turns people around you into your advocates.

When you’re able to see the world from their perspective, and they believe that you can help them, they’re much more likely, your clients, your customers, your friends, your family, they will go out and advocate for you if you’re able to get this piece right.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now, you got me. I have the most random associations for you, Heather.

Heather Hansen
I love it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, right now, there’s a scandal rocking the chess world, which just sucked me in, because it occurred at the Saint Louis Chess Club, it’s like, “My buddy Brent…” shoutout to Brent, he’s a listener, “…he showed me that facility. I’ve been in there,” in which this guy Hans Niemann was allegedly accused of cheating, although they don’t have any hard evidence, and it’s hard to even imagine how that’s done in a live chess match which everybody has wanded down.

But a group of four women just showed up, this is were the Hans girls, “And we support him.” And I just wonder, “There’s a whole another story there. Like, who are these girls? Why did they show up? How did he enthrall them? And does being awesome at chess now mean that you have…?”

Heather Hansen
You’re going to have groupies.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes.

Heather Hansen
Yeah, it’s interesting. And it’s sort of, in my keynotes, sometimes I talk about this, when I customize it, depending on the audience, because there’s a difference between raving fans and advocates, and it’s a small difference but it’s an important one. Because it sounds like they’re raving fans, or fans, right? But do they have the tools to actually advocate for Hans?

And I know a little bit about that story. I know Elon Musk has chimed in. I sort of have been keeping an eye on that as well. But I think that it’s important because you want to not only turn the people around you into your advocates, but you want to give them the tools to advocate for you effectively. So, if those women, for example, had evidence that they were presenting as they were standing outside the chess center, and talking to the reporters, and saying, “Here’s a piece of evidence that proves he couldn’t do those things,” then they would be advocates. But if they’re simply cheering him on, they’re raving fans.

And if you own a business, you probably have some raving fans, but are they going out and encouraging people to use your services, to buy your products, to hire you? And there’s a difference there, and it’s an important difference for those of you that are in business, or even for those of you who have jobs and you want a mentor or someone to advocate for you.

You’ve got to give them the tools to do that well. You’ve got to give them the evidence. You’ve got to say, “Look at this thing I’ve done. Look at this raving review I got from one of our customers or clients. Look at the ROI that I received in this work that I did for the company.” So, there’s a minor difference there. And I’m not sure whether Hans’ girls are making that difference but I think it’s worth being aware of.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. And I think I find that story so fascinating because, for me, not that I passionately follow professional chess, but I played a lot of chess when I was younger, and I saw the Magnus Carlsen documentary, which was fantastic. I just kind of like the guy, it’s like, “Oh, that guy seems normal, and kind of like me, and dedicated to excellence.” And I just sort of liked him. And then it was interesting how I found myself so torn and wanted to do all this research on the matter because, to credibility, I was pondering, “Well, which one do I believe and why?”

And I was having sort of trouble teasing out the factors because I was really torn because I thought, “Well, statistically speaking, given their ratings difference, there’s a 7% chance the underdog would win just normally.” But it doesn’t seem like the Magnus that I’ve come to know from the documentary to just make accusations in an unfounded way, that’s pretty unprofessional, so it was so weird. I’m just sucked into it, like it’s a reality hit TV drama. And I don’t know if you have any commentary, Heather, on who’s being believed here and why.

Heather Hansen
I think that it’s interesting. Even the way that you just phrased it, Pete, it really shows a lot of things about credibility. Oftentimes, we start with what we want to believe, and then we collect evidence to support that thing. And so, if you, having watched that documentary, if you’re a huge fan, then it sounds like you’re a little bit more likely to believe him, and maybe looking at Hans with a little bit less belief, a little bit more suspicion than you would be if you were like me, completely new to the world of chess and just read about it in Morning Brew.

And so, we often do have things that we want to believe, or that we’re used to believing, and that we have a habit of believing. And because of that, we just keep collecting evidence to support that thing. And so, part of this, and you can make it into a game, but to look at, “How could I look at this differently? And where is there evidence to support that other thing?”

Listen, ultimately, Pete, I say this to people all the time and people don’t always like it but it’s true. In my cases, every single person who testifies gets up into the witness stand, swears to tell the truth, and then tells completely different stories, and it’s up to the jury to decide what is true. And that makes truth a little bit interesting because every single one of them believes, or at least do think they believe, they swore to tell the truth, believes that they’re telling the truth. And the jury decides what is true.

