What if the key to self-advocacy wasn’t being louder—but rewiring how you think, feel, and connect with empathy?
Today, I’m joined by executive coach and podcast host Jamie Lee, who specializes in helping women and underrepresented leaders rise through the ranks without compromising their integrity.
We dive into how empathy and neuroplasticity form the foundation of effective self-advocacy — and how rewiring internal narratives can lead to greater confidence, deeper connection, and clarity when speaking up. Jamie shares evidence-based techniques for regulating the nervous system so you can show up with presence and poise in high-stakes conversations. Plus, we touch on the six types of intelligence you can access to build connections and ask for what you want.
If you’ve ever struggled with self-advocacy or want to communicate with more impact and empathy, this episode is for you.
To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Listen in for…
- Defining self-advocacy and neuroplasticity in terms of empathy.
- Compassion as an action is the key to rewiring your brain.
- Ways to access your parasympathetic nervous system in your thinking brain and get out of your automatic stress response.
- Leveraging mirror neurons with empathy and compassion.
“The brain adapts. The brain grows. It changes according to the practices that you expose it to. Compassion is the missing link that helps us be able to access those self-advocacy muscles for ourselves.” — Jamie Lee
Episode References:
- Book a free hour-long consultation for 1:1 coaching with Jamie: https://www.jamieleecoach.com/apply
- The Empathy Edge podcast: Dia Bondi: How to Ask Like an Auctioneer
- Melissa Tiers’ Anti-Anxiety Toolkit: https://www.amazon.com/Anti-Anxiety-Toolkit-Melissa-Tiers-ebook/dp/B0073HU3EG
- James Tripp’s website: https://www.jamestripp.online
About Jamie Lee, Coach, Trainer, Podcast Host
Jamie is an executive coach who specializes in women and underrepresented leaders who are “allergic” to office politics. She focuses on helping them get promoted and better paid without compromising their integrity or throwing anyone under the bus. In her practice, she blends proven self-advocacy strategies with evidence-based neuroplasticity tools.
Over a decade, Jamie has trained thousands of professionals in effective self-advocacy at leading organizations, including Citi, Unilever, Association of Corporate Counselors, American College of Cardiologists, UC Berkeley School of Business, and Smith College.
She’s also the host of the Risky Conversations podcast, where she has honest talks with thought leaders on topics often considered taboo or “too risky” at work — negotiation, mental and reproductive health, office politics, social injustices, and unconventional ways smart women navigate their path forward despite a flawed workplace.
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FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Maria Ross 00:00
Maria, welcome to the empathy edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross, I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society, it’s great for business. What if the key to self advocacy wasn’t being louder but rewiring how you think, feel and connect with empathy? Today, I’m joined by executive coach and podcast host Jamie Lee, who specializes in helping women and underrepresented leaders who are allergic to office politics rise through the ranks without compromising their integrity. Jamie blends proven self advocacy strategies with evidence based neuroplasticity tools to help clients lead with confidence and clarity. Over the last decade, Jamie has trained 1000s of professionals at top organizations like city Unilever UC Berkeley and Smith College. She’s also the host of the risky conversations podcast, where she dives into bold, honest talks about negotiation, leadership and navigating the workplace on your own terms. We dive into how empathy and neuroplasticity form the foundation of effective self advocacy and how rewiring internal narratives can lead to greater confidence, deeper connection and clarity when speaking up, Jamie shares evidence based techniques for regulating the nervous system so you can show up with presence and poise in high stakes conversations, We also talk about how to be a more compelling communicator and presenter by understanding how mirror neurons work to create connection and how great leaders use them to influence with integrity. Plus, we touch on the six types of intelligence you can access to build connection and ask for what you want if you’ve ever struggled with self advocacy and trying to be empathetic, or you want to communicate with more impact and empathy. This episode is for you. Take a listen. Welcome. Jamie Lee to the empathy edge Podcast. I’m so excited to have you here. You are a coach. You are a podcast host, and I love that you bring this aspect to your coaching around self advocacy that’s really based in science and brain science. So we are going to have such a great conversation about the link between empathy and neuroplasticity and self advocacy and all the things. So welcome to the show.
