Heather Hansen has her psychology degree and spent 20 years as an award-winning trial attorney and is a trained mediator. She has appeared on NBC, Fox News Channel, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, and Sirius Radio. She has presented in Kuwait, Ireland, Mexico, and throughout the United States. Heather is also the author of the bestselling book, The Elegant Warrior: How to Win Life’s Trials Without Losing Yourself, and is the host of the podcast, The Elegant Warrior. In this episode, Heather talks about her journey from being a trial attorney to where she is today, the difference between communicating and advocating, why you need to hire yourself as your own advocate, the value of owning your mistakes when it comes to building your credibility, how to build credibility when you’re in a position of power, how to build credibility when you’re not in a position of power, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

• Email Heather Hansen
• Heather Hansen’s Website
• Heather Hansen’s Book | The Elegant Warrior: How to Win Life’s Trials Without Losing Yourself
• The Elegant Warrior Podcast
• Harvard Business Review

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Transcript

Hey, Hey!  It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast, where we’re going to explore the intersection of human dynamics, communication, and service.  If you’re interested in growing your own voice of influence or the influence of those on your team, check us out at voiceofinfluence.net and contact us to talk.  I always love hearing from listeners.   Today, we have with us Heather Hansen, you know, facts tell and stories sell, but advocacy wins.  So, Heather has her psychology degree and spent 20 years as an award-winning trial attorney and is a trained mediator.  She has appeared on NBC, Fox News Channel, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, and Sirius Radio.  Heather has presented in Kuwait, Ireland, Mexico, and throughout the United States.  She is the author of the bestselling book The Elegant Warrior: How to Win Life’s Trials without Losing Yourself.  I love the title, and is the host of the elegant warrior podcast.  

Andrea:  Heather, it is wonderful to have you here with us today on the Voice of Influence podcast.  

Heather Hansen:  Andrea, I’m so excited to be here.  I love your podcast.  

Andrea:  Oh, thank you so much.  I’m excited to talk to you because your book is so good.  I’m going to tell you this just to start with, I really love the fact that your chapters are bite-sized and then it gives people a chance to really just kind of sink their teeth into it real quick, take a bite and then know how to move forward.  So congratulations on your book!  

Heather Hansen:  Thank you so much!  That was on purpose.  I really wanted people to be able to open to one chapter, maybe read it before they head out into their day and have it as a little tool with them all day long.  

Andrea:  I love that.  I think calling those little chapters tool is a really good way to put it.  That really makes sense.  So, Heather, tell us a little bit about your experience in being a trial lawyer and how you came to where you are today?  

Heather Hansen:  Oh boy!  So, I have been at the same firm since I was in law school and I have had the fortune to represent tons and tons of doctors and nurses and people who work in hospitals when they’re sued by their patients.  And that work has been rewarding but also extremely upsetting, very emotional, and very stressful.  

And I learned pretty quickly the difference between communicating and advocating. I love communicating.  I started college thinking I was going to be a journalist and I majored in communications law, economics and government.  But when it comes to winning, you know, communicating is defined as sharing ideas.  And that’s great for relationships.  It’s great for teaching, it’s great for journalists, and it’s great for psychologists, which is ended up being my major.  

But when it comes to advocate to win, you have to publicly support your idea and you have to advocate for it   And I found in all of the years of teaching my clients how to speak to juries in a way that we could win, that I was teaching them how to advocate.  And I found that I could use that skill outside the courtroom as well.  

So now, I do work with CEOs, venture capitalists, environmentalist, and all kinds of people who have a big idea and they want to find a way to advocate for it.  And the book was really meant as, you know, as you mentioned, bite-sized tools that if you don’t have me in your pocket, perhaps these tools will help you be a better advocate for your big idea without me there.  

Andrea:  Hmm.  And do you find that people who do have a big idea that there are times when they struggle to actually own it publicly, I guess, to stand up for what it is that they’re trying to advocate for?  

