In short
Dr. Kate Mason discusses her book Powerfully Likeable: A Woman’s Guide to Effective Communication, arguing that “powerful vs likable” is a false binary. She reframes leadership as combining compassion/empathy with authority, and separates likability from agreeableness.
Guest backgrounds
Dr. Kate Mason is a communications coach, world champion debater, and mom of two boys (ages 10 and 7). She grew up in Australia where debate was male-dominated and often she was the only girl on all-male teams.
Key claims
Neutrality is hard for women (no “neutral suit”); women face tighter social constraints. “Imposing syndrome” is fear of making asks because they feel like impositions. “High price of being agreeable” leads to invisible labor and resentment. Confidence shouldn’t be chased; stay present by focusing on service/connection.
Notable examples
debate starting at age 10; always placing second to boys; Miranda Priestly vs “porous boundaries” leadership; Jacinda Ardern quote; “I’m not an expert, but…” caveats; “sure, sure I’ll finish by Friday” as unlikable; “I’m Austrian/I’m Australian” framing to justify bluntness; “non-goals” lists (e.g., what won’t be done this weekend).
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOExploring Communication as a Woman
0:55 to 1:30
Discussion on the challenges women face in communication and leadership.
“This is a topic I'm thinking about so much.”
Debate Career and Early Lessons
1:30 to 2:32
Kate shares her experiences in debate and the impact on her views on communication.
“Yeah, I think teenage me was the first who started thinking about this as well.”
The Power-Likability Binary
2:32 to 3:57
Analyzing the balance between being powerful and likable in leadership.
“I did high school speech, you know, like a speech and debate.”
Cultural Expectations and Authority
3:57 to 6:00
Discussion on how cultural norms affect perceptions of authority and communication.
“binary in the book, or that it's really maybe not such a binary.”
Navigating Fashion and Authority
6:00 to 7:59
Exploring how women's fashion choices impact perceptions of authority.
“think this is something that women of all ages feel like they have to titrate exactly right and men just go to work?”
Practical Strategies for Women
7:59 to 9:26
Kate offers practical advice for women to assert their expertise and authority.
“I think, again, women are relatively new to a modern workplace.”
Expertise and Self-Undermining Behaviors
9:26 to 15:04
Discussion on how women often undermine their own expertise and how to combat it.
“And then maybe there are other ways that aren't serving you and you might want to experiment with those and play around with them such that you find a place that feels good.”
Expertise and Self-Undermining Behaviors
16:24 to 17:26
Discussion on how women often undermine their own expertise and how to combat it.
“Summer is not a time for a full face of makeup, but there are days I just still want to look awake and alive, maybe even healthy.”
The High Price of Being Agreeable
17:36 to 28:00
Discussing the implications of agreeability and likability in personal and professional contexts.
“And there were a lot of times where I was like, oh, yeah, I can see some parallels here.”
The Importance of Non-Goals
28:00 to 31:18
Learn about the concept of non-goals and how acknowledging them can alleviate stress.
“If your identity is to always be the solution, then whenever you bring a problem, you feel like I'm out of lane.”
Show all 16 chapters
The Importance of Non-Goals
31:54 to 32:17
Learn about the concept of non-goals and how acknowledging them can alleviate stress.
“Getting help from one of State Farm's 19 ,000 local agents when you choose to bundle home and auto.”
Redefining Confidence
32:18 to 41:30
Explore the concept of confidence and how it relates to being of service in interactions.
“So confidence is one of those things a lot of us feel I need to work on my confidence or even worse, I've been told I need to work on my confidence.”
Role Modeling for the Next Generation
41:31 to 42:03
Understand the importance of role modeling boundaries and self-care for children.
Balancing Boundaries and Burnout
42:03 to 42:47
Learn how to set boundaries while considering your own capacity.
“I think it's really important to show that we are finite and our capacity is limited as distinct from being like always there and always saying yes, because that's actually a much more realistic picture to paint.”
Introducing Kate Mason and Her Book
42:47 to 43:04
Find out about Kate Mason's new book on effective communication.
“So that's how I see my responsibility to my children.”
Where to Find Kate Mason's Work
43:04 to 43:33
Discover where to find more information about Kate Mason and her work.
“Her new book is called Powerfully Likeable, A Woman's Guide to Effective Communication.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Amy Wilson:Class it up with Crocs. You know back to school is coming in fast, so why wait to find your new fave footwear? Step into a local Crocs store and step into your new look. Try it, style it, make it yours. Because the right pair doesn't just show up, it shows off. First day fits, handled. Walk out ready for whatever's next. Visit your nearest Crocs store today.
