175. Conscious Communication in Life and Work with Elaine Lou Cartas
Creating Space for Conversation
Communication in the workplace can be fraught.
Bringing together groups of people with different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives that shape how they communicate into a single workplace culture can create situations ripe for conflict and miscommunication.
But when we approach each other with curiosity and operate from a place of obtaining consent before giving feedback, we can shape workplace cultures where people feel witnessed, appreciated, and respected.
Elaine Lou Cartas joins Erica and India for a discussion about creating space for difficult conversations in the workplace, the importance of behavior modeling from leaders, and how conscious communication deepens our relationships.
Listen on your favorite podcast player or keep reading to learn:
How our backgrounds inform our communication styles
Why it’s important to obtain consent and create context for providing feedback
Why leaders need to be aware of the communication styles they model to their teams
How conscious communication deepens our relationships at work and in life
Inspiring and Supporting Women of Color in Business
Elaine Lou Cartas is a business and career coach and speaker, serving clients in 23 different countries.
Elaine specializes in helping women of color entrepreneurs and industry leaders land their dream career and create business opportunities through authentic relationships both online and offline. As a result, clients have made multi 6-figure and 7-figure incomes, received $25k raises, earn 6-figure corporate salaries, transitioned into new careers and created their own global businesses.
Elaine has over a decade of experience as a political grassroots organizer, and nonprofit fundraiser. One of her proudest accomplishments was raising $1 million in student scholarships in 6 months, providing 200+ scholarships. Today, Elaine is the founder of the Color Your Dreams Movement™, an initiative to inspire and support women of all colors to create their dream business and life.
She has been featured in Forbes, Business Insider, Badassery Magazine, and Pasadena Magazine, and Good Morning La La Land. She has spoken around the world including Sweden and Indonesia, as well as Universal Music Studios. She leads monthly community events in the Los Angeles area. She lives in Pasadena, California with her boyfriend, and loves boxing.
Our Experiences Inform How We Communicate
On the Pause on the Play® podcast, Elaine Lou Cartas (she/her) says that difficult conversations in the workplace stem from the differences everyone has in their backgrounds, perspectives, beliefs, and thoughts, as well as the cultural differences created by being at work.
“It’s about learning to understand one another and relearning how to communicate with others.”
As an example, she says that she grew up in a household where yelling was how you got heard, but that’s obviously not acceptable in the workplace. India and Erica both note that for them growing up, they were never expected to raise their own voices, and being yelled at meant they’d done something wrong.
Erica says, “I always wonder, as an adult, how that works within the workplace from the space of somebody communicates with me in a very different way than I have the capacity to communicate with them.”
Elaine says this has definitely shown up for her in the various environments where she has worked.
When she was in politics, yelling and taking orders without comment was expected, and based on her upbringing in an Asian household where her father’s authority wasn’t questioned, that environment and those expectations felt normal to her.
Whereas the first job she had where her boss asked for her feedback, she was initially thrown off, but grew comfortable enough in the dynamics and expectation of that working relationship to give unsolicited commentary.
But when it comes to feedback, she says she also had to learn to ask others before providing it, which was also a dynamic she didn’t grow up with.
“I’m the oldest; I have two brothers. I was just used to telling them what I thought was wrong, what they needed to fix, versus, hey, can I give you feedback or can I let you know what I noticed at a meeting and then giving feedback. That was something I had to relearn to do.”
Consent and Awareness
Erica says that providing feedback was one of the first places where the concept of consent showed up for her, particularly for difficult conversations.
Elaine says that asking for consent around feedback and difficult conversations, both at work and in life, is key because you’re giving the other person the opportunity to prepare themselves for the conversation, and the option of telling you that they aren’t available to receive it at that moment.
She says, “We live in this world, unfortunately–and I call it the Amazon Prime world–that we’re expected to reply to every single message or question right away. And giving people agency and choice when they can receive that feedback from you, that’s important.”
India agrees and says that being open to receive feedback can be based on a variety of factors from time of day, to mood, to, she jokes in her case, if she’s hungry.
Elaine says timing really is an important factor and she has noticed that earlier in the day tends to be better for most people, because they haven’t been through a stressful day yet.
Erica says it does actually come up in her weekly meeting with India to hold each other accountable for remembering to eat and drink enough water. “Because that does play a part in whether or not you can communicate in a conduit, not only providing something, but receiving something.”
