Removing Bias From Conversations for Better Success

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 0:00
to the computer. Hello, hello. Welcome, everybody to our guest expert training for January we are almost to the end of January already, which I don’t know how I feel about that. This is where we are. So welcome everybody. Our guest trainer today is Denise Morrison, she and I have been hanging out together on the interwebs for a little over a year. But she’s amazing, has great energy, all the awesome mindset stuff to share. So I am excited. For today, it’s going to be a real good just thought about where are we at? What are we doing? And how can we be the best selves so that we can be the most successful in our businesses. So with that, I’m Denise, if you want to introduce yourself, I’ll get your slides up.

Denise Morrison 0:58
Cool. Hi, I’m Denise Morrison. Everybody coming in from Norfolk, Virginia. Send me snow, please.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 1:09
Careful, you’re talking to Midwesterners here. So we have all the snow.

Denise Morrison 1:13
You Yes, but then you could give me some. Awesome. So I guess I should begin, huh?

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 1:22
I’ll let you take it away. Yeah, let

Denise Morrison 1:24
me get my screen sorted out so that I can see everybody accordingly. So I’m really excited to share this presentation with you after having some conversations with Sammy. And we’re calling it removing bias from conversations for better success. And Sammy had mentioned that many folks go into conversations with opinions or assumptions or biases that unbeknownst to you could actually be affecting the outcome of your conversation, whatever it may be. So what I’m going to tell you today can be applied to any conversation. But I know you will be using it more specifically for asking for donations, or other things that may come up if you have questions. And if you’re going into a conversation thinking, well, people don’t want to donate. I mean, this is just you thinking, or I can’t ask for that much money, or I should ask for less, or I don’t want to be pushy. So you’re coming into that conversation with some lack some negative biases towards yourself and the outcome. And I would love to help shed some light on that for you today so that we can clear that up and you can have better conversations. So what I’m what I’m going to help you understand is a tool that I use many tools that I use from Neuro Linguistic Programming, that’s part of my coach training my background. In my life, it’s helped me in my career as a health and life coach, it’s helped me as a physical therapist, as a mom, a wife, a yogi. And the basis for Neuro Linguistic Programming is that we actually we learn how to tap into someone’s neurology. So basically, when someone’s speaking and engaging with us, what’s going on and their expressions, their words, how their body moves, body language, so to speak, your language, the L part, your language is such a powerful gauge for the experience that you are having inside of your mind and body and what that person is giving you back when you’re having that conversation. So it’s really quite fun. I tell a lot of my friends and colleagues that I feel like Harry Potter in a way that I can kind of see things and hear things and understand things because I know how to dive into understanding someone’s neurology someone’s linguistic abilities. And then they p of NLP is the programming. It’s basically your own internal operating system. It’s your programming. It’s your understanding of how you became who you are to relate to other people and it’s filled with a lot of stuff. Some good, some bad, and as you’ll see today, all that stuff can interfere with your conversation in any capacity. Okay, let’s move on to the next one. You’re running. You’re running the ship over there, Sammy. And so the overview today, and talking points or inspiration points, questions, whatever comes from you please do not hesitate to ask me because this may sound really weird. If you’ve never heard have this kind of information before. And I’m happy to help you translate it. So the big things are talking today about what are you carrying into your conversations, and it’s much more in depth than you could ever imagine what is going on inside of you that I can help you break down the things that you’ve been carrying inside your neurology, your language, your mind your body that is actually putting up a wall when you’re having a conversation with someone. The other thing I’m going to talk about is why am I stopping my own success? And that might sound really mean and silly. Like, why would I stop my own success? Sometimes we never really quite understand what’s blocking us. And I’ll bring some topics up today that helps you to understand that you could be blocking the conversation, the success, the outcome of the conversation, I’m going to share some of my tools of active unattached listening, which it’s so freeing to be able to have a conversation with someone when you are not putting forth your baggage or taking on their baggage. I’m talking about reflecting back to that person, the client don’t or whoever to gain more rapport with them. And I’ll touch upon speaking to their values. And lastly, give you the secret sauce to creating powerful outcomes. And this is one of my favorite things to share. Okay, next for this fun part. So I share here with you the NLP communications model. And it looks very busy and chaotic and crazy, because that is a great representation of what’s going on in between your ears. And this is one of the reasons why when I learned this in 2006, I immediately thought, oh my gosh, all that stuff going on inside my mind and body, I have no idea how I was going to function. How do I live every day, but I got through it, we all get through it and we show up. But what it’s briefly talking about is that we have so many things going on inside of our minds, from our experiences. As you can see, the external event is something that happened in your life. And nowadays, we have constant bombardment of stimulation, or events or triggers. Basically setting off what we have inside of ourselves as our filters, our values, our beliefs, the language of neurology, all of that, we make pictures in our minds, we make meaning, all of a sudden, we have a different state of being a state of mind and physiology where we might slump over or we might be agitated or what have you. And it affects your behavior and your responses to others. So there’s lots that could be going on inside of you. So I’ll just say this straight off the bat, it’s not entirely your fault. So we’ll take some of the pressure off. But if you have fears, or doubts or lack of confidence, old stories, memories, times that you have failed in conversations, that’s going to be carried into your conversation with anybody. Your assumptions and biases, as Sammy mentioned before with me is that she has certain bias or she notices that others have a certain bias in their conversations. And this is what I’m going to touch upon today. So if you can imagine the weight of all this that’s happening inside of you, and you’re still functioning, but in your mind and body experience, you have your personal history, you have your experiences, your beliefs, stories, excuses, traditions, oh my gosh, oh, my there’s so much going on. And every person that you meet, has their own experience their own images and, and tons going on in them too. So one, we could never imagine to know what that other person is thinking and feeling until you get into a deep conversation with them, and really get to know them and have that rapport where they will feel comfortable enough to share with you. So what I want to help you do today with some of the tools I have is to enlighten you on how to become aware of what you’re carrying into your conversations and help you clean out the mental and emotional clutter perhaps that could be affecting you when you’re having conversations and like I said before, it’s not entirely your fault. We can do something about this. We can change our ways it might feel freaky at first, but the idea is that if you have to be able to have these conversations where you’re succeeding at your goal, it will feel so much better doing the work that I’m going to have you do today. All right, see me next, keep me posted if anybody has any questions, because I’m very intent on sharing this with you all. Oh, I love this quote by Carl Jung. Perception is projection. And I put a lady carrying her luggage. And you can imagine why I put that we have a lot of baggage that we carry with us every day. And if we are not checking our baggage, before we enter into a conversation or relationship with someone, it’s usually right there, under the surface of our body and coming out of our mouths, in our posture, and so on. And to explain perception is projection a bit more. This talks about our consciousness, our awareness, and Carl Jung, the father of psychology, along with Freud, and Adler,

