In this episode of the Impostor Syndrome Files, we talk about letting go of our scripts at work. We all have scripts that guide our behavior in the workplace. These scripts might be internally generated based on past experiences and influences. Or they might be dictated by external forces, such as our manager, who tells us how to show up in certain situations. When we adhere too closely to these scripts, we lose our authenticity and our ability to build trust with those around us. This week, I talk with Ulrike Seminati, a coach and former C-suite leader, about how to let go of these scripts so we can be ourselves. We also talk about the ways in which our egos undermine our communication and connections in the workplace and what we can do instead. And, finally, Ulrike shares strategies you can use to build your confidence and manage what she calls the thunderstorm in your head.
About My Guest
Ulrike Seminati, a globally operating coach, trainer, and consultant, brings a wealth of experience as a former C-level executive to her expertise in authentic leadership and impactful communication. By blending the latest self-development methodologies with her extensive practical experience in leading across all levels of hierarchy, she enables leaders to establish trust and lead change through effective communication. Ulrike's clients benefit from her pragmatic and user-friendly tools that enable them to make lasting improvements.
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Transcript
Kim Meninger
Welcome, Ulrike it's so nice to meet you. And to have you here today. I'm excited for our conversation. And I'd love to start by inviting you to introduce yourself.
Ulrike Seminati
Yeah, so my name is Ulrike Seminati, a complicated name for native English speakers, I know. I am of German origin, I moved to France, when I was 24 years old, for work, actually, and working now for I've been working for the past 15 years or something like that in Switzerland. So I'm kind of navigating between these three countries. And I'm actually a communications expert, leadership and communications. My background is in corporate organizations. So I have for a long time been an employee have climbed up the whole career ladder, I would say, despite myself. And you will really hear about that later on, I think in this conversation. Yeah. And I started as an assistant. And finally, I reached a C-level position in an executive committee of an international pharmaceutical group based in Zurich in Switzerland, which was for me, like, enormous achievement. And when I got there, I thought, Oh, my God, how did I do that? So it's like, my gosh, I'm in this position now. Yeah. And then after a few years, I thought, it's the moment to do something different from that position with that credibility, and step out of the corporate world and build my own consulting and coaching business training, mainly actually, which I do now with leaders from all across the globe, online, sometimes face to face, around leadership, authentic leadership is important for me, I think, and effective communication, leading people through change is one of my passions, because people suffer a lot from change. And it's hard to lead people through change, actually. And so that's fine. I do for a living now, in a nutshell. And maybe you want to dig a little bit deeper into the whole story behind that.
Kim Meninger
Yes, I would love to because I love that. You said how did I do that? Right? You are on this journey. And I think that's something that so many of us can relate to is reaching a peak point in our careers and thinking, How did I get here? And maybe even do I belong here? Right. So I'm curious, in general, whether or how your focus today ties back to your own personal experience? Did you struggle with some of the things that you now train others on? How did you notice, like, as you are on your own journey, that either you or other people might be struggling with some of the challenges that you now address today? What did it look like for you on the inside?
