So welcome to our session on communicating and negotiating effectively without feeling like an imposter. So before we start, um maybe a little bit about myself first and who I am here today to tell you all about this and I see that the slides are actually working as well.OK. So as you can see, um my name is Katherine Sturm. Katherine with A K and Sturm just like Storm, but with a U instead of GEO for, in fact, it is actually German and means Storm. Um This is where I grew up, but I'm based in Ireland. So I've been living in Ireland for the last almost 10 years now. Time really flies. And this is also where I set up my company, which is called the best possible you back in 2018. And in fact, I've not always been an entrepreneur myself. Um I was actually climbing up the corporate ladder myself in the tech industry as a woman in tech from really entry level positions like business development sales in an a company called Oracle. And then most of my time, I managed a people of up to 12 direct reports in a company that you might be familiar with called sales force in business development and sales environment. So a lot of communicating, a lot of negotiating on a very regular basis, all surrounded by men. So this is something probably that you're familiar with, right? OK.

So today is not about me today is all about you and on you like how you can brush up your communication and negotiating skills. And my goal is really to share a couple of tips and tricks that have helped me to get where I am today. But also that I've seen working for other successful women in the businesses. Ok. So when I think back on my career journey and even my own entrepreneurial journey is something that I usually come across. Um as is that sometimes when we think about developing ourselves, we think we need to get another degree, we need to get another training. We might need to get another certificate first before we can be successful before we can apply for a role before we can ask for that race before we can ask for a promotion or before we can actually get to where we really want to be. Does that sound familiar to anybody in the audience? Give me a quick. Yes. And you're like, yeah, that actually resonates with me. But the thing is what we find in um in the channel. Yes. A lot of yes is here good. So there's a very interesting fact out there from the Car Energy Institute of Technology that says 85% of your financial success is due to your personality and your ability to communicate, negotiate and lead. And shockingly, only 15% is due to technical knowledge.

Think about this for a second, 85% of your financial success personality communicate to negotiating and leading on only 15% due to a technical knowledge. And that counts across no matter how technical your role might actually be. Because I'm aware we are probably in a very broad audience today and everyone has different roles in different parts of the businesses. So what usually tends to happen when you think about this is like now we see a trend that actually the soft skills are becoming more and more important nowadays. It's more about the EQ nowadays than it is actually about the IQ as such. And when you think about those things as well is this is when we often, especially as women spot on Kalina. Yes, I like it. So especially as women, we always kind of tend to hold ourselves back when it comes to our own abilities and skills. Would you agree? So this is how it actually looks like this is where also the new trendy word and poster syndrome comes in. What we think others know is usually a lot more, we think everyone knows everyone else is better, deserves that role more than we do deserves that seat at the table.

Um We don't know as much as everyone else, we tend to put ourselves here whereas is in reality we are here or even further ahead. So I think that graphic really shows, um and explains in a very easy and simple nutshell concept, what imposter syndrome is and what your reality most of the time actually looks like. And that actually brings me to my very first point today because before how do we actually even go out there and communicate with others and negotiate with others? It is the perception of ourselves the way we communicate with ourselves internally in our minds in our head that we need to change. First, does that make sense for everyone so far? Great Shruti saying, lost the spot on. Ok, brilliant. So what does that actually mean? So when we talk about like self talk, so first of all, we need to put like change the perception of ourselves and how we talk to us in our mind first before we start communicating with others. So everyone, here's the bad news. Everyone has an inner critic for like, especially as women, our inner critic uh have the feeling sometimes is a little bit bigger. Um And it sometimes becomes even our biggest worst enemy as well.

So we're really good in supporting others and really, you know, being empathetic with others and taking care of others. But when it comes to ourselves, it's sometimes a little bit of a different story, right? So the inner critic is something um that is natural. So this is how our brain is basically wire, this is also called what the negative bias is if somebody has already heard about this. So the negative bias is basically coming from a time when we were still living in caves, when we were hunting our own food, basically. And you know, our brain wanted to keep us safe. It's our natural survival instinct if you want. And back in the days, I think we would all agree that it served us a lot to keep us, yeah, physically safe. But nowadays, in the environments that we are in that like the food is provided for and we live in a very still very good world today. Most of the times it actually gets into our way, it gets into our way when it comes to pushing ourselves outside of our comfort zone, facing the unknown and facing certain fears, right? Anybody familiar with this, that inner voice is always an overdrive that he says, yeah, that's, that's a really, really good point.

