20. How to Achieve Any Goal
Today, I’m sharing a hack you can use for achieving any goal. It’s called Priming. Priming is a technique for activating your association, in which one stimulus influences how people respond to the next stimulus. It happens without our conscious awareness, and that’s one of the reasons it’s so effective.
Priming is simple, but if you use it, it will change your leadership forever. Priming is a common technique in advertising and it’s been used to great effect, so I’m showing you how to use it in your leadership role and how you can use it to help your team achieve their goals too.
Tune in this week for an introduction to Priming. I’m sharing some of the research around Priming and how it affects memory association. I’m also showing you how to start using Priming to save you time as a leader, and how to use it to help your team work as effectively as possible.
If you don’t have the time or budget for ongoing coaching but you’re ready to jumpstart your success in your new leadership role, you don’t want to miss my new offer, The Leadership Accelerator. It includes a 90-minute kick-start session, and at the end of this session, you’re going to get a report detailing your strengths and how you can best use them in your role. You’ll also have set a clear goal and some action-steps to take over the next 30 days, two follow-up 30-minute sessions with me, as well as unlimited support on Voxer throughout the month. Click here to get started!
What You’ll Learn From This Episode:
What Priming is and how you’re already subconsciously exposed to it.
Why Priming is an amazing hack for getting things done as a leader.
How Priming works and some simple examples of how it creates associations in memory.
Some of the research that shows the effectiveness of Priming people in advance to prepare them for what you want them to do.
How to use Priming to keep you and your team on track toward your goals.
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Full Episode Transcript:
Today, I'm going to be sharing my number one hack to help you achieve your goals whether you're at your desk or in a team meeting.
Welcome to The Confident Female Leader podcast. A space for ambitious women stepping into leadership who are ready to take control of their circumstances and own their magic. If you're ready to start shedding your self-doubt, come into your new identity as a leader, and stop consistently undervaluing yourself so you can feel more confident in your role, this show’s for you. I'm Annie Framand, Psychologist, Certified Feminist Coach, and Master Trainer. And I'm on a mission to help women just like you stop overworking, overthinking, and overpleasing, so you can start creating success on your terms. Ready to create your dream life? Let's go.
Hola amigas, how are you? I'm doing so good. I am totally feeling the spring energy, I don't know about you. But it's really interesting, because I grew up in Canada and we really could feel the energy of spring in the weather. So, the ice was melting slowly. Sometimes we would actually get a snowstorm this time of year, kind of one last one sneaking in. And actually, my friends in Montreal were telling me that they did get a snowstorm actually, this week.
But usually, the snow starts to melt, it’s getting warmer, we're starting to put on lighter jackets, the flowers are starting to bloom, or at least you're getting some buds in there. And here in Mexico, it's getting just really much hotter. In the evenings, I'm not putting on a sweater anymore. It's just really nice. I can walk around in shorts and a T-shirt in the evening.
So, there's not much of a difference. I mean, here in Puerto Vallarta, there are flowers all year. I'm wearing short sleeve and even sleeveless shirts and dresses during the day here, all year. So, there's not a huge difference, but to me, I can still feel the energy of the spring equinox, the energy of new beginnings, and I find that really fun.
And so, I have a new offer for you that I will share with you at the end of this podcast, you're going to get more information. But it's a really fun offer that I thought of for those of you who don't necessarily want a full three-month coaching container. You may not necessarily have the time at this stage. Or you might not necessarily need all of that support.
So, it's a one-month container. You have access to me during the whole month, you get one kickoff call of 90 minutes. And you also have two follow-up sessions with me. It's really a great opportunity for those of you who are stepping into a leadership role. Or for those of you who had been leaders for a while but you're still kind of struggling with the same overworking, overthinking, and people-pleasing tendencies.