Ulrike Seminati
That was actually quite a journey because I started five years ago. And in the beginning, I was more on this mission around self-confidence, imposter syndrome, and all of that, because I had really suffered a lot from that myself, especially also as a woman, and did that for women. And then I realized that actually, the corporate world is really my, my comfort zone somehow, but also my zone of expertise. I really know how it feels to be a junior leader, a middle manager, a senior manager and executive even in the C-suite. And I thought this is the area where I want to improve things for men and women alike now. Because yes, in the C-suite, you have more men and women still also running my trainings. And I think it's important because I see that people suffer quite a lot from bad communication, or from poor leadership, which is not often or not always done deliberately, you know, I mean, nobody really wants to be a poor leader, I think. But managers do it out of lack of time, or just because they don't know better, or because they just have their own little fights inside of themselves, which they have to fight every single day. And so there's so much inward focus that they cannot really bring out the best of themselves. And so that's why I finally I made that shift really into going into leadership, especially authentic leadership so that people come to the workplace as their true selves, feel better about themselves, because that also was something which I haven't done, I always thought I'm not good enough as I am, I have to play a role. And that's so draining. And the worst is even if you have a success, you don't feel worthy of it or you can't really celebrate it because you have not done it from your real authentic self with your real conviction. You haven't dare to say maybe the right things or to do something bolder even that was possible because of these self-restrictions. And that's why I do this today. I want leaders really to come in with their full passion with their beliefs with a very clear vision about why they can embrace company goals, that is a very personal one and not the one that they are told by their CEO, by C-level suites and, and by this lead differently, usually from a more human perspective. So that's, that's how I came up with this whole package. But it took me a while to find the core also of my, of my expertise from really personally, personally element individual people, to now more corporate groups, but also still some individual one on one coaching and trainings for individuals, but more in this business context of a company of working for a corporation, yeah.
Kim Meninger
Do you find when you share that message with either a group or an individual, that people have the self-awareness to, to recognize themselves in what you're saying? Like, where are we generally speaking on the willingness of people to say, Yes, that's me that you're joking, right? Because I think that's part of the challenge, too, is that, to your point about these internal self-doubts, and, and, you know, confidence challenges, it's almost feels scary to say it out loud, that I need help in this area.
Ulrike Seminati
Yeah, that's absolutely true. And the higher you climb the hierarchy ladder, the higher the leadership team is in the hierarchy ladder, the more this becomes difficult, obviously, because the less you can admit that because the more people think I need to be perfect. That's why I'm here. That's why I'm the one that has been elected here to be the leader of all the leaders. And indeed, it becomes more and more difficult to hire as you climb this career ladder. But that's why I think also, it's more important to work on that early on, even in your career. So if you are a person who is just dead 30s, for example, it's a very, very good starting point, to not slip into like a false corporate persona. And then like 20 years later, or 15 years later, think like, oh, God, how can I get out of that? How can I now even admit to myself, that that's not really me. And who is that me, I haven't seen her for 20 years. This feeling, but it's true, it's hard for it's hard to get people out of their comfort zone, I work a lot with personality styles, let them co-create them, let them speak about it themselves first in the third person, you know, so that they can like, describe such a person. And then usually we discuss already for a while the pros and cons of each style, which is very different. And then suddenly, people start really admitting actually, that they belong to one style or the other. And that is automatically they also admit that I have some of the flaws of that side for sure. And this is how we get into a bit of more open discussion. And I realize that finally people open up. But yeah, in the lower levels, it's much, much easier because they have this hunger of really helping themselves to make a career if they want that. And, and look at themselves as well. And there's more openness to learn because they can admit that they have to learn for sure.
Kim Meninger
That is such a great argument for starting this process sooner, or you know, earlier in people's careers, because I love what you said to around the authenticity piece, I often say this to people, as part of, you know, interview prep, too, is be careful of trying too hard to impress somebody with, you know, what you think they want to see because if you get hired, you're gonna have to play that part for the foreseeable future. That's not necessarily who you already are. If you show up as your real self, and it doesn't work out, then it wasn't a fit to begin with. And it's better, you're better off in the long run. And so I do think that there is this part of whether it's actually a, an implicit or an explicit message from the organization or the manager that we need to be more of something that we are not, or it's pressure that we put upon ourselves, when you are in tension between how you're expected to show up or what, what you tell yourself you should be doing and who you actually are, it just creates so much more stress and anxiety than it otherwise would.
Ulrike Seminati
Absolutely. And the thing is also, when you do that you tell yourself every day that you are not good enough as you are that right and you create this very negative spiral about yourself. So for your self-esteem or self, self-confidence, it's very, very harmful to do that every day, because you send so many negative messages every hour, every minute, even to yourself.
