Knowing Your Power to Influence with Laura Cox Kaplan
Overview of this Episode
In case you missed the live podcast, we have posted the episode on the channel for you.
In this episode of the Trust Your Voice podcast, host Sylvie Légère sat down with Laura Cox Kaplan, creator of She Said/She Said podcast, to talk about knowing the potential and power of your voice to influence people.
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Episode Transcript
Sylvie Legere 0:00
Well, welcome. I'm Sylvie, I'm the host of the podcast, trust your voice and also the co founder of the policy circle. And we are here at the policy circles, sixth annual leadership summit in Fort Worth, Texas and a beautiful hotel, drover. And I am here with my good friend and board member and a host of the podcast. She said/she said, Laura Cox Kaplan,
Laura Cox Kaplan 0:29
Thank you, Sylvie, I'm so happy to be here on your podcast once again, and really happy to be here at the policy circle. It's one of these events that I look forward to all year. And it's sort of a competition between my whether my brain is more overloaded than my heart or my heart, my heart is more overloaded than my brain. I feel a lot of inspiration from the women in this group, and really honored to serve on the board, and to be here with you.
Sylvie Legere 0:56
And yeah, thank you. Yeah, the theme of this year's summit is thriving communities. So all day, we have heard about on panels, covering really all the facets of what makes it thriving communities, from from education, from development, from having a vision for a community and how to involve and engage with communities. And I think it ties really nicely with the theme of our podcast today, which is about knowing your power to influence because it's, it's interesting, the common theme, and we heard from the mayor of Fort Worth, and one of the things that she said was really, people's need to be involved in their local communities, the news cycle, everything covers just the what's happening at a national level, where we don't have a lot of say, and a lot of influence. But locally, we could do a lot. But we have to know that we have this power to influence, right?
Laura Cox Kaplan 1:54
Absolutely. And understanding that the influence that we have, doesn't have to always be something that we would consider to be so macro, right? You don't necessarily have to change the world. And by the way, the little things that you do, where you have influence over someone else, can actually be those world changing types of of opportunities for them, you just don't necessarily realize that. I think, still the I'll tell a quick story about at least one of the ways that we got to know each other. You're one of your fellow fellow founding board members introduced us cap, Kathy Hubbard introduced us. And we hit it off, I think it's fair to say, and you had me moderate a panel for, I guess, the second policy summit that you guys hosted. And then you called me up a few days later, not having known me very long, and said, You know, I've been thinking about your next life, what you might want to do next. And I think you'd be great at doing a podcast. And of course, I've never listened to a podcast, much less thought about hosting a podcast. And when I thought about it, it made all the sense in the world. But the thing is about that story, I would never have done that on my own, it probably would not have occurred to me, if somebody had not made the suggestion and sort of given me that push and really illustrated influence in a way that was it made a real direct impact on my life. Now here we are five years later, right?
Sylvie Legere 3:28
You have like, episode 200, 200 episode, I'm actually episode one. So I'm actually really bottom on the list of episodes. But, but it took it I have to say that it took a lot of courage also on my part, to you know, I think I was going on a run I was like, oh, Laura is so has such great questions, the way she interviews, she's so thoughtful, and I felt, you know, she can really be a beacon of light or someone who shines the light of people who are making a difference. And I thought of the different medium. And you had talked to me about doing a blog, and I was just like, yeah, blog, there's a lot of blogs out there harder to maybe do something different. And and so and, and then so he suggested but it took a lot of courage for me to make that suggestion to you because you aren't, you're so accomplished. You're involved in so many things. And you know, I didn't know you really well, actually. And so it took a lot even for me to to be a spark. But I think that's one example of the power that we have to influence. If we say yes, I can be a spark for someone, I can ignite a new level of confidence. I can push people to expand their comfort zone and do something.
Laura Cox Kaplan 4:51
So how would you if I posed the question to you or you were giving somebody who's listening advice? How do you build that? Courage and that confidence to reach out, even though it's a little scary maybe to reach out to someone that you don't know, maybe it's an acquaintance. Maybe it's a community leader, or a legislator or someone like that. Maybe what's your advice for building your courage and confidence in that?
