The latest Superstar Communicator Podcast is an interview with Eliza VonCort who is a presence and impact coach for women and an author of the Women’s Guide to Claim your Space. This is an incredible conversation where Eliza shares many case studies, ideas and tips to ensure you present yourself with confidence.
Key learning points:
In this fascinating interview, which has MANY take aways. Here are three learning points.
1. You can make more impact in virtual meetings by having good lighting; a good mic and push yourself to ALWAYS say something.
2. You can claim your space with your body language: be aware of your posture, particularly if you feel nervous
3. Become aware of those self sabotage thoughts – and the people who surround you. Are they acting in your best interest.
Download the Transcript here:
the Superstar Communicator Podcast
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Read the Transcript here.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
women, people, eliza, book, claim, podcast, space, poverty, communication, absolutely, white, thought, girls, question, interrupt, important, hear, talk, life, programme
SPEAKERS
Susan Heaton-Wright, Eliza Van Cort
Welcome to the superstar communicator podcast. My name is Susan Heaton-Wright, a leading impact speaking and communications expert. My aim is to show you how to make an impact. So you will be heard, listened to and respected for career success. Listen weekly to the podcast and go to our website, www.superstarcommunicator.com Hello, everybody, this is Susan Heaton-Wright. I welcome you today to the superstar communicator podcast. Before we start, I want to share with you some things that we are doing here at superstar communicator. First of all, every month, we are doing a masterclass the last Tuesday in the month 1pm. UK time for half an hour. I’m really really fixed on the idea of having something very concise, structured, focused on a topic. Now this is an evergreen podcast. So what you need to do in order to find out more is to go to www.superstarcommunicator.com/webinar-interest . And I will put this URL in the notes because I know that some people want to find out more. Once you register there, I will make sure that you are always contacted when the next webinar is going to be now as I speak. We have also already done one on virtual presentations, one on virtual meetings. And the next one is on the power of storytelling. So there’s some really, really good content there. Don’t forget to register. I will remind you at the end of this podcast as well. The second thing is that you can also grab your 10 Top Tips to being a superstar communicator. This is really a list of things for you to think about to make sure you’re a superstar communicator. And I will put the link also in the notes. It’s www.superstarcommunicator.com/ten-top-tips . So there’s loads of information there. And I am really delighted because we’ve got another guest on today. This lady is called Eliza VanCort and she is releasing a fantastic book which I have read, which is called a woman’s guide to claiming space. She’s a consultant speaker, writer on communications, career and workplace issues and women’s empowerment specialist. A cookhouse fellow of Cornell University and a member of govern for Americans League of innovators. So let us all welcome Eliza Van Cort. So welcome, Eliza, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I’ve already read your book, the woman slide guide to claim your space. What prompted you to write it?
03:53
Oh, boy, that’s that’s a question. My life. Really, it was a series of events it was take my traumatic childhood, combine it with a head injury. And then have me go out as a speaker and have women Follow me to the women’s bathroom after my talks and ask questions they didn’t want to ask and q&a. And I thought, you know, I’ve learned a lot in my life. And then there are so many things that we struggle with that we want to keep in the darkness. And we because for good reason. You know, we don’t want to push back. And I thought, you know, but we really need to take these conversations out of the darkness and into the sunlight. And so that was one of my main motivations for that was my motivation for writing it. It really is me It’s my life. And all I’ve learned in a book, and hopefully it will help people. That’s the goal.
04:40
I’m absolutely certain it will help people. We are recording this on International Women’s Day, ironically, although it won’t be going out for a couple of months. And the hashtag is choose to challenge and I would say that this is a book about choosing to challenge Mm hmm.
05:02
What do you see in that about choosing challenge? I’m so curious, your interpretation.
05:06
Well, later Later on, you talk about owning the space, but also challenging. In particular men who mansplain or interrupt, make sure that you still have a voice and a place at the table.
05:24
Yeah, absolutely. I think that if we’re going to grow as human beings, we need to challenge others who are trying to make us small, we want to challenge ourselves when we are making ourselves small. But then we also want to challenge ourselves not to make others small. It’s all of these different ways that we need to be challenging. So I love that I absolutely love that.