Jamie Lee 02:57
Thank you so much for having me. I’m genuinely so excited to be in this conversation, because I think Maria, You are the embodiment of all of that right, self advocacy, empathy and neuroplasticity. I love your story of how you bounce back from a brain aneurysm, right to become an advocate for empathy in the workplace.
Maria Ross 03:20
Oh, thank you so much. That means so much. I love it. So I want to hear a little bit more before we dive into all the topics around what is self advocacy and what is the role of the nervous system in helping us emotionally regulate. These are all aspects that I’ve talked about in the past that are really important to having the capacity to embrace empathy and to be more of a human, centered leader. So before we get into all that, I want to hear a little bit about your story and how you got into this work and what makes you so passionate about it.
Jamie Lee 03:52
I am really passionate about this topic, about self advocacy and the overlap of self directed neuroplasticity, because I struggled so much with it myself, and my failure has become the impetus for the work that I do today. About two decades ago, I’m dating myself. I was working at a hedge fund as a junior analyst, and I was very wet behind the ears, and I didn’t know how to advocate for my professional value, and I didn’t know how to speak up and engage in conversations, especially when I was the only female in the room, and also a minority, right? A double minority female, but also Asian. And so I found out in this job that I was making 50% of the going market range. And that was the moment I realized, wow, I had a stellar education. I had a stellar liberal arts education, but I didn’t know how to speak up and engage in conversations that are. Strategic to my career growth, and it really blew my mind when it finally dawned on me through, you know, studying negotiation, self advocacy, career growth, it really blew my mind when I realized the missing link was reframing empathy, right, seeing your self advocacy as an act of service, as a way to help business decision makers make better decisions, and that’s when I realized I needed to share this information with as much people, especially women and underrepresented people, because We want to see diversity. When we have more women, more underrepresented people in leadership suites, they make better decisions. The business does better, right? You’re nodding your head. I’m preaching to the choir. I love it, so yeah. And so I got really curious about how to help my clients, first, how to help myself, and then help my clients reframe self advocacy as an act of service, and I saw that the missing link was helping them see that it is through empathy, and it is also through self compassion, so
Maria Ross 06:14
much to unpack in everything you said, I love it all, and I love this idea of reframing Self advocacy as an act of service, because sometimes people misinterpret self advocacy as bragging or being too pushy or being too aggressive, and usually these are words reserved for women or underrepresented groups, not usually straight white men, but that idea of understanding that you can advocate for yourself, you can speak up, You can use your voice and you can embrace empathy while you do it at the same time. And if you do you will open more ears and more hearts by doing it that way, instead of sort of trying to ram the truck through the concrete wall, which I feel like some people swing that pendulum to the other side of like, oh, I have to advocate for myself. That means I have to just, you know, cram my way through, and I have to just, you know, forget how I’m treating people or how I’m showing up. And I love that you marry those two things. And I love this idea of the fact that so much of what you teach and what you coach on is based in science, is based in neuroscience and brain science and all of that, because it gives people a very tangible way to approach it. It’s not super Woo, woo, right? So let’s just get into it. I want to talk about empathy and neuroplasticity as the foundations for self advocacy, and so let’s do some definitions here. First, first, what do you mean by self advocacy, and what do you mean by neuroplasticity for people that might be unfamiliar,
Jamie Lee 07:44
so self advocacy, I mean a way of communicating to stakeholders and decision makers the value of your ask. And when I coach my clients to advocate for their career growth, I always challenge them to think about, what are the business benefits? How does what does the business get? What does the organization get? The board members, whoever it is that you are advocating with, you, want to think about it through their perspective, right? So that I know you touched on this in empathy dilemma in your book, but that’s cognitive empathy, thinking about the ask, but from a different lens, not from the lens of, oh, what I want is selfish and greedy, but what if what I want actually helps them do their jobs better, right? Right?