basically was telling us that we what we perceive outside of ourselves is actually who we are. So when we’re watching someone else, or engaging in a conversation with someone else, we can’t see them except for through our own mental filters. That crowded mind that I showed you before. And the cool and freaky part is that we tend to take our most unconscious material biases and assumptions and we project it onto the people around us onto our conversations onto our goals and outcomes, which, as you can tell, could muddle everything, and it’s not going to turn out the way that we had hoped. Keeping this in mind, like I said, I’m going to show you some ways today to help you clear this up so that you can have more energy and freedom in your conversations so that you’ll set yourself up for success. Next, quote, and photo. So one of our NLP paradigms, which it’s a way of thinking and how we address our conversations, I put here discover their model of the world. And I just show those two heads. And each of us has our own model of the world of how we understand and interpret what people are saying how they’re moving their bodies, and so on. And I want to tell you that the more you can listen, zip it off, observe and get a sense of what that client or donor or person that you’re speaking to, is having an experience of life, this will help you. And the model of the world is basically all of that head stuff that I showed you before their beliefs, their values, their filters, their own desires, their own expectations, experiences. And it’s like your own individual map of how you think things go. So as you can imagine, from what I’m saying, so far, it makes sense that a lot of us clash in many ways if we’re not understanding someone’s model of the world, or understanding what’s going on deep inside of them. But this is a fantastic way. What I’m going to share with you today is to understand this. So let me give you an example. This is hilarious, because this happens with my siblings, and me all the time. So let’s say if you have any kind of family dynamic, where something happened in your life, and you ask each sibling, what was your take on the situation, what was your understanding on the situation and because you may have, from the outsider perspective, you might be like this happened, everybody should have the same response to it. But no, because of everyone’s model of their world, and their filters and their expectations and their pictures and beliefs, that is actually throwing off the whole interpretation of the event. So my invitation to you is to become more aware and flexible in your interactions with others so that you’re taking their conversation for where they are at that time and space and you’re understanding yourself completely knowing what you’re bringing into the conversation and if you have that full understanding. Okay, next one. Let me take a sip of water, I promise. So let’s break down your bias inside of your mind and body and this is a huge topic as you can imagine. Everybody’s talking about mindset and growth mind I’m second now. But as I know, from being a health and life coach, and an NLP practitioner, it’s not just the mindset, we have a lot happening deep below the surface under here. Let me now talk about your self talk and your thoughts. So this is not to say that you have some sort of condition, but we all have a self talk mode, I call it auditory digital, you may call it your mean girl, your inner judge or your inner critic. But there’s a little voice or something inside of you that saying, push on or you’re the best or you’re not good enough, or this is going to suck or they’re not going to like me, or they’re not going to spend any money. And that little sneaky judger are a mean girl that you might have inside of you is going to impact how you have a conversation. As well as what thoughts could be swirling around your head. And, you know, having these conversations with Sammy and many of my colleagues, if we have limiting or detrimental or negative or lacking thoughts, that’s going to affect how we show up in our conversation. And then I dropped down to the bias and the beliefs and Sammy use the word bias and I’m going to supply the word beliefs here. Because of that mind clutter going on, we do have our own personal opinions, attitudes, we have judgments, we have prejudices, and we have our deep rooted beliefs about things. You know, if you believe in Santa Claus, are you if you believe in the tooth fairy? or what have you, those beliefs are pretty hard wired inside of you, and they can interfere with successful conversation with anybody really? And lastly, all the motions and excuses. Oh, gosh, I say this with kindness and love. Because we have been through a crazy time in the past couple years. Many of us have had all the motions pop up. We’ve had different things happen to us in life and being able to check in with yourself and wonder, Hmm, do I have something that’s residing that comes from my past that brings up significant emotions, that triggers me that forces me or is setting me off. So I have conversations which aren’t so helpful, which may sound one way or another and have a strange tone to the person listening. So being aware of is there anything in your life that you’ve been through that still is kind of tucked under the surface that maybe when you’re having a conversation where you need to ask for money, or you need to engage someone’s assistant somehow? What can you do to go okay, what’s really bugging me? What’s coming up? How can I do this, and I’m the kind of person that helps with that, and I’ll share some resources to get you started as well. The other thing I like to throw this in which it sucks, but it’s true. Many folks have their excuses and excuses sound really good and they serve a purpose. But in conversations like, Oh, they’re gonna say this, or I’m afraid they’re gonna say that, or I’m just not good enough. You might have heard yourself saying things that are rationalizing your behavior. When in doubt, it could be you’re afraid or you don’t feel confident or you’re just not sure of what to do. So being aware of those kinds of things, we can help you break down that bias. And we’ll go into the second part of breaking down your bias. How’re we doing so far? Sammy?

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 19:07
Sorry, the mute button was too far white. No, we’re doing great. You’re doing awesome. Okay, cool.

Denise Morrison 19:13
We’re never we’re never with the mute when we did. All righty. What did you make it mean? So this is the million dollar question. I asked my clients in our deep coaching conversations. I asked people that I have great rapport with because it’s very touchy. When you make something mean a certain thing, you are placing judgment, you’re placing your opinions. You’re putting your stamp on the situation to help you make sense of it. And many times that meaning contradicts with what you believe if you’re approaching the conversation. And so being able to tap in and listen to what someone’s saying meaning is about the situation will help you to gain more rapport and have an easier time of pitching or selling or whatever it is that you’re doing in your conversations or convincing your child or someone that you know, to do their chores around the house. And when you make meaning of something, a lot of times you do this to, like I said, make sense of your world to feel safe to feel like you belong. And these meanings, we usually learned how to make these meanings at very young ages, and they stick with us, like little wounds, and they can be helpful, but they also can be detrimental. And oops, oh, sorry, I lost my little slide for a second, I’m coming back. This technology is a fun thing. The next thing I want to bring up, because this is my specialty, physical therapy and a yoga teacher and instructor your posture and your energy. Now, many of you have probably heard things about your body language, but everybody has their own unique way of expressing themselves. And you will get to know yourself once we, you know, begin to process this a bit more. Or if you already know how your physiology and your posture and your tone of voice and your pace of speaking is how you know yourself well enough that you understand what that’s doing when you’re engaging in a conversation. But being aware of that person that you’re speaking to, what’s their posture? Like? How are they showing up? Are they like slumped down and disinterested? Or they could be depressed? Or are they checking their phone or their eyes darting? Or do they just want to escape from your conversation, so paying attention to their body, their body language more than just crossing their arms over the chest? That’s the classic one. But how they’re said thing if they’re crossing their legs or not. If they’re tensing up in any way, holding their breath, there’s so many fun things you can pay attention to. And it’s eye opening when you start to the last one on the slide is communication. And now it might seem like communication is very simple. Many of us in school I know I have in school, we learned you know, to speak our words to answer questions. But communication is so much more than just spitting out words off the top of our head and knowing that your neurology your language, your filters, your biases, your opinions, your judgments, your meanings are all brought to the table when you open your mouth. Your model the world skeleton spilled out you’re seeing their model the world come back at you. But being more alert to how is this communication going and I when I coach my clients, I mean, Zoom is a phenomenal tool that we’ve been using for a while now. But it’s still much of a communication is like a dance. It’s a choreography between you and that person in gaining rapport. And I can quickly tell when I’m working with my clients, like if I’ve lost rapport, if I’ve lost them in any way and how to come back and pique their attention or apologize for something or ask more questions. These are huge topics. So if I let you know again at the end, but if you ever have any questions and you want to have a one on one chat with me just for fun to go through each and every one of these, I will be happy to take you through that. Right, next one. Oh boy. This is one of my favorite topics because I am a recovering master self sabotage. And I brought this up because you may or may not be sabotaging or stopping your own success. I mean, we all do not attempt to go in two conversations purposefully. But many times unconsciously, there’s something brewing that is limiting us causing us to be afraid, much like I spoke before, it’s like we have this meaning we’ve made in the world and when I go to talk to that person, oh my gosh, they’re gonna say no, or I’m not good enough. Or I’m going to ask for too much money and blah, blah, blah, blah, all these things so if your neurology your language, your whole model of the world is like not gonna work. It probably will not work because you’re setting up the conversation with all of this turmoil. And in transformational coaching world the idea is To help you transform, and I have given Sammy access to my two favorite tools. One of them is the mindset reset, which is a seven day email mini course to help you get started or refresh your mind, set your mind health, your awareness of who you’re being when you are engaging with others. So it touched upon it touches upon what I have here. So that’s on my website that you can download for free. And I’ve also given a special transformational journal activity that I created for you guys, today. It’s rewriting your money story. And because of what I’ve been speaking about today, and knowing even with myself, like having to go into sales conversations as a coach, as I was on my own transformational journey with my coaches coming up against Why am I sucking at this? Why is it so difficult for me, when I realized that I had a certain story about asking for money, or deserving more money, or people are gonna pay me money for me, I mean, all this crazy stuff that I didn’t know, was underneath the surface inside my model the world until I was asked these powerful questions, and they helped me get out of my own way. So that I could share these tools with other people. And like I said, I put in both of those resources, even in the emails and the content, please reach out to me, I do not want you to feel alone or like it’s like, just go do it. and off you go. I am here to help you clarify and really put this to use for you so that you have that little transformation as well. Right. Next one. Ha ha ha. If you have never heard this quote, it’s a goodie. And as a yogi, this was one that we learned to use many times only speak, when it’s an improvement on silence by Mahatma Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi. And now, this is hilarious to me. Because nowadays, I’m a Gen X er. So nowadays, we are allowed to speak everything anywhere on social media all over the place. Some great things come out some not so great things come out. But when you’re having your conversations, take some time to reflect and go, okay, is what I’m about to say going to be useful, purposeful, is it going to be hurtful? Harmful, helpful? Is it going to be overwhelming? Is it going to be cluttered or clear and concise? And I mean, you have probably been there, I’ve been there, I’ve seen clients go there, and we’re word vomiting, all of the things that we’re excited about, we’re just like, I have to tell them all this, see what I can do, look what I can do. And I am so guilty of that. I’ve been in the medical practice for over 30 years, and part of our training in gaining our licensing was being able to explain to give our rationale for why we do what we do with our clients patients, because of the threat of being sued and making sure that we’re very clear. Thankfully, I along the way, the coaching tools have helped me realize that people are not really going to tune into all that noise. And they’re only gonna be going to be hearing from their perception of model the world. So you could have the greatest package and the greatest pitch, but if they’re not tuned into what’s in it for them, what’s going to be relatable to them and what they want to hear you are just more noise. So in saying this,