05:49
And why do you think it’s more difficult for women to raise their voices in business situations?
05:56
Well, women are taught since they’re little girls to be good little girls were told to be nice to you know, be polite to Don’t raise your voice. And actually, they’ve done research that when little girls and little boys or little, when little boys interrupt, they are told, stop interrupting at a much lower rate than little girls. So what ends up happening is the girl start to talk and the boy starts to talk and the girl shuts out. And so we’ve also been trained in all of these different things on how to accommodate other people. And so then suddenly, you’re putting a business situation, and everyone’s saying, Oh, you know, be small Be polite, be a nurture, and then suddenly, you’re supposed to do this completely different thing. And it can be very hard to shift your orientation.
06:40
That’s really, really interesting. Do you know today I was meeting up with a client and we were talking about fight or flight, you know, when, when you’re so shocked when somebody interrupts you? Or says something really rude? And there’s a third part of that that they’ve identified, which is fawning? Have you come across this? Now, I will send you the article. Because I know you will love it. But it’s the idea that you’re so shocked that you fawn and you’re kind and nice to accommodate that person that’s attacked you.
07:15
Absolutely. I think also the other one is freeze. Yes. freezes the other one, I was actually just talking to a client as well, who had been sexually harassed. And she just froze, absolutely froze. And I think that’s where a lot of shame happens for women, because we feel they’ve actually found that women who fight back in certain situations feel better that their recovery is better, because of the question of well, why didn’t you X, Y, and Z? You know, when really now we know from the trauma research that people freeze and fawn? I you know, I, I absolutely think that’s true. When you look at the research out there, you actually find that when people have trauma, they will put themselves back in the position of the trauma to try to beat that thing that got them and it never works. You just continue to be traumatised. And part of that is, you know, fawning over the danger thing, which is just such it’s complex, but it is a real phenomenon. And it’s something that causes I think women a lot of shame unnecessarily.
08:18
And what what is your code of claiming space? Because I know You talk a lot about claiming space, in business, but also in social life as well.
08:31
Well, I mean, to claim space is simply to live the life of your choosing, unapologetically and bravely. And that is what claiming spaces and in my book, I have five different ways that you can claim space. And I can go over those if you want.
08:46
Be great pick us obviously, the people listening to our conversation, haven’t read the book yet.
08:53
Yes, yes. Yes. So the five ways to claim space are first claim space with your body, you know, so step into your power with your voice and your body. The next one is claim space collaboratively. So figure out who you want in your orbit, but also figure out who you don’t. And I’ve always found that that’s one of the things that frustrates me a lot when I hear about networking people talk a lot about who to let in and how to bring people in, but they don’t talk a lot about things like anti-mentors who you want to push out. So that’s the second one the next one is and I you’ll find the I’m a complete nerd. So I do a lot of references to superheroes and sci fi. So this The third one is stop your emotional kryptonite. So it’s do the stop this self sabotaging patterns that we have, whether it’s we’re drawn to toxic relationships, or we have imposter syndrome, work on the things that bring you to your knees so that you remain standing tall. The fourth one is stop aggressors. So make sure that you learn And how to shut down mansplaining, interruptions microaggressions, all of those things that would make you small, you have the techniques to stop that. And you also know how to get allies to help you as well. And then finally claim space united, which is really the intersectional piece of this, I always say, you know, when we rise together, we rise so much higher. And historically, unfortunately, feminism in the United States has been seeped really in white supremacy. I mean, we have been getting things at the expense, often of our brown and black sisters. And we really are never going to rise as women until we understand that if we don’t rise together, we’re never going to rise. And so that’s that was really important to me.
10:45
And before we started the conversation, we were just having a chat about that big point. Do not focus on women per se, you really do put a lens on the fact that for our brown and black sisters, it is a much more challenging life than ours.