Maria Ross 08:38
I mean, it’s a very marketing way to look at it. We you know, I’ve been a marketing executive my whole career, and it’s understanding that you want to look at things from the other person’s perspective, because people are always wondering what’s in it for me, and so for them to be it’s not enough for you to say, I deserve this, because I deserve this. But if you really want to have an impact, it’s I deserve this, because this is what this will do for the company. This is how it will impact performance. And I really feel like, you know, like I’ve tried to do with empathy, is make the business case for empathy, not because I’m trying to make it cold and calculating, but that’s how you influence people. That’s how you reach people. That’s how you you get them on your side. Is for them to understand that it’s a win win, and that there’s something in it for them. And I would be remiss if I didn’t reference here an interview. I’ll put it in the show notes I did with one of my colleagues, dia Bondi, who is all about helping people make big asks and get it. And she talks a lot about what is the offer behind your ask. It’s not just you asking something because you want it, but how do you create an offer that actually benefits both of you because of your desk? Yeah, you two should meet. Oh my gosh. So then explain to us a little bit about how you define neuroplasticity for people that are unfamiliar. And then I want to talk about those empathy and neuro. Plasticity as the foundation for self advocacy.
Jamie Lee 10:03
Yes, so self directed neuroplasticity is something that I teach my coaching clients, and neuroplasticity, you know, in plain language, is rewiring or changing your brain, and it’s something that we do innately. Another way to think about neuroplasticity is being able to have different internal associations and access your meaning making abilities, which, again, is something that we do all the time. And the reason why I teach research back self directed neuroplasticity techniques is because we always operate from the default mode. If you know a little bit about neuroscience, like I do, right, you’re familiar with the concept of the default mode of the brain, right? And in the default mode, we’re always repeating our habituated patterns of thinking, feeling and doing, and often, when I work with high achieving leaders who don’t have a strong track record of having advocated assertively for what they want, usually they have habituated patterns of feeling anxious, nervous or worried or anticipating rejection, as opposed to anticipating, hey, this is going to be a great, juicy conversation for all of us, right? And this research that came out of Max Planck Society in Europe very about 10 years ago, and what they did was they trained a group of women, 30 women in their version of empathy training, and how they interpreted empathy is your ability to share or to perceive other people’s suffering. And so their version of empathy training was showing these participants very sad, traumatic videos of people experiencing something difficult, and then they measured their brain activity, and they saw that the pain receptors, the parts of the brain that’s associated with pain and negative emotions, were lighting up, which is, of course, that’s what you would expect them to do, because they’ve been trained to feel the pain and the suffering of the people in the videos. And then they took the same group of people and they had them do compassion training. And compassion training is something that they adapted from the contemplate. I’m going to mess up this word, the meditation practices of, let’s say, Buddhists and other faiths. And what they found is that once they did two weeks of compassion training, the areas of the brain that are associated with reward, affection, love, affiliation lit up because they were training to cultivate the sense of friendliness, and then they had the same group of people re watch those sad videos and they didn’t feel as bad. They still were able to access this feeling of compassion. And so what this shows us is that the brain adapts. The brain grows. It changes according to the practices that you expose it to, and compassion, I think, is the missing link that helps us be able to access self advocacy, those muscles for ourselves. And the reason why I say that is because often in our culture, and especially for women and underrepresented leaders, we have a tendency to associate empathy with feeling bad.
Maria Ross 13:44
Yeah, it’s and it’s not sympathy, it’s not pity, because you can have empathy for someone that’s going through something wonderful as well. You know, you can be excited, just as excited for someone who is super excited about something or so happy. So I think we always forget that. We think that empathy is always associated with sharing the feelings in a negative way, right?
Jamie Lee 14:04
But with compassion, you’re able to light up different areas of the brain that are associated with motivation, with proactive care. And I think compassion is something that, as you said, you know, empathy is something that you can do for self interest, and sometimes you can generate empathy from the outside in. And I think compassion is something that we also do really for ourselves, right? Because when we cultivate compassion, it helps us feel good, and when we can feel good, we can extend that good feeling towards others, yeah, and helps us to be able to address even thorny topics, even difficult topics, even negative emotion, and be able to take proactive care.
