How Unlearning Silence Saves Your Brand from Sabotage with Elaine Lin Hering
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Description
Do you ever feel like you’re holding back your voice to fit in, get along, or simply navigate your day? Silence can be an invisible barrier—one that affects us personally, professionally, and generationally, especially for those from marginalized communities.
Elaine Lin Hering understands this deeply. As an immigrant, she’s navigated the unspoken expectations of silence and has learned to reclaim her voice. Now, as a USA Today best-selling author and expert on communication and conflict management, Elaine is helping others unlearn the silence that holds them back.
In this episode of Branding Room Only, Elaine and I explore the costs of silence and how it shows up in marginalized communities, at work, and even in our closest relationships. She shares insights from her book Unlearning Silence, breaking down how silence can stifle not only our voices but also our personal brands. Together, we’ll discuss how to recognize and unlearn silence, embrace your inherent worth, and use your voice authentically to show up fully as yourself.
Chapters
1:01 - Elaine’s personal brand definition, how she’d describe herself, the mantra she currently holds onto, and her hype song
4:11 - How Elaine’s upbringing and career path served as the inspiration behind Unlearning Silence
8:50 - How silence shows up in women of color and other marginalized identities and what that might mean for their brands
14:15 - The unintentional silencing of others that occurs and the difference between strategic versus oppressive silence
19:42 - How to start owning your voice in spaces where you want to be heard and the importance of unlearning generational silence
27:28 - The one question Elaine asks her clients that she wishes she didn’t have to and the issue with “imposter syndrome” framing
32:16 - Self-silencing as a learned condition and trauma response
35:14 - How silence can be very detrimental to your brand-building and personal relationships
44:34 - Elaine’s message and advice for those with marginalized identities trying to be resilient in spaces contributing to their continued silence
49:09 - What Elaine does for fun, the part of her brand she’ll always stand by, and the Branding Room Only experience she provides
Connect With Elaine Lin Hering
Elaine Lin Hering a facilitator, author, and speaker. She works with organizations and individuals to build skills in communication, collaboration, and conflict management. She has worked on six continents and facilitated executive education at Harvard, Dartmouth, Tufts, UC Berkeley, and UCLA. She is the former Advanced Training Director for the Harvard Mediation Program and a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School.
She has worked with coal miners at BHP Billiton, micro-finance organizers in East Africa, mental health professionals in China, and senior leadership at the US Department of Commerce. Her clients include American Express, Chevron, Google, Nike, Novartis, PayPal, Pixar, and the Red Cross. She is the author of the USA Today Bestselling book Unlearning Silence: How to Speak Your Mind, Unleash Talent, and Live More Fully (Penguin, 2024).
Elaine Lin Hering | LinkedIn | Instagram
Mentioned In How Unlearning Silence Saves Your Brand from Sabotage with Elaine Lin Hering
Unlearning Silence: How to Speak Your Mind, Unleash Talent, and Live More Fully by Elaine Lin Hering
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Sponsor for this episode
This episode is brought to you by PGE Consulting Group LLC.
PGE Consulting Group LLC is dedicated to providing a practical hybrid of professional development training and diversity solutions. From speaking to consulting to programming and more, all services and resources are carefully tailored for each partner. Paula Edgar’s distinct expertise helps engage attendees and create lasting change for her clients.
To learn more about Paula and her services, go to www.paulaedgar.com or contact her at info@paulaedgar.com, and follow Paula Edgar and the PGE Consulting Group LLC on LinkedIn.
Transcript
Paula Edgar: Welcome to The Branding Room Only Podcast where we share career stories, strategies, and lessons learned on how industry leaders and influencers have built their personal brands. Now, let's get started with the show.
Hi everybody, it's Paula, your host of Branding Room Only and I'm very excited for my conversation today with Elaine Lin Hering. Elaine helps people develop skills to communicate, collaborate, and manage conflict. She is the USA Today best-selling author of Unlearning Silence and a former lecturer on law at Harvard Law School. She is a branding newbie who is working to find and use her voice and stay sane while doing it. I hope that will help during this conversation. Elaine, welcome to The Branding Room.
Elaine Lin Hering: Thank you so much for having me and for setting the expectation of me as a branding newbie. I feel more relaxed already.
Paula Edgar: Although I can do it, it's all good. We're going to jump into this. I ask everyone at the beginning of the podcast, what does personal brand mean to you? How would you define it?
Elaine Lin Hering: Who am I? How do I show up? I've been told that my personal brand is what people say about me when I'm not in the room. And I would hope that that actually reflects who I am; what I stand for, how I show up in this world, that there's a consistency between me as a human being and whatever this brand might be.
Paula Edgar: I think that that's a perfect explanation of it. I like to say it's in a room of friends, hopefully, what are they saying in a room of friends? Tell me, how would you describe yourself in three words or short phrases?
Elaine Lin Hering: Human.
Paula Edgar: Mm-hmm. Good.