11:10
Absolutely. I mean, I was talking to a girlfriend, I get very, again, upset when I talk about this, when I was talking to a girlfriend recently, she’s a black woman. And she was saying, you know, what do you feel when you know your son, you’re when you knew you’re going to have children, because I have two biological sons. And I said, Oh my god, you know, I didn’t know they were gonna be boys, when they came out in their boys have three biological children, and then my nephew, so four kids. And when my boys came out, and they were boys, I just was like, Oh, this is great, and how beautiful. It was just, you know, wonderful. And she said, When black women find out they have boys, the first thought is, Oh, God, I how am I going to keep this child safe? And I thought, she said, because we feel like our black men are being hunted and or and they’re incarcerated mass incarceration. So the first thought you have is, oh, the world this this young boy is going into and I just, you know, how different for us. You know, we get the top of the privilege food chain, right, we get a white boy if you’re a white woman, and then you know, black women are dealing with worrying for the lives of their children. And I think we really need to remember it is an intersect there are things that intersect with womanhood, it’s not just white womanhood is all womanhood.
12:24
That that that’s broken my heart. It really has. Yeah, it’s hard. It’s very, very difficult, isn’t it? And how am we support? our black and brown sisters? Well, I think that my art, you know, what I took, call myself an ally, I’m trying my best I make mistakes. My hand up to that when I make a mistake. And my friends that are that are from the BAME community. They will tell me if I’ve made a mistake, and I take it on board and don’t make that mistake again. How, how about you? Well, that’s
13:05
huge. First of all, I mean, I have people often say to me, Well, I know I’m not racist, because none of my friends say that I ever say anything racist. I always say, if people are not telling you that you’re being racist, then they don’t trust you. because trust me as a white person, you’re being racist. While so you know, it’s actually when someone trusts you enough to share that with you. That’s a real sign that you’re doing something right. But I would say that for me, the hardest thing is if you want to, there’s a woman who she actually is reviewed my book, she gave an endorsement. She has a wonderful book. She also has a TEDx, a TED on called goodish and she talks about the need to be a good person can actually get in the way of you doing the right thing, because it’s so painful to think, oh, gosh, I’ve hurt another human. The good hearted people tend to deny their own racism sometimes, because we just don’t want to hurt people. So the first thing is to believe that, you know, racism is in the air, just like sexism, we breathe it in, we’re going to Breathe it out sometimes. And when that happens, the key and this was the hardest thing for me to learn. And of course, I’m still learning it. But it’s believing people. That’s the first thing just believe that there is an experience out there that you don’t have and that you will never understand. And you just so all you can do is take it on faith. When someone says this happened, this happened. And then secondly, don’t get defensive and try to explain. Don’t say no, no, no, that I if those two things happen, I’ll give you a funny story. I was talking to a friend, and she was a black woman. And I said something I’ll say don’t remember what I said. I probably blocked it out because I was embarrassed. But I said something very clumsy. And she said, Wow, that was really white of you and nice. And I said what? And I said, she goes I have to stop because you’re being really white. Right? And I said No, no, let me explain. Let me explain, explain. And then she said, Now you’re being even wider. And then she said, you know, utilise a, when a black woman trust you enough to share her experience, your only job is to shut up and listen, that’s it. And, and for me, because of some of my childhood experiences, I really wanted to believe that I, you know, I didn’t, I don’t have racism, and the realisation that, that really, there’s a whole world that you will never see, and you will never understand and to believe people, if we can just do that will be night, I believe will be 90% of the way there. Really.
15:38
Thank you for sharing that, um, listeners, I’m sure that this is going to be one of the major takeaways from this podcast. Thank you.
15:48
Absolutely. And you know, the other thing we can do, of course, is make sure that when we’re doing our movements, we’re not talking just about the issues that white women face, there’s a lot of talk, for example of, you know, women breaking the glass ceiling, and that’s great, that’s really important that we break the glass ceiling, but the glass ceiling is there, because there are a lot of women who butted up against that glass ceiling in many ways. You know, we it’s a it’s a problem. There are millions of women in poverty, there are millions of women who in certain countries can’t get an education at all, you know, who have arranged marriages, there, you know, there are women in this country who have been killed in their sleep in their beds by police officers, you know. So So Brianna Taylor, you know, so , we have to remember that when we talk about womanhood, womanhood is not white womanhood, and that we really work on the other issues that intersect with our sisters as well. We don’t just focus on the things that affect us immediately only. And I think that’s incredibly important.
