When Cindy Gallop tells you to do something . . .

Scene: a Thursday evening at the brand new Wing Williamsburg, a talk from The Michael Bay of Business (“I blow shit up”), Cindy Gallop, called “Working the Way You Want To”

“Say what you think,” said the woman with the microphone.

A few giggles. A few “yaas queen” snaps. 

“No really.” She pauses; her voice drops an octave. “Say what you REALLY think.”

More snaps. More giggles. And also, the susurrus of women shifting, slightly uncomfortably, in their chairs.

Earlier that day, my co-founder Julie and I ran a workshop on defining and living your communication core values. In asking about the values of communication that these women had grown up with and now carried into their adult lives, one theme came up over and over. “Don’t make anyone uncomfortable.” 

It doesn’t matter what you might need to say, want to say, need to say . . . if you, via what you say or how you say it, make someone else feel something negative, you have failed. You might be punished. Or more commonly, you might punish yourself. 

The BOOTS. The GLAMOUR. The PRESENCE. And this was before she got out her iphone in its “knuckle case”.

Wrapped up in our deep socialization as women to nurture and take care of other people is an insidious mirror: make everyone else comfortable, even at the expense of your own comfort, your own happiness, your own truth, and even your own safety. 

So on Thursday evening, when Cindy Gallop – a woman who personifies fierceness – told us to “say what you think”, I wondered how many women in the audience thought, “Sure. I’d love to do that. But I can’t.”

There are legitimate reasons to feel discomfort – or even outright fear – at the thought of saying what you really think. You could be ostracized. You could piss someone off. You could experience an avalanche of harassment and threats online and off. You could be fired. You could even be KILLED (if you think I’m being dramatic, you don’t have to dig much to find article after article with the basic premise “man comes onto woman, woman rejects man, man maims or kills woman in retaliation”). The stakes and the consequences are particularly dire the further you are from Audre Lorde’s mythic norm (straight, cis-gendered, able-bodied white man). 

I’m quite sure that when Cindy Gallop says “Say what you think”, she doesn’t mean “don’t worry about how or where or why you say it, just blurt it out and don’t worry about being an asshole.” HOW you say what you really think matters, and is worthy of thought, empathy, and intentionality. 

But for so many women, thought becomes an endless cycle of second-guessing, empathy becomes “I must not cause anyone to have a negative feeling”, and intention becomes “I must stay safe, because maintaining the status quo is better than taking this risk.”

Taking care of people’s feelings is a worthy goal. It is a strength – until it paralyzes you. Until it causes you to ignore what is right or necessary. Until it shuts you up when other people suffer. Until it means that you stuff the words that boil inside of you down for so long that you eventually burn up from the inside out – or volcano.

Cindy added to her point: it is important to say what you think at work because we are hired for our brain, our unique perspective, and our ideas. That’s what they want! Saying what you think is also a helpful filter – if the reaction is negative or abusive, you don’t want to work for these people anyway.

She also said something that struck like a gong in my recovering perfectionist, people-pleasing heart: “It’s often not until you say what you really think that you KNOW what you really think.”

It’s true: the act of saying the hard thing can feel intensely uncomfortable. It can also feel like a 20-lb kettlebell has been lifted off your heart. Discomfort is not the enemy.  Discomfort (nerves, fear, stress) is a 100% natural part of living a life of consequence. Breathe into your discomfort, connect to WHY you must say what you think, and know that by expressing your ideas and speaking your truth, you make space for others to do the same.

We’ll be taking Cindy’s advice.

Public speaking, failure, public speaking coaches, public speaking coaching, authenticity, Vital Voice Training, Casey Erin Clark, Julie Fogh, communication specialists