Elaine Lin Hering: A short phrase would be work in progress.
Paula Edgar: Okay.
Elaine Lin Hering: And another phrase would be trying my best.
Paula Edgar: Hmm. I love that. I love that. I think that from the initial detailing, it makes me feel closer to you because it is vulnerable. That is a huge brand benefit when you can get people to lean in a little closer initially. You might be a newbie, but you're doing pretty good.
Elaine Lin Hering: I'm so glad. I'm leaving this conversation already feeling more confident. Thank you.
Paula Edgar: Excellent. Excellent. Our work here is almost done. Do you have a favorite quote?
Elaine Lin Hering: I do. Favorite to me is always like, high standard, forever committed so I'm going to say it's my favorite for now because it is a mantra I hold on to. It is by Pooja Lakshmin, who has the same publisher as I do, “Boundaries are not co-created.”
Paula Edgar: Ooh, I love that. Oh, I'm going to put that on my wall. I love that.
Elaine Lin Hering: If I repeat it enough, I think I'll be able to live it.
Paula Edgar: Yes. We believe it.
Elaine Lin Hering: I'm a work in progress and I have made progress so I'm going with that. Boundaries are not co-created.
Paula Edgar: I can't wait to tell my therapist I learned this. Anyway, okay, on the flip side, do you have a hype song? This is like, when they're going to get full Elaine coming in with all of her glory, what song is playing? Or if you're having a bad day, what song needs to play to get yourself up there? It could be the same song or a different song.
Elaine Lin Hering: I'm a person of faith. That song is Same God, which reminds me that I am part of something way bigger than myself, that what happens today doesn't necessarily mean that this moment is not going to stick around forever however uncomfortable it is, and that there's just context for everything that's happening. That grounds me in a way that I really need.
Paula Edgar: I can tell you that right now in this time and moment, I also need that so thank you.
Elaine Lin Hering: You're welcome. Playlist.
Paula Edgar: Oh, so what we do is take all the songs and put it together as a playlist at the end of the year. Yes. It's leaning gospel. There's that. So, Elaine, tell me about yourself. Where did you grow up and how did that shape you?
Elaine Lin Hering: I was born in Taiwan, immigrated to California when I was 10 months old, the youngest daughter in my family. I share all of that because it probably explains why I wrote a book on silence. Youngest daughter, immigrant family, patriarchal culture where boys are more valuable than girls. I'm just supposed to stay quiet. The way that I respect my elders is to not have an opinion, not ask questions.
That serves you really well when you're entry-level, because you just keep your head down, work hard, other people get to take credit for your work, the usual. Then you have no executive presence. You're not leadership material, except you're like, “No, I am. I'm actually the one doing the work here.” That has been a process of unlearning.
Paula Edgar: Wow. I love the connection to that; the thinking about our cultural connection to how we show up. I'm a child of immigrants from Barbados in Jamaica. I remember very deeply being told, “Not so big, not so big.” Ooh, that's a lot. And just being like, “I guess I'm not one of y'all, it is what it is.” But culturally, it's why I like to ask this question because it definitely brings out more context for most of the people who I speak with. I love that it led to that book. Okay, so tell me about your career path.
Elaine Lin Hering: I was that precocious child. When I was 11, I said I wanted to be a lawyer. I was on that path. Political science, speech and debate, championship, all of that, went to Harvard Law School, fully intending to be a litigator. Came across getting to yes and interspace negotiation, theory and practice, learned a very expensive lesson—paying law school tuition—that emotions are okay to talk about and their data.
It was this mind-blowing experience of, “Wow, this is a skill set I did not grow up with,” given that in our family of origin, we swept things under the rug, and as long as they seemed fine on the surface, everything was fine. Apparently, I've learned it's not just my family. So I fell in love with leadership development, started as alternative dispute resolution other than sue each other and blow each other up. What can we do? Turns out a whole lot. This is a skill set to be able to communicate effectively.
As I was teaching that material, spent more than a decade teaching the concepts that my colleagues at the Harvard Negotiation Project created, a lot of world-renowned “expert” work, and I put quotes in that only because there's so much we could impact there and realized most of this material that is held up as expert advice is written primarily from the perspective of white men or privileged white women.
So there are blind spots to it and there are gaps and unlearning silence is a response to that to say there's a lot that's valuable in these skills for negotiating and having difficult conversations. But why don't some people do it after a tremendous investment of time, energy, finances to build these skills? Because there's this factor called silence that we're not talking about that is so deeply ingrained in how we grew up, in how we interact with one another in the systems we're all a part of.
If we really want to create spaces of dignity, belonging, or just functional relationships, we need to acknowledge the role of silence. So I became an accidental author. I never envisioned writing a book. The more I worked around this topic and researched, I thought, “You know what, we've got it wrong.”
Society says if you're not being heard, you need to be more courageous, you need more confidence, or if you're not being heard, it's because you're too big. Not that big, as your family and culture is saying, versus in what ways might we have learned silence as a coping mechanism, as a survival strategy? In what ways do the people around me silence me by telling me I'm too much?