0:30Amy Wilson:Hello, everyone, and welcome to What Fresh Hell? Laughing in the Face of Motherhood. This is Margaret. And this is Amy. Today, we're talking to Dr. Kate Mason. She is a communications coach, a world champion debater, the mom of two boys, 10 and 7, and the author of a new book, which we'll be discussing today, Powerfully Likeable, A Woman's Guide to Effective Communication. Welcome, Kate. Thank you so much for having me. I was so lit up reading this book. This is a topic I'm thinking about so much. I have a 13-year-old daughter, and we've had discussions about it on the podcast, balancing this idea of niceness and strength and being the right kind of woman versus being the kind of woman you want to be.
1:13Amy Wilson:There's so much wrapped up in having a teenage daughter. And you start to examine these things for yourself as you start to try to model and parent them for your child. You talk about starting to explore this first in your debate career. So tell us a little bit about how you came to this topic. Yeah, I think teenage me was the first who started thinking about this as well. I started debate when I was 10. I would turn bright red and I would physically shake. I'd be so nervous. But something kept drawing me back and back to this space where I felt like in hindsight, I realized it was a place that I could have the stage.
1:49You know, you had the floor for a number of minutes that were all yours. and probably a place where I could get out all of that, like, I told you so energy that I think I had as a young girl, right? You have sort of permission to do that. So that was the beginning of me thinking about that. And certainly in Australia where I grew up, debate is a very male-dominated, or it was at the time, a very male-dominated place. So I was constantly in all-male teams. I was often the only girl or the only young woman in these teams. And I learned really quickly the difference or the delta between what I was doing and what they were doing and how I had to be a little different.
2:28And that was a pretty early awakening to those sorts of things that you're talking about. I did high school speech, you know, like a speech and debate. I was on the speech side and I was just telling my own teenage daughter about this, that in my career, I always came in second. I always in my event lost to a boy. It wasn't always the same boy, but I always lost to a boy. And she's like, why do you think that was? And I was very accepting of it at the time. But as I was explaining it to her, I realized that yes, even as a high school girl, I was very aware of having to look powerful and likable at the same time and getting that balance exactly right.
3:05Whereas maybe the boy could just be powerful and therefore he was going to get the trophy. So I've been thinking about these ideas for a long time myself. I think most girls do. Yeah.
3:13Amy Wilson:And I think also the idea of neutrality, which you get at that there is no true, like what is neutral look like is very hard to define. And the opening page has a quote from the prime minister of New Zealand. And it reads, one of the criticisms I've faced over the years is that I'm not aggressive enough or assertive enough. And maybe somehow because I'm empathetic, it means I'm weak. I totally rebel against that. I refuse to believe that you cannot be both compassionate and strong. And this is a lot of what you are exploring in the book, this line between being compassionate or nice and being capable, able and strong.
3:56Amy Wilson:And you talk about it as a binary in the book, or that it's really maybe not such a binary. So talk a little bit about these two sides of the binary. Yeah. I think for many of us, maybe our teenage selves, Amy, or women listening, we sometimes feel like there are just only two options for leadership, right? And by leadership, I mean at work, but also just showing up, you know, at the PTA meeting or anywhere you might have to sort of stand up and advocate. We think those two options are one, powerful, right? It's the Miranda Priestly, high authority, no friends. Right. Hate it. That's all. Hey there.
4:31Yeah. Or it's the likable, porous boundaries, yes to everything, no worries if not, lots of friends, no authority. And we sometimes, the more and more in my own coaching practice, I see people say that, well, these must be the two options. These are the two ends of this binary. And I've got to choose one. It's incumbent on me. I can only choose one. And once I've made that choice, that's it. I have to live with it forever. And I don't know exactly where that comes from, but I feel like it's very, very resonant with the people I work with. And so I wanted to, in the book, really push against that and say, for one, that construct doesn't actually exist.
5:08No one has a gun to our head about picking one of those two doors. But two, we're actually our best when we can pull together often dissonant or contrasting modes of leadership. And I loved that quote from Jacinda Ardern that you read, Margaret, because it really, it shows that there's no reason why we couldn't bring a lot of, say, traditionally feminine coded attributes like communality or empathy or compassion or all sorts of things like that together with things like respect, power, and authority. And in fact, when we do that, we get a much more generative, interesting mode of being than if we had just picked one of those two doors.
5:48I don't feel like this is something that men have to spend a lot of time thinking about, or maybe they don't feel what they have to think about, that you have to make sure there's enough likable in the powerful. And I think I know the answer, but why do you think this is something that women of all ages feel like they have to titrate exactly right and men just go to work? I wish I had a great answer to that. The answer, I suppose, in my own coaching practice is I actually do see some men more now having to think about that. I have what I think of as very nice men who are like, I need to be in authority, but I don't want to mansplain to anyone or I want to be empathetic, but I don't want to be creepy.