And you just really want to use this spring energy to renew your leadership and get into a new vibe, where you're not doing as much people pleasing. Where you're making decisions with your own authority instead of relying on what everyone else is saying. Where you really want to stop overthinking every single conversation in every email. That offer is for you. You’ve got more details on that at the end of the episode.
All right. Today, we're going to be talking about my number one hack to achieve your goals, whether you're at your desk or in a team meeting. That is “priming”. There are different types of priming. I'm going to give you an overall definition of what it is; we won't get into the nitty-gritty of the types. But I'm going to give you a couple of references. You can do your research, if you're interested in getting into the details, but I'm going to share the overall definition of what it is.
We're going to look at a little bit of research and then we're going to see how you can use this hack. You're going to see it is really simple, but it definitely will change your leadership if you use it. Okay, first, let's get into what is priming. Alright, basically what it is, it's obviously used in our unconscious, as you will see. It's a technique in which one stimulus influences how people respond to the next stimulus.
I'm going to give you an example of what I mean by this. Basically, priming works by activating your association factor, okay? It happens without our conscious awareness; this is why it is so good. As I start sharing examples, you'll see how this works really, really well in sales and marketing, by the way. You'll start realizing, if you're watching ads, you're going to start to see where you're being primed as a consumer. It actually has major impacts on our day-to-day lives without us realizing it.
I'm going to show you how to do this in leadership, how to achieve your goals, how to present when you're in a team meeting, how you can help other people achieve goals, as well.
I'll give you a really simple example. So, if we're introducing one stimulus, let's say the word “yellow”. When we refer to a second stimulus, when we introduce a second stimulus, let's say the word “banana”, you're going to get a faster response to the second stimulus when it is related to the first one. Because a banana’s yellow, obviously, right? You're going to get a much faster response to that first word, than if you were to introduce, as a second word, a word like “television”.
For example, you're showing a series of words to someone, and you have one word in there, which is yellow, and then you've got a second word, which is banana. The person is going to react a lot faster than if you show the word yellow, and you show the second word television. Okay? Why? Because they're a lot closer linked in memory, we react a lot faster to that.
And so, they did a study with people, and they showed them luxury brand names. That led them, when they were shown ads after the names were introduced to them in a text, when they were shown ads for different products, they were more inclined to react positively to the ads that showed luxury brands than to the ads that showed other types of brands. Why? Because they were primed with luxury brand stimuli they reacted positively to that.
I'm going to give you some research around this. Some individuals were given a really difficult math problem, and they needed to concentrate on that problem in order to be able to crack it. Half of the individuals in the study were primed with information, a biography on Margaret Thatcher. The other half were primed with a biography on Mother Teresa.
Now, what the researchers were thinking is that the people who were primed with Mother Teresa biographies, before they did the math problem, were probably going to have more altruistic thoughts and behaviors. So, would probably be more inclined to help other people out than the ones that were primed with the information on Margaret Thatcher. Every single participant was asked to write down the same goal, which is, “I will try to find as many correct solutions as I can.”
Now, half of the participants also had what we call an “if/then” plan. Which is basically “If X-Y-Z, then I will X-Y-Z”. So, in this case, the if/then plan was, “If I get distracted, then I will concentrate on the test even more.” Basically, they were told specifically what to do if they got distracted.
What happened is that someone actually did interrupt the task. That person pretended to be another participant that was confused and needed help. So, it was measured, for each participant, how long they spent actually helping the person who said that they needed help.
The result of that study was that people who were primed from the Mother Teresa group, who read that bio, spent more time helping the participant than the respondents from the other group. Right? That makes sense. That's what we were expecting.
Those who had the “if/then” plan, regardless of which group they were in, initially… So, whether they were in the Mother Teresa group or the Margaret Thatcher group, it didn't matter. Those who had the “if/then” plan, regardless of those two groups, were able to experience less disruption. Whether or not they were primed to be altruistic.
Basically, what that means is if we have a plan for when things go off course, we are more able to stay on track. Okay? Those who were primed to be more altruistic turned out to be more altruistic. But also, those who were primed to have a plan when they got derailed, were less derailed.