Sylvie Legere 5:19
Well, this is kind of a soft throw here in terms of, you know, that's where I feel like the policy circle, the platform itself. The magic happens, you know, in the way you're making connection, but the model of the policy circle initially is to host a conversation. So that takes courage number one, because you have to invite people to come to for lunch or for for just later in the evening, but you have to invite people to engage in a very intentional conversation about it, meaty topic, which is a lot harder to do and to say common, come to a gin tasting, and my house, right? Why don't you meet common discuss Texas? Or why don't we come and discuss literacy, right? It takes that part takes a lot of courage, right? So so just that, that, that pushes you to build a new level of confidence, because it takes courage to invite people that you may not know really well, or that you may know, in a very social setting, and you don't know what they will share, will they be vulnerable. And inevitably, the conversation that is around a brief where people have to read, and they have to come prepared to share what we call their lens of care. So they their lens of care might be personal, it might be professional, because they're acting into this environment might be influencing it. And, and it might be just in their civic life, how they are volunteering, how they see their community, and it's also the lens of care, I feel are also either very personal, at a community level, at a national level, or even at a global level. And once you start sharing that you're inviting people to be vulnerable, and to share parts about their lives, that they they generally do not have a forum to share, right? My friend here, Andhra was sharing, she was just part of a conversation around literacy and share that some of our family members were had challenges with literacy and never really talked about that, right. Like, that's, that's being really vulnerable. My neighbor, you know, was was saying how their foster care daughters that they've now adopted, will will never reach great level literacy. And that's a hard thing to share. And, but you the policy circle roundtable discussion, give you a forum for people to share more about themselves. And I'm saying this, because it allows people to share about their vision for the world for themselves, their own, perhaps shortcomings or things that there's challenges that they're faced with, and also what they want to do. And once you hear that, from people, you are developing such a deeper relationship with, with people that you can see the potential and, and you can therefore be a spark and invite them to do something stretched themselves a little bit and expand our comfort zone
Laura Cox Kaplan 8:31
And the more you do it too. Just to add to it, the more you do it, the more you practice that skill, including how you practice with the person who for them, taxes might not be the kind of thing that lights up their soul and that is okay, there are other issues, right? Practice someone's going to turn you down when you say, Hey, would you come to my house to talk about taxes? And she says, I don't think so. Of course you need to go back at her and try it again. Yeah, no, definitely practice right and circling back with her or, you know, continuing to send her something but not letting the getting turned down and the rejection of that be the thing that you know, completely dissuade you from your goal. The same thing with reaching out to community leaders and to legislate tours, and others the more you practice that the less scary it becomes. Right?
Sylvie Legere 9:21
Yeah, I mean, same with you know, we talked about here about the importance of the people that you elect and really local office and being involved right, but for that you need to interact with candidates which is really intimidating and I still remember getting that first phone call from a candidate you know asking for a contribution their campaigns and everything and you're just like it was a number a you normally it's unknown. I don't pick it up right or something or a number I don't know. And this time I answered and you're on the phone, you're like, oh, do I really like Oh, no. And then I kind of like on my you know what, I need to walk my talk. So I I kind of interacted you know, I'm like, I am going to interact and to record this person and say, What is your vision? Where do you stand on red tape? What? How do you feel about budget or fiscal responsibility, and I hung up. And I think I called my husband, I'm so happy, I just did it, I actually had a conversation with a congressional candidates. But it takes courage to do that. And like you said, you have to practice and the more you do, the, the more, you build a confidence to do it. But you also need to expand your knowledge. And I think this is where again, you know, the purpose of this summit of exploring these tough issues and bringing people together to learn about it is is also the way that you expand your knowledge so that when you meet people, you can find commonality, you know, you can find something that they're interested in, and you can connect with, and therefore it quickly develop a much richer relationship with people and then you have become, because of that relationship, you have a power to influence that person because you can become a sounding board, which ultimately, this is what we want all of policy circle women to become is sounding boards for policymakers.