6:28They are noticing some of these tight ropes as well. So I do think some of them, the self-aware ones are definitely thinking through those balances, but I fully agree with you that women have at least, if not more tight ropes to walk, we're more aware of them. We're more keenly aware of them. I suspect the reason is, and this is from my own anecdotal experiences, that women are relatively still new to the workforce. And so the only model we have, I think about as, and I talk about a little bit in the book, is we think about what does authority look like in an American home? And a lot of it, I believe, comes from the American newsreader.
7:10Think like 1950s, this authoritative man who at At the end of the day, you'd sit down and you'd all turn on the television and this nice older gentleman would tell us what was true and what was happening. And this is how we learned. Oh, okay, this must be true. This is what's happening. You know, Walter Cronkite said it or whoever it is, right? And that newsreader mode, I think, has subconsciously sort of affected who we listen to and who we believe in. He was always a little wrinkled. He had a slow, soft, composing way of being. And in some ways, I think we've really taken that to heart in the way of who we accept authority from and who we sort of place trust or respect in.
7:54And sometimes for a woman to inhabit that space, it can be just a little more difficult. And I think that will change in time. I think, again, women are relatively new to a modern workplace. And I'm hopeful about that over time.
8:07Amy Wilson:I think there is something, and I like the way you talk about it in the book, about the binary and the neutrality. Like a suit is what a presidential candidate wears in the United States, right? But with a woman, there is no neutral suit. Like 10 guys in a suit, you're not thinking at all about what they're wearing. But any woman there, if you put on a suit, like you're doing a weird bit, or if you wear the bow with the weird suit from the 80s, you look dated. But if you dress too feminine, you use this phrase, and I wanted to read it because it really jumped out to me. The shrinking reductive binary of powerful versus likable is a disaster.
8:49Amy Wilson:And I think that I just see so much that the binary and the neutrality is all out of whack, I think, in trying to figure out how to move in the world as a woman who wants to have power and agency. Yeah, it's really complicated. And you're right. Like, do I wear if I wear a pussy bow blouse versus a different blouse? Is that going to send a message like there's layers and layers on this that is exhausting. And so I really wanted to in the book say, I see you, I know it's exhausting, but here are some practical ways to think about it. Like here are some ways to, and exercises to look at yourself, to think about where I'm proud of how I'm showing up and where I think it's serving me.
9:26And then maybe there are other ways that aren't serving you and you might want to experiment with those and play around with them such that you find a place that feels good. I had never thought about that fashion thing. There's a popular podcast in the US called Pantsuit Politics to Women. And I was listening to an interview with them and how they chose the name. And it was because Hillary Clinton was running for president at the time. And they, in conversation, were like, yeah, why is it called a pantsuit when she wears it? It's just a suit. Like, why do we have to have a special name for pantsuit for her fashion choice?
9:57And it's exactly what we're saying, that there is no neutral, right? That she's wearing a suit and all of a sudden it's a pantsuit and it's weird or it's flattering or it's not. And there are so many more things we have to think about. So I guess it's about knowing like, yeah, it is. Is it in our head that this tightrope is there? Or is it that, no, it's there, but here's what you worry about and here's what you set aside? Yeah, I think so. I mean, that's, I have a lot of people say to me, but Kate, don't you just want to burn this whole thing down and start again? Right. Or don't you want it?
10:26This is so frustrating and it's so broken. I'm like, that's one option, right? My take is a little more realistic, which is like, this is what we have. Let's work within it and work out how to feel better about it. And so calling it out, I believe is relieving. Oftentimes when I'm doing a workshop with women, one of the signals I know when I'm getting through to people is I see shoulders come down out of relief. You know, there's this like, oh yes, she's saying it, it's happening, it's there, I'm not imagining it. Because sometimes we don't have these open conversations about what it means to kind of carry all of that.
10:58So my, I guess, philosophy is always like, yeah, let's name it, let's call it out, and then follow up with what can be useful.
11:06Amy Wilson:It's funny, because I, in my other life, I am a speech and presentation teacher. So I do a ton of exercises. And one of the exercises we always do is called the expert. And it's like learning to speak as an expert. It's an improvisational exercise. But one of the first things I like to do in that exercise is say, what does an expert look like? Who is an expert? And often people, to use your example, say like an older white man in a suit carrying a briefcase, maybe he has glasses, like there's a very specific. So you talk in the book about voice, appearance, controlling our faces. So let's start there with the physical manifestations and how power manifests in our communication.