Bottom line, what that means, is prime people in advance with what you want them to do. Okay? This is something that I have been using myself. And I'm going to give you a few different examples of how this can show up. It can be before a conversation, before a presentation, or just to stay on track for a goal.
For example, you have a goal that you're working on. Let's say sometimes I tend to distract myself. I'll be working on this podcast, for example, or I'll be working on a marketing plan, or I'll be working on a post, and I kind of really would prefer being doing something else, even though I love my job. But sometimes we're not in the mood. So, I'm going to open up my email and see what's going on, right? And then, of course there's going to be an email that I need to respond to.
I'm going to go and do that, because that suddenly seems a lot more important than the broadcast that I'm working on. So, I know that I can self-interrupt sometimes. And I know that a lot of my clients do that, as well. And I'm sure a lot of you do, too. So, what I do, is I have an “if/then” plan for that, right?
If I feel the desire to self-interrupt when I'm working on the podcast, a project, whatever it is, then, instead of opening up my emails, I will take a moment; take a step back, take a deep breath, close my eyes, just sit still, and breathe in and breathe out for a few breaths. And then, I will refocus on my task. Okay?
That way, as soon as I feel the desire to open up my email, I remember that it really isn't about the email. It's about the fact that I kind of don't feel like doing the current task. I reground myself, I refocus myself, and I get it done.
And so, usually what I'll do when I'm working on a task, complex project, or whatnot, I'll put it as a Post-it on my computer so I can see it. So, it's really easy to remember. You can have that if you're working on a goal. You can actually use the prompt that was used in the study, “If I get distracted, then I'm going to concentrate on my task even more.” You might want to be a little bit more specific in terms of what that means for you.
Another example. Let's say you want to meet with an employee, and you're afraid they're going to react emotionally because you know you have a difficult conversation you need to be having with them. They haven't been performing at the level that you agreed on together, and so, you need to have a follow-up conversation with them. And you're afraid it's not going to go so well. You're afraid that they're going to maybe be angry or frustrated or another emotion. You can have an “if/then plan for that, to stay on track.
That's the goal of the “if/then”. And the priming here, is the association, right? It's if this event happens, then I will do this. So basically, “If,” for example, “the person reacts emotionally, then I will,” and this is your plan, “listen without responding, reflect what they're saying. And ask them to tell me what is going on for them.”
It might look something like this. “If Mrs. X reacts emotionally, then I will listen carefully. I'm going to reflect back what they're saying. And I'm going to say, help me understand what's going on for you.” So that way, it's really clear, when the actual event happens, if it does, you have a plan. You know what to do. You're not freezing like a deer in the headlights going, “Oh my God, oh my God, the person is reacting emotionally. I was afraid of this, what am I going to do?” You know. You're prepared.
You can use this for things that you know tend to happen often. I used to drive home from work, and sometimes I'd have a difficult conversation with an employee, and I was rethinking about it in my car. So, you can have an “if/then” plan for that and say, “Well, if I start spinning in my head when I drive home at night, and I rethink the conversation in my head, I will remind myself of one thing that I did well in that conversation. And one thing that I can do better next time.” Hindsight is 20/20. What have I learned from it? And that's it. That way you have a game plan to stop yourself from spinning.
This used to happen to me when I had trouble falling asleep, right? It's not the cure-all, but at least you have a plan. So, if I would start spinning about my day and would have trouble falling asleep, I would tell myself, “Okay, if tonight I have trouble falling asleep because I'm thinking about my day, I will tell myself, ‘You don't need to solve for this right now. You can think about this tomorrow.’”
And then that would actually help, right? Because I would remind myself that this thinking is not lost. If it's important, it's going to come back tomorrow, but now's not the time. So, I've thought about the problem in advance. I've thought through a solution. And that way, I'm ready.