Maria Ross 14:52
So talk to us a little bit about how that works in like, Give us an example of how that works in self advocacy. Yes.
Jamie Lee 15:00
So in my coaching practice, as I said clients, I work with high achieving women underrepresented leaders, and often they got to where they are because they’ve been beating themselves up partially, you know, they’ve been setting themselves up to a perfection standard and working twice as hard as other people, and it doesn’t feel right to direct compassion towards themselves. I’ve had a conversation with a leader in the finance world a coaching session, and she was feeling a lot of imposter syndrome. She was feeling nervous and anxious about achieving an ambitious business goal. And in that coaching session, I paused her and I said, Hey, do you know what compassion means? And she’s like, what is that? It was a foreign concept to her? Wow, yeah. And so when I introduced the concept, and I helped her reframe her situation, her actions, through the lens of compassion. What happened was the pressure eased, and when the pressure eased, her performance went up. And when her performance went up, she was able to reconnect with the sense of purpose that she had for the project, and she ended up raising 100 million dollars for a new fund.
Maria Ross 16:22
Oh my gosh, that’s great. I mean, that is so telling. And, you know, I often talk about compassion being empathy in action, and you kind of hit on that as well as compassion is the action piece, it’s that now I’m motivated to do something, and not that empathy on its own is a wasted emotion. I would hate to call it that, but there’s sort of a there’s another side to that, where it’s like, Okay, now that you’ve connected with that person and you’re seeing things from their point of view, what are you going to do about that? What are you going to do with that information? And it doesn’t mean you have to do something big and bold. It could just be listening, it could just be holding space for someone, it could be all these different things. But what I’m hearing you say, and correct me if I’m wrong, is I’m hearing you say, it’s about understanding that you can bring an act of compassion, even in the midst of making an ask, even in the midst of advocating for yourself. Am I kind of getting that right? Absolutely.
Jamie Lee 17:19
I love how in your book empathy dilemma, which is a great book, an award winning book, I like, how you break down empathy into cognitive and emotional, right? We can cognitively understand the business wants to make more money, save money, right? And we can also feel the emotions of other people. And I think compassion is a subset of that emotional empathy, where you feel the emotion, you feel that affiliation and the positive feelings of love, affection, and you take proactive care,
Maria Ross 17:51
yeah, okay, great, all right, so we’ve talked a lot on the show and in my books. As you know, when I talk about empathy, has got to start at home, and we have to get our own house in order before we can make space in our brains and our hearts for empathy for others, we have to regulate ourselves and be able to respond rather than react out of just knee jerk reactions, right? So talk to us a little bit about the role of the nervous system in that self regulation, and tell us what’s actually going on there and how you interrupt that pattern Absolutely.
Jamie Lee 18:26
So this is something that I often teach when I do self advocacy trainings and coaching sessions with individuals. It’s only natural for some people to associate stress, conflict, confrontation with speaking up for themselves, if they’ve had past experiences where they were reprimanded or rejected, or, you know, they were told that it wasn’t the time and the place and so that can leave a mark on their nervous system. An example of that is, if this is something that I have coached my clients through, if you notice some things that are not being communicated well by certain leaders, and you speak up about it without as much grace and nuance as you would hope, and then the reaction is like, you get shut down, right, right? Or you get shoved away or pushed out of the project, and that leaves a mark on your nervous system, because we take our work lives very personally. Yeah, we care deeply, right? And so some people, they come to me and they tell me, they freeze up when they think about even speaking up again, even if it’s a new environment, new team, new set of people, right? They still notice their nervous system freezing up.
Maria Ross 19:46
Yeah, it’s like once built and twice shy type of situation.