Elaine adds that it’s also important to consider the other person’s priorities at that moment. She gives an example of someone preparing for an event, and if your feedback isn’t related to that event, maybe holding off on providing it unless it’s truly urgent.
She says being aware of differences in communication styles, priorities, timing, and other factors is part of fostering conscious conversations in our lives.
“When we have these conscious conversations with an individual, it actually deepens the relationship.”
Initiating Conscious Conversations
Erica adds that this also extends to having an awareness of how the way you initiate conversations impacts others. For example, she says for her, telling her that you want to have a conversation about something later can send her into a stressful spiral of overthinking.
“It’s so important to keep that in mind with the people that you’re interacting with, especially if they’re a direct report or someone that in some way, shape, or form does answer to you or confer with you, to really be aware of what is going to position them, from a nervous system standpoint, to be present and open to this conversation and not defensive.”
India says that one way they’ve put that in action is to give clients a space to put their questions and ideas as they come up, that India and Erica can check periodically in an organized way, rather than receiving a string of messages throughout the day.
“That allows them to get those ideas out of their head, and also allows us, as a service provider, to be able to address them in a way that’s going to be the most helpful.”
Elaine says these kinds of factors are why it’s so important to ask for consent for these kinds of conversations from the beginning, so that we don’t inadvertently trigger others.
She adds that the way you phrase your request and your feedback is also very important to facilitating an open conversation with the other person, so you’re “reminding them what the bigger goal is, why you are giving the feedback, and then share the feedback with them.”
As an example, she tells a story of an older female colleague who would consistently praise Elaine by saying “good girl,” which Elaine felt was condescending and made her uncomfortable. In order to let this colleague know how she felt, Elaine asked her to stay behind privately after a meeting, told her she appreciated the work they’d been doing together, but that her saying “good girl,” made her feel condescended to and like the other woman was praising her like she would a dog.
“I wanted to give her the feedback of how it made me uncomfortable, while at the same time, I also want to share, I was completely unattached to how she was going to respond. What was very important for me was giving her the feedback.”
Elaine’s colleague responded that she’d been saying that to her younger coworkers for years and no one had brought it up to her, but because of the way Elaine had approached it, her colleague was able to be open to receiving the feedback.
“It just showed me how beautiful this world can be when giving each other feedback in a place of understanding. I didn’t go in the, ‘I’m right, you’re wrong. You do what I say.’ I was more like, this is how it’s making me feel. It educated her. And we had such a great relationship working together.”
Shifting the Rhetoric of Workplace Communication
Erica says she has noticed significant shifts in the rhetoric around communication in the workplace over the course of her professional life. It has shifted from minimizing feelings and just dealing with it, to an understanding that it’s impossible to do your best work if you don’t feel comfortable, appreciated, and respected.
Elaine agrees and says she has also noticed those shifts over the course of her career, as well as generational and cultural differences she contended with when it came to asking her parents for advice on things like how to ask for a raise.
“I hired my first career coach because I needed someone to teach me how to communicate.”
Once she did ask for and receive that raise, Elaine says “I got addicted to, oh, wow, I could ask for what I want. I could share my ideas and my opinions.”
India says Elaine’s experience is similar to the messages that she received growing up about getting a “good government job and work your way up from the bottom to the top. By just being a really hard worker, you’ll naturally get promoted and raises. And it’s like, that’s not the world we live in anymore.”
Elaine adds that she has also come up against stereotypes about Asian American women in the workplace that “she’s just gonna listen and obey…I was not that…I gave feedback and suggestions and called people out on things that they were not used to, and that’s actually how I moved up and got promoted.”
And when she was in positions where she was expected to just do the role and her feedback wasn’t heard, she left.
Erica says that in her experience as a Black woman, there has been an air of that she should be glad to get the job at all, and taking initiative to do anything outside of the box would be met with an attitude of “who do you think you are,” or “oh, you think you’re too good for this?”
“Usually these types of things come on the heels of something where either you have advocated for yourself, or somehow somebody has to do something different. They have to maybe do something that requires them to work a little harder and they don’t like it.”
She continues, “It’s not a difficult conversation if someone is talking at you or disrespecting you or demeaning you, and I wanna differentiate that as well. A challenging or difficult conversation is somebody bringing something that maybe isn’t necessarily positive, or neutral, and it’s just something that there’s feedback or space for growth, but it doesn’t have to be negative. And it always includes respecting people.”