So, those are some examples of how you can use priming. Now, another way that you can do this is in presentations. This is one of my favorite ones. If you've gone to a training course… I used to facilitate a lot of them. I've done hundreds of them, if not thousands, at this point.
We would ask people before the class to fill out this sheet where they would ask themselves a few questions. We would send them the objectives for the class, let's say that it was on how to influence. Then we would let them know these are the three outcomes you're going to get from this class. And then, we would ask them three questions. Like, what are you struggling with in terms of influence? What do you want to get out of this class? And what's your biggest strength in terms of influencing, for example?
The goal of this pre-work for the class would be priming. So, the whole point is to get people into the mindset, and preparing them prior to attending the class, that this is what we're going to be focusing on. So, that they come with, in mind, what their issues are, what they want to focus on, and what they're doing well.
We're just kind of preparing them for the main event, basically. And so, that's something that you want to do as you have presentations, you want to start preparing people for what's coming up. That's why we send agendas before, so that people can start thinking about the presentation.
If you want to prime them in a certain way, if you want to actually influence them on a decision that they need to make, then you're actually maybe going to want to prime them with certain words in the agenda, certain words in the email, that you're going to be sending out for the team meeting. Okay?
That's why words are really important. Because as our brains associate, and this is all unconscious. We don't realize the associations that we are making. Our brains associate the words together. So, if you want, for example, your team to make a decision on an important project that's coming up, and you're going to present a few vendors to them, and then you want to make the decision kind of as a team.
Or you want to gather their input, let's say, then you're going to be sending them, in the agenda, words around decision, action, and next steps. You're going to be sending action words, so that you are priming them. Letting them know without them realizing it; it's unconscious. Without them realizing that there's actions that are going to be taken during that conversation or after that conversation.
You want to be really intentional about the words that you put in your email, as well, the presentation itself. Now, it doesn't mean overthink it. Okay? But it just means stop sending words like, let's brainstorm, I want to hear your thoughts. Because if you're writing things like that, the priming that you're sending or the information that you're sending is, oh, we're just here to chat. We're just here to talk. And also, people might think this isn't really an important meeting. Like, “If I skip this one, it doesn't really matter.”
Whereas, if you're sending action words to make it clear that there is going to be an outcome, their decision matters. And if they're not there, they're not going to be part of the decision. Then they're going to want to make the meeting.
And then you want to see, throughout the meeting, once again, which words are you using? This actually brings me to an important one. I was having a conversation recently with my client around this word, and it is the word “just”. So, I might have said this on the podcast before, I'm not sure. But as women, we tend to use the word “just” quite a lot. “I just need your help for this. Could I just have a minute. I would just like to add something.”
Notice this in your vocabulary, how often, in one day, you say the word “just”. Now, it's not all women, but as women, we've been socialized to maybe not take up as much space as we could, to play small, and so it's like, “I don't really want to bother you but I have this one thing I want to ask you. Do you just have five minutes? It’s just going to take five minutes.”
It's kind of like we go into the conversation apologetically by saying the word “just”. And so, if you're using that word a lot in your emails, for example, or even in your conversations, what you're doing is you're actually priming the other person that you're talking to, to think that what's coming next in your sentence isn't really that important.
You're priming them to think that you're not that important, when you're speaking those words. So, just do an experiment. If you say the word “just” quite a bit… See? I just said it. See if you could remove it as much as possible. Just do an experiment. I said, “just” again, there you go. You see? Conduct an experiment this week, seeing if you can, as much as possible, remove that word from your vocabulary. And then see the impact, with just one word, that it has on your audience.
All right, that's what I have for you this week, ladies.
If you are loving the podcast, I would love for you to share it with a woman you know, who is also a leader and wants to become more confident in her role. Also, don't forget to rate and review the podcast, wherever you listen to this podcast. Have a wonderful week, everyone.
