Education
Need to have a talk about a tough topic? This show is for you! Welcome back to Her Rules Radio where you come to learn how to live life by your own rules! Today’s show is brought to you by my new book, co-authored with my incredible husband Bob Gower, Radical Alignment, how to have game-changing conversations that will change your business and your life! SOOO excited to be back here with you, talking again - I took a little summer break and now we are basically back here in Season 6 (yes, coming up on our 6th anniversary of this show!)... If you’re listening for the first time, or the first time in a long time, I grew up in a radio station - my mom had her own organic gardening radio show for 10 years, and every once in a while I would go on the show and do a “children’s gardening” episode with her! My older brother brendan was her sound engineer, so it was a family affair! Even though we were a creative, often collaborative family, there’s one thing I didn’t really learn growing up with my fam: How to have tough, emotional, or high-stakes conversations that felt safe, where everyone could be bravely vulnerable. It’s part of why Bob and I finally wrote this book - RAdical Alignment. You know those skills you wish you'd mastered earlier in life? ME too. I didn't learn how to gracefully talk about emotional topics until well into adulthood. Important conversations would veer wildly from where we started, and it felt so dangerous. Maybe you grew up in a family where any past mistake could be brought up again. Maybe you didn't have space to talk. Maybe one person would dominate conversations so you felt like "what's the point?" Emotional conversations were hard for me until my late 30s because I always felt I had to argue my points and “win” - and that never felt right to me. I would show up to conversations with people I cared about, friends or family or even business colleagues, and I would feel like I was trying to be fair and generous, and maybe the other person was out for blood! The heart of our book Radical Alignment is The All In Method, which helps each person commit to sharing their intentions, concerns, boundaries and dreams about a topic. It’s not about arguing points, or “winning” - it’s a format to collect information so you don’t avoid talking about really valuable emotional stuff that sits underneath all important things. YES - emotions matter and they’re always present! I grew up thinking emotions were bad, or invalid or even unfair to bring into conversations. But we are all human! EVERYONE has emotions. So our AIM helps you share them in a respectful, safe way where people are able to listen to each other better than ever before. Another thing that kept me from bringing up tough topics? Things going off the rails! Has this ever happened to you? You start talking about one tough topic, and the other person brings up something completely different that happened in the past, and now you’re arguing about something completely different. In our book Radical Alignment we show you how to set up a conversation with another person or people so that you all agree in the beginning on the topic, so you can come back to it if things feel like they’re getting off course. It's such a relief! I like to think of it as a linear process for emotional topics. When you have a shared map - ok, everyone we are agreeing at the start to share our intentions, then our concerns, then our boundaries, and then our dreams, and everyone gets the same amount of time, and no one will talk over each other - we are just hear to listen to each other … With THAT roadmap? Totally new outcomes are possible. One of the tough conversations we are in as a family, and that’s me and my husband, my son, and his dad and step-mom, is what is life going to look like in September. My son is getting ready to go into high school here in New York City, although at the point I’m recording the show, I don’t know if he’ll be going to school or starting the year from his bedroom. This is a tough choice and many families are feeling really upended because we don’t know what to do, or what’s coming. So we are using our AIM to help us have conversations about the decisions that need to be made as an extended family. We use AIM to help us understand each other’s needs, worries, and to actually build empathy with each other - which in blended families with competing needs and fears isn’t always easy. This is a way to have a shared vocabulary, a shared commitment to how we will communicate that is respectful, fair, and productive. It helps us stay grounded. And it helps us make space for our son to share his thoughts and feelings, and because we’ve been using it with him for a while, since he was 7 or so, he feels comfortable talking about tough topics with us - WHICH feels so huge to me. A few weeks ago at the dinner table, he said, out of nowhere, “I’m really glad I’m being raised learning to care about other people’s feelings.” I don’t know about you, but this feels like a huge parenting WIN! SO: I offer you a challenge: to invite someone in your life to have a tough conversation in the next 48 hours. Invite them with openness and kindness: don’t say “WE NEED TO TALK.” No one likes to hear that. How to invite someone to a tough conversation Be specific but not rigid. Be inviting, and be clear about the topic. See what happens! Personally I’ve had a BIG breakthrough with some family members recently about topics I’ve been avoiding for decades… the conversation is ongoing but we are off to a clear, caring start. I would love to hear from you how this goes! Pre-order Radical Alignment and get your bonuses here! https://radicalalignmentbook.com/