Heather Hansen:  Yes.  It’s so funny because there’s sort of two things there.  One is to have the confidence and the trust in your idea and your knowledge to actually do it.  And then the second part becomes how do you do it, and I train people on both because first you have to know how important it is to use your voice and you have to be reminded that this idea, sometimes, especially, women were more likely to do things for other people or other things.  

So, sometimes when I remind people that this idea is a thing that needs you to stand up for it, they find it easier than thinking that it’s them putting themselves on the line.  And then once people are OK with stepping into being an advocate, then we can get to the “how do you use your voice?”  “How do you use the tone of voice?”  “How do you use your body language, or which questions to ask?”  But sometimes, Andrea, your point is very good one.  Sometimes the hardest part is for people to step into the role of advocate with confidence and with strength and with a true knowledge that what they’re doing is to promote that idea.  

Andrea:  Why do you suppose it is so hard?  

Heather Hansen:  I think that we doubt ourselves.  Oftentimes, we don’t know that we are the right person to do that.  We think that there’s someone better suited for the job and there’s not.  One of the things that I really work hard with my clients, on and also I do a lot of speaking to women and to children, because I think that we often say, “Well let me find somebody else who could do it.”  

And you know, I know that even in my job there’s a lot of times where I’m like, “Well, if I could just hire someone to do my sales or hire someone to promote me.” But truly there is no one who is a better advocate for your big idea and for you than you are, because you know it better than anyone else.  You’ve lived with it longer than anyone else.  You love it more than anyone else, and hopefully you know yourself, you’ve lived with yourself and you’ve loved yourself better than anyone else.  

So there isn’t anyone who can do it better.  And when you remove yourself from the situation, I often teach my clients to hire themselves to be their own advocates.  So to, you know, lay out all of the qualifications that you need and then advocate, and then lay out all the ways in which you meet those qualifications or get the skills you need in order to do so.  So that ultimately, the person with the most knowledge, the most passion, the most faith, the most background in this big idea is the one out there publicly supporting it.  

Andrea:  I really like the way you put that just hiring yourself as your own advocate.  And making the decision, it sounds like to not just rest on your strengths and the things that you’re already good at.  But to add to that the things that you need to be able to get your idea into the world.  I think something that a lot of people don’t realize that it’s OK to say “I’m not good at this yet, but I will be.”  

Heather Hansen:  That’s absolutely right.  And most of these things can be trained, you know, they can be learned.  You have to be curious though, and you have to be open to the idea that you’re not an expert in everything.  You’re an expert in your big idea that is for sure.  But some of these other things you’re not yet an expert in.  And that’s OK.  

We can make you an expert by training and tools and specific.  I mean, some of the tools are really easy, but things that you can remember just as you step out, like the idea of hiring yourself to be your own advocate.   And the nice thing about that, Andrea, is that there’s all kinds of studies that show that when we remove ourselves from a situation and refer to ourselves almost as a third person.  So if I were to say to you, “Oh, Heather is getting upset about that,” it sounds ridiculous but it helps us to see things from a different perspective and to take them less personally.  

So when you hire yourself, you’re able to sort of remove yourself and say, “Well, this new hiree is lacking in these skills.  So she’s gonna need some training there, but she’s very strong in these skills so that’s why we’re hiring her.”  And it removes you from the situation, so you don’t take it so personally if you’re lacking in one or two of the things that you need.  

Andrea:  That’s really interesting.  I guess I’m kind of wondering how it hits on value and how we value ourselves, how we value our own voice or not.  What’s your take on that?  

Heather Hansen:  I think that there are some people who are very centered in their value and they’re well aware of how valuable they are to their institution or to their boss or to their family.  But it’s interesting, Andrea, because I think a lot of people know their value in one area of life, but maybe are less confident in another area of life.  