Hey, ladies, I have a new offer for you that I am super excited about. It's called the Leadership Accelerator. I created this offer for new leaders, and not-so-new leaders, who tried navigating the transition from expert to leader on their own, but who just can't seem to figure it out.
So, if you've been overthinking your every move and your every email, and if you're still hustling every day to prove yourself in the job that you already have, which is keeping you in a cycle of overworking and people pleasing, this is for you.
Now, the Leadership Accelerator includes a 90-minute kickstart session. At the end of this session, you get a report detailing your strengths and how you can best use them in your new role. You also set a clear goal, only one, and some action steps to take over the next 30 days to help you reach your goal.
And to help you achieve your goal drama-free, you get two 30-minute follow-up sessions; one halfway through the month, and one at the end. In these sessions, I help you stay on track and remove any blocks that stand in the way of you reaching your goal.
Now, the best part of this offer is that you get unlimited support for 30 days. So, for example, let's say that you've been working on a presentation for your boss, and you've been really agonizing over that presentation that you have to make; overthinking every single word because you're afraid of how other people are going to react. Now, what you could do is you can send me the presentation and I'm going to give you feedback on it, the same day. So, no more wasting time procrastinating, looking at your screen, or chasing the words in your head.
You have access to me for a month, whenever you're feeling stuck in the moment, whenever you need to write an email, whenever you need a sounding board for a decision at any time. It's like having a coach in your pocket. Seriously, I wish I had that when I became a leader. It really would have saved me so much time and energy.
Now if you want to find out more and grab your spot, you can visit my website at AnnieFramand.com/leadership-accelerator.
Thanks for listening to The Confident Female Leader podcast. Ready to dismantle the patriarchy with me? Come say “Hi” at AnnieFramand.com to learn more about how you can take this work deeper and apply what you're learning.
Welcome to The Confident Female Leader podcast. A space for ambitious women stepping into leadership who are ready to take control of their circumstances and own their magic. If you're ready to start shedding your self-doubt, come into your new identity as a leader, and stop consistently undervaluing yourself so you can feel more confident in your role, this show’s for you. I'm Annie Framand, Psychologist, Certified Feminist Coach, and Master Trainer. And I'm on a mission to help women just like you stop overworking, overthinking, and overpleasing, so you can start creating success on your terms. Ready to create your dream life? Let's go.
Hola amigas, how are you? I'm doing so good. I am totally feeling the spring energy, I don't know about you. But it's really interesting, because I grew up in Canada and we really could feel the energy of spring in the weather. So, the ice was melting slowly. Sometimes we would actually get a snowstorm this time of year, kind of one last one sneaking in. And actually, my friends in Montreal were telling me that they did get a snowstorm actually, this week.
But usually, the snow starts to melt, it’s getting warmer, we're starting to put on lighter jackets, the flowers are starting to bloom, or at least you're getting some buds in there. And here in Mexico, it's getting just really much hotter. In the evenings, I'm not putting on a sweater anymore. It's just really nice. I can walk around in shorts and a T-shirt in the evening.
So, there's not much of a difference. I mean, here in Puerto Vallarta, there are flowers all year. I'm wearing short sleeve and even sleeveless shirts and dresses during the day here, all year. So, there's not a huge difference, but to me, I can still feel the energy of the spring equinox, the energy of new beginnings, and I find that really fun.
And so, I have a new offer for you that I will share with you at the end of this podcast, you're going to get more information. But it's a really fun offer that I thought of for those of you who don't necessarily want a full three-month coaching container. You may not necessarily have the time at this stage. Or you might not necessarily need all of that support.
So, it's a one-month container. You have access to me during the whole month, you get one kickoff call of 90 minutes. And you also have two follow-up sessions with me. It's really a great opportunity for those of you who are stepping into a leadership role. Or for those of you who had been leaders for a while but you're still kind of struggling with the same overworking, overthinking, and people-pleasing tendencies.