11:48Yeah. I was going to add a lab coat is often something people say to me too. Like lab coats are great one. You know, this toothbrush ads with a lab coded dentist is always like, oh, he must know what he needs. Four out of five dentists agree. It's a real dentist. That's right. Yeah. I mean, authority, similarly, yeah, I think that's a really good point that there's so much that we glean from people. So I think about expertise in a couple of different ways. One is when I ask women, who is an expert or are you an expert? They'll usually say, oh, no, no, I'm definitely not an expert. And I say, when will you be an expert?
12:20And they're like, well, in about five years, 10 years. And I'm like, oh, so it's age. So when you're 50, you'll be an expert. And then they're like, oh, well, I don't know. It's always in the future and it's always contingent. Like it's never right now. And I think that's so fascinating because the people I work with are really high achieving people whose titles you would see on LinkedIn or, you know, in the news and think, oh, of course they're the expert. They're the SVP of this or the head of that. And yet even they are still kind of a bit uncomfortable with this word. So expert is a really interesting word to me.
12:54We often undersell by accident or subconsciously or undermine our own expertise in a lot of different ways. And so part of the book is looking at, are there ways that you might be subtly undermining yourself or your expertise? One of them is a really classic, I'm not an expert, but, or I'm sure you've already thought of this, but. We do these sort of caveats at the beginning, right? And which straight away makes the other person think whatever we're going to follow up with mustn't be that important or our voice mustn't be listened to. I'm not an expert, but. And very often the people saying these things actually are.
13:32They do have a lot of subject matter expertise. So that's one of the things I look at is like, maybe there are ways you might be undermining. And if so, and if you're not happy with what that effect is, here are some ways you might want to think about changing those. We're talking to Kate Mason about her new book, Powerfully Likeable, A Woman's Guide to Effective Communication. And we'll be right back.
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17:39Amy Wilson:So Amy has a book called Happy to Help. And there were a lot of times where I was like, oh, yeah, I can see some parallels here. And let's talk about the high price of being agreeable. Because I think that I was recently talking to Jyothi Chand, who has a book called Fitting Indian. And her idea was, or she was talking about in the book, that you can be a good Indian wife, you can be a good Indian daughter, you can be a good Indian mother, but the good and Indian never come off. There's only certain roles you can play. So I liked this phrase a lot, the high price of being agreeable. I think many of us have encoded likability or being liked with being agreeable.
18:24We've put those two things together so that if you talk about someone being likable, the implication is like, oh yeah, she'll fit you in. She'll make it happen. She'll say yes. And I kind of want to decouple those two things. I want to say that likable definitionally should really mean I like being around that person. I like being in their orbit. I see their name on my calendar or they ring my phone and I'm happy. I think that's a good thing. That's likability. Likeability being coupled with agreeableness kind of makes it feel like I'll only be likable if I say yes, or I'll only be likable, like it's contingent on me giving something in exchange.
19:06And I really fundamentally don't believe it should be, or that we don't need to couple those things together. So I think we all have felt that high price of agreeability, the sure I'll do it or no worries, or I'll bring the meal or I'll organize the thing or whether it's, you know, extra work or whether it's taking something on or even in a work context saying, sure, sure, I'll take on that thankless extra task that no one else wants to and I'll never get recognized for. We sort of assume that that will mean we are likable. And actually, it doesn't often mean that at all. It often means that we end up being taken for granted or doing invisible labor that nobody sees or gives us credit for.
19:48and often breeds, I think, a fair amount of reasonable resentment in us, right? I did all these things and no one ever said thank you or pointed it out or acknowledged it. So I want to make sure that we're thinking about agreeability as one thing and likability as a difference. And there's lots of different ways to be likable. It seems to me, Kate, that that's something else that women are expected to do. Women are expected to not mind taking on this one more thing or fitting in this, that being agreeable and looking out for the needs of the group is something that is valued and expected of women more than of men.
20:24And that then when you do take on maybe more than you should have, because you were trying to be likable, because you thought that's what you needed to get ahead. In other words, conflating likable and as agreeable as you're saying, then it's sold back to you as an insufficiency in yourself that you were so weak willed, as opposed to like, I was really trying to seem responsible and capable. Right. And nobody wanted those cookies you made anyway. So, you know, right, right. And that seems to me that that's another thing that a typical man in a typical workplace wouldn't have to tease out in quite the way that women do.
20:56But we do. Yes. And I think there's a great example of that because I can feel the implicit question here is like, but hang on, that's true. I'm sure that's true. I know I have to be these things, right? And I want to say, imagine you're managing someone or you're working alongside someone for like a school fair or some project and someone says, sure, sure, sure, I'll have everything done by Friday. And come Friday and you think, oh, how likable, how agreeable, right? They've got it all done by Friday. Come Friday, they don't have it done because they said they would take it all on and they just didn't have the bandwidth or the capacity to get it done.
