by Gay Gaddis
Always Have a Point of View
Having a strong point of view demonstrates your competence, that you have thought things through. I know a lot of women who are not comfortable around conflict. They just don’t like it. But properly managed conflict is invaluable and something most women need to be more comfortable with because it forces you to articulate your personal values and beliefs.
I watch my three Border Collies at the ranch. Several times a day they tie into one another. It is a very aggressive form of play and usually stops short of drawing blood. They grab each other around the neck, knock each other down, growl and snarl at each other. It is the most natural thing in the world, because they are practicing their aggressive skills for a time when they need to make a kill or defend themselves. It keeps their skills honed. And strangely enough, it is most likely to happen when we are on a conference call at the ranch because they are spoiled and want our full attention.
People need the same exercise, maybe with less teeth. I admire people with strong points of view. I do not have to agree with them, but I respect someone who has done the mental gymnastics to form a strong opinion, and that usually means debating the pros and cons of issues. Too often, women shy away from debates and it is a mistake. Force yourself to verbally argue out an issue. It is the only way to form strong opinions. If you cannot take a challenge, you probably have not thought through an issue or done your homework. I learned a lot about points of view because back in my high school debate classes I had to argue from one point of view and then turn right around and argue from the opposite perspective. Debate, and then you will be ready to have a strong point of view that people will want to hear.
The Roman Catholic Church understood this when they appointed a “devil’s advocate” to present arguments against a proposed beatification or canonization. They were worried that they had too many yes-men making important decisions. Find someone to argue with. Be challenged. Be OK being uncomfortable. It is an amazing confidence builder.
Ask yourself, when was the last time you had a healthy, robust debate? Find your partner, get two glasses of wine, jump in the hot tub, and debate like a cowgirl.
When You Speak, Lead with Your Heart
I have always been comfortable on my feet in front of a crowd. Some of it comes from my mother thrusting me into almost every event and parade in East Texas. My husband says that I never miss an opportunity to run in front of a parade. In fact, I just entered the dog parade in nearby Burnet, Texas, dressed up in a beaded black evening gown, beautiful black heels, and long white gloves, walking my beloved, ever so handsome black-and-white Aussie and Border Collie mix named Henry, who was sporting a black bow tie. He looked like he had on a tuxedo. I thought we were adorable and would surely come home with the blue ribbon, but a country and western hound dog act beat us out! If you put yourself out there, sometimes you are going to get beat!
I have given speeches all over the world—to a closed audience of sixteen amazingly wealthy women in Dubai to over a thousand in Tampa, to business students in China and on many college campuses. I usually have a few slides to keep me on the topic of the presentation and to illustrate the points I am trying to make, but I always speak extemporaneously. I usually know a lot about what I am talking about, so it is pretty easy for me. And I keep the audience energized and laughing with a few of my crazy stories. But often I will step away from the lectern or walk out into the crowd and genuinely speak from my heart. Those moments are never planned. They come from watching what resonates with the audience in real time. These moments are always about emotional connections. I know when I get to one. I stop and I talk candidly about it.
I am amazed at the feedback I get from those moments. People say they have rarely heard someone speak with more authenticity, or who was more genuine or open about her feelings. I get notes and e-mails saying kind and wonderful things, and it always touches me deeply. I know speaking is intimidating for a lot of people, but work at it and do not be afraid to put your heart into it and show your passion and even vulnerability. If you speak the truth, you don’t have to be perfect. People won’t care.
When I was working for Leadership Dynamics in Atlanta, I took an evening speech class at Emory University. I have a pretty strong East Texas accent. I asked my professor if I needed to lose the accent to be effective. He said, “Everyone has an accent. It’s not as important how you sound as it is what you have to say.” So my Texas twang is still here.
Work on your presentation style. Join Toastmasters and other speech groups. Be yourself, speak with your own authentic voice. But slow down. Walk around, take control of the room. Use some humor. Be introspective. Be warm. Make your audience relax. Be heard. Let them see the cowgirl that you are.
If there is one piece of advice I could give to those of you with children, it would be to introduce them to situations where they can learn to be comfortable speaking in public. It will serve them well in life, build their confidence, and make them powerful people.
It’s OK to Be Intimidated Now and Then
When I spent the week with the military, one morning before daylight we boarded buses and went to Parris Island, South Carolina, where marine recruits have their first exposure to US Marine Corps drill instructors. As we climbed out of the bus, the drill instructors started yelling at us, treating us as if we were raw recruits. We followed the yellow footprints on the pavement where thousands of marine recruits have stood through the years. We tried to follow orders as best we could. But, I have to admit to you, I was totally intimidated. I was so shaken that when they handed out rations I spilled my box of cereal on the floor. My drill instructor was not very gracious about it!