Kim Meninger
Exactly. And then to go back to what you were saying before to about starting this process earlier. If you haven't, if you haven't explored any of this, or you haven't done the work, by the time you get to the top of an organization, it almost feels too dangerous to start this process because you feel too vulnerable. Right? And I think that, you know, the one of, the one of the theories or things that I've been thinking about a lot lately is just so much of the dysfunction or lack of inclusion, lack of psychological safety. We talked about all of these more, you know, human-centered types of leadership qualities comes from the fact that the people at the top are so insecure that they their egos are too fragile, to be challenged. Right. And so if you have people who want to express new ideas or people who maybe come across a smarter or more experienced that's back to them. And they don't know what to do with that. And so of course, I'm stereotyping and generalizing. But I do think that that is the case for so many humans in leadership is that we haven't done our own inner work to strengthen our confidence to recognize where our strengths lie, and where other people's strengths can complement those strengths that anything that challenges us becomes a threat.
Ulrike Seminati
Yeah, exactly. I mean, many people who are in very high positions have a trade that I call on me personally, I call it dominance. Because in the limbic system of our brain, I work with this system, it's called dominance. And in this trade, people need a lot of control, they need control because they want to be successful, that's the driver behind that. And obviously, when you have people in C suites, for example, who wants to keep that control to be sure that they and their teams are successful, then it doesn't mean that, you know, they don't care about their team, but they care so much about that success point, because there's so much used to that. And also, they have so much fear, which they will never admit to themselves, never, if they don't really reflect on themselves, fear of losing the control of really making sure that the success will happen, that they will not show vulnerabilities, they feel very unsafe with that. And I think it takes many people a lot of energy every day to maintain this. This illusion of I'm the strong one, every single day, I have it all in hand, I control all of that I'm you know, mastering my area, and my whole territory will be like hedging as early in a certain way, then, and getting away from that and saying, Hey, finally, I need to open up. Because only when I do and when I show the famous vulnerabilities, which you have all heard of, you know, I mean, it's an art to show that if you're not used to it, then only people will also allow themselves to open up and come up with ideas that might be rejected. Because then rejection is not a punishment anymore. It's just normal. Because we all become more creative, we propose things, some things get through and materialize, and others don't. And that becomes natural. But it's a very, very long process to that. Because the world out there is not made for it. Everybody wants it. That's, that's the paradox. Everybody wants it. All organizations speak about that, you know, more ideas, people should speak up, and so-on and so-forth. But at the end, they don't realize because it takes it takes effort and a willingness to look to yourself to maybe criticize in a way, first of all, dismantle your way of being of the past 20 years, because most of the times, that's a minimum of people who are decision-makers, they're made so far, it's a long time, it's a lot of habits. And dismantling that is, is painful, I mean, you really need to admit it. And it's very hard to do that in front of your peers. Because often you have a lot of different egos, quite strong, quite strong egos in there, and they have built their whole identity around that. And it's very, very hard actually, to open up yourself towards yourself. I think that's really interesting. I work so much with leaders and immediately they switch to I distinguish also always between the “I” and the “We” dimension. And this which I needed you the way dimension the team and how I work as a team and how motivate them and all of that, as a stick first to yourself, take, take time to first reflect on yourself, how do you relate to that goal? How do you relate to this activity, before jumping immediately in, that's the team and with the team, I do this, because you don't even know where you're coming from mentally internally. And that part, people have forgotten how to do that, we mostly have forgotten how to do that. And that's why it becomes So, like you said, a little bit even dangerous in a certain way. Because people feel insecure inside of themselves, and cannot admit it because it's like a flight towards the goal. To not be in this oh my god, I have to reflect myself me before and what might I see, I often hear oh, if I do that, if I look into myself, I will open a Pandora's box, and I can't close it anymore. I don't even want to know what's in there is it? There's nothing horrible in there. You know, it's like this really, nobody you know has something horrible inside of you. It's just that you will get to know yourself much better and your triggers your reactions, all your negative emotions, you can much better understand where they're coming from can handle them better, your stress, will, will go down a bit or maybe a lot, even if you do that very well. So you can do a lot with that which is positive.
