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How to speak up for yourself

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    Speaking up is hard to do.
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    I understood the true meaning
    of this phrase exactly one month ago,
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    when my wife and I became new parents.
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    It was an amazing moment.
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    It was exhilarating and elating,
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    but it was also scary and terrifying.
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    And it got particularly terrifying
    when we got home from the hospital,
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    and we were unsure
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    whether our little baby boy was getting
    enough nutrients from breastfeeding.
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    And we wanted to call our pediatrician,
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    but we also didn't want
    to make a bad first impression
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    or come across as a crazy,
    neurotic parent.
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    So we worried.
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    And we waited.
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    When we got to the doctor's office
    the next day,
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    she immediately gave him formula
    because he was pretty dehydrated.
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    Our son is fine now,
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    and our doctor has reassured us
    we can always contact her.
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    But in that moment,
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    I should've spoken up, but I didn't.
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    But sometimes we speak up
    when we shouldn't,
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    and I learned that over 10 years ago
    when I let my twin brother down.
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    My twin brother
    is a documentary filmmaker,
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    and for one of his first films,
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    he got an offer
    from a distribution company.
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    He was excited,
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    and he was inclined to accept the offer.
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    But as a negotiations researcher,
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    I insisted he make a counteroffer,
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    and I helped him craft the perfect one.
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    And it was perfect --
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    it was perfectly insulting.
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    The company was so offended,
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    they literally withdrew the offer
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    and my brother was left with nothing.
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    And I've asked people all over the world
    about this dilemma of speaking up:
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    when they can assert themselves,
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    when they can push their interests,
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    when they can express an opinion,
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    when they can make an ambitious ask.
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    And the range of stories
    are varied and diverse,
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    but they also make up
    a universal tapestry.
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    Can I correct my boss
    when they make a mistake?
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    Can I confront my coworker
    who keeps stepping on my toes?
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    Can I challenge my friend's
    insensitive joke?
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    Can I tell the person I love the most
    my deepest insecurities?
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    And through these experiences,
    I've come to recognize
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    that each of us have something called
    a range of acceptable behavior.
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    Now, sometimes we're too strong;
    we push ourselves too much.
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    That's what happened with my brother.
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    Even making an offer was outside
    his range of acceptable behavior.
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    But sometimes we're too weak.
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    That's what happened with my wife and I.
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    And this range of acceptable behaviors --
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    when we stay within our range,
    we're rewarded.
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    When we step outside that range,
    we get punished in a variety of ways.
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    We get dismissed or demeaned
    or even ostracized.
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    Or we lose that raise
    or that promotion or that deal.
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    Now, the first thing we need to know is:
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    What is my range?
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    But the key thing is,
    our range isn't fixed;
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    it's actually pretty dynamic.
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    It expands and it narrows
    based on the context.
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    And there's one thing that determines
    that range more than anything else,
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    and that's your power.
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    Your power determines your range.
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    What is power?
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    Power comes in lots of forms.
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    In negotiations, it comes
    in the form of alternatives.
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    So my brother had no alternatives;
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    he lacked power.
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    The company had lots of alternatives;
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    they had power.
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    Sometimes it's being new
    to a country, like an immigrant,
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    or new to an organization
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    or new to an experience,
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    like my wife and I as new parents.
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    Sometimes it's at work,
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    where someone's the boss
    and someone's the subordinate.
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    Sometimes it's in relationships,
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    where one person's more invested
    than the other person.
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    And the key thing is that when
    we have lots of power,
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    our range is very wide.
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    We have a lot of leeway in how to behave.
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    But when we lack power, our range narrows.
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    We have very little leeway.
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    The problem is that when
    our range narrows,
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    that produces something called
    the low-power double bind.
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    The low-power double bind happens
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    when, if we don't speak up,
    we go unnoticed,
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    but if we do speak up, we get punished.
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    Now, many of you have heard
    the phrase the "double bind"
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    and connected it with one thing,
    and that's gender.
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    The gender double bind is women
    who don't speak up go unnoticed,
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    and women who do speak up get punished.
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    And the key thing is that women have
    the same need as men to speak up,
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    but they have barriers to doing so.
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    But what my research has shown
    over the last two decades
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    is that what looks
    like a gender difference
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    is not really a gender double bind,
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    it's a really a low-power double bind.
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    And what looks like a gender difference
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    are really often just power
    differences in disguise.
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    Oftentimes we see a difference
    between a man and a woman
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    or men and women,
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    and think, "Biological cause.
    There's something fundamentally different
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    about the sexes."