Jamie Lee 19:49
Yeah, right. And so what’s happening is that your sympathetic nervous system, which is the nervous system that’s associated with stress, stress responses of by. Fight freeze that is being activated, right? And there are very simple techniques that scientists have and neuroscientists have generated, that help us access the parasympathetic nervous system, which is associated with rest and digest, and also a brain state that’s more associated with compassion, empathy, presence, being in the moment. And I don’t know about you, but I always do my best thinking, best negotiating, best advocating when I feel that I am present and connected in the moment. So really, really simple technique that I can demonstrate right now is something that I have learned through my teacher, Melissa tears, and it’s written in her book The anti anxiety toolkit. It’s a great little book with all these very simple, short, brief techniques to help you access the parasympathetic nervous system in your thinking brain, and this one is so simple, all you have to do is simply soften and diffuse your visual focus, like pick a spot. And if people are listening, they can do it right now. Just pick a spot, look away from the little iPhone screen or your Android ski Android screen, just pick a spot and then just soften and diffuse your focus and engage your peripheral vision. And if you wear glasses like I do, you immediately start to notice the fuzzy frames of your glasses or the two walls that you hadn’t noticed but have been there all along. And also, when you do that, you also notice that you can sense more of the ambient noise. You can almost feel the temperature of the room, right, yeah. And every time I engage my clients in this very simple, brief exercise, they notice that the chatter in their mind quiets down. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. So if you are in a high stakes conversation, maybe you are gunning for that promotion to managing director, and you’re speaking with your supervising manager, and something gets a little heated in the moment, and you notice that you know that stress response coming up, it’s something that you can do and still be completely present in the moment,
Maria Ross 22:30
is that also because, for me, it’s deep breathing. For me it’s like because I notice I hold my breath when I’m anxious and stressed, and my even my the pitch of my voice gets higher because I’m not taking enough air in. And so I will sort of like, take a moment, take a really deep two or three belly breaths to re engage that parasympathetic system. It sounds like this is something similar, but almost like from a visual perspective, right? Of like taking, almost taking a deep breath with your eyes. I don’t know if that’s like a thing, but I’m gonna call it a thing. I love that, that idea, and thank you for explaining to us why it works. Like why is it? Because I think we do. We get so into that phase of stress or anxiety, and all kinds of physiological things are happening to us, and we have to, we have to first notice it. I think that for me, that for me, that was the biggest thing of noticing what when my body was doing, and seeing what was happening before it escalated, and then interrupting that pattern. That’s right. And why do you think it is so hard for people? I mean, notwithstanding that they don’t know some of these tools, but there’s so many moments we all have where we regret our reaction later, but in the moment, what stops us from interrupting it in the moment? What’s your theory?
Jamie Lee 23:50
There’s so many things I mean in this day and age. First of all, we have so many interruptions, distractions, phones, screens, data, input, and I think it can be a little bit more tricky to Yes, these are self directed neuroplasticity tools. So ultimately, I teach my clients so that they implement these tools on their own time, and they practice and then generate a new neural pattern, a new neural network. But it does help to work with someone, because we’re not able to see the contents of our own brains. Yeah, like, I can’t. There are always things happening outside my conscious awareness, right? Our conscious awareness can process up to seven to nine plus or minus two bits of information at any given moment, but our subconscious is processing up to 11 million bits of information per second. So it’s still more impressive than any AI, yeah, and it sustains a little. Organism, right? Excuse me, reading and digesting and all of it, so memorizing and remembering. So it does help if you notice that you continue to repeat habituated patterns that you want to stop. It can help because you just don’t have that perspective. Yeah, third party can have
Maria Ross 25:18
absolutely and I think also, like kind of, I can’t reiterate it enough, and it’s why self awareness is the first pillar in the new book and empathy dilemma. Because if you don’t even realize it’s happening, if you don’t recognize that behavior as a habitual pattern, it’s a lot harder for you to break that cycle, because you don’t think anything’s going on. You don’t recognize that anything’s going on, but if you can start to pay attention to your heart rate, your palms, like your voice, just where you’re feeling it in your body. A lot of people think that’s super Woo, woo, but I think it’s really practical, like we need to understand what fear and anxiety feels like in our body, we need to understand what me about to, you know, unleash a tirade on someone before I do it, what it feels like in my body and what’s causing it, because otherwise we can never interrupt those habitual patterns.