Paula Edgar: Right, exactly. I hope y'all are listening, I'm just kidding.
Elaine Lin Hering: This is an intervention for your family, I gotcha.
Paula Edgar: I want to talk about in specific silence and how it shows up in women of color and other marginalized intersecting identities. Then I want to talk about what that might mean for their brands. Tell me how it shows up and let's get a conversation about that.
Elaine Lin Hering: Yes, so anytime you are minoritized, you carry a subordinated identity. Meaning you're not part of the dominant group, that could be race, gender, class, education. Any factor, you're more likely to be othered, more likely to be doubted, more likely to be left out. And expert advice says, if you want people to like you, want them to work with you, say yes to you, you need to mimic them.
Now, as a woman, I've been given the advice, “You need to be more manlike.” We need to unpack, well, what does that actually mean? As an Asian American, I can't be white. I've tried. That proximity doesn't actually protect me. In fact, it's damaging because that whole question is framed around “Woman of color, you're the problem. Go fix yourself. Then maybe we can talk, maybe we can pay you. Maybe we can promote you, but maybe.”
The trap of that is that then someone else has the power to set the goalpost, and then they change the goalpost. If you haven't already gone down that path, just a forewarning, don't. It doesn't work. We internalize it.
Paula Edgar: Yeah, so say more because you just said it, it just sat with me for a little bit, because I do think that anybody who's listening who has ever felt othered, it's going to resonate. Even if you are a part of the traditional dominance identity, there are still times in which we feel othered, and that is hard. I just had a moment.
Elaine Lin Hering: Yeah, yeah, yeah, breathe, breathe through it. This is why, to me, the frame around this whole conversation has been so damaging. It's been “Fix yourself, do this, and then you might be okay. You might be accepted.” The thing about that framing is the other people in your life don't have to take responsibility for their contributions. It's a very convenient frame. It's not that leaders aren't leading well, it's that you have more presence, fill in the blank, whatever it is.
To know that silence is pervasive and sneaky, meaning one of the populations I did not expect to connect with on silence, I obviously write from the perspective of a woman and a woman of color, but it is wives saying, “Oh, my husband needs this because he will not push back to his mother.”
Paula Edgar: Oh, yeah.
Elaine Lin Hering: You’re a mama's boy, and even though you've evolved in other parts of your life, you revert to the young man who once were too damaging effects of whoever else is in your life right now, because you're not having those conversations. Even though it does fall along lines of subordinated identities, really the question of silence defined as “There's not enough room in the system for your needs, your goals, your hopes, your concerns,” that you weren't invited into the mix or didn't think that you could ask, that you have to bite your tongue or withhold sensor part of yourself to stay in relationship or maybe be accepted, it's no way to live.
Paula Edgar: No, when folks are talking about you have to bring your authentic self to the workplace, what they mean is to be like us or to be less like you, or as much of you as we can tolerate.
Elaine Lin Hering: Correct, and be as much of the version that we expect of someone who appears to be like you versus your real self, and you cannot ask me to be my authentic self if you are not willing and ready to accept that authentic self much less do you deserve my finest energy.
Now the connection though to brand is really interesting and it tracks my own lived experience which is I spent all this time being a good team player, building someone else's brand, making their life easier, their career better. You don't actually think that you might have a brand of your own, thoughts of your own, an identity of your own, because you're always second string, supporting others.
To me, the most damaging part of that is forgetting that you have a voice. If your brand is your voice, your voice is how you move through the world. That to me is synonymous to brand, then you don't think you have one of your own, which is not true because we're all unique human beings. So if you're just you, that is your brand, you don't realize that it's there because you just exist to do someone else’s bidding.
Paula Edgar: Oh. Oh. Oh. When you were just talking about wives whose husbands have been silenced by their mothers, I thought to myself, “What other groups were you surprised about who were navigating this silence?”
Elaine Lin Hering: I mean, if you want me to be, I'll be honest. I was surprised that anyone other than my mother read the book. That's how deep the mental imposter treatment goes to making you think it's you. I have been beautifully surprised that my Latina sisters are like, “Oh, that's what my grandmother said to me when she said, Calladita te ves más bonita (You're more beautiful if you keep your mouth shut.)” I was like, “Oh, it's not just my family. It's not just my Asian parents.”
Paula Edgar: Wow.
Elaine Lin Hering: It is the human condition that even when we don't intend to silence other people, if we are not actively designing the way that we communicate, conscious that we are different human beings wired differently, and holding it that we are wired differently than you’re weak where you can't cut it, we end up inclining people towards silence even when we don't intend.
There's compassion and an invitation to say, “Let's really interrogate how we're showing up for each other.” Because if you want to create a place where everybody has a brand, everybody can drive their own impact, that the underlying message is that you matter and you are enough as you are, what do we need to do differently day in and day out? What do we need to unlearn? Because very few of us, I think, go into this world to say, "Oh, I want to squash your dreams and your hopes," but we've all worked for leaders who have done just that.