take this and savor this quote, I throw this around my house all the time. Because my husband is a professor and he likes to talk and talk and I’ll just say hey, there’s only if it’s gonna improve upon the silence. Okay, if you have any questions about that, or how that impacts your life, let me know. Say how all these wonderful tools can be used in your life. And the cool part is is what I’m sharing with you today. You can practice like starting now starting with the next person that you speak to and especially on your family, but you may want to warn them what you’re doing because it will definitely annoy them at the first go round. All right, let me except. So this slide is about active unattached listening. And I chose the word unattached because that attachment piece is part of like your energetic beingness, though I’ve been kind of alluding to this whole time, that feeling that you give off with someone and if you have this attachment that you want to sell that you want to win them over or make them become your client or get them as a client, those words and that tone and that energy is very attached to an outcome and it can come off as like creepy and salesy and desperate and lacking and that is no way that I’m sure you want to show up when you’re about to ask someone for money. So I’ll go back to the top. Listen, oh, this is fun. When you’re having a conversation with someone, I’m not sure what your practice is. But typically I have, if I’m on Zoom, I have otter going if to record conversations, I have my notes. They’re taking notes as the person is as speaking to me. But when I asked my questions of my clients, or your potential donors, ask your question and zip it up, and go in and just enjoy the experience of what they’re saying. Listen to their word choices, listen to how they say the words, of course, they have an accent. If they use a specific tone, are they speeding? Or are they really slow? Do they gesture a lot, or they, you know, folding their arms, whatever it is, experienced it, watch it, note it down, no judgment on it, because that’s just how they’re doing their experience, okay? Because they are showing you and giving you their cues on how they see the world. And one thing that I’m going to add to this is when you are having these conversations, always keep in the back of your mind that you’re actually opening a relationship with this person, if it’s for the first time, but even each time you’re you’re building a relationship, by gaining rapport by listening. And this is such a different slant to how things were originally taught to me out there in the world, in selling or in asking for money. This is more of a relationship building for the long term and building that trust and tapping into how you value them and yourself. So one of my coaches always says, don’t propose marriage on the first date. And that is also the unattached energy. So if you’re going into that conversation with all this stuff loaded up in your mind and body, and you come off as pushy or needy or creepy, you may get a reaction and you’ll see it in their body language and the tone of voice because you may have lost that rapport. And so that leads down into the observe part. Watch their subtle body movements, watch their face color change, or different ways they move their head and their body do they cross their arms or legs is their shirt falling off, loose. And so you’re always gaining signals from them, and understanding how you can best kind of match and mirror, how they’re moving their bodies and how they’re speaking so that you can get into that relationship, that rapport with them. And once again, I’ll mention below is checking your energy. And, you know, I’m excited right now you can tell I’m passionate about what I’m speaking about, I want you to learn and I love this stuff. So that’s why I’m speaking in this way, I might be speaking to my client in a whole different manner. And so being able to adapt your communication style to whoever you’re trying to gain rapport with. So fun, so valuable and so helpful for that long term relationship. The other thing too, I’ll just jump in and say here is there’s a study and art of listening to someone’s choice of words and knowing what system their body is tapping into and whether they’re more of a visual person or an auditory person or a feeling type person and the words that they’re using. Once you get a sense of the words they’re using, you can replay them back to them. Okay, let’s go to the next One. So here we are with reflecting back to gain rapport. As you’re listening, watching, sensing, taking notes, embrace and pause to see what that valuable experience is that they’re giving to you. And once you can kind of match and mirror them, understand their pace, their tone of voice, their gestures. When you’re speaking with them, you could say, Well, what I heard you say was this or I understand that you felt X or when they breathe out, you breathe out. Or when they shift positions, you shift positions, but you do so subtly. Not like you’re being a child and playing Simon Says, but you do so subtly. And you can move in towards the screen or move in closely to the conversation and really get into that nice dance that choreography of exchanging words with them so that they’re understanding that you understand them, you’re getting them, you’re having an experience with them, and they will find you much more approachable, more valuable, more trusting, because you’re listening to what they said, you’re watching how they move their bodies, and so on. And this does take practice. This is super fun when you do this, so well, you will make tons of friends. But then you can also use this to annoy people and ignore them as well. But we won’t talk about that right now. That’s for a separate session. Okay, next. Sam is going to come back to me for the next one. Let’s see, where are we? Oh, here we go. I’m on it. Um, there was a bird outside. So this here, find out what find out why and reflect back. What this is talking about is getting into the heart of finding out what their values are, and what they find is important. And in any conversation, potential dirt donors, board members, whoever, your spouse, your colleague, the plumber, when you’re having a conversation, you can start to ask questions to get a sense of what’s really important to them. And as I said before, if you go in and word vomit and spill out all your guts about your programs and what you have to offer, you might be overwhelming them, and you might not even be hitting the mark on what do they actually care about? What what’s important to them, what did they find valuable in their life and relationships and where they’re placing their money and who they’re dealing with? So listening to them, when you’re having your conversations, you can always ask, Well, why is that important to you? Or in what way is that important to you? And what is the what is important to you about XYZ and you all have your language better than I will. So if I was to ask, you know, my potential client, like what’s important to you about having a coach? Why is that important to you? Why is that important to you, and you can have a little fun. And we say, you can go seven levels deep, as long as that person is ready. But you can keep asking, Well, why is that important to you? And and circle back to that, using this beautiful tool of your language and your body language, the communication to really deep deeply go inside and find out? Like, what are they focused on? What are they passionate about. And when you can reflect back to them, what you heard them say about what they find is valuable, and how it’s so important to you that their needs are met. Or I understand that this is important to you

to allow them to make a better decision to choose you or to support you or to stay connected to you for a long time. So it’s a powerful process that you can do on yourself as well asking yourself what you value so that when you’re going out in the world, you will find people to work with with similar similar values and learn more about how to speak directly to what they want and need instead of just blaming out all the things that may they may not pay attention to or care about because it’s not in their perception of the world. Right next one. This is fun, like my little drawings. Let me take a sip here. So I put this here, as the secret to creating successful conversations. In place of conversation, you could put outcome, you can put goals, you can put dreams, and one of the secret transformational coaching tools, NLP tools that we use to help improve the outcome of a conversation or a sales call is to tap into all of the senses, the sensory experience completely of that conversation. So I’m sure many of you have heard, like, I have to jot down my goals and the smart formula, or I have to put my vision board and put all these pictures. That’s awesome. That’s wonderful. But let me give you the deeper secret if you haven’t heard this, because we have a powerful system inside of our mind and body. It’s called the RAS the reticular activating system. It allows us to kind of set our sights sounds experience our model of the world to attract more successful conversations more success in reaching our goals, seeing our future outcome come to be if we use all of our senses. And from my picture there, you’ll see visual for your vision, auditory for your ears, kinesthetic is for your body, feelings, olfactory for your smell your nose. gustatory is something that you would taste and self talk, as I mentioned before, sadly, many times we’ve learned to set goals and put things out there without actually tapping into all of our senses. And many clients come to me, and they’ll tell me, but I’ve put this on my vision board, and I wrote out this goal. But they didn’t have the complete sensory picture alignment, to actually bring life to their goal through the reticular activating system. Now, I’ll explain a little bit more about that. But using all of the senses, all of these components helps you become the most aligned in that mental and physical arrangement that I spoke about before, like understanding what’s your thoughts, your feelings, your beliefs, your energy, all of that aligned, and these are the little tools to help you do that in the formula. And if one of those pieces or two of those pieces are in congruent or out of align with your success, or your outcome or your goal being achieved, that’s understandable, because a lot of times, you know, people will set goals based on a vision, but their self talk is actually saying, You’re not good enough. I don’t believe I can do this, I can’t do this. I don’t know what I’m doing. And so that little self talk is affecting the success of your conversations and your achievement of your goals. But you can help yourself, you can make it so much easier for yourself by using your own reticular activating system. And this system helps you identify information in your environment. And it’s like your little own meter that takes a peek around in the world. And it’s like, okay, my focus is on these visions, these sounds these feelings, those smells and tastes and this is what I’m saying. And it kind of lines you up. The classic example is if you’re thinking of buying a car, okay, I’m looking at a red Honda Prelude or something. That’s what I bought in the past. Everywhere you go, you start seeing red Honda’s right, because you are now focusing in your beautiful bundle of nerves inside your own brainstem. And it’s regulating what your focus is on what stimulation to pay attention to. And it’s so powerful because it’s your own and you can use it to your advantage. So in looking at that little picture, once again, when I work with my clients to have them create a successful goal, outcome something towards the future and for you in thinking about what kind of conversations you want to have, how do you want to ensure that that conversation is going a bit better for you and line you up? When you’re doing this exercise you can write on your paper vision. What do I want to see as I’m having this conversation? How do I look? My pleased Am I excited? You can design and dream this whole thing? What are you You hearing in this conversation you might be hearing, yes, I’ll give you this much money or Yes, like, I’m going to work with you for the rest of your life, you get to design it because you are now tapping into the skills of your own beautiful system to start focusing on the key pieces to creating the successful outcome. Of course, as you’re going through this process, you would want to write down how are you feeling inside yourself when you have those conversations. So if you’re imagining this, you’re thinking about what’s about to happen, know that powerful feeling inside of you that successful, confident feeling inside of you. So you’re ready and motivated to have that conversation. Of course, many of you may use or may not use essential oils or candles, that basically anchors that successful way of thinking and being and seeing the conversation. Sometimes you might have a taste in your mouth, you might be sipping water or coffee, if that inspires you to succeed in a conversation. And lastly, is your self talk, that’s probably the you just one, that’s the most viewed one in there, because that little inner critic, that little voice or judger, if he or she is in there saying you’re gonna suck at this, you can’t do it, that can collapse the whole beautiful picture that your reticular activating system is trying to set up for you to succeed. So I know that was a lot. And if you have questions about that, we can ask or you can find me separately, even I can take you through the exercise because it is different and unique. All right, next one, because I know we’re getting close to the end. That that, Oh, I love this paradigm, savor it. Failure is only feedback. So gather the learnings. I don’t know how you grew up, but failure was a horrible thing. I’ve been told I’m a failure, you’re gonna fail. You’re not good enough at this, all those things. And if you have ever had someone in your life tell you anything negative about failing, failing, I invite you to now change the way you’re thinking and feeling and being about the word failure. Because it is really only feedback. It’s a way for you to understand and learn what went well, what didn’t go so well. And what can I do better next time. And it’s always practice. And it’s always a way for you to learn more about yourself and how you’re showing up in conversations. Because you will make mistakes. I mean, we’re humans, of course. And most people I know nowadays want to relate to another human being. And it feels so much better if you can present yourself that way. And the funny thing is here is that I love working with kids with this because kids are the most honest when they give you feedback with their words or their body language, because we are constantly sharing ourselves and our experience with the world and enjoy taking on that failure yet it’s feedback because it’s helping you to become a better person that whatever you’re doing in life, and I think that’s pretty darn cool. So we can ixnay that failure is a bad thing. Alrighty, next.