21:31To me as a manager or as a colleague or as a friend, that is supremely unlikable behavior. I would have loved for you to tell me you were struggling so we could get it done. Now we're in the position it's Friday, we don't have what we need. That's frustrating for everybody else, right? So sometimes agreeability doesn't necessarily help you in the long term. A boss is going to be kind of annoyed to not have that done by Friday if you promised it would be. So thinking about it would be much more quote likable from that boss or colleague's perspective if you said, you know what, I don't think I'm going to be able to get all that done by Friday.
22:05Here's what I'm going to prioritize. These are the three things I'm definitely going to have done. The fourth one, I'm going to need some help or I'm going to need us to get someone else to work on this with us and then I can guarantee everything will be done. That's a much more difficult thing to do, but frankly, a longer term, sustainable, better thing to do for that relationship. Right, right. Not just better for how you're perceived, but actually better for you, your own work-life balance and yeah, yeah, for outcomes. Yeah, and better for the project, right? Everything would be done by Friday.
Read the full transcript
22:35So I always try and give those examples to say it's not always a likability thing to say, sure, sure, sure, it's all be perfect because if it doesn't work out, there's always that frisson, that friction between what you said you'd promise and then what gets delivered. And over time, that can be really damaging at work, particularly.
22:54Amy Wilson:Let's talk a little bit about imposing syndrome as opposed to imposter syndrome. Yes, my favorite. I like this concept. So we all know, I think, imposter syndrome, right? The feeling that they're all going to find me out. And I have many thoughts about that one. What I wanted to talk about in the book was the idea what I call imposing syndrome, which is when we are so aware of our own likability, we're thinking, oh my gosh, everyone's looking at me and I must be this agreeable and nice person, that we are afraid to make any ask or any ask that we might have, we feel like it would impose or be an imposition on somebody else.
23:32So think about when you say it'll just take two seconds. That's I'm afraid to ask for time. I don't believe I am important. I don't believe my work is important. If we over-apologize for something that doesn't need an apology, if we do lots of those caveats, I'm not an expert, but I couldn't possibly, but no worries if not. We're so used to doing these types of diminishments or minimizations to our asks that it becomes, I think, a pattern wherein we think that's the only way that we could ask and there's this discomfort in asking. And I really want to push and say, if your work is important and you are important, which I believe both things to be true, it should be okay to make an ask and say, Amy, can I put in 30 minutes for us to talk through this next week?
24:21Or Margaret, I really wanted to talk to you about our resourcing for next quarter. These are great asks. These are important asks. and by giving them space and time, we actually optically or verbally help show the other person that they're important. If I tell you it'll just take two seconds, you're probably not going to think I'm going to tell you something that revelatory, right? Like 30 seconds, no big epiphany ever happened in 30 seconds. Right. And then it's a 20 minute meeting and then they're mad at you that you said it would take two seconds. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And they're not listening.
24:54They're not primed to hear something interesting. They're primed to hear a quick update or can you move the meeting from 10 to 11? So for sure, there are things that will take two seconds and by all means, use that when it's appropriate. But give yourself the space and the time. That's what I really want to push on with imposing syndrome, that it's not something we need to feel burdened by. We are valuable and our ask is valuable. And interestingly, I think in a work context, when you start positing that my work is valuable and I am valuable, you are unsurprisingly seen as such. Someone takes it seriously.
25:27Oh, okay. She wants to talk about resourcing. Let's really sit down and give that some time. So suddenly the ask is important and also she is important. It's a very different kind of coding than, oh, someone's irritating and stopping by my desk and getting me out of my flow again.
25:44Amy Wilson:I think that also just as I'm raising a daughter, as I'm being a mom and a wife and staying at home and doing a lot of different jobs, I think that the idea of taking your own importance at work, I feel like it feels very understandable. Like, okay, at work, I need to be in this specific role. But I think in thinking a lot about these issues that to say, and this is something I've come to, I think, partly from doing the podcast. I feel so much more comfortable saying to my spouse, we need to sit down and have an hour where we talk about budget. I feel like things are out of control. like just the way I run the house is important.
26:24Amy Wilson:The way we spend our money as a family is important. And I like that you shine the lens on because I think we've all heard the rules of don't say you're sorry too much. Don't apologize for existing. But I think putting the lens back on like your needs are important in any organization, whether it's a workplace where you're trying to function and possibly stand out or whether it's at home where often I'm sublimating my needs to my kids I feel like one of the things I've gotten a lot better on by thinking and talking about parenting is saying everybody stop it's my night I have a class that I have to teach tomorrow I need to prep for it someone else needs to make dinner but just accepting the importance of yourself is the first step.