Jamie Lee 26:15
Absolutely, I think you’re spot on. And this is something that I learned from my mentor, James trip. And what he did was he categorized, he organized the different types of intelligences we have. And there are six different types of intelligences. The first is, of course, cognitive, which many people, most of us, tend to engage in right when we’re typing email or writing up a proposal, or, you know, sitting in a meeting. We’re almost always engaged in cognitive intelligence, but then we also have episodic intelligence, being able to recall memory. We have metaphoric intelligence, right? Because we use language, and so much of our language is in the form of metaphors, almost all of it, yeah, metaphoric, right? Yeah. And then there’s also the somatic intelligence, the intelligence of holding your body, like when you straighten your back and you take a deep breath into your belly, right, sudden you feel a shift, and that is accessing your somatic intelligence. But also there’s interceptive, which is accessing your inner senses, like the root of that word is to be able to connect with your gut. So sometimes, when you ask somebody hey, what does your gut say? Yeah, how do you feel on the inside? Right? That’s accessing interceptive intelligence, and I think all of that culminates into social intelligence, right? And I think that’s why what you’re talking about, empathy, being a business driver, is key, because when we’re able to access all the different types of intelligences, it culminates into greater social intelligence.
Maria Ross 28:00
I love this so much. Can you cite his name again for us? James, James trip.
Jamie Lee 28:06
James trip R, i, p, p. He’s a great he teaches people to be change workers. I love it.
Maria Ross 28:11
I’m going to put a link to his work as well as Melissa’s in the show notes. So let’s talk a little bit about mirror neurons, because it’s really interesting to me. When I first started my empathy research, back in like 2016 obviously, I came across all the studies and research about mirror neurons first, and this idea that, you know, we are wired biologically with these mirror neurons, and they’ve done studies with babies where it’s if they see something, they’re going to mirror it, right? So you see someone crying, a baby might start crying. You see someone laughing, a baby will start laughing. And it’s this idea of how we as humans connect with each other is through these mirror neurons. So talk to us a little bit about how skilled communicators, whether they’re self advocating or not. How do they I don’t want to say you leverage mirror neurons to be so skilled and to communicate effectively.
Jamie Lee 29:10
I love this question because this is something that comes up often in my coaching sessions, and when people really understand it, it’s like they’re able to see the world of communication through a different lens. We all know that influential speakers, what they do really beautifully is they read the room, right? They don’t just listen to the words, they don’t just notice the faces that people are making, but they also listen at a deeper level, where they can notice what is in this room, what is the energy, what is the emotion in this room, right? And when they do that, they’re also able to do this thing really well, which is pacing and leading. And pacing and leading is often the that one little crucial communication skill that’s not. Missing in a high achieving leaders skill set that could really make or break how well what they advocate for lands with the other side and so really simply pacing and leading leverages mirror neurons, because what you do is you pace, you reflect back using their precise words, or the key words and the key expression that they’re showing right, to show them, I’m here with you, right? You don’t force a horse to water. You pace and then you lead the horse to water, right? It’s the same thing that you do in communication. You want to be able to read it, and even if you don’t completely agree with everything that they’re saying, right? If there are key phrases, hot phrases, key metaphors that people are using, it’s almost like those words are associated with a specific neuronal network. And so you want to say it back to them, and then follow, well, follow it up with a question that asks, okay, and what happens next? Or tell me more about that, right? So you pace them, you meet them where they are, and then you direct the conversation. So that is a way to leverage mirror neurons, because when people see and they can hear that you are meeting them where they are, they are more likely to follow your direction.