Susan Heaton-Wright 16:57
Thank you for sharing that. I love the idea of you avoiding you saying that you should avoid those who make you small. And I think that there’s a massive message from that. But what happens if you happen to be in a team where people are making you feel small?
17:18
If you’re in a workplace situation where somebody is making you feel small, you know, I talked about the how, so how do you go about finding the tools, because the book really is you can read it from start to finish, and many people will want to do that. But there are some women who don’t have time for that. They just don’t, their lives are too busy. But what they do need is certain skills in the book, so they can go to the index and find those things. So the that is kind of how you want to approach being made small, because everything is different for every woman, we all have different triggers. So it triggers you might not trigger someone else. So the first thing is to figure out what are the things that make me feel small, there are universal things, but then there are things that are specific to each one of us. Once you figure that out, then you say okay, what are the tools that I think will be most powerful and comfortable for me to use. And then you start using those tools. And one of the best ways to start figuring out your How do I do this is to start getting in touch with your own safety scale. And what I mean by that is when women walk in a room, we put ourselves on the scale, whether we know we are or not on one side is complete, physical danger, mortal physical danger. And the other side is absolute emotional safety. And very few of us, thank God, let’s spend much time on the absolute mortal danger, although black and brown women do have a greater probability. But we spend a lot of time navigating the middle, and a lot of time trying to push ourselves toward emotional safety. So what we want to figure out when we walk in a room is where are we on the scale? What is happening to make us feel that way? Because often we just have this feeling we don’t know what it is. So identify why do I feel this way? And then once you know the why, then you can do the how this is how I’m going to approach this.
19:11
Brilliant. Now you talked about trying to be had the power of being the first. Now, it’s likely that you and I are less likely to be the first person in our family to go to university, for example, or the first to run our own businesses in the family. But how do we achieve that? Can we create our own framework? So we do become the first?
19:43
Um, well, I think the important thing is that what we really want to do more than anything is when we’re looking at the first it’s following what you care about following your passion and not letting anyone tell you no, I cannot Do this, you know, that is so important. Because when we are following our path, so much of the time, when things are hard, they found that actually, it let’s say you’re want to go into STEM, for example, when things are really hard, what they have found is that girls will call women will call their parents and their parents will say, well, maybe that’s too hard for you. Yeah, maybe you shouldn’t do that. But when men call, they say work harder. So we want to encourage our girls and our young women to work harder and believe that they can do whatever they want to do. And that it might be harder for them, but they just need to push through. And that is so critical.
20:39
That is a really, really good point. And for the people that are listening, remember that you need to support your girls, your daughters, your nieces, younger women that you might be mentoring, in the same way that you would for men.
20:58
That’s exactly right. That is exactly right, we want to make sure, and you know, there is this idea that women are particularly white women are weak, you know, we’re fragile flowers. And so what we want to make sure we’re doing is not doing that to our women understand we are strong and capable women, we can do what we want to do. And so we really want to make sure that when we’re talking to our girls, we are not trying to protect them from suffering if something’s hard. And I actually think that suffering is not that bad of a thing. I think suffering is actually an important part of life. And when we try to keep people from suffering, often we’re keeping them from their dreams, rather than saying, you know, you might suffer a little bit to get here. And that’s part of your journey. And that’s okay.
21:40
And I don’t know if if you are the generation I’m certainly was when we were told, Oh, don’t be a doctor, be a nurse, because that will fit in with your family far more, even if you’re an a grade person.
21:59
Right.
22:00
And now we have the next generation. And it’s fantastic, that we are able to say to young girls, yeah, try and be a doctor. That’s right. Your opinion about that how things have moved on since, you know, we were in that situation of choosing a career?