27:11Yes. And that it might inconvenience someone like you not being home to cook dinner. That may be annoying. And that's not a deal breaker. Right. And you've got to do it anyway. It's very small. I noticed it on myself. Like recently I asked my husband to take our boys to soccer on a Saturday morning. Normally we both take one son each to different places. And I was so exhausted. I did a huge week and I said, I realized I had really been working myself up to ask. Like it was a big ask. But I said, can you do both of the soccer games? And he was like, yeah, sure. And I said, oh, thank you. I just need that hour to like regroup and I'll go for a walk.
27:46I'll feel a lot better. I'll be ready for the whole weekend. And he's like, yeah, it's not a big deal. But I had really sort of twisted myself into knots about even asking. And it's not because he's an unreasonable person. It's the very opposite. We're so used to taking that on. So making those asks is not an imposition. It's often welcomed.
28:03Amy Wilson:If your identity is to always be the solution, then whenever you bring a problem, you feel like I'm out of lane. I'm doing something wrong. So much of it is just looking at that identity. And think about, you know, women in a work context were usually secretaries, right? If we go back to the 50s, they were the solver of problems. I will fix the schedule. I will order lunch. I will make sure everything flows smoothly. Even AI assistants, the default voice today is a woman. So we're very used to responding and fixing, but we're not so used to asking for space and time or resources or whatever it is ourselves.
28:39So it's not surprising because all of culture has kind of posited it that way. But it's really important for us to sort of try to reverse it little by little. So even if it's just 1%, even if it's just in your household asking for that one thing you need this week, I think that's a really revelatory thing. And you might realize that people around you are like delighted to help. Like my husband was like, sure, I'm happy to do the soccer run. It's not often as gnarly as we make it out to be in our minds. Right. Let's talk a little bit about the phrase non-goals. So I am obsessed with this idea. I talk about when I went to work at Google, someone said, oh, yeah, for this project, that's a non-goal.
29:20And I thought they were joking. Like, what do you mean? You have a list of non-goals. And actually in product management, when you're launching a tech product, there are literally a list of goals, like these are the things we will do. And there's an explicit non-goal list. These things we know about, but they are out of scope for this product launch. We are deliberately not doing them. What would be an example of that? So maybe you've got a, like in a product context, you may say we're going to launch a product that has the ability for people to change the calendar, but we're not going to have the ability to like add multiple people to a calendar event.
30:00That's going to come later. So you think about product launches in pieces and the first version will have some pieces and the second version will add more, et cetera, et cetera. I love this idea in life to overtly and explicitly name the things we are not going to do. So you may say, I am not going to wash the car this weekend. It is a non-goal. We have too many things on. There are lots of other competing priorities. It is dirty. It needs to be washed. I acknowledge that. But this is a non-goal. And it can be very liberating because I think oftentimes we sublimate or we take on all of these invisible goals to other people and then we feel really bad about them.
30:42I haven't folded the laundry. I haven't done all of these things. My I haven't list is usually very long and I'm sure yours is too. Calling it a non-goal for this weekend and saying this is the parameters I'm going to set out. It is not happening right now. It will happen. There'll be a V3 or a V4 of me that will do it. But right now calling it out that way gives us a little bit of license to just put it down for a moment. And I think that's a very liberating thing to think about in life as it is in if the biggest companies in the world are doing this. I think we can learn something from it. I love that idea.
31:16We're talking to Kate Mason about her new book, Powerfully Likeable. We'll be right back. Hey, friends, Olivia from OLLI. Between new routines and the ultimate group project known as parenting, you need science-backed solutions that work with your life. That's where OLLI comes in. Start your mornings off right with Maltese made to support nutrition and immune health. Choose from our lineup of gut-supporting probiotics, and we've got occasional sleep support to help the whole fam chase their big dreams. Head back to class with the number one gummy supplement brand. Stock up on ollie.com today. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.
31:47This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast instead of doom-scrolling?
31:56Amy Wilson:Smart move. Another smart move? Getting help from one of State Farm's 19 ,000 local agents when you choose to bundle home and auto. Bundling, just another way to save with the personal price plan. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state. So you have an idea in the book, Kill Your Confidence. Describe that to us. So confidence is one of those things a lot of us feel I need to work on my confidence or even worse, I've been told I need to work on my confidence. right?
32:32Someone has said that. You might feel familiar with it. You might have also heard, I need to develop my executive presence, which I think is a ridiculous phrase because who really knows what that means, right? Like, do I have to dress differently or talk differently?
32:43Amy Wilson:I think with kids, it often manifests as self-esteem. We need to get more. We all need more self-esteem as if it's a box that you can open and find. Absolutely. Yes. And I actually think when you tell somebody, a child or an adult to be more confident, it's the last thing they end up feeling. It's like telling someone you just got to be healthier. It sounds good in theory, but there's lots of different ways we get there and it's going to look quite different for all of us. So one of the things I think about when I think about confidence is if I'm so worried about being confident, I lose myself.