Kim Meninger
You're so afraid and that, you know, we tend to think of that in terms of vulnerability and also oftentimes we translate vulnerability into weakness, right? And I have to protect myself my image, my control, as you said and digging below the surface in this way is going to undermine that as opposed to seeing that as actually that is strength, because the better you understand yourself. And one of the things that I tell everybody to think about no matter where you are in an organization is know your triggers. Know yourself well enough to know. And that means paying attention when you're in different interactions, if it's one-on-one settings, if it's group meetings, if it's whatever it is that you're doing, that makes you uncomfortable in some way, right? I think of that as your body's check engine light, right? I'm feeling particularly irritable right now, or I'm feeling really insecure right now, whatever it is that makes you feel uncomfortable is an opportunity to examine further what might be going on. And the more you understand, oh, every time I'm in this kind of a conversation, I tend to get triggered, what does that tell me about myself in relationship to this situation? And what can I do proactively going forward to minimize that to manage my response more effectively? And so it actually comes from a position of strength, not weakness to do the kind of work that we're talking about? It's just not perceived that way. Because it's not the way that we typically are, have typically done things.
Ulrike Seminati
Yeah, that's absolutely right. And what do you say? It's fantastic. I think it's very simple to track that people think, Oh, it's so difficult to understand what's going on inside of me. But the easiest thing is really like you say, when you feel discomfort, and you feel it in your body, you know, this awkward feeling in your belly, when you feel like something wasn't quite right. What have you sought, then the past five seconds about yourself or the past 15 seconds about yourself, there was something going on in your mind. And where did that come from, and really writing it down. Because we try to have quite a nice and easy around that and forget it immediately. So we write it down. Because that's how our ego protecting us not wanting us to see all of that stuff. So write down and after a week, you will see there's a whole heap of beliefs and sentences that you tell yourself. And they shave usually a pattern because it's more or less in the same direction very often. And you will understand why that's what's triggered in me actually. And there's maybe a fear behind that, or some of your beliefs that are so strong that you always fall into the same trap, when there is the same trigger or the same type of person in front of you, which is maybe why you have conflict with certain other personalities, depending on who you are, and how you are. And I think that is very important to really self-analyze regularly, and to just sit back for even just 10 seconds when you have a strong reaction, and not run into this and dive into this emotional reaction bra and dwell, but just breathe once and think, you know, what did I think before was what was my last thought? And just understand a little bit better? What's going on? You're so much triggered by our ego. And it's quite funny, actually, when you start looking at it, and get a distance from it. How? How I see it sometimes new, like a little child who is getting crazy because it wants chocolate or something. It's a bit like that. Because for nothing, it can freak out our ego completely. Wow, I need that. No, no, I don't know, this is not well, this is not respectful towards me or something and you get completely mad about something. Sometimes it's maybe justified in a way. But often it's just it's just your reaction to it. And only make you make things or things happen materialized because we show a certain reaction also to it. If we don't, they will not materialize, at least not that same way. And I mean, there's so much behind…
Kim Meninger
You're so right, I absolutely love what you're saying. And I think if I say this sometimes to the leaders that I work with, I see you have no idea how scary you are. Because therapy being in ways that feel very natural to them, I always say, you know, everyone's behavior makes sense to them may not make sense to us, but it makes sense to them. And what you're describing is, you know, sometimes a disproportionate response from somebody really can be, have a huge impact on the people around them. Whereas here maybe that just reminded them of something that was traumatizing earlier in their careers. And they just had this sort of reflexive response. And the higher up you get within an organization the more people are watching and scrutinizing your every behavior they're trying to read you and so if you're feeling insecure, if you're having a lot of self-doubt, you may be thinking to yourself, kind of like you said earlier, right? Like Well, how did I get here? Like I'm, I'm among all of these really smart people, but I'm not one of them, right? And so it's like I don't feel the same sense of self that other people attached to me right like other people like well look at, look at her look at him and, and so we don't see the, the impact that our behaviors have on the people around us. And so if we're not taking that extra step to manage that emotional response, that makes all the difference in the safety, the, the, the environment that we're creating for the people around us.