So you may know that you’re a very good mother and friend, but less confident in your ability to use your voice or to get on stage and talk about your big idea.   And so I think that the thing that we need to realize is that you have value in all of these areas and a lot of the skills that you use as a mother and a friend are transferable and you can use them in advocating for your big idea.  Once you know your value in one area, it becomes a little bit easier to extend that to the other areas.  

Andrea:  Hmm, really good.  When it comes to having a voice of influence is telling the truth or having a good idea enough or what role does building credibility or serving as an advocate play in promoting change?  

Heather Hansen:  It’s funny that part about telling the truth.  You know, in my trials, both sides believe they’re telling the truth.  You know, both sides have a story and it’s the person who is the better advocate that wins.  It’s the person who tells that story with more evidence to support it.  And in the corporate world that ends up being data with more confidence and, to your point, with more credibility.  

So, it is very important to have and build your credibility, but you can do that in a whole host of ways.  A lot of people struggle with this idea of credibility because they say, “Well, I don’t have the corporate background.  I don’t have the education.  I don’t have those years of experience.”  But you do have this natural talent for communicating or you do have a natural way of holding yourself physically that’s going to be very effective when you’re advocating.   So, building credibility is an important part, but it doesn’t mean that if you don’t have the background you can’t do it.  

One of the biggest parts of building credibility is simply to set expectations and meet them and make promises and keep them.  And if you can’t, this is the most important part, if you can’t to own it and fix it.  So, you can build credibility in a huge way, very quickly, by doing that. And it’s not going to matter so much if you don’t have the years of experience or the education.  If you have owned a mistake and fixed it or set an expectation and met it, you are well on your way to building your credibility.  

Andrea:  Uh, that’s really important, this idea of owning where you’ve messed up.  Do you have any examples of that?  

Heather Hansen:  I have a lot of examples from my experience as an attorney.  You know, I often gave keynotes in my early years to doctors and one of the things I would recommend to them is that when you have a complication and they happen, you know, they happen to you and I in our day, we make mistakes where things happen.  

They happen in medicine as well.  But I would always urge my clients to run towards their problems instead of away from them.  Because studies show that when doctors sit down with a patient and own a complication, say, “Listen, this happened, I’m sorry, this is what we’re going to do to try to fix it.”  That prevents lawsuits better than almost anything else.  

So that’s a perfect example of building credibility in the worst possible scenario by that doctor has made a promise that they were unable to keep, they had set an expectation that they couldn’t meet but they owned it by talking about it with the patient in terms of the patient could understand and then they offered to do what they could to fix it if possible.  If possible and that really builds credibility quickly.  

Andrea:  It sounds like it builds trust that allows for credibility.  

Heather Hansen:  So trust and credibility are close siblings.  In my mind, trust just takes longer to build.  So you know, in my cases, sometimes I’m only in front of a jury for three days, other times it’s three weeks.  But three days, even three weeks isn’t time enough to build trust.  But it is time enough to build credibility and that credibility would hopefully someday lead to trust. The relationship between a doctor and a patient, if you’ve been seeing that doctor for a long time, you may have built that trusting relationship.  But if you haven’t, you can start with credibility and that can be a foundation for trust.  And sometimes it can be enough on its own.  

Andrea:   Hmm.  That’s really interesting.  Credibility sort of leads to trust then if you’ve been around long enough, that’s, that’s really interesting.  You say in your book on page 81, “When we build credibility at trial, we do it with evidence.  You need evidence too.  You can build credibility with evidence of honesty, patience time and hard work.”  Tell us a little bit more about that.  You’ve started to talk about it. I think that there’s more there.  

Heather Hansen:  Yeah.  I mean, you know, evidence is how we win or lose cases.  It’s the pieces of data that we put before a jury.  So evidence of your credibility is…so for example, when I step into the courtroom, I’m always dressed a certain way.  I always act a certain way.  I don’t tend to be like loud and laughing in the courtroom because my cases tend to be very emotional for the parties, oftentimes, very sad.  