I recently had dinner at the French embassy in Washington, DC, with a group of powerful people who were working on finding better ways to work together on both sides of the political aisle by focusing on areas where we can agree. It was a lovely dinner and I felt pretty much at ease. I was raised a Southern girl and knew my table manners, but there were multiple knives and forks that I had rarely seen before. I looked at the other people and quickly saw they were experiencing the same dilemma. We all laughed at once, and I asked one of the waiters to explain the protocol to us savages. He was very accommodating.
Being intimidated is not a bad thing. It keeps you on your toes and honest about what you do and don’t know. People that intimidate me are usually ones who have a particular expertise that I don’t have. They can be from backgrounds, organizations, and situations with which I am not familiar. However, once I get to know these people, we usually hit it off and learn from each other.
I have come to believe that if you are not occasionally intimidated, you are not trying hard enough. You are not putting yourself out there as much as you should. Find someone you are in awe of and find a way to go see them. Sure it can be a little scary, but do it anyway.
Oh, did I mention that I am intimidated by rattlesnakes? Thank goodness I am a great shot.
Never Stop Learning or Teaching
One of our creative leaders has been with us for many years, and from time to time we worried that he might have a hard time keeping up with all of the changes we have experienced in the business. Just about the time you think he might be lagging a bit, he reinvents himself and emerges with something completely new. He has done it more times than Madonna. He listens, and he reads constantly. He is a quick study. He is self-aware, not the best manager in the world, and a big introvert. But when clients meet him, they beg for him to work on their projects. Literally.
T3 has always been a learning environment, and we are led by many self-taught people. Don’t wait on someone else to teach you; go learn it yourself. Make the effort, put the time into it, and get better. One of the most important skills a woman needs to develop as she progresses through her career, especially after her children are more self-sufficient, is honing her learning ability. To keep your mind fresh, have a lifelong learning strategy and learn at least two new competencies every year.
Inventory your skills and decide where to focus your learning. From a career perspective, there is always something to learn and usually pretty awesome videos and courses to help you do it. From a personal perspective, follow your passions and increase your expertise every year. A cowgirl is always working on a new trick with her horse. Practice, practice, practice.
Lessons Learned: Cowgirls Build Their Own Competence
There are no shortcuts to becoming competent. You have to be relentless, fearless, and dedicated when it comes to tackling the work and steps it will take to gain your competencies. Associate yourself with people smarter and better than you, and you will reach new heights. I was in the audience when Nancy Lopez (the renowned professional golfer) said in her speech, “You have to play with people better than you or you will never up your own game.” This is true in business and life. She won forty-eight LPGA tour events! And, by the way, I think Nancy is a cowgirl.
As Nancy’s example points out, to excel, you have to do things better than anyone else. Find those talents and spend your life building upon them. Mix in a little optimism and serendipity, and you have the formula for success.
Mildred Douglas Chrisman
(National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame, Fort Worth, Texas)
Chapter 6
Cowgirls Use Competence to Find Confidence
Let me introduce you to one true crowd-pleaser. Mildred Douglas Chrisman just wasn’t cut out to stay in a stodgy Connecticut boarding school. However, they did teach horseback riding as part of the curriculum, and she decided she liked horses better than books. So she left school and joined the circus! Barnum and Bailey’s, to be exact, which led to an opportunity at the 101 Ranch Wild West show.
Mildred teaches us that sometimes you just must take a leap of faith. Go with your gut and courageously follow your dreams. One step of change will lead you to the next opportunity.
Not only did Mildred take that leap, but she was a real winner. In 1918, she won championships in Cheyenne and Pendleton. Bronc and steer riding were her sports, along with trick riding and trick shooting. Her dangerous relay races and bucking horse competitions worked the crowds into a frenzy of yelling, cheers, and applause. Not a demure bone in her body! Her personal brand was enhanced with flashy, fringed skirts and vests. Mildred was a master of winning over crowds from one road show to the next.
Cowgirls like Mildred learned to be extremely confident in their rodeo performances. But to become a superstar, you have to be willing to differentiate yourself and win over your audience time and time again. Once you have that down, it is much easier to assert yourself in situations where before you might have shied away. Building on competence doesn’t always make you qualified to be assertive, but pick your battles in this arena and you will eventually win the war.
You Don’t Just Think You Can. You Know You Can.
Cowgirls have learned to be tough, but they are still very much women and act like women. Cowgirls have the power to assume both masculine and feminine traits when it suits them. They have the ability to go back and forth—to be vulnerable at some times and bold at other times. On top of this, they have the self-confidence to laugh at themselves for doing it. What emerges is irresistible. Men can’t do this, so this is a wonderful, unfair advantage.