Ulrike Seminati
Yeah. Because if you have someone in front of you who is not who's not really honest, because they tried To be perfect in the worst case, which is even existing perfection. Yeah. I'm a perfectionist to the like, gives a horrible, you know, I mean, it's like, yeah, you're aware that you can manage it at least a bit better. But there is no such thing. And that means if you, if you are in a, let's say, you're really in a quite high position, a lot of people are listening to you in a big town hall meeting, and you speak about a bigger change coming up. And you, you, you think that you need to show up very, very secure very sure about the whole thing as if you had a plan for everything, everything's under control, and you bring it across like that. But inside of you, you know very well, that there are some things where you have no clue how it will work out because that's usually the reality, it will somehow filter through, and people will see the self-assured person, if you ask them, they might even say, yeah, that was really strong character and strong, self-assured person, but yet, they won't believe you. Yet, they will say, I don't believe that was his if he saying we will be better off in three years when we if we do that, I don't think so. And that's the result of the fact that inside there something different than on the outside. And then the body language, these little micro mimics that we have are not congruent. And people see that a hearing the voice. And when it's overly confident, for example, people have doubts. I mean, the alarm bells go on, because somehow we know, nothing's perfect. So overly confident, it's all fine every single second can't be. And so we stopped doubting the whole thing afterwards. And I think it's much better to be honest and say, okay, you know, if something is not clear, in a change project over two or three years when you announce it, which is the reality, actually, there are many things that aren't clear, instead of saying no, no, we have it all under control, we have a plan and everything's fine. You can say, Yes, we help plan. But I know there might be some things which are not under control. There may be even things which I can't answer you today, because I do not know how it works out. But then if you're really senior, senior leader, you need to add something that people can trust, you also be reassured, and you can say that you will do your very, very best that you can assure them, you will do your very, very best to work it out. When it comes when these unknown things will pop up. And I think this is a very different way of speaking about change, for example, than just standing there and thinking in a way that we have it all under control. Nobody believes that anymore. Everybody has made the experience, we have never any change under control. We start off with something and we land somewhere very different, usually a very different place. And I think that it's important to find the right balance, and depending on the hierarchy level you are, you need to find a balance for sure. In the form a senior leader, people want to feel that if there's if there's a glitch, there will be a fix to it. This person is competent enough to help us here. Yeah. So you need obviously to convey something like that. But that doesn't mean that you have to say that you know it all. It's just another way. And I think this is important to understand. And I see that not very often in leader positions like that are in, in typical town hall meetings usually is every everything's fine. The slides are great, and it's all very glossy and polished. And people go out and they feel like squid empty, you know, what was the real message. It's just a usual corporate stuff. I can't believe that.
Kim Meninger
Hmm. And you're, you're right, it feels hollow because they also know that they've been through this before. And they can't trust that what that person is saying is true, because it defies their own experience and their own logic to your point of who can predict everything that's going to come with change and how we're going to adapt to everything that is presented to us along the way. And so I love what you're saying, you're this comes back to sort of my definition of confidence, which I think a lot of people especially perfectionist or people who struggle with impostor syndrome, when they think of being confident it means, Oh, I'm so self-assured. And I believe that I have all of this great expertise, and I'm fully prepared. And to me, it's that's not confidence. To me, confidence is trusting that you can handle whatever comes along, right? So I don't know everything. I don't need to know everything. But I know that when a question is asked of me, I can go research it and I can access the resources to figure it out. And I think it's the same thing as what you're talking about with leaders is to be able to stand up there and say, I would love to be able to tell you that I have every answer to every question you have. But let's be real. That's, that's not the case. In any change. However, I will tell you that you know, my number one job is to make sure that we and right and then people believe you and they trust you and they, they believe that you care about them. And I think that that is at the heart of everything that we're talking about is just letting go of that fragile ego really long enough to be able to be authentic with people. And you'll find that if you can do that you actually end up being a better leader than you are today.