And so the good news about all of this is now that we are aware of like the inner critic and also what I sometimes call actually the monkey. So this inner critic, you can easily give it a name by the way as well. So when I work with my clients, we often give the monkey a name and why the monkey um it's based on a really interesting book that you might find useful. It's called The Chimp Paradox Chimp Paradox by Professor. Um I think it's Doctor Steve Peters and he explains the concept of that inner monkey and we can't really change the monkey. We can't make it go away. But the only thing you can change is how we actually manage it. So how we teach it to behave. And that's the good thing because in the end, it's all about us in the end to make the decision on how we want to look at things. And this is also the way why um affirmations work really well or like journaling meditation, really all those exercises to shift you naturally away from this negative bias of your brain, practicing gratitude for instance, and really focus on the positive things. And affirmations can be simply a post it, a post it that you stick to your laptop, the mirror wherever you can like be simply be reminded of those kind of things um to empower you with positive thoughts. And if you're wondering like, yes, great Catherine.

But what will I put on those post? Its let's have a look at a couple of concrete examples here. So you can see here on the left hand side, the negative self talk, it's in red. It's more like what I also like to call the red platform basically. So this is the typical thought sometimes that you might be familiar with like I'm weak. Oh Time will never change. I will not try again. Things are never good enough. I can't do this. I'm not sufficient. All those things that sometimes tend to kind of creep up without in the critic. On the other hand, you see the empowering green platform version of it instead of saying nothing is good, everything will work out. I am worthy. I will not stop trying best. The best is yet to come. I can do this. I am sufficient. I am enough. So this is really just to give you a couple of examples. Channel examples of how you can basically twist your mindset around those kind of things as well. And what we are really talking about here is um developing a growth mindset. So some of you might be even familiar with that term. Let me know in the chat if you've ever heard about the growth mindset. So the growth mindset is a concept um that was researched wildly um by a professor called um what's her name? Um Laura, you were saying that she's the one. So it's Carol Dreck. Yes. Carol Dre is a professor at the Stanford University in the US.

And she's done extensive research on what the most successful people out there all have in common. And it is what she found a growth mindset in simple terms. What it basically means is whatever like happens to you in terms of failures, setbacks or whatever it might be, it's not about you. It doesn't mean that you are a failure that you are not worthy of things that you are not valuable. It's all about the skills, your approaches, the tools, the communication that you've been using. So detach yourself from it and you can build on things, you can learn things. Most of the times we tend to forget that the way we actually learned walking as well is by trial and error. So she really cultivates and encourages this kind of type of mindset. So why is this so important? Why have you been talking about this? Um when we're talking about communicating and negotiating? Because in the end, if I always say, if you don't believe in yourself, why wouldn't anybody else? So it will show up in your communication because you might be familiar with this chart. So the way we communicate is only surprisingly 7% by words and this is sometimes what we get hung up the most, right? So the actual word, what am I gonna say? But it is a 38% the tone of voice that you are communicating with.

And then 55% is the body language. More than half the way you show up is the most powerful communication tool. And I think this is very important to also bear in mind nowadays where most of us are still working in a virtual environment. So you if you have something very important to communicate, to discuss or even to negotiate, think twice if like a simple message, a written message is always the right way to do it. So now we have talked a little bit about like what is naturally holding us back and what we can do basically to prepare ourselves before we even go out there and communicate and negotiate with others. So one thing that I wanted to mention you as well because we still live in a yeah, very online world. Be aware that like if you're in an environment when you have a lot of yeah, zoom meetings all day, you're in a marathon, whatever our brain is impacted by us looking down. So there is a little nerve called vagus nerve in the back of our neck that is being triggered into fight and flight response.

So it is very important that you take also regular breaks and make sure that you're not very tense around your muscle area to not trigger that fight and flight response. Because the impact is that we perceive those things that we see here on the screen different to what is reality. So this is something that we can't really control. If this happens to us. From the other side, we can only like um talk about the things today that are within our circle of influence and our control. So let's have a look at those. So the very first thing that I tend to say is before you go out there and negotiate, have an important um conversation or even a tough conversation is be sure on knowing what you actually want. So a lot of people are out there and you know, when you go and, and even um you walk into a negotiation, a salary, no negotiation, a client meeting, a lot of people don't even know what their ideal outcome is. How often do we do meetings without an actual agenda? Anybody guilty of this? Right?

So take a step back, do your due diligence and your homework and make sure that you actually know what you want and what you are aiming for and especially negotiations when um numbers are involved, make sure that you know what is the, the reference price that you're sticking there?

You're anchoring and where is your exit price that you know, where are my boundaries? What am I aiming for? And when I am I willing to walk away from things. And this one brings me also down quickly to, to to the next point. So once you know what you really want, what your values are, what your priorities are and what you really want to get out of whatever negotiation or communication is coming up for, you, make sure that you actually then go and ask for it. It sounds really trivial. But like if you don't ask, you don't get now this is where I sometimes get like the first resistance with people. But like, oh Catherine. But I have to ask for something. Yeah, rejection, fear of rejection, fear of failure. Anybody does. What if, what if I don't get it? What if I fail? What if, don't, they don't say yes anybody. So these are the, the natural tendencies of our brain again that we need to accept. It's the monkey speaking. Remember? And I could say like, thank you for your input. But today I'm gonna switch my mindset and look at it differently because if I don't ask, it's gonna be by default or no, right? If you don't ask, it's most likely gonna be a no anyway. And we sometimes do forget this. So why is there such a natural resistance and fear? We talked about the brain as well, but like especially when it comes to women and I see this all the time.