And I want to set an expectation with the jury who’s wandering around in the hallway or sitting in the jury room, which is just next door that I am always going to act with empathy and with respect for them in the system.   And I set that expectation and then every day I do what I can to meet it..  And then as far as promises in my openings, I make promises to the jury, but I don’t make them until I’m really sure that I can keep those promises.  And so day by day you build.  You know, you set expectations by saying “I’m gonna be on time and prepared for that meeting.”  And then you meet it.

And by doing so you’ve started to build your credibility.  You make a promise, “I’m going to get you that proposal by Friday.”  And you keep that promise and with that you have started to build your credibility.   And again, if you can’t do it, then you own it on Friday afternoon, you call the client as difficult as a call that might be and say, “I can’t keep that promise that I made to you.  This is why I’m going to work on it all weekend and I will have it to you by Monday.”  And then when you do, when you actually follow through on that, you have built a huge amount of credibility, but it takes step-by-step piece of evidence by piece of evidence to build that kind of credibility.  

Andrea:  Can we, can we take a look at this from a couple of different perspectives?  I’m thinking about maybe framing this in terms of somebody that’s empower and somebody that’s in a position of power or authority where they are wanting to get people on board.  They’re wanting to build credibility with the people that need to get on board with the thing that they’re going to do and then also from the perspective of that person that maybe doesn’t have as much power but they’re wanting build credibility with the person who does so that they can sort of see their thing go through.  

When you see somebody who has from that perspective of I’ve got power, I’m in the position of power, and getting people on board; what kinds of things do they need to really be mindful of when it comes to how they look and how they act, just like you were talking about coming into the courtroom.  

Heather Hansen:  So, it’s easier for people who have already reached high levels of power and success to build credibility because we see their successes.  And that starts to create a feeling of I trust them in that respect.  But here’s the thing, Andrea, they may not have built any credibility when it comes to their relationships with you or their ability to follow through on a promise or the way that they treat their employees.  

So it’s important to look at this, not just from a very, sterile black and white like numbers proposition, but also a relationship driven proposition.   And the other problem that people who are in positions of leadership, people who have already done well, people who already have a lot of years behind them, they have what’s called the curse of knowledge.  They know things so well that they forget what it’s like not to know them.  And so they’re often talking in terms that the people that they’re trying to build credibility, “We don’t understand at all.”  

I’ll give you another example from the courtroom.  My doctors walk into the courtroom with a certain level of credibility simply from the fact that they went to medical school, they have done a fellowship.  They’re been doing this operation for 15 years.  That’s great.  They have credibility with respect to their expertise. But that doesn’t mean that the jury finds them credible with respect to their compassion or their kindness or their ability to tell the truth.  So they have to build that kind of credibility.  

And one of the things that gets in the way is when they’re talking in words, the jury doesn’t understand.  So, one of my jobs is to help them to remember what it’s like, not to know these things.  So for example, if I have a case that involves a vascular surgeon that’s a surgeon that teaches treats blood vessels, I will say to the doctor, say the blood vessel surgeon, why confuse the situation with words that the jurors might not know rather than make it simple, make it understandable, and allow the jurors to really get into the story that you’re telling so that you can build that credibility.  

Andrea:  That’s interesting because I can see somebody on the jury thinking to themselves, “I don’t know what that means.  Why don’t I know what that means? I feel like an idiot.”  

Heather Hansen:  You just hit something so important in the head that I worked so closely with my clients on.  If I say one word that the jury doesn’t understand, Andrea, they don’t even hear the next eight to 10 words I say.  Because doing that in their head like, “Wait a minute, what is that word?  What is she talking about?  This trial is gonna be hard.  

I’m not gonna understand this stuff.”  I can’t afford to have people not here eight to 10 words that I say and neither can any of you.  If you are advocating for yourself or a raise, if you’re advocating for your big idea on a stage, if you’re trying to get funding for your huge idea that’s going to change the world.  You’ve got to use words that your audience understands or else you will lose that opportunity for sure.  