Ulrike Seminati
Yeah, absolutely, I would call it actually, you know, get away from the corporate script, either one that is really scripted by your communications department, like I have also done for so many years. So that's why I was talking about this, or from the one that you have created in your head without even realizing it. Yeah, the corporate script or the corporate description of yourself, get away from there, and start just to be human and yourself. I mean, it's just human logic. And we lost that quite, quite, quite a bit. I think, like you said, also forum for people who are, I have had also quite a lot of younger women. Younger, from, from my perspective, I'm 51 or younger woman like 35, for example, often work as crucial steps in their career, you know, it's like, really making an X next quite important or nice step, which they really want to make. And then it becomes so nervous in meetings like, Oh, what if someone asks a question, and I can't answer, like what you just said, it's, it's one of these huge stress factors, and people have to present something. presenting something alone is for many people a stress factor, if you don't like to present in front of others. But that thing, Oh, my God, If a question is coming, I can't answer. Oh, disasters that no, why is this a disaster? Do you know anyone who's blank can answer any question? Even if it's a question in your area? You can't know it all. But just be honest, don't try to find strange and fluffy answers. If you don't know it, say it. And that shows confidence that you say, I can't answer correctly. Or I can give you I could give you a fluffy answer. But I don't think that you deserve that I will really look into this matter and come back tomorrow, next week, whatever time it needs really to get this answer. And, and being just very honest about that is so helpful. And it's refreshing because we all know how it feels when you're in the audience, and somebody says, comes with a very vague answer avoiding the topic somehow, you know that you don't believe this person anymore. You think, oh, no, the poor one. Now she lost them all. It's that don't believe her anymore. Look at the faces around you. Oh, god, Oh, God. And you don't want that.
Kim Meninger
You're so right. And I think that, you know, we, we live in a world where information is created at such a rapid pace that you have an expectation that you could know everything or be able to respond to every question is just ridiculous. It's not realistic. And so I think about that a lot as well because that is probably the number one response that I get when I ask people, What undermines your confidence? It's that fear of not being fully prepared, or someone's going to ask me a question. I don't have the answer to but you're absolutely right. I often think of it as going on offense rather than defense. And what I mean by that is, don't freeze and start apologizing and start defending and say, Oh, I'm so sorry. I know, I should know the answer to this. No, you just own it. Like you're saying, right? Well, I could give you an off-the top-of-my-head answer, but I don't. You know, I love what you said about I think you deserve better than that. Or I'd really prefer to think about this for a bit and get back to you. And if you respond with confidence, you inspire confidence in the people around you. It's when we start to get uncomfortable with it. And we start to look guilty that other people start to think, oh, maybe she should have known the answer.