33:19I lose the connection with other people in that interaction. And I'm sitting in that mental space judging, did that sound confident? How do I say that more confidently? Did they think I'm confident? We have all of these other mental tabs opening instead of actually being in the moment. So if you have been told to be confident or to find self-esteem, don't give that feedback or don't think about it in those terms. Think about, for example, how can I be of service in this relationship? How can I be helpful in this meeting? How can I be useful right now? How can I connect and really listen with this person.
33:56These are the things that are going to keep you in that interaction, keep your own ability to help and to listen and to respond really at your best. And actually, it gets you out of your own head. So, one of the things that I think is confidence keeps you in your head and thinking through like connection actually puts you back in the moment much more effectively. And actually, ironically, then you probably will look confident because you've listened, you've answered, you've met the request, you're acting. So it's more about sort of inhabiting that verb rather than thinking about it as this thing that's out of reach.
34:33What about taking the other side of this? What about the woman who is told that she's being too assertive? She's being strident or heaven forbid, shrill or whatever. I mean, I was in a, I served on a nonprofit board where the board president, male, you know, took me to task for being too forceful in meetings, like asking too many tough questions. And I love the board was my answer. But what do you I could just leave, right? It was a volunteer position. But how do you work with women who are being told they're being too powerful in a situation that they need to make work in some way? What's the right way through that situation?
35:10Yeah, so I have a lot of clients who come to me on either end of these binaries, right? I need to step into my power or I've been told I'm a lot and I don't know how. You're right. We have a whole lot of vocabulary specifically reserved for women, like shrill, nagging, whining. We never talk about men in those terms. So it's kind of a fascinating rabbit hole to fall down. One of the ways in which I think about women like that, and I actually, I am that woman. So I think I have a sense of it, is one, think about which battles you need to fight in that moment. Do you need to fight all of them at once?
35:43Because sometimes that's not going to work just because people cannot take on all of the many arguments. So is it that this is the most important one and I'm going to fight this one and then tomorrow I'm going to fight the next one? So sort of chunking out what needs to be done and when can be a useful thing. It's not to say that any of your arguments were wrong. I'm sure they were all right and I'm sure all the hard questions you asked were correct. But maybe some are non-goals, right? To use that idea. They don't have to be all dumb today. Right. So that can be one way of thinking about it. The other way to think about it is I have this wonderful client who she's Austrian, but she works in the US.
36:18And she's like, I'm just naturally kind of blunt. That's who I am. I'm not sure if this is true to all Austrians, by the way. It just so happens that this is her experience. And she's like, I'm told I'm not warm. I'm not approachable. I'm very transactional. I'm very blunt. And when I talk with her, first, I found her completely endearing and brilliant. But I saw what she meant. She does call it out. And I said, okay, I want you to call that out in your meetings. So say, look, I'm Austrian. I'm going to tell you how it is. I'm going to be really forthright here. I don't mean any offense. I'm just someone who really likes to be efficient and get things done.
36:51So here's how it's going to be. And she started realizing that when she would kind of just say that people were so like, oh, it gave her license to continue to be who she is, but it gave everybody else a bit of a bridge to understanding how and why she was that way. So sometimes calling these things out can be really helpful. You can just say, hey, I'm someone who's going to come at this with like a lot of tough questions. That's how my brain works. That's how I like to approach things. I'm fully in support of the board or I love the direction here, but here's some things I've been really ruminating on and I want to put them forward.
37:25suddenly we kind of get a little bit of a signpost for how to take it. And it sounds sort of a strange thing, but it's a very disarming strategy that helps other people go, oh, right, she's aware of it. She doesn't mean harm. And this is just kind of quote how she works. I find that to be a very, very simple way of moving forward. I used to do the same strategy, by the way, I lived and worked in the Bay Area for five years. And I would often find myself being a little bit more blunt than my very polite Californian colleagues. And I would come to say, look, I'm Australian. This is the way I would see it.
38:03And everyone would kind of laugh and be like, oh, well, she's Australian. But it gave me license to continue to do the things I needed to do or ask those tough questions as well.
38:11Amy Wilson:The book has, as we said, lots of examples of different women, lots of different kind of categories of communication, but it also has a lot of exercises and tips. So I'm going to give an example of one. You say, take an inventory of your last week. What were your moments in which you felt like your power was high, like you were unstoppable, free and in control? Conversely, what were the moments in which you felt stymied or frustrated by yourself or external conditions? So talk a little bit about the purpose of this exercise and maybe some of your other favorite exercises that are in the book. Yeah.
