620: How to Respond When You Get Triggered, with Sally Helgesen

Sally Helgesen: Rising Together Sally Helgesen has been cited by Forbes as the world’s premier expert on women’s leadership. She is a best-selling author, speaker and leadership coach. She has been named by Thinkers50 as one of the world’s top 20 coaches and ranked number 6 among the world’s thought leaders by Global Gurus. She is the author of several books, including The Female Advantage: Women’s Ways of Leadership and The Female Vision: Women’s Real Power at Work.

Her book The Web of Inclusion: A New Architecture for Building Great Organizations, was cited in The Wall Street Journal as one of the best books on leadership of all time and is credited with bringing the language of inclusion into business. She co-authored How Women Rise, with executive coach Marshall Goldsmith, examining the behaviors most likely to get in the way of successful women. Her newest book is Rising Together: How We Can Bridge Divides and Create a More Inclusive Workplace*.

When we get triggered, our default response tends to be either venting about it to others or suffering in silence. In this conversation, Sally and I explore how to respond in a more useful way. She invites us to consider being less invested in our initial response, creating an alternative script, and finding a path forward to influence different behavior. Key Points

When we get triggered, our tendency is to either vent about it or suffer in silence. Being overly invested in our first response limits our ability to respond better. This is the authenticity trap. Create an alternative, positive script that helps your own mental well-being and precipitates a more helpful action. Whether the alternative script is true or not isn’t the point. The aim is to find the line between not humiliating the other party and also not letting a poor behavior be unaddressed. Wisdom from Sun Tzu: indirection or redirection to disarm an opponent is preferable to the direct engagement or combat.

Resources Mentioned

Rising Together: How We Can Bridge Divides and Create a More Inclusive Workplace by Sally Helgesen

Interview Notes Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required). Related Episodes

The Way Out of Major Conflict, with Amanda Ripley (episode 529) End Imposter Syndrome in Your Organization, with Jodi-Ann Burey (episode 556) How to Create Inclusive Hiring Practices, with Ruchika Tulshyan (episode 589) How to Respond Better When Challenged, with Dolly Chugh (episode 615)

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