I know it from myself or a lot of colleagues in the, in the tech industry out there. One thing that we need to be very mindful of if we go out there and communicate and ask for things, it's let's not take things personal. We are very good in attaching our self worth, even any result, our career successes to our self worth and the value, right? Does that sound familiar to anybody? So we think if we don't get that promotion, if we don't maybe close that deal if we don't. So we have a lot of expect expectations on ourselves already and if it then doesn't happen, we simply attach it to ourselves personally. Most of the time we do forget, especially in a business environment. It is not about you as a person. It is about you in the role of serving a certain company. So you have a certain role or a function. And often when we go and ask for things like additional resources, additional head count, salary increases, promotions, whatever it might be, we sometimes forget that it's not about us. It's not about us wanting something and they're not being deserving of things. Why we do go and ask for those things. It's because we are trying to create additional value and benefit for the other party. Does that make sense so far?

So what we are trying to do here is really develop a sense of thinking what is in it for them where it is us, don't make it about you. It's all about putting yourself into their shoes. Think about what do they value? Is it recognition? Is it a better price? Is it money? Is it maybe the title? What is really important for the other party that you then don't need to make it about yourself? That's a very classical and practical um tool um that they teach you, especially in, in tech sales actually that you can use throughout your whole career even in personal settings as well. Good. So we just said we make it not about us, we make it um about them. So always think like what's in it for them and one powerful way of making this message a little bit stronger. That helped me personally um when leading bigger teams um in the tech environment as well, always think about like when you communicate with the other party of why is it important? I think we have in general, a big tendency to always assume that everyone else knows first of all, what we want and why it is actually important. So we tend to focus on the what and sometimes on the how.

But we, we tend to forget about the why is it important that maybe something gets done? Let me give you a practical example. So let's say you're leading a team and you have to have a couple of things done by the end of the week. So you could be going out there addressing your direct reports and say, I think it is in the best of both of our interests that the data gets cleaned by the end of this week so that you can leave without any disruption on your holiday and that our team gets the visibility to serve so that I can then put you forward for a promotion.

Does that make sense? So it's not about just I need you and I want you to do things. It's about like um start with A Y Yes, I like it. So this is, start with the Y Simon scenic spot on a kind of so this is called the Golden Circle. So Simon scenic if you don't know him. Um I kind of just put the name in the chat. There is a really nice video out there on youtube, I think um a couple of minutes long where he explains the Golden Circle as he calls it what we see on the screen here. And he um uses the example of Apple on how they actually build such a really big, big global and popular brands because they don't really sell on like what to do and how to do it, they address on why they do what they do. So I let you um take some notes on this one if you want to check this one out. OK. How are we doing in terms of time? Great. So what we are talking about here is divide for like what is in it for the other party and we are, what we're doing here is we're really making it a win, win situation.

It's a give and take scenario in the end because no matter when you communicate or even if you negotiate in the end, it's always about like evaluating the tourist sites and it doesn't need always to be a price like an actual number, it could be anything. So you ask for some kind of investment in terms of time or anything resources and the other party will always evaluate what is the potential return on investment if that makes sense. So it's all about the input it takes then comparing it to the output, how many times just ask yourself like whenever somebody comes to you and ask you for a crest, how often do you go? Maybe? Oh So what's in it for me? Why does that even matter to me? So this is what we also like um in the sales world, what people call even value sending, think about like what is the value for the other person? What can you give? And that's also the reason when you sometimes hear somebody saying something is too expensive. So a price is a perceived value. So if the value is not big enough to justify the price, it it seems expensive. This is where the whole concept of give and take and win, win come from talking about win, win.

And also, you know, we've been talking about like thinking about the the other parties, shoes, putting yourself into their shoes, trying to understand what their priorities are, what their values are, what, what is really important for them. One very simple trick that everybody can use from today on is the language that we are actually using. So instead of saying I want you to do something, go and actually say we as a team, I see it all the time with leaders actually that like sometimes I feel like there's one leader in a rowing boat trying to get other people in other boats to do something. And those people go like, well, why would I bother? I'm already drowning here. So put yourself into the same boat and have a like a common shared goal, destination and vision where everyone feels like, well, if we work towards this, it is a win, win and something is in it for everyone. Good and last, but not least because we are mostly women in the audience, if not only today and it's a women in tech event. And I know like especially in a very still male dominated industry.