38:51So part of, I think, being a woman and talking in the world is that there's already so many prescriptions and rules that we've talked about that feel like we're surviving amongst. And I didn't want to write a book and I don't philosophically believe that like, do these three things and everything will be great. It's not a listicle. It's not simple like that. But what I really believe in is where are you currently sparking? Where currently are you feeling in your power? And like, you know, you come out of an interaction and think, I crushed that. That was really, that worked exactly how I wanted it to.
39:26Find and isolate those moments. So this is that exercise. And then let's find the moments where you're feeling a little less than, where you're like, that didn't go the way I really hoped it would, or I didn't feel like I showed my best self in those moments. and what the book seeks to do is say we're going to try and amplify those moments where you are already feeling great and here's some ways you might want to mitigate or help out those parts of you that might be feeling a little frustrated or smaller and I think it's a really interesting exercise because our answers are going to be super different person to person.
40:01I have people when I run workshops who say I feel really alive when I'm on stage and in front of people and in the same group I have someone else being like, I feel terrified when I'm on stage and in front of people, right? That's my nightmare. So really leaning into where we're already getting that energy from can be a really helpful, lovely way to think about it. I don't know if I have a favorite exercise in the book. That's like asking my, you know, my favorite children question. Yeah, favorite child. But I do posit that the book is less a prescription, like go do these seven things and more an invitation.
40:32If these things have not been serving you, go have a think about what you might want to try, you know, roll around in it, try it on, see if it fits, and then come to it with a sense of like, oh, yeah, I like that, or that's helping me. That would be my dream, I suppose.
40:47Amy Wilson:And I like this central idea of the book that power is a verb. That really resonated with me. It's something you practice, you are active in. It's not something that anyone hands you or takes away from you. A hundred percent. Yes, it really has to be. And And that's when we know we're living that verb, we feel it. It's really, you know, you get that zappiness in your fingertips. You know it's happening. And when you know it's not happening, you feel it just as keenly. You come away from an interaction feeling small or diminished. You're like, oof, that didn't go the way I wanted it to and I didn't quite feel it.
41:21Do you think there's something we can teach our children, our high school debaters that we're raising now about what it means to be powerful and likable? are they learning a new way naturally or are there things that we can teach them as parents it's a great question I do think that I oftentimes find myself talking with my 10 year old and he's like yeah mom that's obvious and I'll think oh wow like this is great you're much more advanced than I was at your age he says it in a very endearing way I do think kids are different and growing better I think one of the best things we can do is help just by role modeling part of this is that we didn't see we didn't see female newsreaders in the 50s we didn't see female ceos as we were growing up or our parents in generation so part of it is just being able to help them by showing them this is me holding a boundary this is me saying no this is me being warm and amenable but also thinking about my own level of burnout and capacity all of these things I think are really important to be able to demonstrate like I can't be class parent or I can't be volunteering at the soccer thing this Saturday, whatever it is.
42:34I think it's really important to show that we are finite and our capacity is limited as distinct from being like always there and always saying yes, because that's actually a much more realistic picture to paint. So that's how I see my responsibility to my children. And hopefully, I think that that's helping them understand that there are times when it's perfectly okay to say that's not going to be possible for me. That is a non-goal. Non-goal. I love that. Non-goal. We've been talking to Kate Mason. Her new book is called Powerfully Likeable, A Woman's Guide to Effective Communication. The book is out now and we will put the link to buy it in the show notes.
43:15But Kate, tell our listeners where else they can find you and your work. Thank you so much. My website is katemason.co and that's a great place to come find me. And you can sign up to my newsletter there and read a little bit more about me in the book. Great. We'll put that in the show notes as well. Kate, thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you so much. It was a pleasure.
43:57Amy Wilson:first order site-wide with code FRESH at oseamalibu.com. That's code FRESH at O-S-E-A malibu.com.
From the publisher
How do women balance being both effective and likable? It shouldn't be ours to manage, and yet it is. This week Margaret and Amy talk with Dr. Kate Mason, communications coach and author of POWERFULLY LIKABLE: A Woman’s Guide to Effective Communication.
What you'll learn in this episode:
Why women often feel trapped between being “powerful” or “likable”
The cultural roots of authority and expertise—and how they still affect women today
The difference between agreeability and likability
What “imposing syndrome” is and how to overcome it
Why naming your “non-goals” can bring more freedom and focus
How to raise kids who see power and likability as compatible
Find Dr. Kate Mason at katemason.co
Buy POWERFULLY LIKABLE: https://bookshop.org/a/12099/9780593797204
We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website:
https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/p/promo-codes/
women communication strategies, powerful and likable, Kate Mason interview, effective communication tips, impostor syndrome vs imposing syndrome, agreeability vs likability, motherhood and communication, women leadership balance, power as a verb, parenting and communication
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