Oh, this is fun. We’re coming to the end now. So in your conversations with potential donors, or board members, whoever that you’re talking to where you feel that you want to gain a little bit more rapport with, I’m gonna give you the, you know, the teeny tiny curated version right here. But how does you’re speaking to someone and in in a professional capacity, or even with a family member or friend, you can help them to make a decision help them decide? Because if you ask them, when you’re deciding something, or when you’re looking to buy something, or when you’re looking to donate money, does it need to look right, does it need to sound right? Does it need to feel right or make sense? And you pause and you wait and figure out and let them go inside themselves and figure out yeah, really needs to feel right. I’m not going to decide on buying that car because it doesn’t feel right or when people tell you something like it has to make sense. Otherwise I won’t do it. Pay attention to their cues because if they’re using those key words that show you that they need to see something in order to purchase it or to to give money to or they need to be able to feel a certain way. In order to go forward and say yes, or they might need to hear the right words from you, that’s going to allow them to say yes, so pay attention to that. And like I said, before, so many times, practice on everybody, and you will just light up your own neurology and learnings, because you will be able to gain more rapport with someone, when you hear these words that you’re using, and I know it sounds crazy, as I was talking before, about matching and mirroring and not looking like you’re playing, like Simon Says, or making fun of someone or teasing them, doing it in a subtle, beautiful, loving way, compassionate way, as you hear them speaking, take note of these words. And as the conversations shifts, you can say to them, I heard you say that, it needs to feel a certain way, I think we can do that, and so on and so forth. So this is a really fun thing to do. And it helps you as well. So you can ask yourself the same question, I need to go on a trip somewhere, I’m gonna go here there, doesn’t need to look right sound like sound right? Feel right or make sense. And you can check in with yourself as well, to get to know yourself better. Right? Here we come to the end. I know I could talk about this for days and days and days. But if anybody has any questions in the time that we have, let me know. Now that I’m at the end. Oh, hi, hi, hi.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 51:34
We all pop back up. I’m Denise, a mazing. And what I love about everything that you’re saying is it’s really just like, you know, Patrick, and I harp on this all the time. We’re here to build long term relationships with people. So just show up without expectation. I think if we can just change that mindset would be huge. But I love what you were just talking about with the last slide. I have a question on that. Because when you ask those, like the way that this like you would literally say that statement to somebody, right? Like, what would help you make a decision doesn’t need to feel good, right? And what I like about that is it gives somebody an answer, as opposed like an easy answer to give you back, as opposed to just being like, Okay, well, what do you need from me? And they’re like, I don’t, I don’t know. So like, is that just something that you have, like, just memorized and like replay in your mind, and when you practice it, now, it just comes out? Second Nature, when you’re in those conversations, you’re just literally like, you just spit that out? As if it’s just hey, how’s it going today?

Denise Morrison 52:39
Pretty much. Yeah, because I’ve been doing this for too long. It falls out of me. But like I said, you you have everybody in your household to practice with your friends, or even if you wanted to practice with me, or Patrick one time, we can have a little fun doing this much like I I learned myself when I do with my clients, because everybody’s giving you the answers when you listen to them and watch them. And the quicker you can get into rapport with them. They’re like, she gets me, they get me and they’re like, you, I’m picking you. Yeah. But yeah, there’s, there’s, we can go way into depth with this. This is like, you know, millions of years of study. I’m not that old. But you know, would you say flamboyant hand gestures? Oh, yeah.

Patrick Kirby 53:22
So I’m not saying that it’s not the right way to go about it. But I mean, it’s what I do. The other thing, too, is I have question, because I think as as, as chamber commerce leaders do, and as nonprofit leaders, you know, we’re always trying to put like a super great foot forward, we’re, like, more overly optimistic than most people. We’re like Pro, Business Pro, nonprofit, work pro doing good, blah, blah, blah, we can come in a little hot. Right? So what I like about this, too, it’s framing it to sort of meet them where they are, and rather ask them the questions that you’re already going to get the answers that you don’t have to sell. So one of the things that I love about this is that if you, if you’re asking a question like, Hey, tell me a little bit about your business, or tell me a little bit about your organization, or tell me a little bit about your foundation on why you do the things you do more often than not because they want to talk about themselves and the way they’re going to lay out all of the problems that they have. And you walk in there and you’re like, Oh, well, instead of trying to sell you on what I assume you want. It’s honestly going oh, well, if I could provide this for you, where I can provide this for you? Would that be something you’re interested in, they’re immediately going to say yes. And all of a sudden you walk away with a business or a donation or something like that. So that self awareness piece that just has to remind you to meet you where you are, even though we are the type of individuals who are like super into this. Matching energy in order to get info out of them is something I need to remind myself on a fairly regular basis. So this is always a nice helpful way to do that too.

Denise Morrison 54:54
Oh, and I mean, we I have to remind myself, you know, different times different places. I mean, being triggered. So if there’s different triggers that I’m not aware of, and I have I’ve been caught off guard and I turned my jersey self back on. I’m like, Whoa, what happened there? Oh, yeah, I unconsciously was triggered back into my jersey sample. And I’m not even dying. But you know what to say? Like, it comes back out, and I have to check in and go, oops, feedback, feedback, okay, like, I just tick that person off or chase them away. And, you know, but ya know, if you do work with someone that’s flailing flail right along, but if you’re sitting in someone’s like this, then you sit up like that and hold yourself down.

Patrick Kirby 55:38
While the breathing exercises, it’s a lot of those. Yeah. We didn’t have any other questions. But I know that I think the conversation is going to continue within the bootcamp and I know that’s going to convert, you know, the competition is going to continue individual with people figuring out, okay, now I got a kind of a roadmap that we have in order to sort of engage people, and then that, you know, that first step of going, you know, what our organization is worth it to be to be attuned with an order, like that nonprofit gift of that business is the right place right time for us that this opportunity is going to be great for us. And this business will be wonderful for our chamber of commerce, it all sort of works out super well. So I’m glad this is all going to be as a replay and part of all those things as well. So I mean, just awesome.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 56:25
Yeah. And I think too, you know, even I’m excited. I know, we have a couple of chamber leaders on this call. And I’m excited to intentionally share this with them as well, because I think as we are opening up more in person events, as we are opening up more networking events, and things of that nature, everything you shared here Denise is also really great for those of us that are nervous to show up to some of those events. Oh, we just lost her nervous to show up to those events, great tips and how to show up more confidently have better conversations and get more out of their own chamber membership. So

Patrick Kirby 57:00
she was nervous about receiving all the compliments. I

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 57:03
know. She’s like I am out of here. I don’t like positive feedback. Um, okay, so yes, the replay will be up in the dashboard. In a day or so, the freebies, that Denise mentioned option that the freebies that Denise mentioned will also be available it for you and your members to download. Denise any final parting words that you’d like to say to everybody before we wrap this up?