Paula Edgar: Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Elaine Lin Hering: So both-and. How do I show up, use my voice, build my brand, and how do I normalize that everybody's brand and voice is going to look different and that is the beauty and the power of this world?
Paula Edgar: And it's valuable. I struggle a lot in conversation with leaders, I work a lot in law firms with saying when you silence, without using the word silence, when you don't have people feel as if they can be and bring themselves into the space, you're losing out on the magic of them.
I equate magic with brand all the time. It's challenging on multiple things because I think that also means that you're not as good as a leader. Then they are not as good as the follower that you need them to be because of your leadership. Another group I just thought about—and tell me what your thoughts are—are people who become silenced.
Maybe I have been raised and owning silence and incorporating silence as much, but I think about folks who get older and become silenced because they're not valued as much in the workplace.
Elaine Lin Hering: Yeah, completely. I do want to say that the difference between silence that is additive and strategic and the silence that is oppressive is agency. Are you choosing when and where to use your voice or to stay silent? What appears on the outside as silence could actually be strategy, or, “You haven't created the conditions precedent for me to show up as my authentic self and bring my gifts, so, you know what, I'm going to clock in, clock out, but in the rest of my life, I know where my meaning and my purpose is.”
I think there's a health, going back to boundaries, there's a health to know in what context am I going to invest my time and energy. Each of us only has so much to go around. Now, my great aspiration is to be an 87-year-old grandmother because they seem to just finally get to the point of being able to say what they want to say and be who they want to be, and the people around them accept them for it versus their expectations of who we need to be today.
Paula Edgar: I was thinking about it in a very narrow way, probably because I have started watching Matlock, and a part of the underlying premise is that she is an older woman in the workplace so she's not seen or heard because she's the older. I was just thinking there, “But you know what, there is an agency that comes from being able to not give a damn anymore.”
Elaine Lin Hering: If you reach that point.
Paula Edgar: Yes, exactly. Exactly.
Elaine Lin Hering: And in what context do you choose that and ageism in the workplace is real. In what ways is there a responsibility from everybody else, whatever generation, to see the wisdom and experience you bring and not write you off? Again, it's the same thing just from a different angle of what box am I putting you in and expecting you to show up in a way versus how are you actually showing up and do I take the time to get to know you and hear you?
Paula Edgar: Everybody's going to go buy the book. There's that. But what are some nuggets about Unlearning Silence? How do we knock down the patriarchy inside us to own our voice in spaces where our voice, as we have just talked about, may not be wanted or valued in the way that we want to be?
Elaine Lin Hering: There's a ton of practical ideas in the book. Let me offer a couple here. One, starting with do you fundamentally believe that you have a voice? That's a decision node. Yes, no. If yes, great. Then we start thinking about how you want to manifest, how that shows up. If you're at that, “I don't actually think I do,” or “I've never thought about it,” or “It's been 20 years since I thought I did because the workplace and my manager have beat me down and life has beat me down, sometimes literally,” I don't make light of it, then I actually would start with some internal work, which is asking yourself the question, “What do I think and what do I need?”
Not what does my mother think? Not what does my manager want me to think? Not the party line, but what do I, the individual with a brain and a heart and instincts, “What do I think?” Because over time that reminds you that there is a you in there. Then is this question of “When do I externalize it?” I would start with, it's drawing from therapy a little bit, but if you had a voice, what would you do? It's different than “I'm just going to use my voice.” Even that bar can feel too much.
But hypothetically, if I had a voice, what would I do? And to normalize that everybody's voice is going to look and sound different. Voice is not just the words you say or don't say in a meeting, but how you move through the world.
Paula Edgar: Oh, yes. That's the brand piece. I love the equation there because you can say a whole bunch without saying anything.
Elaine Lin Hering: Yeah. Yes. So if you're an artist, art. If you're a verbal person, verbalize. But what is your version? Your addition to that is actually co-creating a different world, co-creating a different world that normalizes that we're different and that's the beauty of it, that we're moving through in color rather than black and white or grayscale. There's that piece of it.
If you are someone who has never struggled with using your voice, I would also ask the question, “In what ways might I be unintentionally silencing the people that I lead and that I love?”
Paula Edgar: I'm so glad that you pulled it out because I was going to bring that up next because I do think that a lot, probably most of it is either unintentional or I would imagine particularly culturally, out of fear, that if you just, like I told you my parents said, just chill a little bit and you won't make any waves, and then you can get to where you need to get to.
Then also in workspaces in particular, I think a lot of people who are big-voiced, even when they're not saying anything, don't even understand that they are giving permission. They're not actually giving permission until they say, "I welcome you. I want you,” in different ways, modulating that for different people.
Elaine Lin Hering: Completely. Chapter five is Nine Different Ways We Silence Other People Even When We Don't Intend. One of those ways is we fundamentally underestimate how hard it can be to own your brand, to use your voice. If you, your identities, your voice has always been normalized, you assume—unless you're conscious about it—you assume that everyone else has had the same lived experience, which they haven't.
