Transcript​

Welcome to the Celebrate BRAVE podcast. 

I’m Nicole Trick Steinbach, your host, and the international bravery coach. On a mission to redefine brave. How we identify it, live it, and most importantly, celebrate it. Because when you build your brave, you change your world and that changes the world. Talk about something to celebrate. Let’s go.

Hello brave people. Today, I’m going to share with you how to build a persona. So I’m going to also share with you why build a persona and how it helps you in your career. This topic, let’s call it a topic. This topic was inspired by a recent conversation I had in a large organization that I am a part of. I was asked, oh my goodness. I probably should have practice this topic. Cause I’ve never talked about it before. So you guys are getting like the raw full version of; Nicole Trick Steinbach telling a story. All right! 

So in this large organization, there were a couple of hundred people on the line and I was asked what it was like or how it felt, how it showed up that being an optimist. I just felt my closest friends, my sister, and probably about 400 of my former colleagues laugh out loud and or gasp and then laugh out loud. I am not a natural optimist. I am not naturally positive. In fact, I mean, I am because I was born as a baby with the full assumption that I would be loved and it was fine for me to show that I needed food, love, care, et cetera, but how I show up or my first inclination is not positive optimism. In fact, if you send me a communication draft, a webpage draft, et cetera, my first response is going to be everything that’s wrong. And then I need to go and talk about what’s right. When I evaluate my own progress in my career, which I do at least a week, at least every single week,….. at least. I have had to force myself to look at what went well, before I look at what didn’t go well, and then of course, what I could do better. Or what I could do differently. So I am not an optimist. I am not a  positive, rah, rah, rah. in my first step. So why do so many people experience me in that way? Especially, when I’m speaking publicly, especially when I’m helping design something, why do they experience this positive, fun energy? I’ll tell you why. Two things;

Number one, that’s where I want to be. That’s who I want to become. I have an earlier podcast episode; Who do you want to be? How does she feel? Well, who do I want to be? A wildly successful coach for women in technology shifting the definition of brave for the entire globe? How does she feel? Fun, connected, positive, brave, confident, empowered.

So, how am I going to show up? Well, I’m not going to fake it till I make it. I’m going to show up with a persona, do it till it’s real. I’m going to show up with a persona that is the power of a persona. Throughout my career. And many of my clients, you know, I’ve had different personas. It’s not that I’m changing and pretending to be someone entirely different. It’s setting an outcome, choosing the actions for those outcomes based on the feelings that I want to have. Oh, that’s very, very simple. Clients are like rolling their eyes and going, oh my gosh, it’s so much harder. Yeah, of course. When we’re learning a skill, it’s much harder, but that is a persona. So are there aspects of me that are fun? Heck yeah. I love to have fun. I love to laugh. I literally scheduled it into my calendar for years before it became natural. Are there parts of me that are optimistic? Yes. Especially the part that I want you to know how amazing you are, you have magic. I deeply believe that every single person I meet has a magic.

And you know, who taught that to me, side note, I just realized this recently, Harry Potter, but not who you think; Draco Malfoy. Think about how he was raised. We are conditioned. And we can condition ourselves and that’s a persona. Okay. Back to the content, back to the actual content, Harry Potter aside.

Okay. So here’s the deal. How do you build a persona? I kind of foreshadowed it a little bit. What result do you want if I want to have, and this is where I started to build the persona. If I want to have gravitas, if I want to have authority in a room where I’m the most junior person in this room, or maybe I’m the only woman, that happens a lot, or maybe I’m the only person who isn’t technical, but I’m there to represent the human experience through change. Maybe I’m the keynote speaker with a couple of thousand people on the line. Right? What do I want? What’s the outcome? Most of the time, the outcome is impactful, effective, fun, encouraging all of these outcomes. This is what I want. So then, let’s go with the idea of wanting gravitas, wanting authority inside of a meeting. So I want authority in a meeting and I want that authority to be positive and to be acknowledged. Cool. So what actions do I need to take? First of all, I need to speak in simple, short sentences. I need to, while I’m building the confidence of this gravitas, this persona inside of a meeting, I need to say things like, I think I see, but as I become more confident, I got to get that shit right out of my vocabulary. So at the beginning, I think the team needs more support. I see the team needs more support. And then as I mature, as I become more confident in myself and my gravitas, my authority in this meeting, I say the team needs more support. Okay, cool. So how do I need to feel to speak and to show up in this way?

Well, For fun, let’s call it mediocre white guy confidence. The best part about that story. Mediocre white guy confidence is I actually got it from a white guy. He was the one who said, Nicole, I’m finished, before you walk into this meeting. I need you to shake yourself and just put on your mediocre white guy confidence and just sashay yourself right on in there. Oh man, this is the fun I want to have. This is the positive I want to have. This is the connection, the brave, confident, empowered connection I want to have with you. That I want to create in the world. 

I may not be who I am when I wake up first in the morning or when I’m going through a hard time and I haven’t had coffee. Okay. Be real, Nicole without coffee, bad idea, anyhoo, but it is how I want to show up in the world. And it is a persona. Another example, executive. Many, many, many, many of my clients are headed into an executive level. They may already be there and they’re going to the next level of executive, you know, like from an SVB to an EVB or they could be a senior and they want to get into director level. Who you are, how you show up as a senior was at some point uncomfortable. Remember the first time you identified yourself as a senior director or as a vice president. That was a weird right. A little bit exciting, a little bit glamorous, super weird. It wasn’t natural until it became natural. If you want it to become natural, even faster for everyone else and you step into a persona, what results do you want to achieve? What actions bring you towards that result? And the core is how is the feeling for you? If you walk into space saying, oh, I’m the only woman I’m going to have to work so much harder. You know, there’s going to be people pushing against me. You’re going to show up with that. And so when you talk, it’s either going to be super soft or it’s going to be super aggressive. And then what’s the result. The only woman. Do we need to listen to her neghh. But what if you say, I’m going to be the only woman in this meeting, and this is my opportunity to really shine for myself and for everyone else, people want to listen to me. People want to listen to me and I feel confident. I feel engaged and I feel inspirational.

Cool. How are you going to speak? Guess what? You’re going to speak fun. You’re going to speak inspirationally. You’re going to show up with confidence and then how do the other people tend to receive that? Yeah, exactly. Confident, inspired, fun. If you want to go a little bit deeper inside of this, choose a thought for yourself. Choose a thought that leads to those feelings that create the actions that establish the result. People want to listen to me. Currently, when I speak to these large groups virtually my thought is; “I’m as, as amazing virtually as I am in person” and it works, it works. 

So why do you want a persona? There you go. And how do you build it? What result do you want? What actions will support that and how do you feel, how do you want to feel? And if you want to go a little bit further, cool. Think of a thought, identify a thought, create a thought, and then put that persona on and go in there and make change happen.

Bye.

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Celebrate BRAVE Podcast.

If you’re ready to build your brave, to live a life you love, and create a career that matters to you. Reach out! Together we can spend time one-on-one to explore how I can help you. And until then share this episode with people in your life. People who can join our movement. To redefine brave how we identify it, experience it, and celebrate it.