Laura Cox Kaplan 11:15
Yeah, yeah. You know, we talk a lot about building and sustaining influence in our careers on my podcast, she said, she said podcast, which is we talked about Sylvie inspired. And one of the elements associated that I find a pretty consistent thread with, I would say, almost every if not every single guest, is her ability to understand how to curate her story, and also how to edit her story. And that's a really compelling and powerful component of building influence, because it's what reminds you of what makes you and your your position, your thoughts, your input, so unique and so valuable to that person that maybe you are trying to, you're advocating on behalf of a cause, or you're trying to influence them in some way. It can be really helpful to have clarity on your story and understanding what are those elements in my story that makes me unique?
Sylvie Legere 12:14
Yeah, I think one of the my podcasts episode is when Natalie's a boy. And we talked about StrengthsFinder. And she has a really great when people are familiar with this, it is a test from Gallup. And it's called the Clifton strength test. And what's very useful with this test that you develop a vocabulary to express the value that you are bringing to the table because it classifies like 34 strengths, and you realize what are your top five or 10? But also what are your bottom down? And and it gives you words to describe yourself on LinkedIn to describe the value that you are bringing, so that to add to your story. In a way it's like, well, this is what I do. This is what I do well, Yama, I did. There's one word individualization or something like that, where it's like, you could see the potential and others. And this is kind of my unique it is my unique gift. Right? It's like I can see the potential in others and and and then spark that. Right. And but it came out in the Strength Finders. Yeah, totally weird. But yeah
Laura Cox Kaplan 13:22
So and I think to to to Sylvie's point, really turning to your mentors to the, to your tribe, to the women and men who are part of your circle, or to people whose opinions you respect, and really listen, when you ask them, you know, hey, what are those elements of my story, like, get help, if you're struggling with this, which you would not be not only alone, but you would be unusual, if it were easy for us to tell our stories for some weird reason, we tend to have a harder time telling our own stories than other people do sort of seeing things in our stories and what makes us unique and valuable. And so getting that input from our mentors, from the people around us who see like you did something that I was not really able to see in myself, that's a very valuable thing and such a gift to have from someone else.
Sylvie Legere 14:15
Yeah, it is. And I think it's also this idea that you you have to develop kind of your own, like, set of mentors or relationship with with people that you feel are good sounding boards so that when you feel stuck, you have someone to call like so often I call you actually you know
Laura Cox Kaplan 14:33
I call it as an investment strategy, right? I grew up in sort of banking and finance roles. I worked in public policy roles, but focused on banking and finance. And so the idea of, you know, accrual capital, like we're here, you're you're, you're generating income by investing continually investing the same thing is true for relationships, right? When you're investing them, you just you never know how they're going to what the returns gonna look like in that regard.
Sylvie Legere 14:59
Yeah, but It's again, I feel like this is a little bit where hosting conversations on tough topics allows you to discover and learn about people differently. And and this is where you can start finding your mentors or your personal board of advisors because you are able to get to know people better, much better than perhaps in other setting. And, and I feel like this is also something at at work, the, you know, in a professional environment, as you move up and in leadership, you are asked to connect the dots between different departments, but also with the community in which your company operates in with the state level with government that impacts your business operations. And you need to be comfortable in those circles and those conversations. So this is where, you know, the I feel the policy circle model allows you to become comfortable in those conversation, because you've hosted them or participate in them in a place where it's just really informational, right? It's just about discussing ideas. But when you get to the to the boardroom, you are able to actually ask the right question and comfortable about it and speak up. So I think that's another way of being able to kind of know the power of your influence, because the words that you say, matter, and in your voice matters in every setting.
Laura Cox Kaplan 16:27
Yeah, to take the to take my point about investment a little bit further. What Sylvie just talked about this idea of practicing is also an investment in yourself, right? You're investing in yourself to make yourself smarter in order to contribute in a way that will have even more impact. So again, it's that idea of investing in yourself. Sometimes people hear that, and they think, gosh, that sounds a little selfish investing in myself. But the reality is, if you don't invest in yourself, it makes it much harder to contribute to other people. And there's that great story which I shared in the breakout a little while ago, you know, every time you get on an airplane to go on a trip, they say, you know, you put your oxygen mask on before you help the person next to you. Because you'll be too weak to do anything helpful if you're not taking care of yourself. And so it's really hard to engage in a healthy, constructive way in our communities, in our families, with our children, if we're not also paying attention to investing in ourselves. So I think that's another great illustration, what's that looks like as it relates to influence.