Denise Morrison 57:34
Um, thank you for welcoming me back. I have so much fun doing this and be patient with yourself because it’s learning a new skill and crack up when you do it and be kind but practice with whoever is willing participants in practice, and enjoy getting to know yourself and your clients better your donors better, everybody. It’s really cool, but thanks for sharing that you can they can find my resources. Well, my internet was acting stupid.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 57:59
It’s all good. Well, thank you, everybody. And we will see you next month for our guest expert training. I don’t have the date right in front of me. You February 22 February 22 at 12pm Central Time Chelsea will be walking us through all of our goal setting questions and how to stop with the excuses of I’m too busy. I don’t have time for this and get the dang thing done. So, love it. Have a great rest of your week. Thanks, Patrick. Thanks

Removing Bias From Conversations for Better Success

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 0:00
to the computer. Hello, hello. Welcome, everybody to our guest expert training for January we are almost to the end of January already, which I don't know how I feel about that. This is where we are. So welcome everybody. Our guest trainer today is Denise Morrison, she and I have been hanging out together on the interwebs for a little over a year. But she's amazing, has great energy, all the awesome mindset stuff to share. So I am excited. For today, it's going to be a real good just thought about where are we at? What are we doing? And how can we be the best selves so that we can be the most successful in our businesses. So with that, I'm Denise, if you want to introduce yourself, I'll get your slides up.

Denise Morrison 0:58
Cool. Hi, I'm Denise Morrison. Everybody coming in from Norfolk, Virginia. Send me snow, please.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 1:09
Careful, you're talking to Midwesterners here. So we have all the snow.

Denise Morrison 1:13
You Yes, but then you could give me some. Awesome. So I guess I should begin, huh?

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 1:22
I'll let you take it away. Yeah, let

Denise Morrison 1:24
me get my screen sorted out so that I can see everybody accordingly. So I'm really excited to share this presentation with you after having some conversations with Sammy. And we're calling it removing bias from conversations for better success. And Sammy had mentioned that many folks go into conversations with opinions or assumptions or biases that unbeknownst to you could actually be affecting the outcome of your conversation, whatever it may be. So what I'm going to tell you today can be applied to any conversation. But I know you will be using it more specifically for asking for donations, or other things that may come up if you have questions. And if you're going into a conversation thinking, well, people don't want to donate. I mean, this is just you thinking, or I can't ask for that much money, or I should ask for less, or I don't want to be pushy. So you're coming into that conversation with some lack some negative biases towards yourself and the outcome. And I would love to help shed some light on that for you today so that we can clear that up and you can have better conversations. So what I'm what I'm going to help you understand is a tool that I use many tools that I use from Neuro Linguistic Programming, that's part of my coach training my background. In my life, it's helped me in my career as a health and life coach, it's helped me as a physical therapist, as a mom, a wife, a yogi. And the basis for Neuro Linguistic Programming is that we actually we learn how to tap into someone's neurology. So basically, when someone's speaking and engaging with us, what's going on and their expressions, their words, how their body moves, body language, so to speak, your language, the L part, your language is such a powerful gauge for the experience that you are having inside of your mind and body and what that person is giving you back when you're having that conversation. So it's really quite fun. I tell a lot of my friends and colleagues that I feel like Harry Potter in a way that I can kind of see things and hear things and understand things because I know how to dive into understanding someone's neurology someone's linguistic abilities. And then they p of NLP is the programming. It's basically your own internal operating system. It's your programming. It's your understanding of how you became who you are to relate to other people and it's filled with a lot of stuff. Some good, some bad, and as you'll see today, all that stuff can interfere with your conversation in any capacity. Okay, let's move on to the next one. You're running. You're running the ship over there, Sammy. And so the overview today, and talking points or inspiration points, questions, whatever comes from you please do not hesitate to ask me because this may sound really weird. If you've never heard have this kind of information before. And I'm happy to help you translate it. So the big things are talking today about what are you carrying into your conversations, and it's much more in depth than you could ever imagine what is going on inside of you that I can help you break down the things that you've been carrying inside your neurology, your language, your mind your body that is actually putting up a wall when you're having a conversation with someone. The other thing I'm going to talk about is why am I stopping my own success? And that might sound really mean and silly. Like, why would I stop my own success? Sometimes we never really quite understand what's blocking us. And I'll bring some topics up today that helps you to understand that you could be blocking the conversation, the success, the outcome of the conversation, I'm going to share some of my tools of active unattached listening, which it's so freeing to be able to have a conversation with someone when you are not putting forth your baggage or taking on their baggage. I'm talking about reflecting back to that person, the client don't or whoever to gain more rapport with them. And I'll touch upon speaking to their values. And lastly, give you the secret sauce to creating powerful outcomes. And this is one of my favorite things to share. Okay, next for this fun part. So I share here with you the NLP communications model. And it looks very busy and chaotic and crazy, because that is a great representation of what's going on in between your ears. And this is one of the reasons why when I learned this in 2006, I immediately thought, oh my gosh, all that stuff going on inside my mind and body, I have no idea how I was going to function. How do I live every day, but I got through it, we all get through it and we show up. But what it's briefly talking about is that we have so many things going on inside of our minds, from our experiences. As you can see, the external event is something that happened in your life. And nowadays, we have constant bombardment of stimulation, or events or triggers. Basically setting off what we have inside of ourselves as our filters, our values, our beliefs, the language of neurology, all of that, we make pictures in our minds, we make meaning, all of a sudden, we have a different state of being a state of mind and physiology where we might slump over or we might be agitated or what have you. And it affects your behavior and your responses to others. So there's lots that could be going on inside of you. So I'll just say this straight off the bat, it's not entirely your fault. So we'll take some of the pressure off. But if you have fears, or doubts or lack of confidence, old stories, memories, times that you have failed in conversations, that's going to be carried into your conversation with anybody. Your assumptions and biases, as Sammy mentioned before with me is that she has certain bias or she notices that others have a certain bias in their conversations. And this is what I'm going to touch upon today. So if you can imagine the weight of all this that's happening inside of you, and you're still functioning, but in your mind and body experience, you have your personal history, you have your experiences, your beliefs, stories, excuses, traditions, oh my gosh, oh, my there's so much going on. And every person that you meet, has their own experience their own images and, and tons going on in them too. So one, we could never imagine to know what that other person is thinking and feeling until you get into a deep conversation with them, and really get to know them and have that rapport where they will feel comfortable enough to share with you. So what I want to help you do today with some of the tools I have is to enlighten you on how to become aware of what you're carrying into your conversations and help you clean out the mental and emotional clutter perhaps that could be affecting you when you're having conversations and like I said before, it's not entirely your fault. We can do something about this. We can change our ways it might feel freaky at first, but the idea is that if you have to be able to have these conversations where you're succeeding at your goal, it will feel so much better doing the work that I'm going to have you do today. All right, see me next, keep me posted if anybody has any questions, because I'm very intent on sharing this with you all. Oh, I love this quote by Carl Jung. Perception is projection. And I put a lady carrying her luggage. And you can imagine why I put that we have a lot of baggage that we carry with us every day. And if we are not checking our baggage, before we enter into a conversation or relationship with someone, it's usually right there, under the surface of our body and coming out of our mouths, in our posture, and so on. And to explain perception is projection a bit more. This talks about our consciousness, our awareness, and Carl Jung, the father of psychology, along with Freud, and Adler,