Andrea:  Hmm, so good.  OK, so, so you have to use words that people understand.  What about the way that somebody acts in?  OK, we’re still talking about this person who is already in power.  How can they act around others who may be underneath of them in a sense in a hierarchical kind of a situation, or at least there’s, they don’t have as much power as they do for whatever reason.  I am assuming that setting people at ease is an important piece of it, but what are some other things that you would recommend?  

Heather Hansen:  So, setting people at ease is certainly an important piece of it.  Body language is an important piece of it.  I work a lot with my clients on their body language, you know, crossed arms.  A lot of these things are the things that sort of come naturally.  But I don’t know if you know about power posing and powerful poses versus less powerful poses.  There’s also ways to sort of use your body language to make people feel more comfortable around you.   And the other thing that we don’t talk enough about is tone of voice, the way that you not only use your tone of voice but also listen to others.  

And one of the most important pieces that a person empowered needs to know is that when you are the powerful person in the room, it is your job to do more listening and less speaking because you want to know what the people in the room need.  That is the opposite for the less powerful person who should try to do more speaking and be given the opportunity to do more speaking.   So for the person who is in power, it’s being very receptive and open and almost empty.  You know, they have all these preset ideas, they have all this training, they have all this knowledge, and they have all this experience.  And yet, in order to truly advocate, you need to know what the other people want, need, see, and perceived.  And you don’t find that out without asking questions, listening to answers, paying attention to body language, and looking around a little bit.  

Andrea:  Hmm.  So how do you help somebody who is maybe not in power or not as powerful in that particular situation, be able to advocate for themselves, you know, where they are speaking up more and that sort of thing.  How do you encourage them to do that?  

Heather Hansen:  So, a lot of that comes down to what we started this talk about with respect to confidence, you know.  So, we have to try to build the confidence to speak so that you can build the credibility by what you say.  

One of the hard things that I talked to a lot of young women about is because you can’t have credibility immediately.  You have to build it and that takes time.  You know, and I gave a talk to a group of young women the other day and I said to them, you know, “I don’t want to disappoint you, but you’re not going to have credibility tomorrow.”  You know, it is a series of expectations met and promises kept.   But if you prepare like crazy, you are going to have more confidence to speak up because you’re going to be secure in the knowledge that you have the information that needs to be shared.  And then the thing that I really tried to help people to focus on is you are now speaking for your big idea.  You’re not speaking for yourself.  You’re doing this for something else or someone else.  

Andrea:  There’s something at stake that’s beyond my need.  

Heather Hansen:  That’s exactly right and when that’s true, we all are more likely to step up to the plate when we know that if we don’t advocate for our big idea, people will be worse off for it.  There will not be this opportunity.  You know, I work with some people who are in the environmental fields and if we don’t get that big idea out there, this thing that could help us to clean the oceans will never be realized.  Or for women who are looking for VC funding, if you don’t get your big idea out there, you’ll never get the money that you need to create this product that’s going to change the world.  That is important.  And that means that you have to speak up for that thing.  It’s not for you because we oftentimes get more insecure about speaking up for ourselves.  It’s for that thing and that thing needs you.  

Andrea:  I think we’re a lot more willing, at least women, are a lot more to sacrifice for something else than we are for ourselves.  

Heather Hansen:  Gosh, you are innately brilliant, Andrea, because you’re a 100 percent right.  There is this study out of Harvard Business Review that shows that when it comes to negotiating, women are actually more likely to lean towards unethical when they are negotiating for someone else, whereas men will lean that way for themselves.  So, not that anyone should be leaning towards unethical, but you’re right in that women will do things.  I mean it’s the Mama Bear Syndrome.  

Andrea:  It is.  

Heather Hansen:  And I know this from my experience in the courtroom, I will negotiate for my clients in ways that I would never negotiate if I were buying a car like aggressively and confidently.  And there’s so many things that we’re willing to do for others that we aren’t always willing to do for ourselves, which is why it really helps to reframe the conversation to recognize what it is you’re advocating for.  