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    But in study after study,
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    I've found that a better explanation
    for many sex differences
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    is really power.
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    And so it's the low-power double bind.
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    And the low-power double bind
    means that we have a narrow range,
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    and we lack power.
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    We have a narrow range,
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    and our double bind is very large.
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    So we need to find ways
    to expand our range.
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    And over the last couple decades,
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    my colleagues and I have found
    two things really matter.
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    The first: you seem powerful
    in your own eyes.
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    The second: you seem powerful
    in the eyes of others.
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    When I feel powerful,
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    I feel confident, not fearful;
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    I expand my own range.
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    When other people see me as powerful,
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    they grant me a wider range.
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    So we need tools to expand
    our range of acceptable behavior.
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    And I'm going to give you
    a set of tools today.
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    Speaking up is risky,
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    but these tools will lower
    your risk of speaking up.
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    The first tool I'm going to give you
    got discovered in negotiations
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    in an important finding.
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    On average, women make
    less ambitions offers
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    and get worse outcomes than men
    at the bargaining table.
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    But Hannah Riley Bowles
    and Emily Amanatullah have discovered
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    there's one situation
    where women get the same outcomes as men
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    and are just as ambitious.
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    That's when they advocate for others.
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    When they advocate for others,
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    they discover their own range
    and expand it in their own mind.
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    They become more assertive.
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    This is sometimes called
    "the mama bear effect."
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    Like a mama bear defending her cubs,
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    when we advocate for others,
    we can discover our own voice.
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    But sometimes, we have
    to advocate for ourselves.
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    How do we do that?
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    One of the most important tools
    we have to advocate for ourselves
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    is something called perspective-taking.
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    And perspective-taking is really simple:
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    it's simply looking at the world
    through the eyes of another person.
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    It's one of the most important tools
    we have to expand our range.
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    When I take your perspective,
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    and I think about what you really want,
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    you're more likely to give me
    what I really want.
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    But here's the problem:
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    perspective-taking is hard to do.
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    So let's do a little experiment.
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    I want you all to hold
    your hand just like this:
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    your finger -- put it up.
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    And I want you to draw
    a capital letter E on your forehead
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    as quickly as possible.
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    OK, it turns out that we can
    draw this E in one of two ways,
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    and this was originally designed
    as a test of perspective-taking.
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    I'm going to show you two pictures
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    of someone with an E on their forehead --
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    my former student, Erika Hall.
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    And you can see over here,
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    that's the correct E.
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    I drew the E so it looks like
    an E to another person.
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    That's the perspective-taking E
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    because it looks like an E
    from someone else's vantage point.
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    But this E over here
    is the self-focused E.
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    We often get self-focused.
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    And we particularly get
    self-focused in a crisis.
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    I want to tell you
    about a particular crisis.
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    A man walks into a bank
    in Watsonville, California.
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    And he says, "Give me $2,000,
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    or I'm blowing the whole bank
    up with a bomb."
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    Now, the bank manager
    didn't give him the money.
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    She took a step back.
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    She took his perspective,
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    and she noticed something
    really important.
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    He asked for a specific amount of money.
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    So she said,
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    "Why did you ask for $2,000?"
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    And he said, "My friend
    is going to be evicted
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    unless I get him $2,000 immediately."
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    And she said, "Oh! You don't want
    to rob the bank --
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    you want to take out a loan."
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    (Laughter)
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    "Why don't you come back to my office,
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    and we can have you
    fill out the paperwork."
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    (Laughter)
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    Now, her quick perspective-taking
    defused a volatile situation.
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    So when we take someone's perspective,
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    it allows us to be ambitious
    and assertive, but still be likable.
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    Here's another way to be assertive
    but still be likable,
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    and that is to signal flexibility.
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    Now, imagine you're a car salesperson,
    and you want to sell someone a car.
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    You're going to more likely make the sale
    if you give them two options.
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    Let's say option A:
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    $24,000 for this car
    and a five-year warranty.
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    Or option B:
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    $23,000 and a three-year warranty.
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    My research shows that when you give
    people a choice among options,
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    it lowers their defenses,
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    and they're more likely
    to accept your offer.
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    And this doesn't just
    work with salespeople;
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    it works with parents.
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    When my niece was four,
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    she resisted getting dressed
    and rejected everything.
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    But then my sister-in-law
    had a brilliant idea.
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    What if I gave my daughter a choice?
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    This shirt or that shirt? OK, that shirt.
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    This pant or that pant? OK, that pant.
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    And it worked brilliantly.
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    She got dressed quickly