Now, going back to the immigrant thing, there's also a question, and this is where the unlearning comes into play. This is not just what skill sets do we add, but this is how do we interrogate the foundation on which we're building our lives and our leadership, interrogating and excavating what of what we learned along the way serves us, has served us, still serves us today or serves who we are becoming, and if it's not, that's the unlearning.
I, as an immigrant, building upon the foundation from my parents and elders who came before me and in a very different life situation, we're not in survival anymore as much or worried about getting kicked out of this country, post-it note election, we'll see.
Paula Edgar: Right, I was going to say asterisk.
Elaine Lin Hering: All the caveats.
Paula Edgar: Uh-huh, yep.
Elaine Lin Hering: If I'm not in survival, just to put food on the table, then what obligation do I have to honor the sacrifice of those who came before me? What opportunity do I have to use my voice in a different way that felt too risky to their generation?
Paula Edgar: I think about this from the perspective as a parent, as a parent now, and what this might mean for parents who read this, when you're talking about what serves you as you go forward and what messaging it might be, I'm like, “Why did you just tag me in it then?” But anyway, it's so true that some of those lessons and behaviors that impacted us, we're also continuing to give to the people we bring into the world or shape.
Elaine Lin Hering: That's the generational silence. What are we going to pass on? What are we going to disrupt between generations? I will say as a mother of a six-year-old writing a book on Unlearning Silence while raising a young one, I don't recommend it, and I have to consciously remind myself, “I'm not actually trying to create a mini-me.” My role as your parent is to try to help you become you. What is your brand? Even if it's totally unlike mine, and I don't understand it, and it wigs me out a little bit, but how do I celebrate you so that you don't learn silence and don't have to unlearn it and can be fully unabashedly powerfully you?
Paula Edgar: We'll pull in that quote right there.
Elaine Lin Hering: Check in with me in 12 years.
Paula Edgar: As a parent of a 12-year-old and a 19-year-old, I can see where I have inflicted silence on both of them, and I can also see where I have unlearned some of the things that I was given and given them a lot more voice than I would have had. But the Lord is still working on me.
Elaine Lin Hering: Yes, and working on them.
Paula Edgar: Right, exactly.
Elaine Lin Hering: Which is the same grace.
Paula Edgar: Right, and how. But it's fascinating because I reached out to you to have you on the podcast because I saw a post that you had made and I was like, “This has to do with brand.” This does because when we are not able to show up as ourselves, it impacts how we are perceived. If we don't understand that sometimes how we're perceived is inflicting on other people the inability for them to show up as themselves, that also impacts your brand as well.
We jumped into the book, and I wanted to ask you before we got into that, as I want to revert a little bit, I mean, maybe it's not reverting, maybe it's dovetailing into this, in the work that you do, you coach women and minorities who are navigating leadership in majority-white spaces. What are some of the strategies that you focus on with them to help them find their voice, and build a brand while managing those challenges that exist because of who they are?
Elaine Lin Hering: Yeah. It's a long pause because I always ask one question that I really wish I didn't have to ask. But as a matter of professional responsibility, I ask, “Do you want me to coach you to be you or do you want me to coach you for career advancement in the system?”
It shouldn't in a perfect world have to be an either/or and sometimes it's not, but it has an acknowledgment that the system also needs to change, otherwise, it's irresponsible of me to go in and say, “You just be your authentic, powerful self,” that that's not reality.
The other part of my work is working with the dominant, often male groups to say, “What are you doing?” Because we can get a woman to sit at the table. But if at the table, she needs to just show up as the version that you expect her to be and take notes, well, that's damaging for everyone involved. You know what? The responsibility is not on that one woman at the table to speak up louder or more clearly or smile less or whatever it is. It is the responsibility of everybody else around the table to create the conditions where she can bring those ideas and insights that are going to change the way that we work. But until there is that end, we got to be really, really be able to stick to what she does.
Paula Edgar: I'm answering the question for myself, but I'm going to ask you.
Elaine Lin Hering: You're on the podcast, then I want to hear your thoughts.
Paula Edgar: Yes, I want to talk about what is the intersection that you just mentioned and what people refer to as imposter syndrome or imposter experiences.
Elaine Lin Hering: Anyone who has not read Ruchika Tulshyan, [inaudible] HBR article Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome, go read it now.
Paula Edgar: We'll link it in those show notes.
Elaine Lin Hering: Yeah. Who came up with this? What's the context of imposter syndrome versus what imposter treatment are we all subjected to all the time? That's my short version of it. It brings me to it is even more important for us to have our own thoughts and insights rather than just ingest the way questions and situations are framed to us, even by people who are world-renowned “experts or best-selling authors.”