Andrea:  OK, so we’re in the midst of quite the interesting political climate and I don’t expect either one of us to talk about politics too much.  But I am really curious about the actual conversations or lack of conversation, perhaps lack of dialogue, that’s taking place.  And I’m curious if you have any advice that you would give to political leaders who are sort of vying for position and authority, who want to get people to believe that they are more credible than somebody else.  What kind of advice would you give them?  

Heather Hansen:  The most powerful person in the room is the one who’s doing the most listening.  When you’re listening to what your constituents want, what your audience wants, what your potential funders want, no matter what it is.  So if you’re a politician, if you’re truly listening to what your constituents want, you are getting the information you need to win.  You also have to be willing though to listen to those that are different from you.  You know, we can’t win by only having the choir that we love to preach to vote for us.  

So there has to be some level of compromise and some level of being able to move to the center, but you’re not going to even begin to have any sort of authority with people of the other side until you are listening to them and proving that you’re listening to them by repeating it back.  One of the things that’s really powerful, Andrea, in all aspects of advocating for yourself is mimicking the person you’re speaking with.  

So I used to be a waitress and I got pretty good tips and I always thought it was because I worked my butt off, but I recently read a study that explained it a little bit more.  When a customer would order, they would say, “I’ll have a swordfish with anchovy butter on the side, baked potato with sour cream, and a salad with Parmesan and pepper dressing,” and I would say “Got it.  Swordfish, anchovy butter on the side, salad with parmesan and peppercorn dressing and a baked potato with sour cream.”  I would repeat it back word for word, and people love that.  

Studies show that waitress and waiters who repeat back a customer’s order word for word get 73 percent higher tips because it shows that you’re listening.  People want to be heard and seen.  And I think in politics right now, I mean there’s so much going on in politics and so much that is wrong, but every single person in this country wants to know that there is a leader out there who sees them, who hears them and wants to get it right.  Just like I did with those customers at the Chartroom.  I saw them, I heard them and I told them what it was that I heard and they knew I was going to try to get it right.  

Andrea:  Hmm.  So, so good.  And I am sure that those customers, after you repeated that back to them, they could sit back in their chair and have a really good conversation instead of worrying about whether or not you were going to get it right.  

Heather Hansen:  That’s it.  That’s it.  They were confident that I was going off to do my job and they couldn’t drink their mudslide and have a great time.  

Andrea:  Yeah.  

Heather Hansen:  That’s right.  And in politics it’s the same.  I mean, you know, for yourself, Andrea, all you want to know is that there’s someone in politics who sees you, who hears you and is trying to get it right for you.  And I think that if more of our politicians were focused on that rather than fighting with each other and not listening to anybody other than the echo chamber that makes them feel more important then we would have a much better dialogue going on and we would ultimately end up with much better leaders.  

Andrea:  Wow, Heather, this has been a fantastic conversation.  It’s sad that we’re at the end, but I would like to ask, if the listener is like really intrigued and would like to connect with you, where can they find you?  

Heather Hansen:  Well, I’m in transition right now.  So right now the website is a heatherhansonpresents.com but the best way to reach out to me would be my email, which is heather@advocatetowin.com and the new website’s going to be advocatetowin.com and I said, in transition.  But direct email me is fine if you want a little piece of some of the tools that we’ve talked about, there is at my heatherhansenpresents.com website.  There is a webinar on picking people and I talked with the jury consultant on the tools that we use to pick jurors and how that can be applied in your life outside the courtroom, and that’s free at the website.  

Andrea:  That sounds fascinating.  I’m going to personally check that one out.  That sounds great.  All right, Heather, thank you so much for being a Voice of Influence for our listeners today.  

Heather Hansen:  Thank you so much for having me.  I really enjoyed our conversation.