22:20
Yeah, it’s really interesting. We are moving into careers that we have not done before. But what’s really fascinating, and I don’t know how it’s been in the last two to three years, but the research from a couple years ago has shown that when women go into professions that are traditionally male professions, the pay grade of that profession goes down. Yes. Which is just. So that’s that’s really, to me, that is some fascinating stuff right there. But I guess what I would say is that we are moving in that direction. And I think that’s wonderful. But really, it has been largely certain women, privileged women, white women, women from multi generations of families, all of those things. And that is the part that we need to work on. Because white women definitely are getting more and more opportunities and our brown and black sisters definitely have it harder. And the stories I hear from the women who are CEOs and professors would make your your skin crawl. I mean, it’s just the amount of constant, unrelenting, everyday pushback they’re getting. So they’re spending so much time navigating that, that they often don’t have the bandwidth to do all the things that they need to do to get to the next level. Yeah.
23:34
And what about less privileged white women? Because that’s another group. That might be underachieving. Absolutely.
23:46
I mean, this is a huge problem is cyclical problem, poverty, intergenerational poverty is huge, and white women in rural areas often get stuck in a cycle of poverty. That, you know, I know, I learned about this. I have a really interesting story about this. When I was younger, right out of college. I took a year off in between college and moving on to my next adventure. And I went to work as a youth worker in the Big Brother, Big Sister programme. And one day one of the other youth workers said, Hey, can you come with me? I want you to come with us today while we do this other programme because I was I didn’t have something to do whatever she said she wanted me I now I know why she did it at the time. I didn’t understand. So he said, Sure. So I got in the car, we pull up to a junkyard, and I’m like, why are we stuck in a junkyard, and a kid comes out of a structure in the junkyard, and I realised that it’s a dilapidated old trailer. So I’m already just like, my mind is completely blown. The kid gets into the bus with us as a little bus and picking up all these kids to go to a programme and the youth worker says to him, so do you have another poem This week. And he goes, yeah. I said, Oh, yeah, she said, Oh, can we hear it and he sing kind of sings speaks it. And it starts with I live in the sticks, I’ll never forget it. And it was this beautiful poem that I, I’m a real, I love poems, my Angeles poems kind of got me through middle school. And I, and hearing him, I thought, this is as good as the best poet you would ever hear, like, it’s so brilliant. And when he got out of the bus, I turned to her and I said, He’s gonna make it, he’s gonna make it. And she said, Eliza, I have been working with his family for three generations, his mother was just as smart as he was, the grandmother was just as smart as she was, he’s not going anywhere. And my heart just went off, you know, it just hit me. And that’s, you know, that, that poverty, if you look at that, think about, you know, anytime we have one group that has an advantage over the others, in terms of getting into the marketplace of ideas, we lose little boys like that, you know, a little girls like that, who have these beautiful ideas and will never hear them. And that’s really, as an artist, that’s part of where my my passion is, I just want part of my book is I just wanted to play a tiny, teeny little part, and making sure everyone is heard. Because what a better world we could live in, if that young man had a book of poetry about growing up in that place, you know,
26:31
absolutely. What we would learn from that.
26:35
Yes, just incredible. And so yeah, I think that that is a big problem. I will pivot on that a little though, which is that, you know, the way I think about these isms that we carry, and what makes things easier for somebody and harder for the out that somebody else is, you know, when you’re born, you’re given a little backpack, and that little backpack, kind of, and then in the backpack, they stick stuff. So for example, they have found that attractive people have an easier time. And that if you’re very, very, very, if you’re off the bell curve of what would be considered attractive, and there are things like your eyes are closed, you know, things like that, you actually have an incredibly hard time getting hired for jobs. So you know, let’s put that in there. And then you put race or you put whatever, and then you imagine two people walking up a hill. And let’s say one is black. And first generation one is white and first generation and somehow that white kid, and that black kid had somebody invest in them. And they were able to break that cycle of poverty. So they’re walking up the hill, and it’s steep for everybody. And it’s hard for everybody, you know, and then some dude with a scooter comes by and just blows by them. And they’re both thinking this is totally unfair. Eventually, they get to a point in their career, where the white guy takes out the poverty brick, and the black guy takes out the poverty brick brick, but the black guy still has that I am black in the world break. And so and the problem is he starts to fall behind. But the white person is looking up at that scooter, that guy in the scooter who is born with a silver spoon in his mouth saying, Wait a minute, this is totally unfair. And he’s tired, because life is hard. And he’s still going up the hill, and he doesn’t have the energy to look behind. And I think, because he’s just seemed so unfair. So you’re looking ahead and not behind. And part of what our job is, is, you know, look behind you, even when you’re tired, there are other people caring more. So Well, I think poverty with white people is a gigantic problem, a huge problem. Once you break through that, if you’re lucky enough to get through that, once you integrate into that world, you’re still gonna have a lot of imposter syndrome, you’re still going to face a lot of things, but it will not be you still will not have to deal with the race. And so that that’s sort of the thing to keep in mind. I think when you’re thinking about these issues is some are easier to it’s easier to assimilate and hide some of these things that people judge then than others.