basically was telling us that we what we perceive outside of ourselves is actually who we are. So when we're watching someone else, or engaging in a conversation with someone else, we can't see them except for through our own mental filters. That crowded mind that I showed you before. And the cool and freaky part is that we tend to take our most unconscious material biases and assumptions and we project it onto the people around us onto our conversations onto our goals and outcomes, which, as you can tell, could muddle everything, and it's not going to turn out the way that we had hoped. Keeping this in mind, like I said, I'm going to show you some ways today to help you clear this up so that you can have more energy and freedom in your conversations so that you'll set yourself up for success. Next, quote, and photo. So one of our NLP paradigms, which it's a way of thinking and how we address our conversations, I put here discover their model of the world. And I just show those two heads. And each of us has our own model of the world of how we understand and interpret what people are saying how they're moving their bodies, and so on. And I want to tell you that the more you can listen, zip it off, observe and get a sense of what that client or donor or person that you're speaking to, is having an experience of life, this will help you. And the model of the world is basically all of that head stuff that I showed you before their beliefs, their values, their filters, their own desires, their own expectations, experiences. And it's like your own individual map of how you think things go. So as you can imagine, from what I'm saying, so far, it makes sense that a lot of us clash in many ways if we're not understanding someone's model of the world, or understanding what's going on deep inside of them. But this is a fantastic way. What I'm going to share with you today is to understand this. So let me give you an example. This is hilarious, because this happens with my siblings, and me all the time. So let's say if you have any kind of family dynamic, where something happened in your life, and you ask each sibling, what was your take on the situation, what was your understanding on the situation and because you may have, from the outsider perspective, you might be like this happened, everybody should have the same response to it. But no, because of everyone's model of their world, and their filters and their expectations and their pictures and beliefs, that is actually throwing off the whole interpretation of the event. So my invitation to you is to become more aware and flexible in your interactions with others so that you're taking their conversation for where they are at that time and space and you're understanding yourself completely knowing what you're bringing into the conversation and if you have that full understanding. Okay, next one. Let me take a sip of water, I promise. So let's break down your bias inside of your mind and body and this is a huge topic as you can imagine. Everybody's talking about mindset and growth mind I'm second now. But as I know, from being a health and life coach, and an NLP practitioner, it's not just the mindset, we have a lot happening deep below the surface under here. Let me now talk about your self talk and your thoughts. So this is not to say that you have some sort of condition, but we all have a self talk mode, I call it auditory digital, you may call it your mean girl, your inner judge or your inner critic. But there's a little voice or something inside of you that saying, push on or you're the best or you're not good enough, or this is going to suck or they're not going to like me, or they're not going to spend any money. And that little sneaky judger are a mean girl that you might have inside of you is going to impact how you have a conversation. As well as what thoughts could be swirling around your head. And, you know, having these conversations with Sammy and many of my colleagues, if we have limiting or detrimental or negative or lacking thoughts, that's going to affect how we show up in our conversation. And then I dropped down to the bias and the beliefs and Sammy use the word bias and I'm going to supply the word beliefs here. Because of that mind clutter going on, we do have our own personal opinions, attitudes, we have judgments, we have prejudices, and we have our deep rooted beliefs about things. You know, if you believe in Santa Claus, are you if you believe in the tooth fairy? or what have you, those beliefs are pretty hard wired inside of you, and they can interfere with successful conversation with anybody really? And lastly, all the motions and excuses. Oh, gosh, I say this with kindness and love. Because we have been through a crazy time in the past couple years. Many of us have had all the motions pop up. We've had different things happen to us in life and being able to check in with yourself and wonder, Hmm, do I have something that's residing that comes from my past that brings up significant emotions, that triggers me that forces me or is setting me off. So I have conversations which aren't so helpful, which may sound one way or another and have a strange tone to the person listening. So being aware of is there anything in your life that you've been through that still is kind of tucked under the surface that maybe when you're having a conversation where you need to ask for money, or you need to engage someone's assistant somehow? What can you do to go okay, what's really bugging me? What's coming up? How can I do this, and I'm the kind of person that helps with that, and I'll share some resources to get you started as well. The other thing I like to throw this in which it sucks, but it's true. Many folks have their excuses and excuses sound really good and they serve a purpose. But in conversations like, Oh, they're gonna say this, or I'm afraid they're gonna say that, or I'm just not good enough. You might have heard yourself saying things that are rationalizing your behavior. When in doubt, it could be you're afraid or you don't feel confident or you're just not sure of what to do. So being aware of those kinds of things, we can help you break down that bias. And we'll go into the second part of breaking down your bias. How're we doing so far? Sammy?

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 19:07
Sorry, the mute button was too far white. No, we're doing great. You're doing awesome. Okay, cool.

Denise Morrison 19:13
We're never we're never with the mute when we did. All righty. What did you make it mean? So this is the million dollar question. I asked my clients in our deep coaching conversations. I asked people that I have great rapport with because it's very touchy. When you make something mean a certain thing, you are placing judgment, you're placing your opinions. You're putting your stamp on the situation to help you make sense of it. And many times that meaning contradicts with what you believe if you're approaching the conversation. And so being able to tap in and listen to what someone's saying meaning is about the situation will help you to gain more rapport and have an easier time of pitching or selling or whatever it is that you're doing in your conversations or convincing your child or someone that you know, to do their chores around the house. And when you make meaning of something, a lot of times you do this to, like I said, make sense of your world to feel safe to feel like you belong. And these meanings, we usually learned how to make these meanings at very young ages, and they stick with us, like little wounds, and they can be helpful, but they also can be detrimental. And oops, oh, sorry, I lost my little slide for a second, I'm coming back. This technology is a fun thing. The next thing I want to bring up, because this is my specialty, physical therapy and a yoga teacher and instructor your posture and your energy. Now, many of you have probably heard things about your body language, but everybody has their own unique way of expressing themselves. And you will get to know yourself once we, you know, begin to process this a bit more. Or if you already know how your physiology and your posture and your tone of voice and your pace of speaking is how you know yourself well enough that you understand what that's doing when you're engaging in a conversation. But being aware of that person that you're speaking to, what's their posture? Like? How are they showing up? Are they like slumped down and disinterested? Or they could be depressed? Or are they checking their phone or their eyes darting? Or do they just want to escape from your conversation, so paying attention to their body, their body language more than just crossing their arms over the chest? That's the classic one. But how they're said thing if they're crossing their legs or not. If they're tensing up in any way, holding their breath, there's so many fun things you can pay attention to. And it's eye opening when you start to the last one on the slide is communication. And now it might seem like communication is very simple. Many of us in school I know I have in school, we learned you know, to speak our words to answer questions. But communication is so much more than just spitting out words off the top of our head and knowing that your neurology your language, your filters, your biases, your opinions, your judgments, your meanings are all brought to the table when you open your mouth. Your model the world skeleton spilled out you're seeing their model the world come back at you. But being more alert to how is this communication going and I when I coach my clients, I mean, Zoom is a phenomenal tool that we've been using for a while now. But it's still much of a communication is like a dance. It's a choreography between you and that person in gaining rapport. And I can quickly tell when I'm working with my clients, like if I've lost rapport, if I've lost them in any way and how to come back and pique their attention or apologize for something or ask more questions. These are huge topics. So if I let you know again at the end, but if you ever have any questions and you want to have a one on one chat with me just for fun to go through each and every one of these, I will be happy to take you through that. Right, next one. Oh boy. This is one of my favorite topics because I am a recovering master self sabotage. And I brought this up because you may or may not be sabotaging or stopping your own success. I mean, we all do not attempt to go in two conversations purposefully. But many times unconsciously, there's something brewing that is limiting us causing us to be afraid, much like I spoke before, it's like we have this meaning we've made in the world and when I go to talk to that person, oh my gosh, they're gonna say no, or I'm not good enough. Or I'm going to ask for too much money and blah, blah, blah, blah, all these things so if your neurology your language, your whole model of the world is like not gonna work. It probably will not work because you're setting up the conversation with all of this turmoil. And in transformational coaching world the idea is To help you transform, and I have given Sammy access to my two favorite tools. One of them is the mindset reset, which is a seven day email mini course to help you get started or refresh your mind, set your mind health, your awareness of who you're being when you are engaging with others. So it touched upon it touches upon what I have here. So that's on my website that you can download for free. And I've also given a special transformational journal activity that I created for you guys, today. It's rewriting your money story. And because of what I've been speaking about today, and knowing even with myself, like having to go into sales conversations as a coach, as I was on my own transformational journey with my coaches coming up against Why am I sucking at this? Why is it so difficult for me, when I realized that I had a certain story about asking for money, or deserving more money, or people are gonna pay me money for me, I mean, all this crazy stuff that I didn't know, was underneath the surface inside my model the world until I was asked these powerful questions, and they helped me get out of my own way. So that I could share these tools with other people. And like I said, I put in both of those resources, even in the emails and the content, please reach out to me, I do not want you to feel alone or like it's like, just go do it. and off you go. I am here to help you clarify and really put this to use for you so that you have that little transformation as well. Right. Next one. Ha ha ha. If you have never heard this quote, it's a goodie. And as a yogi, this was one that we learned to use many times only speak, when it's an improvement on silence by Mahatma Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi. And now, this is hilarious to me. Because nowadays, I'm a Gen X er. So nowadays, we are allowed to speak everything anywhere on social media all over the place. Some great things come out some not so great things come out. But when you're having your conversations, take some time to reflect and go, okay, is what I'm about to say going to be useful, purposeful, is it going to be hurtful? Harmful, helpful? Is it going to be overwhelming? Is it going to be cluttered or clear and concise? And I mean, you have probably been there, I've been there, I've seen clients go there, and we're word vomiting, all of the things that we're excited about, we're just like, I have to tell them all this, see what I can do, look what I can do. And I am so guilty of that. I've been in the medical practice for over 30 years, and part of our training in gaining our licensing was being able to explain to give our rationale for why we do what we do with our clients patients, because of the threat of being sued and making sure that we're very clear. Thankfully, I along the way, the coaching tools have helped me realize that people are not really going to tune into all that noise. And they're only gonna be going to be hearing from their perception of model the world. So you could have the greatest package and the greatest pitch, but if they're not tuned into what's in it for them, what's going to be relatable to them and what they want to hear you are just more noise. So in saying this,