Ulrike Seminati
Yeah, it's exactly that. I mean, the so-called mirror genes, which we all have, you will be very strong. Yeah, we are mirroring very often what is in front of us. If somebody gets aggressive, we get aggressive. Yeah, for sure. If somebody's like you say, very insecure, we confirmed the Oh, insecure person. They don't know what they're talking about who. And we do that automatically. We judge permanently actually, that's also something that we do and being aware how quickly we judge and that's the thing, we are so afraid of judgment in everything we do that we try to fake things or to be perfect all the time or to look good, at least Yeah, to look good, in a sense in a professional sense. And that is the biggest mistake because that's when you start faking it. That's when you start hiding traits of you and not liking them anymore. Not even appreciating them yourself. So yourself over time, because we unlearn to appreciate ourselves and our lives very, very early on as soon as we start having the first set of thoughts, we continue to confirm that all the time all the time. And I think it's about really reversing that spiral and just have a higher level of, okay, I'm not perfect, but I can do that. What I think is really important. And what, what helped me a lot as well and is it hard to change your level of self-confidence. Obviously, it takes really time because they have a lot of thoughts in your head and it's so much ingrained, sometimes very hard. But I think a really good trick, especially when you present in front of people, is that you shift your focus to the people. You have to force yourself to do that, probably. Because you feel confidence is low, you have a thunderstorm in your head that is killing you about how do I look like oh my god, I'm not sure if my skirt is now in the right place in my hair. And what is on that PowerPoint? What did I say? Oh, no, I forgot that sentence, you have a huge summer, stop it horrible. Yeah. And that means you are totally inward-looking, you have absolutely nothing that radiates out to the group in front of you. Because everything is on you, and your whole body language will become smaller your voice will be, will be lose energy, you will lose the whole impact because of this thunderstorm. So instead of just try trying to reverse every single negative sentence to positive one, which is Whoa, that's really high engineering. better, and better, do something relatively simple. Try that. And when you feel like I'm fooling myself, focus on the people, you know, try to why you even though you're speaking, try to listen with your heart or say, with your instincts with your heart and with the ears because people don't say anything. But you feel the people in front of you, and try to speak more automatically. Because we can do that. We don't have to look at every word. And try to just feel the people and even interrupt yourself. When you see maybe somebody's nodding or you only see that somebody looks like if they want to make a comment, having that courage and don't maybe ask for it like, yeah, you want to say something? Yeah. And to be just a bit more spontaneous, because you focus totally on the audience. And shifting that again, and again. And again, you have to do it in half an hour presentation 50 times, probably 100 times probably because automatically, you always come back to you, oh, God, I gotta go, how am I good enough thing? Yeah, that helps really, to shift off of your empty energy shifts. And that's a nice thing. Because then you will realize that people have a better reaction, or you see in their faces, that there's more buy-in because you created some kind of energetic connection with that with them. And that in turn, helps you again, yeah, it increases your confidence, you can feel that, oh, it's going well, you know, and, and then you realize, oh, it's going well, I'm again, self-judging, focus on the outside, again Always, you know, having this thing that's quite nice. And it's a nice exercise that, that people could just try out in the next time when they present and when they feel so insecure and nervous, actually,
Kim Meninger
That is such a great practical strategy, just shifting your attention. And like you said, it takes a lot of practice, and it's going to happen in any presentation or situation. But the more you do it, the easier it becomes right, it's obviously going to be a lot harder at first when you've never done this before. But it's such a powerful point to that you're making of when you're a leader when you are responsible for sharing information. This success, so to speak of that interaction is really more about the connection and the relationship that you're building with the people in that room. You could be the world's foremost expert on the topic. But if you're in your own head, and you're just, you know, reciting facts, nobody's probably even listening, let alone feeling a sense of connection to you, right? And so, so I think about that a lot, too, in terms of who do you want to be? In this situation? Do you want to be an expert? Or do you want to be someone who's of service, to the mission to the goal that you're trying to achieve here, write to your team. And if your goal is being an expert, you're always going to fall short. Because you're never going to think you're good enough. But if your goal is to be of service, right, oh, I just want to advance the conversation. I'll share what I know so that everybody can then share what they know. It has a different feeling to it. And it takes a lot of the pressure off.