I'm going to ask you now, have you ever come across this judgmental statement that women might be a little bit too emotional. Anyone. We women are emotional, never heard about this before. No, me neither. So I think this is something that like this is probably a little bit of a a bias that we are sometimes fighting against. And my last tip for you today is, you know, don't let yourself label you. So it's again your mindset. So a very practical tip instead of you going out and talking about your emotions at all, stick to the facts. It's all about the facts. It's all about the numbers. It's like the the kind of, yeah, the business case is that you're building like our male counterparts are very analytical. Most of them, let's not generalize but they like fact based things. So that being said don't make it about you and your emotions. But what we've just learned and saw as well is you can and it is actually encouraged to speak about the emotions it can um evoke on the other side. So if we know that people buy from people and it's based on emotions. So if you put something forward, think about like, how will it make the other person feel? Is it like moving towards pleasure or often what we tend to forget is we are shying away from fear.

So it's all about like what is the consequence if we don't get things done? What could be? Yeah, happening. So why do we need to prevent it? Why is it important for them? Good. I'm just conscious of time here. We have six minutes left. So as a recap, I know this is a lot of um things to digest and I see that the chat is going going well. I see a couple of people commenting. Yeah, I think the emotional part is a little bit of, of a trigger. I think we are all familiar with this. So what we've heard in a nutshell here today that you can take away, first of all, improve your self talk like the way you look at yourself. And maybe also sometimes you are not aware of that self talk and your blind spots, get maybe a mentor, a coach, a colleague, somebody you trust to has the best intentions to help you figure out like where is it that you might need to tweak your mindset as well, which is then already the preparation for the next point, know what you want and what you aim for.

What is the goal? What is the agenda? What is the ideal outcome? Number three, if you are prepared for all of this, it's time to go out there and sometimes leave our comfort zone and ask for it. And if you don't ask, you don't get remember, it's, it's going to be a no by default otherwise. And then number four focus on what's in it for them versus you what we've just said. So make it all about them. What is the win, win the value and the benefits for the other party and whatever you encounter. Um Along this way, it doesn't matter what the result is. You're still working. You know, you can do things, don't take those no setbacks and rejections as something personal. See it as a gift even now, you know what you have to work on and you might need a different approach you might need to look for for something else, but it's not personal criticism. Feedback is a gift as Carol Dr used to say as well. I know there was a lot to take in, in, in almost half an hour and I know as well, like in, especially in those conferences we are here and you know, we hear a lot of things. We're taking a lot of theory. One thing that I would like to ask you now is before you actually leave this session today, think about one thing that you've heard today where you feel like a little like action or a little step, something small that you can do beginning from today or tomorrow.

That already might make a huge difference and feel free to share this in the chat with everyone else today to really make sure that you get something out of it because I know it can be very daunting in the world that we out there in like as a woman in. But that's probably the last thing that I want you to take away for today is you are not alone. So don't beat yourself up. Don't be too hard on yourself. We are all in the same boat. It's completely normal to feel like some, you know, insecurity, the thoughts, you're feeling everything, nobody has figured it out. It's up to you and how you look at it, it's up to you and how you manage your little monkey and your mindset and it's up to you if you choose to say like, yes, I'm gonna work on this or if you go away for um from today and say like, hm, it's my imposter syndrome and use it as a simple excuse, well done ladies.

So we have a couple of minutes left in case somebody has any questions, I see Cynthia is saying also my takeaway, remember to ask yes, I think that's a really good one because sometimes, you know, we forget to actually ask what we want. We assume everyone knows what it is. So I'm gonna be sticking around for a couple of minutes if you have any questions. Um if you have to leave or if you want to reach out, connect and continue this conversation. This is my digital business courage. If you want um connect with me on linkedin, this is where I'm mostly active. Um I do post uh things, tips and tricks around these kind of um topics that we touched on today. If you have any questions that you don't want to actually ask in the chat today, that's OK. Sent you a private message and yeah, well done again. Ladies, you showed up for yourself today and started working further on your communication and negotiation skills. Amy saying take we have a plan really good. What is the name of the order of the Golden Circle and Simon Sinic, Simon sick. Good. Laura saying I would like to find more, find out more about the tone as well. I usually stick to facts and numbers and haven't encountered any too much of situations that I often worry that I may come off as cold when it's just facts and points. Yeah.

And I think that's really a good point as well because um we actually feel like, you know, there's a lot of things that we already do to prepare. Um But like this is something really worth looking into. Um And maybe this is also a good opportunity to get like a mental or coach or just a colleague to help you with this, practicing those kind of of voice body languages because this is not typically something that you can just simply do a training online on if you want to learn more about this, um feel free to, to reach out as well or if you have any further questions, feel free to connect with me on linkedin and well done again.

And thanks for having me today.