Research published in Insights by Stanford Graduate School of Business, “Researchers: How Women Can Succeed in the Workplace” shows that women who are aggressive, assertive, and confident, but who can turn these traits on and off, depending on social situations, get more promotions than either men or other women. In many ways, women who learn to do this become more powerful than most men, according to the research.12
A woman who can take a powerful stand, laugh about it, and then slide back into her gracious feminine charm has a raw power that can disarm almost anyone. I have had this ability most of my life. I can play both roles pretty well. At this point, I do it instinctively. If this behavior isn’t instinctive for you, here is what I recommend. Try this out first with family or your Rough Rider colleagues. Learn to push the pedal and take a strong stand, then slip back in to a more kind, sensitive person. As my mother said, “Kill them with kindness.”
Being a bit of a chameleon by playing both feminine and masculine roles can help you find a business voice that works for you.
Be Assertive—Solve a Problem
Solving problems gives you the authority to be assertive. The more you do it, the more power you earn, and the more trust you build. At T3, our clients bring us their marketing problems every day. In the early days of my career it was often difficult, if not impossible, to prove that an advertising campaign actually worked. My team had opinions, our clients had opinions, but there was not a lot of supporting data on either side. Generally, if a client liked his TV commercial and it connected (either made them laugh or cry) with his board of directors, and his buddies on the golf course said, “Hey, I really like your TV spot!” it was deemed a success.
As we moved into the digital space we began to develop better ways of proving up results. We could measure sales. We could measure page views, the time spent on a particular page and as a result we got much better at proving success. We moved from opinions about results to actual data about results. Now we have so much information that the challenge becomes determining which data points are the most important. Our analytics team can run reports on massive data sets searching for correlations we never dreamed existed. That is a powerful tool we deliver to our clients.
So today we test concepts, media mix, price offers—all kinds of things—and we have developed the skills to forecast how campaigns will perform. There is nothing more exciting than to launch a campaign and watch the results come in, in real time. We see the data pour in and we learn what mobile app ad pulls the best, what media delivers the most effective return on investment. It is like election night every day at T3.
Most of the decisions we make are fairly logical, but we have learned not to stop at logic. We push through with things we do not completely understand. Do customers react better to different typefaces? Are two offers more engaging than one? Does an illustration work better than a photograph for this specific information? Where is the best place for the “Buy” button on the page?
These learnings provide our clients with real solutions. Provable solutions. Our constant learning gives our clients power in their organizations. They do not have to say, “I think.” They can stand up and say, “I know.” This is simply raw power. It gives them the authority to bulldoze a lot of office politics and push their agenda forward.
Every day look for ways to prove the value of what you do. Measure it. Work to make it better. You will learn more and your confidence will soar. Your results will improve your competence. Do it over and over again. Your ongoing optimization proves you are gaining more competence. What a wonderful little virtuous circle for a cowgirl to ride into.
Don’t Stand There with Hat in Hand
In South Texas there is an old saying, “Don’t stand there with hat in hand.” In the ranching world, cowboys did not take off their hat unless talking to a lady, or someone who could be considered superior to them. Or unless they were putting pride aside and asking for something, usually money.
Warm Springs Rehabilitation Hospital was a client of ours for many years. It was a small account, but we believed in their mission. It originated in the 1930s as a polio treatment facility. After polio was largely eliminated, their mission shifted to helping people with traumatic brain injuries. They were wonderful, caring people who stood up and took care of some of the most challenging cases—bringing people as far back as possible from devastating brain injuries. Many of them were the victims of motorcycle accidents.
They had one very nice, semiretired man who was their fund-raiser. He stopped by our office one day for coffee and confided in me that he was having a real challenge getting through to potential donors. He said, “I feel like I go in asking for money with my hat in hand.” The fe
eling he was expressing to me was that he did not feel any sense of power. It broke my heart.
I was determined to fix it because I knew the power of what the hospital did. I had worked for them for years and was a true believer. We built a complete fund-raising system for him that told the story of the original mission, of the win against polio and the bravery of both the caretakers and the patients. The messages were beautiful, sobering, inspirational, and they worked. The tools we gave him enabled him to find his own personal power by being able to tell an effective, emotional story about the need. He was never standing “hat in hand” again; instead he had a strong, emotional, authentic story that was worthy of serious consideration.
Cowgirls understand that they have to be assertive if they want to manage their own lives. They understand that life is a series of negotiations on almost every level. The terms “negotiation” and “power” conjure up a lot of negative, business-oriented imagery—fat, cigar-smoking men in stinky rooms making deals to only benefit themselves. I understand that. That is precisely why a lot of women shy away from thinking about how to be more powerful when they have these important conversations.
When you go into a negotiation, I want you to go in with your hat firmly planted on your head. I want you to go in confidently with as much power as possible, not to try to beat the other person, but to be able to stand up for yourself and find a win-win solution. Go in with pride about your accomplishments and skills. Go in as a strong team leader who has lifted people up. Go in as someone people trust. Go in with facts and figures and make a compelling argument. Go in prepared. And with all of your personal power behind you.