Ulrike Seminati
Yeah, exactly. Because I mean, there's a price to pay, which is you will not control every word anymore of what you say for sure. But nobody will remember your words anyway. Rarely and yes, we know your situation. So he remembered he or she has said this one sentence. Oh my god. Yeah. But that's really exceptional. And if you if you connect with the people, and you speak more spontaneously, more honestly out of your heart, for sure, you need to prepare your content, you need to really know what you will talk about. But you don't have to prepare it word by word like on this slide, there is three main key messages that have to come across exactly like that. You won't get about it, nothing will come across if you do it like that, because the energy is not there and the credibility is not there. But rather, yeah, you pay the price. I recall the price because it is a price, pay the price that maybe two out of one out of your three key messages. You might skip it, you might forget it. So what because people might retain them really very well the other two because you said it in a different way. You said it in are connected way. And that's great. I mean, they will anyway not retain the three chiefs thinking that except if you repeat them 10, 10 times in 20 minutes, so and he won't do that either because you don't want to be repetitive. So, yeah, I think it's a really different way of communicating. And I realized even with my own trainings, I mean a really a perfectionist it was for me a huge step to let go of this control of how I say things and how I introduce things. I am doing, obviously my homework, I have my structures, I know what's you know, in part one, part two, and the timings and all of that offer seminar training, obviously. But when I'm there, I don't think anymore, I just go and try to empty the head as much as possible and keep it as empty as possible throughout the whole training. Even now, while I'm speaking, I don't try to prepare my sentences when I'm speaking for usually do. I just let come out of my mouth that's coming out. And that's not perfect. But it's authentic. And I know it's coming from a place of energy and not from a place of, I don't know, it's even like acting like an actor, if you do it differently. And that's not that in real life that doesn't convince people.
Kim Meninger
Yes, oh, and I think what you're talking about too, is we just sort of circle back to an earlier theme is being human. And people know when you're being human and when you're not. And if you want to be an effective leader, how many facts you have is not going to be the measure. Nobody is assessing your leadership based on your encyclopedic knowledge of the subject matter, right? It's, it's really on how you connect with the people around you. And I think that's such an important thing to remember.
Ulrike Seminati
No, absolutely. And this is how also you will be seen as a future talent. If you really want to climb the career ladder, that's one of these major aspect that differentiates you from all the other experts, because expertise in an area everybody can gain. But this human side is much more difficult if you don't have it naturally. And many people don't have it naturally. It's really exceptional people who have it naturally, many have to work it out. Yeah. And to give themselves, I would just say be really friendly with yourself, finally, being friendly with yourself, and give yourself that space to be how you are and to have some flaws and to not speak in a perfect way. And yeah, maybe not. But at least you come across people can feel you and not the corporate persona that you wanted to show to them. And this is where you get connection. And this is where the doorbell is ringing. You spoke about authenticity.
Kim Meninger
We talked about not, not pretending that we're perfect and allowing for the doorbell to ring and dogs to bark and whatever else is happening in our lives. Ulrike this has been such an amazing conversation. I really could talk to you all day. But in the interest of time, I know there are others who are, you know, really drawn to what you're saying as well. Where can people find you if they want to have more of you and your work? Where can we? Where can we find more of you?
Ulrike Seminati
Yeah, best place is simply my, my website, which is my name. So little bit complicated, but you'll put it in the show notes. UlrikeSeminati.com. And, and, and again, ring. Can I open? Or is it a problem? [No. Sure. Go ahead.] Yeah. Yeah, so people can find me on my website UlrikeSeminati.com, in which you can find there's also courses for individuals, it's called for individuals, where I do usually 90-minute courses, quite short ones around, communicating with impact, creating more presence, for example, and these kinds of things, what we discussed about in bits and pieces, which are always very pragmatic, or they can find me on LinkedIn, simply Ulrike Seminati. And it would be a pleasure to get in contact with.
Kim Meninger
Wonderful. Thank you. Again, I really appreciate hearing your perspectives and appreciate the work that you're doing. And as we talked about, I will share those links in the show notes as well for anyone who's interested.
Ulrike Seminati
Thank you very much for having me. It was a really real pleasure. Like you say we could have discussed much longer but there's a lot to the topic. Thank you very much.