Maria Ross 31:36
I love this so much because I, you know, I’ve been speaking for a long time, but not on stages. I used to have to do lots of presentations in my 20s, when I was coming up through my career, and I think about how I always enjoyed it, but a lot of it was just, I was just there speaking, and I didn’t learn how to connect with the audience. That actually, where I learned that skill was through acting, was through being on stage and being being able to read the room and the energy in the room and try to either get something from it, or try to, like, do something with what was going on on stage, to re engage the audience. But even, you know, I think back to some presentations that I gave, you know, years ago, decades ago, and I’m like, Oh God, that must have been awful. But now it’s very much I you know, if I can tell they’re excited, I’ll match their excitement. If I can tell I’m losing them, I might slow down or pause or ask a question, and learning how to do that when you’re so concerned with the content you’re delivering. And let’s not even forget, you know, just your own self consciousness of being up in front of a room of people, it can be really hard, but I’ve found that I actually make myself feel better the more that I can connect with the audience and meet them where they are. It actually, in a weird way, takes away my self consciousness, because I know that I’m getting a reaction and I’m getting through, I guess I’m trying to say I
Jamie Lee 33:02
would not be surprised if they took a functional MRI of your brain in that moment when you are making that connection. It’s probably a lot like that research I cited where the areas of the brain that are associated with love, connection, affiliation, reward that’s lighting up. Yeah, yeah, your brain is like, I can empathize, but I also care about their experience in a proactive way. In other words, it’s compassion and
Maria Ross 33:31
action, yeah, well, and actually, I find that it also helps me be more impromptu. You know, some people, sometimes we’re so afraid to let go of the script, or we’re so afraid to let go of our talking points, but when I’m able to connect, it almost doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what my talking points were. If I’m able to tell a story in the moment that I wasn’t planning on telling because I’m having a connection with someone, it just creates a more organic conversation. And I love that you’re explaining to us why that’s the case, from sort of a neuroscience perspective, it’s that it’s almost like we’re building an affinity with the person that we’re talking to, and we’re less, we sort of become less concerned with what they think of us and more concerned with how they think and feel, and if they’re on board, you know, it kind of gets us out of the ego a little bit. That’s right, yeah, I love that. That’s fascinating, fascinating. So I love all this stuff. What’s one last thing I know? You know, sort of the topic of your podcast is risky conversations. Which I love that name so much. How do you handle all of this advice and all of these concepts you’re talking about, where they really get tested is when you’re having those risky conversations and you’re having the difficult conversations, right? It’s one thing for us to have a conversation where I’m giving an excellent performance review to you, right, but when you’re having I call them crunchy conversations, right? How do we how can we remember. This advice in those moments where the self consciousness and the self doubt starts creeping in, especially if it’s a difficult conversation and we don’t know how the other person is going to react, or if they’re going to react positively or negatively.
Jamie Lee 35:13
So a couple of things, what I do in coaching is help my clients engage all the different types of intelligences, right? So right off the bat, cognitive level, I always encourage my clients to remember, if it feels awkward, you’re doing it right. And in fact, what we do know from neuroscience is that when new neurons are being connected and fired and wired together, it feels weird. It doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. It means you’re learning and growing. And I just coached a client this morning who is aiming for a promotion and she wants to improve her sales performance, and she engaged in some strategic conversations with the hope of leading to a sale. And she’s like, Yeah, I don’t know. I think it was a six out of seven, six out of 10, because I felt awkward. And I said, Wait, but did you meet your objective? She’s like, Yeah. And you felt awkward. I think
Maria Ross 36:11
you did it, right? Well, no one promised it was going to be easy. This is the thing I always say, is like, yeah, when, even when you’re practicing empathy or practicing any new skill, it’s like, going to the gym for the first time, it’s going to feel weird and you’re going to be sore, and you might not think you had a great workout. You might not, you know, it might be really ugly to watch you working out, you know, in that moment, but it doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. It just means you’re practicing it. And practice practices, there’s a reason they say practice makes perfect. Like, practice isn’t supposed to be perfect. Practice is supposed to be where you make the mistakes and where you feel uncomfortable and where you, you know, take the risks. So I love that. I love that you’re like, yeah, if it feels awkward, you’re probably doing it right. Yeah, yeah. And I was just going to add something real quick, because you’re sparking some things for me. You know, you mentioned my story of recovering from my brain aneurysm and in my rehabilitation when I was working on my cognitive deficits, none of that was comfortable, and it was because my brain was fine. Now you’re telling me I’m understanding now it’s because my brain was finding new ways of doing things that I’d done automatically for so long, things like vocabulary recall, or, you know, keeping up with a conversation, or, you know, any number of things that I was working on when I first got home from the hospital. And it was so I don’t know what the word is like, not painful, but it was just very jarring to be like, I know, I used to be able to do this with no issue, and so it was painful, and it did feel awkward, until I built those new strategies, and I built those new neural pathways up, and now people go, Oh my gosh, you seem like you had a miraculous recovery. I’m like, you know, kind of but also, it wasn’t easy. It was painful to get my brain, just like any workout, right? To get my brain to operate in a slightly different way than it had before. And so I think that’s a really great message to tell people. Of if you’re not used to doing some of this for yourself, or practicing empathy, or anything that we’re talking about here, it’s okay. You’re not doing it wrong, just because it’s uncomfortable, right?