Well, you get to decide what is true for you, and you can do that by weighing the evidence that you collect. But you want to be sure that you’re aware that you have biases as you collect that evidence, and try to, if not be aware of them, even go beyond that and counter them a little bit.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s very well said. And I think, for me, it was that there was a pretty good case to be made on both sides, thus, creating a real mystery. And then, in so doing, with the reality TV stuff joke, it’s like there is a tension and a curiosity that can suck you in. And that’s why there are so many shows about courtroom proceedings.

Heather Hansen
Yeah, because it’s all a matter of perspective, and how you see things makes a huge difference. Wayne Dyer had that quote, “Change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” But it’s really quite true. You might remember, I think it was in 2015, the white and gold dress. Was that a white and gold dress or was it a black and blues dress? Do you remember that meme on the internet? It was huge.

And people would fight about that to the death, “It’s black and blue.” “No, it’s white and gold.” And it really just depended on your perspective. Scientists, afterwards, did some research on why actually people saw it differently, and it had a lot to do with shadows and what kind of assumptions your brain and your eyes make based on your experience.

So, so many of our beliefs are based on our experience, and when we’re aware of that, we can start to think, “Is this something that I want to believe in? And if it’s not, how can I collect some evidence to counter it?”

Pete Mockaitis
All right, Heather, good stuff. Anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Heather Hansen
No, I think, listen, it’s something I could talk about forever. But, every day, you are building credibility in one way or another. And so, to be aware that you’re doing it and that you can do it effectively will make you better at it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now, could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Heather Hansen
Yes. So, I was thinking about my favorite quote and I had to go with the one that’s sitting here on my desk. It is attributed to Viktor Frankl, though I don’t know that it’s clear that it’s from him. And the quote is, “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” I am big on this idea of choice, Pete, and so I love that quote because I think we get to always choose our response to things.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Heather Hansen
Yeah, my favorite study right now is out of Yale. It’s relatively recent, I’d say within the past two years. And it’s a study that shows that you can tell more about a person’s emotion from their tone of voice than their facial expressions and their body language combined. I love it for a number of reasons. I’m a little bit obsessed with tone of voice, in general. But I love it because it encourages people to do more listening. And listening is what helps you to become a stronger advocate.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Heather Hansen
I think Golden, the one that I mentioned before, that is “The Power of Silence in a World of Noise,” that really had a huge impact on me. I am really focused on listening to silence and making space for quiet in my day as a result of that book.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool?

Heather Hansen
I like Insight Timer. I meditate. That’s one of the ways that I’m able to sort of create that space and able to respond rather than react. So, Insight Timer is a great app for that. And the other one that I like that a lot of people don’t know about is it’s called Marco Polo, and it’s a way to correspond with people. It’s like video text messaging, and I like it for a bunch of reasons. I use it with some of my coaching clients. We’re able to sort of go back and forth during the day and see each other’s faces and hear each other’s tone of voice as we talk about things. And I also like it because it’s a great way to talk to my parents and the people I love, and save those conversations forever.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Heather Hansen
For me, it’s getting up early. I know there’s a lot of people who are not morning people. For me, the first hour that I’m awake, when I meditate and I do my morning reading, and I enjoy my coffee before I work out and walk my dog, that hour is invaluable. And that habit started in law school, I would get up even earlier. I used to get up at 4:00 o’clock in law school because I knew that it was the time that I had before clients would start to need me. And now, it’s just my favorite thing about the day, and it’s one that I would not want to break.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that really connects and resonates with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Heather Hansen
Yeah, I think that the idea that you can turn the people around you into your advocates if you’re only willing to see things from their perspective and then speak to that perspective is really exciting for people because, first of all, it makes them recognize that they can be their own best advocate. And, second of all, they recognize that they don’t have to do it alone, and they can actually get people on board to be advocating for them when they’re not even in the room.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Heather Hansen
So, Heather Hansen Presents is the website. Hansen is spelt with an E-N. And there you’ve got links to all of my talks, to the consulting that I do, to the coaching that I do, my books, and to my podcast.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Heather Hansen
Yeah, I think I would challenge you today to start advocating for yourself, your ideas, your services, the people around you. Start to see how you do at asking for what you want in a way that makes people actually give it to you, and see how well you do with that. Because some people think that they’re good at it, and they’re not as good as they think they are. Others just don’t even try. So, no matter which of those groups you fall into, you will learn a little bit something if you try to do that today.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Heather, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you much credibility everywhere you need it.

Heather Hansen
Thank you so much, Pete. Have a great night.