take this and savor this quote, I throw this around my house all the time. Because my husband is a professor and he likes to talk and talk and I'll just say hey, there's only if it's gonna improve upon the silence. Okay, if you have any questions about that, or how that impacts your life, let me know. Say how all these wonderful tools can be used in your life. And the cool part is is what I'm sharing with you today. You can practice like starting now starting with the next person that you speak to and especially on your family, but you may want to warn them what you're doing because it will definitely annoy them at the first go round. All right, let me except. So this slide is about active unattached listening. And I chose the word unattached because that attachment piece is part of like your energetic beingness, though I've been kind of alluding to this whole time, that feeling that you give off with someone and if you have this attachment that you want to sell that you want to win them over or make them become your client or get them as a client, those words and that tone and that energy is very attached to an outcome and it can come off as like creepy and salesy and desperate and lacking and that is no way that I'm sure you want to show up when you're about to ask someone for money. So I'll go back to the top. Listen, oh, this is fun. When you're having a conversation with someone, I'm not sure what your practice is. But typically I have, if I'm on Zoom, I have otter going if to record conversations, I have my notes. They're taking notes as the person is as speaking to me. But when I asked my questions of my clients, or your potential donors, ask your question and zip it up, and go in and just enjoy the experience of what they're saying. Listen to their word choices, listen to how they say the words, of course, they have an accent. If they use a specific tone, are they speeding? Or are they really slow? Do they gesture a lot, or they, you know, folding their arms, whatever it is, experienced it, watch it, note it down, no judgment on it, because that's just how they're doing their experience, okay? Because they are showing you and giving you their cues on how they see the world. And one thing that I'm going to add to this is when you are having these conversations, always keep in the back of your mind that you're actually opening a relationship with this person, if it's for the first time, but even each time you're you're building a relationship, by gaining rapport by listening. And this is such a different slant to how things were originally taught to me out there in the world, in selling or in asking for money. This is more of a relationship building for the long term and building that trust and tapping into how you value them and yourself. So one of my coaches always says, don't propose marriage on the first date. And that is also the unattached energy. So if you're going into that conversation with all this stuff loaded up in your mind and body, and you come off as pushy or needy or creepy, you may get a reaction and you'll see it in their body language and the tone of voice because you may have lost that rapport. And so that leads down into the observe part. Watch their subtle body movements, watch their face color change, or different ways they move their head and their body do they cross their arms or legs is their shirt falling off, loose. And so you're always gaining signals from them, and understanding how you can best kind of match and mirror, how they're moving their bodies and how they're speaking so that you can get into that relationship, that rapport with them. And once again, I'll mention below is checking your energy. And, you know, I'm excited right now you can tell I'm passionate about what I'm speaking about, I want you to learn and I love this stuff. So that's why I'm speaking in this way, I might be speaking to my client in a whole different manner. And so being able to adapt your communication style to whoever you're trying to gain rapport with. So fun, so valuable and so helpful for that long term relationship. The other thing too, I'll just jump in and say here is there's a study and art of listening to someone's choice of words and knowing what system their body is tapping into and whether they're more of a visual person or an auditory person or a feeling type person and the words that they're using. Once you get a sense of the words they're using, you can replay them back to them. Okay, let's go to the next One. So here we are with reflecting back to gain rapport. As you're listening, watching, sensing, taking notes, embrace and pause to see what that valuable experience is that they're giving to you. And once you can kind of match and mirror them, understand their pace, their tone of voice, their gestures. When you're speaking with them, you could say, Well, what I heard you say was this or I understand that you felt X or when they breathe out, you breathe out. Or when they shift positions, you shift positions, but you do so subtly. Not like you're being a child and playing Simon Says, but you do so subtly. And you can move in towards the screen or move in closely to the conversation and really get into that nice dance that choreography of exchanging words with them so that they're understanding that you understand them, you're getting them, you're having an experience with them, and they will find you much more approachable, more valuable, more trusting, because you're listening to what they said, you're watching how they move their bodies, and so on. And this does take practice. This is super fun when you do this, so well, you will make tons of friends. But then you can also use this to annoy people and ignore them as well. But we won't talk about that right now. That's for a separate session. Okay, next. Sam is going to come back to me for the next one. Let's see, where are we? Oh, here we go. I'm on it. Um, there was a bird outside. So this here, find out what find out why and reflect back. What this is talking about is getting into the heart of finding out what their values are, and what they find is important. And in any conversation, potential dirt donors, board members, whoever, your spouse, your colleague, the plumber, when you're having a conversation, you can start to ask questions to get a sense of what's really important to them. And as I said before, if you go in and word vomit and spill out all your guts about your programs and what you have to offer, you might be overwhelming them, and you might not even be hitting the mark on what do they actually care about? What what's important to them, what did they find valuable in their life and relationships and where they're placing their money and who they're dealing with? So listening to them, when you're having your conversations, you can always ask, Well, why is that important to you? Or in what way is that important to you? And what is the what is important to you about XYZ and you all have your language better than I will. So if I was to ask, you know, my potential client, like what's important to you about having a coach? Why is that important to you? Why is that important to you, and you can have a little fun. And we say, you can go seven levels deep, as long as that person is ready. But you can keep asking, Well, why is that important to you? And and circle back to that, using this beautiful tool of your language and your body language, the communication to really deep deeply go inside and find out? Like, what are they focused on? What are they passionate about. And when you can reflect back to them, what you heard them say about what they find is valuable, and how it's so important to you that their needs are met. Or I understand that this is important to you

to allow them to make a better decision to choose you or to support you or to stay connected to you for a long time. So it's a powerful process that you can do on yourself as well asking yourself what you value so that when you're going out in the world, you will find people to work with with similar similar values and learn more about how to speak directly to what they want and need instead of just blaming out all the things that may they may not pay attention to or care about because it's not in their perception of the world. Right next one. This is fun, like my little drawings. Let me take a sip here. So I put this here, as the secret to creating successful conversations. In place of conversation, you could put outcome, you can put goals, you can put dreams, and one of the secret transformational coaching tools, NLP tools that we use to help improve the outcome of a conversation or a sales call is to tap into all of the senses, the sensory experience completely of that conversation. So I'm sure many of you have heard, like, I have to jot down my goals and the smart formula, or I have to put my vision board and put all these pictures. That's awesome. That's wonderful. But let me give you the deeper secret if you haven't heard this, because we have a powerful system inside of our mind and body. It's called the RAS the reticular activating system. It allows us to kind of set our sights sounds experience our model of the world to attract more successful conversations more success in reaching our goals, seeing our future outcome come to be if we use all of our senses. And from my picture there, you'll see visual for your vision, auditory for your ears, kinesthetic is for your body, feelings, olfactory for your smell your nose. gustatory is something that you would taste and self talk, as I mentioned before, sadly, many times we've learned to set goals and put things out there without actually tapping into all of our senses. And many clients come to me, and they'll tell me, but I've put this on my vision board, and I wrote out this goal. But they didn't have the complete sensory picture alignment, to actually bring life to their goal through the reticular activating system. Now, I'll explain a little bit more about that. But using all of the senses, all of these components helps you become the most aligned in that mental and physical arrangement that I spoke about before, like understanding what's your thoughts, your feelings, your beliefs, your energy, all of that aligned, and these are the little tools to help you do that in the formula. And if one of those pieces or two of those pieces are in congruent or out of align with your success, or your outcome or your goal being achieved, that's understandable, because a lot of times, you know, people will set goals based on a vision, but their self talk is actually saying, You're not good enough. I don't believe I can do this, I can't do this. I don't know what I'm doing. And so that little self talk is affecting the success of your conversations and your achievement of your goals. But you can help yourself, you can make it so much easier for yourself by using your own reticular activating system. And this system helps you identify information in your environment. And it's like your little own meter that takes a peek around in the world. And it's like, okay, my focus is on these visions, these sounds these feelings, those smells and tastes and this is what I'm saying. And it kind of lines you up. The classic example is if you're thinking of buying a car, okay, I'm looking at a red Honda Prelude or something. That's what I bought in the past. Everywhere you go, you start seeing red Honda's right, because you are now focusing in your beautiful bundle of nerves inside your own brainstem. And it's regulating what your focus is on what stimulation to pay attention to. And it's so powerful because it's your own and you can use it to your advantage. So in looking at that little picture, once again, when I work with my clients to have them create a successful goal, outcome something towards the future and for you in thinking about what kind of conversations you want to have, how do you want to ensure that that conversation is going a bit better for you and line you up? When you're doing this exercise you can write on your paper vision. What do I want to see as I'm having this conversation? How do I look? My pleased Am I excited? You can design and dream this whole thing? What are you You hearing in this conversation you might be hearing, yes, I'll give you this much money or Yes, like, I'm going to work with you for the rest of your life, you get to design it because you are now tapping into the skills of your own beautiful system to start focusing on the key pieces to creating the successful outcome. Of course, as you're going through this process, you would want to write down how are you feeling inside yourself when you have those conversations. So if you're imagining this, you're thinking about what's about to happen, know that powerful feeling inside of you that successful, confident feeling inside of you. So you're ready and motivated to have that conversation. Of course, many of you may use or may not use essential oils or candles, that basically anchors that successful way of thinking and being and seeing the conversation. Sometimes you might have a taste in your mouth, you might be sipping water or coffee, if that inspires you to succeed in a conversation. And lastly, is your self talk, that's probably the you just one, that's the most viewed one in there, because that little inner critic, that little voice or judger, if he or she is in there saying you're gonna suck at this, you can't do it, that can collapse the whole beautiful picture that your reticular activating system is trying to set up for you to succeed. So I know that was a lot. And if you have questions about that, we can ask or you can find me separately, even I can take you through the exercise because it is different and unique. All right, next one, because I know we're getting close to the end. That that, Oh, I love this paradigm, savor it. Failure is only feedback. So gather the learnings. I don't know how you grew up, but failure was a horrible thing. I've been told I'm a failure, you're gonna fail. You're not good enough at this, all those things. And if you have ever had someone in your life tell you anything negative about failing, failing, I invite you to now change the way you're thinking and feeling and being about the word failure. Because it is really only feedback. It's a way for you to understand and learn what went well, what didn't go so well. And what can I do better next time. And it's always practice. And it's always a way for you to learn more about yourself and how you're showing up in conversations. Because you will make mistakes. I mean, we're humans, of course. And most people I know nowadays want to relate to another human being. And it feels so much better if you can present yourself that way. And the funny thing is here is that I love working with kids with this because kids are the most honest when they give you feedback with their words or their body language, because we are constantly sharing ourselves and our experience with the world and enjoy taking on that failure yet it's feedback because it's helping you to become a better person that whatever you're doing in life, and I think that's pretty darn cool. So we can ixnay that failure is a bad thing. Alrighty, next.