The whole system is centered around one point of view, one gendered point of view. If someone's advice is not working for you, it may not be you. But so often we interpret that as, “Well, that's what the expert said and it's not working for me. I must be the problem.” You're not the problem. Look at who it was intended for.
Paula Edgar: Right. The question came to my mind because there's a lot of overlap in what you were saying about folks managing how they are navigating in these systems that are not necessarily set up for their success or to include them. I remember I did a fireside chat with Carla Harris and she was like, "What is imposter syndrome?" She was like, "We don't have that. I've not met anybody with imposter syndrome yet, but I've seen places that did not allow for people to thrive."
I really wanted to call that out because I do think exactly what you're saying. The brand of imposter syndrome is a strong one where it is expertise, it is all these things that people are like, “It must be what I have.”
Elaine Lin Hering: It's a whole industry with incentives to continue to exist and people who profit off of it.
Paula Edgar: Yeah. All of you sitting and thinking, I definitely want you to read the article we just referred to, and obviously, you're going to be reading Unlearning Silence. To think about what's the “you” there and what's the “their” there that we need to navigate.
But within that, I'm sure in your research and during the book, there may have been some conversation or some studies about self-silencing because as a learned condition, which I do think is the closest thing to what it was. But it's like trauma.
Elaine Lin Hering: It is trauma. Chapter three of my book, “When Silence Makes Sense" is actually my favorite chapter. Because for the people who say, "Just speak up," you're completely ignoring lived experience and data that has told us it is not safe for me too, so why are you continuing to tell me that?
Now it gets us to, there are costs to staying silent as well, that self-censorship contributes to social isolation and loneliness, comparable in health damages and impacts to obesity and smoking. Silence is a secondary trauma response, but it is community and connection that can buffer against the stress of that silence.
In the book I talk about it as Mario Kart, there's a double pain badge that we may not be able to immediately solve the initial pain, whether it's a diagnosis, a job loss, or the look that our manager gave us in that meeting. But what we can solve is the double pain of feeling like we have to carry it alone. Feeling like we are the only ones because the more we talk about it, the more it's like, “We are all human. Were you in that meeting with me? How did you know?”
I'm like, “Because it's a fact pattern that gets replicated multiple times, and as we are working for systemic solutions to those initial pains, at least we can resolve the double pain of not having to carry it alone, not thinking we are the only ones.”
Paula Edgar: To that end, I imagine that this conversation about your book should be one that a lot of ERGs and affinity groups should want to bring you in to talk about because it is them bringing together the community. I always say it's like our kumbaya circle where it's like, “Hold on to me, I'll hold on to you.” But this could be very powerful to be able to unearth some of these situations in the group dynamic in a way that is wholesome as opposed to harming.
Elaine Lin Hering: Even if we're not a monolith. Just because we share an identity that brings us together in our ERG does not mean we're a monolith. It can be a reminder, this is why it's the invitation and the call to action for us all to examine what role silence plays in our lives and in our leadership in all directions.
Paula Edgar: Hmm. You kind of got into this piece about folks telling people to speak up and how that can be damaging to them. You talked about it in two aspects. One is that everybody can't just speak up. There's stuff that's happened. But also in that, I guess the when and how you speak up can be a strategic thing too.
I love thinking about that in the personal brand aspect because silence can be very powerful when you're building your brand and it’s extremely detrimental when you're building your brand.
Elaine Lin Hering: Say more.
Paula Edgar: At the same time, as you mentioned in the beginning, a lot of times when you first start someplace you're a junior, you're putting your head down, you're silent because you just want your work to speak for itself. Then you get to a point in your career and it's like, “Uh-oh, the work speaking up was not enough. Now nobody knows who I am and how I value other than that work because I haven't been silent. And…”
Elaine Lin Hering: As you were silent about it, the thing about silence is that if you are not telling the story, someone else is still telling the story for you. They're not telling it from your point of view. It's not a firsthand source. Someone else's narrative controls versus you even just adding that counter-narrative of what it looks like from your perspective. Silence is not neutral.
Paula Edgar: It's so true. I tell people all the time if you think you have a brand, you are right. If you don't have a brand, you're wrong.
Elaine Lin Hering: But are you driving it? Are you taping it? Or has someone else said, “Oh, this is who Paula is.” And you're like, "That's not me."
Paula Edgar: Exactly that, which makes sense in encouraging folks to speak up in a way that feels a little uncomfortable for them. Not quite comfortable because sometimes that's our learned experience saying, "No, no." So all of you have heard me say before, that growth begins where comfort ends. So get a little uncomfortable. But it won't speak up for itself or it'll be saying the wrong thing. I think that's an important thing here.
Elaine Lin Hering: Yeah, also, whose comfort are you prioritizing?
Paula Edgar: Ooh, now you're preaching, Elaine. It's so true. Another grouping that I think—and you kind of alluded to this with the mother-in-law instance—is this could be powerful for couples. Because I've been married for 21 years, and I know I selectively choose silence because I like my piece sometimes.