    and without resistance.
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    When I've asked the question
    around the world
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    when people feel comfortable speaking up,
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    the number one answer is:
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    "When I have social support
    in my audience; when I have allies."
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    So we want to get allies on our side.
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    How do we do that?
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    Well, one of the ways is be a mama bear.
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    When we advocate for others,
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    we expand our range in our own eyes
    and the eyes of others,
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    but we also earn strong allies.
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    Another way we can earn strong allies,
    especially in high places,
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    is by asking other people for advice.
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    When we ask others for advice,
    they like us because we flatter them,
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    and we're expressing humility.
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    And this really works to solve
    another double bind.
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    And that's the self-promotion double bind.
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    The self-promotion double bind
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    is that if we don't advertise
    our accomplishments,
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    no one notices.
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    And if we do, we're not likable.
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    But if we ask for advice
    about one of our accomplishments,
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    we are able to be competent
    in their eyes but also be likeable.
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    And this is so powerful
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    it even works when you see it coming.
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    There have been multiple times in life
    when I have been forewarned
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    that a low-power person has been given
    the advice to come ask me for advice.
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    I want you to notice
    three things about this:
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    First, I knew they were going
    to come ask me for advice.
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    Two, I've actually done research
    on the strategic benefits
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    of asking for advice.
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    And three, it still worked!
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    I took their perspective,
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    I became more invested in their calls,
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    I became more committed to them
    because they asked for advice.
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    Now, another time we feel
    more confident speaking up
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    is when we have expertise.
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    Expertise gives us credibility.
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    When we have high power,
    we already have credibility.
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    We only need good evidence.
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    When we lack power,
    we don't have the credibility.
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    We need excellent evidence.
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    And one of the ways
    we can come across as an expert
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    is by tapping into our passion.
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    I want everyone in the next few days
    to go up to friend of theirs
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    and just say to them,
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    "I want you to describe
    a passion of yours to me."
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    I've had people do this all over the world
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    and I asked them,
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    "What did you notice
    about the other person
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    when they described their passion?"
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    And the answers are always the same.
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    "Their eyes lit up and got big."
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    "They smiled a big beaming smile."
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    "They used their hands all over --
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    I had to duck because their
    hands were coming at me."
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    "They talk quickly
    with a little higher pitch."
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    (Laughter)
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    "They leaned in
    as if telling me a secret."
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    And then I said to them,
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    "What happened to you
    as you listened to their passion?"
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    They said, "My eyes lit up.
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    I smiled.
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    I leaned in."
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    When we tap into our passion,
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    we give ourselves the courage,
    in our own eyes, to speak up,
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    but we also get the permission
    from others to speak up.
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    Tapping into our passion even works
    when we come across as too weak.
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    Both men and women get punished
    at work when they shed tears.
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    But Lizzie Wolf has shown that when
    we frame our strong emotions as passion,
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    the condemnation of our crying
    disappears for both men and women.
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    I want to end with a few words
    from my late father
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    that he spoke at my twin
    brother's wedding.
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    Here's a picture of us.
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    My dad was a psychologist like me,
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    but his real love and his real
    passion was cinema,
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    like my brother.
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    And so he wrote a speech
    for my brother's wedding
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    about the roles we play
    in the human comedy.
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    And he said, "The lighter your touch,
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    the better you become at improving
    and enriching your performance.
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    Those who embrace their roles
    and work to improve their performance
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    grow, change and expand the self.
  • 14:05 - 14:06
    Play it well,
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    and your days will be mostly joyful."
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    What my dad was saying
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    is that we've all been assigned
    ranges and roles in this world.
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    But he was also saying
    the essence of this talk:
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    those roles and ranges are constantly
    expanding and evolving.
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    So when a scene calls for it,
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    be a ferocious mama bear
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    and a humble advice seeker.
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    Have excellent evidence and strong allies.
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    Be a passionate perspective taker.
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    And if you use those tools --
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    and each and every one of you
    can use these tools --
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    you will expand your range
    of acceptable behavior,
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    and your days will be mostly joyful.
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    Thank you.
  • 14:53 - 14:56
    (Applause)
Title:
How to speak up for yourself
Speaker:
Adam Galinsky
Description:

more » « less
Video Language:
English
Team:
closed TED
Project:
TEDTalks
Duration:
15:08
  • can i translate it to arabic?

  • Sorry, It's my task.
    If you want to translate to Arabic go to tasks on the upside of your browser and look for available Arabic Subtitles.

    ^^

  • Hi Laura,

    Welcome to the OTP and thanks for joining the team!

    Please have a look at the TED OTP Main Guide before getting started, so you can be sure to have the basic guidelines down::
    http://translations.ted.org/wiki/OTP_Resources:_Main_guide

    To address your specific issue and to elaborate on Maram's comment, please see the following:
    http://translations.ted.org/wiki/OTP_Resources:_Main_guide#How_to_find_something_to_translate

    Best of luck, and feel free to message me if you have any questions.

    Camille

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