28:57
And what would your three top tips because I always ask people, three top tips or three things that you would ask your listeners, my listeners, or your readers to take from your book?
29:14
Well, the first is the most important I think, which is believe you have the right to claim space. Believe it, because so much of the time we’re taught that we don’t and if we don’t believe it doesn’t matter how many tools we have, we won’t use them. So believe you have the right to claim space or 50% of the population. The second one would be Watch yourself, when you are safe when you’re with the people you love the most and see how you’re communicating and see Are you being received the way you want to and if you’re not watch the times when that’s happening, you may find patterns. Oh, okay, I speak really fast. And when I speak fast people tune out. Oh, I let people interrupt me even in the safest situation. So watch that, that can help you shore up your baseline of your communication is because you got to start when you’re in your safe, safest place possible. Then once you’ve gotten your baseline to where you want it to be, then start watching yourself, how do you respond when you’re under duress with your communication? And once you figure that out, you can then take those tools and the way I recommend people do do it. Take one tool at a time. Try it for a day, see if it works. So for example, let’s say I have a dude named Chad, who’s constantly mansplaining me. And I say today, I’m going to not let Chad mansplain me. So he starts to mansplain me. And I use a technique where I ask your question, let’s say it doesn’t work, I try it several times doesn’t work, I’m not going to start doing other things that day, I’m just going to go home and say, okay, that didn’t work. Then think about other tools that might work. Try that the next time. So don’t try to do it all at once. Don’t try to be perfect. Just try to go in there. And really methodically get your, as I did, after my accident, build your communication back up to where you want it to be brick by brick.
31:05
Fantastic tips. Now, I’m sure that there are going to be people that would love to buy your book, or know more about you. Could you share that with the listeners?
31:18
Absolutely. You can reach out to me on LinkedIn. I have people reaching out and asking questions about communication all the time. And I love love. Love it. Now I don’t always get back people right away. So don’t be shy, claim some space and ask me twice. If I get back to you. It just means it’s a busy day. But I love when people connect with me. I’d like to ask questions. And then my website is going to be fairly Pretty soon, but it’s still kind of a little tired right now it’s about to get a makeover. But but you can also go onto my website, I send out bi weekly newsletters and they’re not you know, buy things there. Here’s a tip here. I did a podcast and I think this discussion might be interesting. Or let me tell you about this new research that came out. You might find it interesting. So if you’re really interested in the intersection of women in communication, it’s you can join our community of space claimers.
32:08
Fantastic and what is your website called?
32:12
It’s www.Elizavancort.com .
32:25
And I will make sure that this is in the the notes for the website. And finally, your book when is launched and how can people get it?
32:38
Well, it is available for every speaker. I’m one of those telemarketers when I say
32:43
it’s available for presale now.
32:46
But it is available for pre sale now. And you can get it at Barnes and Noble, you can get it at Amazon, you can also go to your local bookstore and say you want to reserve a copy. And if you do think the book is something that would interest you. The best way to support a book is to get it before the week it comes out because that tells the sellers that you are a book that they should buy and stock. So definitely always get books. And I did not know this until I did a book and now every year it’s great to do it, then or the first week of sales is also important. So those are the two big, big times that you can really help an author and help get a message out you care about. So yeah, definitely do that and enjoy it. And if you have questions and you get the book, I hope you’ll reach out to me because I love answering questions.