But I also know that it took both of us to have each our own therapist to find our voice in a very different way than when we were young right out in bushy-tailed and thought that just love would carry us through.
Elaine Lin Hering: Those are beautiful days though.
Paula Edgar: Oh, they are. They're so naive. They were a little [inaudible] I'm making the case for everybody to get this for their friends.
Elaine Lin Hering: You can't be in an intimate relationship if you feel silenced by the other person. Silence undercuts intimacy. Silence means we are not connected, and I'm not willing to share with you because it doesn't feel safe or worth it to do so. Now it's not to say that truth and love can't be painful, but that actually having those conversations or letting someone know the version of myself I am today versus the version that I was five years ago, and we're constantly married to different people, even if we're married to the same person over time.
Paula Edgar: Every day, every single day.
Paula Edgar: Your brand evolves as the other person's brand evolves. The question is, “Are we both going to choose to invest in that co-branding over time?” When you mention relationships, it really tracks the whole evolution of this book. It started as a business book because that was the leadership development world I came from.
I came to picking a publisher. I went with Penguin Life, which was a big idea that changed the world because you cannot completely disconnect learned silence from your professional life to your personal life and back and forth. We're too porous as human beings.
If you really want to invest in your relationship, I would encourage a conversation. I'll name it and then I'm going to give you the fine print. The conversation is about talking with your partner about, “In what ways do I silence you?” Okay, here's the fine print. Only ask the question. If you are ready to hear it, receive it, love that person, and think about how you want to move forward because if you don't react well, if you get defensive, you're going to cut the intimacy, but it gets to the heart of the deepest, darkest parts where we don't feel seen or known or we feel vulnerable.
Or in what ways, I think I’m loving you well, but you don't, you don't experience it in that way so how can we better align that good intent? But you've got to be in a really specific ready place. It's not like a Tuesday night, date night.
Paula Edgar: Right, right. And before the wine. Well, I'm glad you asked, but I would also say that that might be a very interesting activity to say to your children. I definitely do not want to do that.
Elaine Lin Hering: Yeah, it really gets down to how I love you well. You as you, not you as the version of you I hope you would be because it would make my life more comfortable and easy.
Paula Edgar: Well, thank you for coming to therapy with Paula and Elaine. I'd like to be surprised at my podcast because it really is for me, I want people to be on a journey with me of learning at the same time that they are. I can tell you that I did not expect the conversation to be as broad and full as it is, and it's so important. I'm really glad that it has this breadth because sometimes I'm very like lawyerly in the focus of conversation, or sometimes I'm very like whatever.
But this is probably the most expansive and applicable to anybody who is listening and that they should definitely be telling their friends about because we all talked at the beginning about the fact that you help people navigate conflict. Since you just gave me an exercise that's going to create conflict, I want you to know that it's such an important thing.
I just think about where societally we are. Forget about the workplace. Well, we can't, but just in general there's so much division and so much trauma that we're navigating that some of that trauma is from folks feeling very confident and not being silent anymore.
Elaine Lin Hering: Yes, that we are watching on our screens, on our devices, and it is a privilege afforded to some and not to all. What are we then normalizing? What world are we co-creating? This takes me back to the internal locus of control and agency, what can we influence?
We can influence and we have agency over how we show up day in and day out. Am I choosing kindness? Am I choosing to extend grace because this is a difficult time in the world for everyone?
Paula Edgar: For everybody.
Elaine Lin Hering: I have no idea what's really going on in your life, even though I think I do. Based on whatever I see, the snippets that I can get, which is also why the agency to choose when and where to use your voice has to sit with the individual. There's no judgment whether you decide to stay in a workplace or decide to leave because only you know what you're carrying, the set of factors that you're navigating, and what you have tolerance and capacity for.
My job in supporting you, your voice, and your brand, is to center you. Not to try to make you into some version of my minion, my bidding. That's undercutting everything we're talking about. But there is just so much, and if we're not examining and interrogating what we've learned, those become the unconscious habits, which is how we actually live our lives. If we have one life to live, the question is, how do you want to live it? Because we have some influence over that.
Paula Edgar: Yes, which brings us right back to your quote about boundaries because I really feel like when you said that quote, it just kind of, “Oh.” I think it's something that we're all navigating. It's the one that I'm putting them up because I need to protect in here, when am I lowering them because you've made me feel a little bit safer and then we can be in communication in a different way. Wow. What advice do you have for people who have marginalized identities when they are trying to be resilient in these workspaces that may be contributing to their continued silence?
Elaine Lin Hering: Yeah, I have a mindset thought and then I have an action thought. The mindset thought is if no one in your life has told you today that you matter, let me be that person. Number one, you are enough as you are, not because of what you can do or deliver but because you are human, and being human makes you worthy of dignity belonging, and respect.
You matter, your needs, goals, hopes, concerns, and preferences matter because the system around you and the people you work with probably don't send you that message. That's a mindset piece. Then the action piece is, who's your team? Because none of us can go through life alone, whether it is building or maintaining or evolving a brand, whether it is showing up day to day, we are more susceptible to the messages that other people send us when we do not have counter-narratives.