Sylvie Legere 17:31
Yeah. And as it relates, so I mean, we covered several dimensions of knowing your power influence, I think the other piece, you know, maybe we could talk about is focus. So we were just in a session with Kristin Cox, who is actually based in Utah, and she has an amazing talk. She's a systems thinker, and she gave a presentation on on how to solve impossible problems. And I just love how actually candid she is that not every problems need to be solved. And also that the importance of focus. And I think that is the thing that that everything is so complex, every problem is so complex, it's really hard to find a focus and be okay with saying this is the one area that I am focused on, and I'm going to be successful on give you an example, we hosted a conversation about aging. And, and we have a brief about the future, you know, aging in a 21st century. What does it mean, one of the things that came out is aging is poverty amongst aging women in particular who outlive their husband, and and end up alone and poverty in women. And, and it stems from financial literacy. So what we did is we did a brief on financial literacy, we hosted a program on financial literacy. And for me, I kind of took it as my one area of focus in the area of education in high school is to say, well, what are we providing in terms of financial literacy in the school where my kids go to random starting there. So it's about finding focus. I think this is where again, these policies, circle conversations and the brief that present a multitude of challenges and reforms, but also good ideas. And that was to find the focus and find a solution that we want to move forward in the space, the immediate space that we want to influence
Laura Cox Kaplan 19:35
And making choices about those things, right. You can literally boil the ocean and never get anything done, which was sort of, you know, Kristen's point. She didn't say it quite that way. But the reality is, there's always lots and lots of problems to solve and you have to be decisive. If you want to move the ball at all, on maybe two or three things as opposed to the 35 things that probably need some help. You've got to pick and choose otherwise you'll never be able to move it forward. And I thought her presentation was such a great illustration of that idea. It's, it's personal discipline, right? Again, it's investing in yourself in a way that's reinforcing that notion of personal discipline around focus, whether it's policymaking, or whether it's running your business or your household, or going through your to do list. If yours looks anything like mine, there's 100 things on it at any point in time. And so whittling that down, so that, you know, on that particular day, you're gonna focus on these three things. Like there's all that stuff on the list, you don't want to forget about it. But you got to have maybe three things that you can really do. Yeah, it applies to your personal life, it applies to professional life, it applies to shaping policy.
Sylvie Legere 20:44
Yeah, I think Christina had a great way. I love that, where she said power, and the impact power is equal to volume and focus. So she had this image of her river, you know, a wrap in where it's really narrow, and there's a lots of water going through. And that's how electricity and power is formed. I thought that was like, perfect visual. And I think that's what is really the key anchor to knowing your power to influence. So Laura, I'd love to kind of it's been a wonderful conversation if perhaps you have like some lasting thoughts on, on on knowing your power and using it.
Laura Cox Kaplan 21:23
Yeah. I'm so grateful to be here. And I think it's really important to be open to inspiration to both be open to it, and to be proactive about seeking it, as opposed to just assuming that it's going to knock you on the head and being open to those opportunities that sometimes present themselves to you that you weren't expecting. And really ask yourself hard before you say no, ask yourself a real hard question about, I wonder why this idea was presented to me. And if it feels like something in your heart that you're supposed to do, even if you don't have all the answers and even if you don't know exactly how to do it. Sometimes the idea of thinking about that idea too much. We'll talk yourself you can talk yourself out of that. And as women, again, a generalization not every woman is like this, but many of us are present company included. You can talk yourself out of something really amazing as opposed to just doing it and figuring it out and getting help as you're going through it. Like those can be I think, really important elements. But, you know, be proactive about inspiration, attend events that speak to your soul, like the Policy Circle Summit, which is so amazing. And listen to podcasts, like she said, she said, um, trust your voice. Wherever you listen to.
Sylvie Legere 22:45
Right. That's right. That's right. Well, thank you, Laura, for being here. This is your first live podcast. Pleasure. Well, so thank you so much. And yes, do subscribe and rate the show in a nice five star. Thank you