And you just really want to use this spring energy to renew your leadership and get into a new vibe, where you're not doing as much people pleasing. Where you're making decisions with your own authority instead of relying on what everyone else is saying. Where you really want to stop overthinking every single conversation in every email. That offer is for you. You’ve got more details on that at the end of the episode.
All right. Today, we're going to be talking about my number one hack to achieve your goals, whether you're at your desk or in a team meeting. That is “priming”. There are different types of priming. I'm going to give you an overall definition of what it is; we won't get into the nitty-gritty of the types. But I'm going to give you a couple of references. You can do your research, if you're interested in getting into the details, but I'm going to share the overall definition of what it is.
We're going to look at a little bit of research and then we're going to see how you can use this hack. You're going to see it is really simple, but it definitely will change your leadership if you use it. Okay, first, let's get into what is priming. Alright, basically what it is, it's obviously used in our unconscious, as you will see. It's a technique in which one stimulus influences how people respond to the next stimulus.
I'm going to give you an example of what I mean by this. Basically, priming works by activating your association factor, okay? It happens without our conscious awareness; this is why it is so good. As I start sharing examples, you'll see how this works really, really well in sales and marketing, by the way. You'll start realizing, if you're watching ads, you're going to start to see where you're being primed as a consumer. It actually has major impacts on our day-to-day lives without us realizing it.
I'm going to show you how to do this in leadership, how to achieve your goals, how to present when you're in a team meeting, how you can help other people achieve goals, as well.
I'll give you a really simple example. So, if we're introducing one stimulus, let's say the word “yellow”. When we refer to a second stimulus, when we introduce a second stimulus, let's say the word “banana”, you're going to get a faster response to the second stimulus when it is related to the first one. Because a banana’s yellow, obviously, right? You're going to get a much faster response to that first word, than if you were to introduce, as a second word, a word like “television”.
For example, you're showing a series of words to someone, and you have one word in there, which is yellow, and then you've got a second word, which is banana. The person is going to react a lot faster than if you show the word yellow, and you show the second word television. Okay? Why? Because they're a lot closer linked in memory, we react a lot faster to that.
And so, they did a study with people, and they showed them luxury brand names. That led them, when they were shown ads after the names were introduced to them in a text, when they were shown ads for different products, they were more inclined to react positively to the ads that showed luxury brands than to the ads that showed other types of brands. Why? Because they were primed with luxury brand stimuli they reacted positively to that.
I'm going to give you some research around this. Some individuals were given a really difficult math problem, and they needed to concentrate on that problem in order to be able to crack it. Half of the individuals in the study were primed with information, a biography on Margaret Thatcher. The other half were primed with a biography on Mother Teresa.
Now, what the researchers were thinking is that the people who were primed with Mother Teresa biographies, before they did the math problem, were probably going to have more altruistic thoughts and behaviors. So, would probably be more inclined to help other people out than the ones that were primed with the information on Margaret Thatcher. Every single participant was asked to write down the same goal, which is, “I will try to find as many correct solutions as I can.”
Now, half of the participants also had what we call an “if/then” plan. Which is basically “If X-Y-Z, then I will X-Y-Z”. So, in this case, the if/then plan was, “If I get distracted, then I will concentrate on the test even more.” Basically, they were told specifically what to do if they got distracted.
What happened is that someone actually did interrupt the task. That person pretended to be another participant that was confused and needed help. So, it was measured, for each participant, how long they spent actually helping the person who said that they needed help.
The result of that study was that people who were primed from the Mother Teresa group, who read that bio, spent more time helping the participant than the respondents from the other group. Right? That makes sense. That's what we were expecting.
Those who had the “if/then” plan, regardless of which group they were in, initially… So, whether they were in the Mother Teresa group or the Margaret Thatcher group, it didn't matter. Those who had the “if/then” plan, regardless of those two groups, were able to experience less disruption. Whether or not they were primed to be altruistic.