By team, especially if you're the only one on a team to use Deepa Purushothaman's phrase “The First, the Few, the Only,” if you are the first, the few, or the only, your team cannot be the other people on the org chart because it is unlikely that they will get you or that they are for you, the real you. By team, I mean, who knows what matters to you, your values, how you really want to live life and can nudge you in the way that you want to go?
Paula Edgar: Yeah, your squad.
Elaine Lin Hering: Totally, your squad. But who is going to tell you that you're not crazy? Who is going to remind you that you're not the only one who cares about equity or justice or dignity when everyone around you seems to not? That can be who's in your feed, that can be who's in your AirPods.
The team is not just who's on your org chart or who you text, but also what data do you supplement to the onslaught that is coming your way? What do you filter out and categorize as noise because of the values that you hold and how you want to live?
Paula Edgar: Yeah, well, they know you're letting in.
Elaine Lin Hering: What weight do you give it?
Paula Edgar: Yeah. Lots to think about.
Elaine Lin Hering: Send your invoices for therapy.
Paula Edgar: I was going to say. Now that we're all cured or on our way. I think that was very sound advice. Particularly, I appreciate the saying, “If no one's told you,” because especially since COVID, and the way that the workplace has shifted, there are a lot of people who don't interact with folks, except for when they're in meetings, we have a crisis of loneliness, and then people that self-talk can become very detrimental if we don't have that, to your point, counterbalancing messaging and whether that's social media or actual people, live people, I think that's important.
I knew every conversation I wanted to have just went by really quickly. One thing before I jump into my final questions to you is that you always have an open invitation to come back to this podcast to talk about whatever you want because now, Paula and Elaine and these sessions are going to be a thing. Two, the action piece that you mentioned about remembering who your people are, I just think that this is so important.
I say, “I have Paula's peeps. They're my peeps.” Everybody's listening. I'm really glad you all had a chance to hear what Elaine has to say because I think it's such an important message. Now, what about the fun stuff? What do you do for fun?
Elaine Lin Hering: I love trees. I'm in Northern California, so big redwood trees, hiking. There's like a perfectionist achievement aspect to it that I need to work through in therapy. But it just reminds me that there's more than the computers that we stare at. There’s a whole world out there and a majesty to it, again, not to diminish myself, but to contextualize.
Paula Edgar: I love that.
Elaine Lin Hering: There's this glory around me.
Paula Edgar: Yes. All right. Everybody in my podcast gets asked these two questions. One is this, what is your stand by your brand? What is a unique aspect of who you are that you will never compromise on?
Elaine Lin Hering: Integrity.
Paula Edgar: I love it. I love that. Okay.
Elaine Lin Hering: There's a whole episode behind that and that long pause before, but you get the one-word answer.
Paula Edgar: I think that's probably the word that has been used the most by any of my guests, and it always has a different way to it. It always sits in this way where you kind of get it. I feel like it feels very authentic to what you've said. The second question is this, Branding Room Only is a play on the term standing room only because I'm clever. So what is something that is your magic, what is something that people would be standing in a room with only standing room only space for to experience about you?
Paula Edgar: You know what has struck me that I don't fully understand and maybe you do, so feel free to analyze, and psychoanalyze me, the thing that has stuck out from my brand is actually humanity. That in an AI chatbot world, being human is rare and powerful because it is the least common denominator.
It's been incredibly freeing for me to just get to be me rather than the versions of myself, I think I should be, as someone who went to Harvard Law School or taught there or has done this work or that work or fill in the blank role and to see the response that being human almost gives other people license to be human as well in a standing room. We're hungry to get to be human, which feels completely ridiculous, and yet there's a hunger for that.
Paula Edgar: Yeah, there's a presence in that because to the point of us being disconnected physically and also ideologically, like in a lot of places, I can see that and I would say that what you said resonates because I feel a connection to you even though we have just had the opportunity to--Your humanity does resonate. From the beginning of this, when you said you were a brand newbie, clearly you've been doing this for a long time.
Elaine Lin Hering: Well, I've been me for a long time. I didn't realize it was a brand.
Paula Edgar: Branding that is authentic and unique to you is the one that sticks the most. It's the one where we connect the most because you don't have to try. It's just how you show up. I'm so happy that you came on the podcast and we could talk about you being you and how we could be we a little bit better than we had before this conversation. Tell everybody how they can learn more about you and your work and connect with you.
Elaine Lin Hering: Yeah, elainelinhering.com. I'm most active on LinkedIn where I rant the most. I have a free monthly newsletter on how to use your voice and create spaces of voice. Would love to connect and be human together. Paula, thank you for helping me see myself more clearly.
Paula Edgar: I love that. Everybody go tell a friend, especially that one you know who is too silent or who's silencing others, and buy this book. As always, remember to stand by your brand and I'll talk to you all soon. Bye.
