In those environments, if someone's not, if you feel like your manager or your boss or your CEO or even like a colleague isn't showing you respect. I've read your stories, so I know that this happened multiple times in your life where there would be someone around you that wasn't showing you the respect you deserve. I have a lot of people that come up to me and they say, I'm struggling because my boss is not showing me respect or my colleague isn't listening to me or all these kinds of things. Where does your mind default to you when I say that?
Like where do you go to in your mind? What's your like action A? So with the last one you just said, my colleagues don't listen to me. I would come back and I would say, give me an example of where?
They don't listen to you, right? So I would say to you, when you do speak, do you look at people when you speak? Do you project your voice? So it's called paralinguistics.
Everyone's so focused on what they say like reading my notes or reading my agenda. They don't think about the tone pitch of the voice. How are you delivering this? Are you projecting your voice?
Do you talk like this when you speak? I have a question. I just want to share something. People are going to like, glaze over.
I have a question. Or even just the tone. How you end up? Hi, I'm Evie.
Hi, I'm Evie. Feels different. Those are simple things you can do to make sure people hear you. The other thing is, I say this a lot when I speak to companies because communication is a big thing.
Don't just talk to talk. There's this thing out there and especially with women. It's like, make sure they hear you. Make sure your voice is heard at the table.
I'm fine with that. Do you have something beneficial to say or value to say? Because if you don't, don't say anything. Have the meetings I go to, I don't speak.
Because I may be, I have nothing to say. It's so interesting. From being in many board rooms for many, many years, probably 15 years being in marketing board rooms for 15 years, about 10 years being in marketing board rooms with CEOs with my team, with lots of different people, lots of different teams. I've had thousands and thousands of meetings.
I eventually observe something in myself, which is a bit of a prejudice that I have, which is the minute someone speaks, based on their contribution score, which is like a credit score, based on all of the contributions you made in the past, in those first couple of seconds, if their previous contributions were all valuable, everyone in the room would stop and look and lean in. But if they developed a low contribution score because they'd continually talk for the sake of talking, I'd give an example. In my New York office back in the day, there was this one guy who, we'd be in a brainstorm trying to solve a problem, and he would start speaking. By the way, he started speaking.
I hadn't actually thought through what he was going to say to go, what about if we put a, I don't know, like a pop-up and maybe we'll do some TikToks? And so, honestly, what I then observed from that individual is every time they open their mouth, people would instantly basically dismiss the idea because they had such a low contribution score. And we all have a contribution score. You have one, I have one.
Based on the last 10 years of when we've opened our mouth, how valuable it was to the people around us. That individual, whenever he spoke, I would see the person sat next to him who I won't name, almost like low key roll their eyes in the first five seconds and shut it down before he'd even got it out. And then there was this other guy called, in my UK office called Paul, never spoke, never really said anything, super mature, super experienced guy. The minute he said anything, because every time he opened his mouth, it was important and valuable and considered everyone, he could interrupt anyone, the instant silence, everyone stares over at this guy.
Because when he contributed, we all knew that he had something valuable to add. And I swear to my team, I said this to this team that I hear with us in New York, like just make sure you protect your contribution score. That's such a brilliant way to say it, yes. You're probably, yes, it's your score because people keep tabs on you.
Yeah. Everyone's going to say something. He doesn't always speak, but he's going to say something every time he drops something, he drops something of value. Where people think like, I have to talk because everyone tells me I have to talk, make my voice heard.
No, shut up. And if you're silent, then you're not a value. That's what people think. They think you don't add anything.
Right. Well, you're taking away either. Yes. I will tell you this to Stephen, when I go to meetings, or sometimes I go to meetings and if I'm the dumbest person in the room, I'm the happiest person.
That's a one time where I'm happy because I'm thinking, wow, look at all these smart people around me and I get to be part of this. I get to listen, I love to sit back and listen. I just had a meeting with my scripted agent, Sylvie, with my manager about some TV project. And I knew enough to know to say, they're like, hey, have you listened to this?
And I said, you know what? This is a space I don't know. I'm going to follow your lead. Fill me in.
I'm taking a seat back. You guys do the talking. What about when someone compromises your boundaries with disrespect? How do you react to that?
Because I think I have a lot of leaders around me, my various businesses. And I see sometimes that some leaders struggle with confrontation. They struggle with team member might disrespect them in some way or might not deliver work to the right standard. And they might struggle with pulling that person in, knowing how to do that and how to address that situation.
And the avoidance of that conflict, obviously, just causes a bigger future problem because you're saying a new boundary, right? You let someone, jeopardize or cross a line. And if you don't, I'm assuming that if in the moment you don't address that, they're going to cross it again in the future. This is really about conflict resolution, interpersonal conflict resolution.
And when you've been disrespected, how do you deal with that? So the first time I'm going to flip it back, what have you done to let people think that they can do that to you? That's the first thing I'm going to say. What standard have you created or what things have you set up to let people think I don't have to deliver on time.
I can't be disrespectful. I can't show up late for work. That's the first thing I'm going to say. Is it in the past, is that a standard for this?
Right. In some way, that should open the past. That's the first thing I'm going to do. What is there something I have done to create an environment where a person thinks that it is okay to do these things?
That's first. Why do you go to I? Because I'm the one who sets the tone. I just interviewed a chief of station, former chief of station, John Frenchy.
He's former CIA. And he managed a lot of people and a very strong, a lot of strong personalities because you've got officers and all these different people. And he said to me, you know what I learned? He said, it is easier to be more, have boundaries and be a little bit more sturdy and more authoritative in the beginning and then pull back and to be everybody's friend and then try to put those boundaries in place.
The latter doesn't work. They say, you do the first, you let people know what you expect of them and then you can pull back a little bit. You always have to toe that line. So that's what I'm going to say first and he's right.
What tone have I said in the environment that I'm working that people think it's okay to do these things? That's one. Now let's say sometimes I have an outlier. I have a person who does these things.
As soon as it happens, you have to address it. What people do is they don't address things. They let it go. It's small and then it happens again.
It's small and again and then we become resentful. We become pissed. This is a person who keeps doing it. Why don't they self correct?
Again, it goes back to me. Why haven't I addressed it? People are afraid of conflict. Conflict can be done in a great way.
You have to think of conflict as think of it as like I'm competing. I can speak to you, not raise my voice, not make it ugly and debate something with you. In the White House, next to the Oval Office was the cabinet room. The cabinet room is where the president would sit with all his heads, you know, secretary of secretary of Homeland Security and they would discuss and debate policies, laws and they would compete.
One person would say, I don't like this idea. This is why. Another person would say, well, this idea doesn't work. This is why.
You have to be comfortable in doing that. Most people are not. They don't understand that you can sit somebody down and say, hey, you know, this happened. Can you tell me about that?
I had someone who worked for me and she had made a mistake on something. And so it was a pretty big mistake. So I called her up and I said, hey, you know what, this and this happened, talk me through it. And I let her explain.
And she said, you know, I'm sorry, this and that. There's a reason why. But the one thing I did is because I wanted to rectify it because I didn't want to tap it again. I was like, is there anything I can do to help make your job better so you can be more successful at what you do?
Because I want to hear, is there something I'm doing or not doing that's impacting her decision making or the way she sees things? So it's a twofold. But you also do when it comes to respect and this is a whole separate thing you brought up with the respect part. Just make sure people are.