Basically, what that means is if we have a plan for when things go off course, we are more able to stay on track. Okay? Those who were primed to be more altruistic turned out to be more altruistic. But also, those who were primed to have a plan when they got derailed, were less derailed.
Bottom line, what that means, is prime people in advance with what you want them to do. Okay? This is something that I have been using myself. And I'm going to give you a few different examples of how this can show up. It can be before a conversation, before a presentation, or just to stay on track for a goal.
For example, you have a goal that you're working on. Let's say sometimes I tend to distract myself. I'll be working on this podcast, for example, or I'll be working on a marketing plan, or I'll be working on a post, and I kind of really would prefer being doing something else, even though I love my job. But sometimes we're not in the mood. So, I'm going to open up my email and see what's going on, right? And then, of course there's going to be an email that I need to respond to.
I'm going to go and do that, because that suddenly seems a lot more important than the broadcast that I'm working on. So, I know that I can self-interrupt sometimes. And I know that a lot of my clients do that, as well. And I'm sure a lot of you do, too. So, what I do, is I have an “if/then” plan for that, right?
If I feel the desire to self-interrupt when I'm working on the podcast, a project, whatever it is, then, instead of opening up my emails, I will take a moment; take a step back, take a deep breath, close my eyes, just sit still, and breathe in and breathe out for a few breaths. And then, I will refocus on my task. Okay?
That way, as soon as I feel the desire to open up my email, I remember that it really isn't about the email. It's about the fact that I kind of don't feel like doing the current task. I reground myself, I refocus myself, and I get it done.
And so, usually what I'll do when I'm working on a task, complex project, or whatnot, I'll put it as a Post-it on my computer so I can see it. So, it's really easy to remember. You can have that if you're working on a goal. You can actually use the prompt that was used in the study, “If I get distracted, then I'm going to concentrate on my task even more.” You might want to be a little bit more specific in terms of what that means for you.
Another example. Let's say you want to meet with an employee, and you're afraid they're going to react emotionally because you know you have a difficult conversation you need to be having with them. They haven't been performing at the level that you agreed on together, and so, you need to have a follow-up conversation with them. And you're afraid it's not going to go so well. You're afraid that they're going to maybe be angry or frustrated or another emotion. You can have an “if/then plan for that, to stay on track.
That's the goal of the “if/then”. And the priming here, is the association, right? It's if this event happens, then I will do this. So basically, “If,” for example, “the person reacts emotionally, then I will,” and this is your plan, “listen without responding, reflect what they're saying. And ask them to tell me what is going on for them.”
It might look something like this. “If Mrs. X reacts emotionally, then I will listen carefully. I'm going to reflect back what they're saying. And I'm going to say, help me understand what's going on for you.” So that way, it's really clear, when the actual event happens, if it does, you have a plan. You know what to do. You're not freezing like a deer in the headlights going, “Oh my God, oh my God, the person is reacting emotionally. I was afraid of this, what am I going to do?” You know. You're prepared.
You can use this for things that you know tend to happen often. I used to drive home from work, and sometimes I'd have a difficult conversation with an employee, and I was rethinking about it in my car. So, you can have an “if/then” plan for that and say, “Well, if I start spinning in my head when I drive home at night, and I rethink the conversation in my head, I will remind myself of one thing that I did well in that conversation. And one thing that I can do better next time.” Hindsight is 20/20. What have I learned from it? And that's it. That way you have a game plan to stop yourself from spinning.
This used to happen to me when I had trouble falling asleep, right? It's not the cure-all, but at least you have a plan. So, if I would start spinning about my day and would have trouble falling asleep, I would tell myself, “Okay, if tonight I have trouble falling asleep because I'm thinking about my day, I will tell myself, ‘You don't need to solve for this right now. You can think about this tomorrow.’”
And then that would actually help, right? Because I would remind myself that this thinking is not lost. If it's important, it's going to come back tomorrow, but now's not the time. So, I've thought about the problem in advance. I've thought through a solution. And that way, I'm ready.