33:34
Remember everybody we want to support Eliza with this. So order the book before before it comes out
33:42
in presale now.
33:44
rare books are sold.
33:48
Is there anything else you’d like to add? Eliza?
33:56
Yeah, one thing I would say is one question I’ve been getting a lot of lately is how do we claim space during the pandemic with our communication?
34:06
Yeah, in fact, I’d written that down all about virtual Thank you very much.
34:11
Yes, it’s such a great question. I think it’s so important. And I’m going to give just a couple tips because they’re so simple and they’re so easy. And some of them seem obvious, but people don’t do it. So the first thing is get a ring light. sound so
34:25
lights here
34:26
exactly if you cannot be seen if you people are not seeing your face, it’s a lot harder to claim space. People can’t even tell if you’ve interrupt Exactly. She just turned her ring light off. Anyway when it goes off girl’s neck. So get the ring light. Also you can get a little microphone and you can do these for 20 bucks. You really get them on Amazon for cheap. So that’s the first thing Make sure your background is saying what you want it to there’s this hilarious story of our country Sarah Palin was pardoning a chicken and behind her their slot. And chickens. And so they always say when you’re doing any kind of media turnaround, yes, exactly how you get the wind up there, turn around and make sure the background is what you want people to see. Because all these things, send a message out who you are. And you claim space by telling people, you know, this is who I am, you can’t see by right now, I’m in front of a door full of signatures where all of my students sign when they graduate. And I always feel like I love are with me. Yeah, it’s so wonderful. And so I you know, that’s important. And then the other thing is, make sure that you are speaking at least once in every meeting, it’s very easy to not speak in virtual because you just don’t people aren’t comfortable with this genre. So if you don’t have something that you think you want to say, the two things you can do are one parrot and idea. I know that sounds really simple. But in people say well, why should I say something that was said before watch men do it all the time? They’ll be like your job, Bob, that was an awesome point you made? Thanks, Bob. You know, women do not say great job. You know, Jane or Bob, you know, we don’t do that. We can also tell Bob and Jane, they did a good job. And that’s it shows that you’re saying I have the right to say my opinion that I think this is good matters. And then also a question, ask a question. A questions are a really good way to get into a conversation. And I think it’s just important that we all claim space by making sure that we are taking our fair share of the space. Yeah, virtual conversations
36:30
that we are demonstrating. We’re present.
36:33
That’s right, exactly. We’re telling people what we think we deserve.
36:38
Yes. And if we don’t do that, if we don’t claim it, people are going we are going to be less visible.
36:46
That’s right. Well, you know, people will humans I have found will really rise to the level of the of the marker that you give them. So if you tell people you know, treat me down here, or they’ll say, Okay, if you say I want to be up here, I want you to treat me like a queen. People will say, Well, I guess this woman thinks that she should be treated like the queen and she seems to believe it. I better do that. We all know that person. You meet them. You just wouldn’t mess with them. Yes. Because they are saying you can’t. I’m in my power. I know my value. You can mess with me. So I think that’s really really important for us to claim space and, and make peace and let people know, you know, like everyone else. I deserve to claim space.
37:27
What a fantastic way to finish. Thank you so much, Eliza. I have really, really enjoyed reading the book. And I have really enjoyed meeting you for this podcast.
37:43
Well, this was really so lovely. It really was. Thank you so much for having me. I’m really delighted.
37:51Thank you very much. So everyone, you can understand why I wanted to interview Eliza some fantastic takeaways aren’t there. And remember that in the notes for the podcast, I will share some key points from the interview. And remember, if you’re interested in being involved in our monthly master classes, don’t forget to register on www.superstarcommunicator.com/webinar-interest . Until next time, this is Susan. You have been listening to the superstar communicator podcast. Don’t forget to subscribe and review the podcast on iTunes and all that. Please contact us if you want to discuss any topic would suggest a topic for us to include or a guest who could come on to the podcast go to www.superstarcommunicator.com
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