Jamie Lee 38:22
And there in lies the compassion, self directed compassion, which is so closely linked with self directed neuroplasticity.
Maria Ross 38:32
I’m going to throw you a curveball question I would just love to hear about. Do you have like a most or one of your most memorable clients, and can you share a little bit like before and after of work? I know you’ve shared a few stories with us already, but who sort of stands out in terms of like, when they came to you, this is what they were facing, and then after working with you, or as they worked with you, this is what they were able to accomplish.
Jamie Lee 38:55
I have a client who reached out to me because she felt like an imposter. She knew she had an experience of building her own business. It had its success, it had its ups and downs, but she was now working inside an organization, and she felt she was being put down. She also happened to be the only indigenous woman in that team, a person of color. And she wanted to be able to build up her self confidence and advocate for a promotion for race. And she wanted to just feel better, become more confident under her own skin. So I, you know, coached her, taught her self directed neuroplasty, plasticity techniques. And again, we arrived back at self compassion. How do we direct compassion towards ourselves so that we can be even if it is just a team of one, believing in ourselves, believing in our. Potential, believing in what we’re capable of doing. And then as soon as it clicked for her, she realized she can do way better. I mean, she negotiated, she got a pay raise, and she’s like, No, actually, I have potential. I can do way better than this. And she set up her own consulting agency, and literally, within weeks, she was fully booked with seven figure contracts.
Maria Ross 40:28
Oh my gosh, wow. Talk about getting out of your own way, like,
Jamie Lee 40:32
exactly she got out of her own way, yeah. And she became the CEO of her own agency, yeah, and she was just able to connect the resources that were already within her to opportunities that were in front of her, and that’s how she was able to generate that result.
Maria Ross 40:50
You know, I’m just hearing this theme of basically getting you out of your own head, which is so applicable to empathy, right? When we’re too caught up in our own stuff. Again, we have no space for empathy for other people, because we’re in survival mode, and so much of it, what you’re talking about is when you’re coaching people who are suffering from anxiety or self doubt or imposter syndrome, that’s them getting caught up in their own stuff, and it doesn’t leave room for them to have the connections when they’re having the conversations because they’re too and not I don’t mean this in an egotistical way. They’re too self focused because they’re again, they’re in survival mode. But when you’re able to open up and you’re able to sort of settle those voices down, that’s when you can practice empathy effectively with other people and leverage that to meet your goals, leverage that to drive impact and results. Now you’re outward focused versus inward focused and not outward focused in I’m going to deplete myself by doing what other people want. What I mean by that is you’re so well grounded and present in yourself, you are able to be outward focused and able to connect with empathy for other people.
Jamie Lee 42:06
Yes, because you are able to direct that empathy towards yourself, yes, first, and then it goes outward 100%
Maria Ross 42:14
Oh my gosh. I love this so much. I can talk to you so much longer. We are going to have all your links in the show notes. And also, I know you have a fantastic offer, which I will put in the show notes to book a free hour consultation with you for one to one coaching so listeners take advantage of that. Jamie is in demand. And I just want to thank you so much for sharing your insights with us today, and your techniques and some really actionable things that people can take away today.
Jamie Lee 42:40
You’re so welcome, and thank you for being the living embodiment of what self directed neuroplasticity can do when it meets empathy.
Maria Ross 42:49
Thank you so much. I will remember that on my low days, because we all have low days, so I will take that with grace. Thank you. And thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate, review and share with a friend or a colleague, and until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy. Visit the empathy edge calm there you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice. Maria, never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place you.