So, those are some examples of how you can use priming. Now, another way that you can do this is in presentations. This is one of my favorite ones. If you've gone to a training course… I used to facilitate a lot of them. I've done hundreds of them, if not thousands, at this point.
We would ask people before the class to fill out this sheet where they would ask themselves a few questions. We would send them the objectives for the class, let's say that it was on how to influence. Then we would let them know these are the three outcomes you're going to get from this class. And then, we would ask them three questions. Like, what are you struggling with in terms of influence? What do you want to get out of this class? And what's your biggest strength in terms of influencing, for example?
The goal of this pre-work for the class would be priming. So, the whole point is to get people into the mindset, and preparing them prior to attending the class, that this is what we're going to be focusing on. So, that they come with, in mind, what their issues are, what they want to focus on, and what they're doing well.
We're just kind of preparing them for the main event, basically. And so, that's something that you want to do as you have presentations, you want to start preparing people for what's coming up. That's why we send agendas before, so that people can start thinking about the presentation.
If you want to prime them in a certain way, if you want to actually influence them on a decision that they need to make, then you're actually maybe going to want to prime them with certain words in the agenda, certain words in the email, that you're going to be sending out for the team meeting. Okay?
That's why words are really important. Because as our brains associate, and this is all unconscious. We don't realize the associations that we are making. Our brains associate the words together. So, if you want, for example, your team to make a decision on an important project that's coming up, and you're going to present a few vendors to them, and then you want to make the decision kind of as a team.
Or you want to gather their input, let's say, then you're going to be sending them, in the agenda, words around decision, action, and next steps. You're going to be sending action words, so that you are priming them. Letting them know without them realizing it; it's unconscious. Without them realizing that there's actions that are going to be taken during that conversation or after that conversation.
You want to be really intentional about the words that you put in your email, as well, the presentation itself. Now, it doesn't mean overthink it. Okay? But it just means stop sending words like, let's brainstorm, I want to hear your thoughts. Because if you're writing things like that, the priming that you're sending or the information that you're sending is, oh, we're just here to chat. We're just here to talk. And also, people might think this isn't really an important meeting. Like, “If I skip this one, it doesn't really matter.”
Whereas, if you're sending action words to make it clear that there is going to be an outcome, their decision matters. And if they're not there, they're not going to be part of the decision. Then they're going to want to make the meeting.
And then you want to see, throughout the meeting, once again, which words are you using? This actually brings me to an important one. I was having a conversation recently with my client around this word, and it is the word “just”. So, I might have said this on the podcast before, I'm not sure. But as women, we tend to use the word “just” quite a lot. “I just need your help for this. Could I just have a minute. I would just like to add something.”
Notice this in your vocabulary, how often, in one day, you say the word “just”. Now, it's not all women, but as women, we've been socialized to maybe not take up as much space as we could, to play small, and so it's like, “I don't really want to bother you but I have this one thing I want to ask you. Do you just have five minutes? It’s just going to take five minutes.”
It's kind of like we go into the conversation apologetically by saying the word “just”. And so, if you're using that word a lot in your emails, for example, or even in your conversations, what you're doing is you're actually priming the other person that you're talking to, to think that what's coming next in your sentence isn't really that important.
You're priming them to think that you're not that important, when you're speaking those words. So, just do an experiment. If you say the word “just” quite a bit… See? I just said it. See if you could remove it as much as possible. Just do an experiment. I said, “just” again, there you go. You see? Conduct an experiment this week, seeing if you can, as much as possible, remove that word from your vocabulary. And then see the impact, with just one word, that it has on your audience.
All right, that's what I have for you this week, ladies.
If you are loving the podcast, I would love for you to share it with a woman you know, who is also a leader and wants to become more confident in her role. Also, don't forget to rate and review the podcast, wherever you listen to this podcast. Have a wonderful week, everyone.
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