Oh, this is fun. We're coming to the end now. So in your conversations with potential donors, or board members, whoever that you're talking to where you feel that you want to gain a little bit more rapport with, I'm gonna give you the, you know, the teeny tiny curated version right here. But how does you're speaking to someone and in in a professional capacity, or even with a family member or friend, you can help them to make a decision help them decide? Because if you ask them, when you're deciding something, or when you're looking to buy something, or when you're looking to donate money, does it need to look right, does it need to sound right? Does it need to feel right or make sense? And you pause and you wait and figure out and let them go inside themselves and figure out yeah, really needs to feel right. I'm not going to decide on buying that car because it doesn't feel right or when people tell you something like it has to make sense. Otherwise I won't do it. Pay attention to their cues because if they're using those key words that show you that they need to see something in order to purchase it or to to give money to or they need to be able to feel a certain way. In order to go forward and say yes, or they might need to hear the right words from you, that's going to allow them to say yes, so pay attention to that. And like I said, before, so many times, practice on everybody, and you will just light up your own neurology and learnings, because you will be able to gain more rapport with someone, when you hear these words that you're using, and I know it sounds crazy, as I was talking before, about matching and mirroring and not looking like you're playing, like Simon Says, or making fun of someone or teasing them, doing it in a subtle, beautiful, loving way, compassionate way, as you hear them speaking, take note of these words. And as the conversations shifts, you can say to them, I heard you say that, it needs to feel a certain way, I think we can do that, and so on and so forth. So this is a really fun thing to do. And it helps you as well. So you can ask yourself the same question, I need to go on a trip somewhere, I'm gonna go here there, doesn't need to look right sound like sound right? Feel right or make sense. And you can check in with yourself as well, to get to know yourself better. Right? Here we come to the end. I know I could talk about this for days and days and days. But if anybody has any questions in the time that we have, let me know. Now that I'm at the end. Oh, hi, hi, hi.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 51:34
We all pop back up. I'm Denise, a mazing. And what I love about everything that you're saying is it's really just like, you know, Patrick, and I harp on this all the time. We're here to build long term relationships with people. So just show up without expectation. I think if we can just change that mindset would be huge. But I love what you were just talking about with the last slide. I have a question on that. Because when you ask those, like the way that this like you would literally say that statement to somebody, right? Like, what would help you make a decision doesn't need to feel good, right? And what I like about that is it gives somebody an answer, as opposed like an easy answer to give you back, as opposed to just being like, Okay, well, what do you need from me? And they're like, I don't, I don't know. So like, is that just something that you have, like, just memorized and like replay in your mind, and when you practice it, now, it just comes out? Second Nature, when you're in those conversations, you're just literally like, you just spit that out? As if it's just hey, how's it going today?

Denise Morrison 52:39
Pretty much. Yeah, because I've been doing this for too long. It falls out of me. But like I said, you you have everybody in your household to practice with your friends, or even if you wanted to practice with me, or Patrick one time, we can have a little fun doing this much like I I learned myself when I do with my clients, because everybody's giving you the answers when you listen to them and watch them. And the quicker you can get into rapport with them. They're like, she gets me, they get me and they're like, you, I'm picking you. Yeah. But yeah, there's, there's, we can go way into depth with this. This is like, you know, millions of years of study. I'm not that old. But you know, would you say flamboyant hand gestures? Oh, yeah.

Patrick Kirby 53:22
So I'm not saying that it's not the right way to go about it. But I mean, it's what I do. The other thing, too, is I have question, because I think as as, as chamber commerce leaders do, and as nonprofit leaders, you know, we're always trying to put like a super great foot forward, we're, like, more overly optimistic than most people. We're like Pro, Business Pro, nonprofit, work pro doing good, blah, blah, blah, we can come in a little hot. Right? So what I like about this, too, it's framing it to sort of meet them where they are, and rather ask them the questions that you're already going to get the answers that you don't have to sell. So one of the things that I love about this is that if you, if you're asking a question like, Hey, tell me a little bit about your business, or tell me a little bit about your organization, or tell me a little bit about your foundation on why you do the things you do more often than not because they want to talk about themselves and the way they're going to lay out all of the problems that they have. And you walk in there and you're like, Oh, well, instead of trying to sell you on what I assume you want. It's honestly going oh, well, if I could provide this for you, where I can provide this for you? Would that be something you're interested in, they're immediately going to say yes. And all of a sudden you walk away with a business or a donation or something like that. So that self awareness piece that just has to remind you to meet you where you are, even though we are the type of individuals who are like super into this. Matching energy in order to get info out of them is something I need to remind myself on a fairly regular basis. So this is always a nice helpful way to do that too.

Denise Morrison 54:54
Oh, and I mean, we I have to remind myself, you know, different times different places. I mean, being triggered. So if there's different triggers that I'm not aware of, and I have I've been caught off guard and I turned my jersey self back on. I'm like, Whoa, what happened there? Oh, yeah, I unconsciously was triggered back into my jersey sample. And I'm not even dying. But you know what to say? Like, it comes back out, and I have to check in and go, oops, feedback, feedback, okay, like, I just tick that person off or chase them away. And, you know, but ya know, if you do work with someone that's flailing flail right along, but if you're sitting in someone's like this, then you sit up like that and hold yourself down.

Patrick Kirby 55:38
While the breathing exercises, it's a lot of those. Yeah. We didn't have any other questions. But I know that I think the conversation is going to continue within the bootcamp and I know that's going to convert, you know, the competition is going to continue individual with people figuring out, okay, now I got a kind of a roadmap that we have in order to sort of engage people, and then that, you know, that first step of going, you know, what our organization is worth it to be to be attuned with an order, like that nonprofit gift of that business is the right place right time for us that this opportunity is going to be great for us. And this business will be wonderful for our chamber of commerce, it all sort of works out super well. So I'm glad this is all going to be as a replay and part of all those things as well. So I mean, just awesome.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 56:25
Yeah. And I think too, you know, even I'm excited. I know, we have a couple of chamber leaders on this call. And I'm excited to intentionally share this with them as well, because I think as we are opening up more in person events, as we are opening up more networking events, and things of that nature, everything you shared here Denise is also really great for those of us that are nervous to show up to some of those events. Oh, we just lost her nervous to show up to those events, great tips and how to show up more confidently have better conversations and get more out of their own chamber membership. So

Patrick Kirby 57:00
she was nervous about receiving all the compliments. I

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 57:03
know. She's like I am out of here. I don't like positive feedback. Um, okay, so yes, the replay will be up in the dashboard. In a day or so, the freebies, that Denise mentioned option that the freebies that Denise mentioned will also be available it for you and your members to download. Denise any final parting words that you'd like to say to everybody before we wrap this up?

Denise Morrison 57:34
Um, thank you for welcoming me back. I have so much fun doing this and be patient with yourself because it's learning a new skill and crack up when you do it and be kind but practice with whoever is willing participants in practice, and enjoy getting to know yourself and your clients better your donors better, everybody. It's really cool, but thanks for sharing that you can they can find my resources. Well, my internet was acting stupid.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern 57:59
It's all good. Well, thank you, everybody. And we will see you next month for our guest expert training. I don't have the date right in front of me. You February 22 February 22 at 12pm Central Time Chelsea will be walking us through all of our goal setting questions and how to stop with the excuses of I'm too busy. I don't have time for this and get the dang thing done. So, love it. Have a great rest of your week. Thanks, Patrick. Thanks