Modeling Communication
Elaine says there are a lot of nuances to consider when approaching challenging conversations and providing feedback.
And she says, we learn from and take cues from people in leadership positions at our workplaces, but the norms set by leadership aren’t always effective and can be received very differently from people of different backgrounds, particularly for underrepresented and marginalized groups.
She recalls working on a political campaign where her boss, who was a white man, would be very blunt in his feedback in meetings, often simply telling people, “That’s wrong.” But when she adopted that communication style, she wasn’t heard. And it made her realize that her communication style had to be different, and that it needed to be based on asking questions and getting consent in order to be heard and have effective conversations.
Erica agrees and says that unless it’s a situation of dire risk or importance, “You don’t get to decide what’s right or wrong for someone.”
There may be legal or procedural reasons why things are done a certain way that need to be corrected, but she says, “Even if that is the thing, the minute you respond to someone by saying that’s wrong, they’re gonna shut down. That’s not conducive to conversation. It’s not collaborative and it is borderline disrespect.”
She continues, “Behavior modeling is so important. And to behavior model that you can safely do that as a white man is already damaging enough, but then to model that and someone that doesn’t identify in the same way now is given the message that this is how we do this; you’re inviting conflict and miscommunication.
India adds that simply giving feedback of “you’re wrong,” also shuts down the kind of curiosity that helps people be open to sharing and understanding, which is why getting consent to have these conversations and establishing a good context of time and place for them is so important.
Erica says that not having diverse leadership and role models presents challenges to learning how to communicate and have difficult conversations. “It doesn’t give you an opportunity to talk with someone or to communicate with someone about what they learned or experienced that got them to this point…Having that opportunity to be able to discuss that with somebody that identifies at least in some way, shape, or form similarly to you, I think that does make a difference.”
Elaine says this comes up often in her work as a career coach for women of color, when she gives advice for communicating with leaders and colleagues or team members and they respond that they didn’t know they could communicate that way.
“It’s because we weren’t modeled, we weren’t shown that way. Whether it is having an older white man as a boss, or we just lived in a traditional household where we just listen to our father; it’s relearning.”
Deepening Our Relationships
When we learn how to communicate, to ask for consent, and to be curious with each other, she says, our conscious conversations become about coming to a place of understanding with each other, rather than who’s right or wrong.
Erica and India both say that being openly communicative is not normalized enough in our culture. Instead, India says, we’re given a model of communication that is about exerting power.
Elaine says the bigger picture goal of shifting our communication to honor consent and curiosity is to ask, “How can I deepen this relationship? How can I be a better human?”
She says the environment we’re in now, particularly with social media, makes it very easy to get caught up in the binary of right and wrong, but that we need to remember that having difficult conversations does deepen our individual and societal relationships.
“My old boss…shared with me, the moment someone stops giving you feedback is the moment they have given up on you…I always take it as a compliment when someone is willing to have that difficult conversation with me.”
And she says the deep shifts in our society that began with the pandemic, from the Great Resignation to rising rates of business ownership and divorce, are the result of us having deep conversations in our work and our lives and being open to questioning things.
“And even though it’s so uncomfortable, I just see this as a beautiful point in today’s society. Like, wow, there’s big changes happening in all levels, individually, collectively, and as a society and nation.”
Elaine says there is no one moment or experience that she can pinpoint that made her as passionate as she is about supporting people in learning to communicate differently, but that it’s the accumulation of experiences where she was able to have difficult conversations and be heard, whether it was negotiating for a raise or encouraging a nonprofit to bring a woman of color onto the board.
And now, in her work as a career coach, “you start seeing fabrics of change happening with individuals and how it’s even changing the bigger collective where we’re having these conversations and it’s changing…I just see change happen each time we do have a conversation.”
The Relationships That Matter
When considering difficult conversations outside of work, India says it is something that often comes up for her around the holidays and conversations about time off, gifts, seeing family, and other topics that can get uncomfortable. She asks Elaine if she notices any differences or nuances in how she approaches conscious conversations in her personal life as opposed to in the workplace.
Elaine says there isn’t really a difference in the approach, but one of the byproducts of the pandemic that she, personally, appreciates is being able to focus on maintaining the relationships that truly matter to her and letting go of those that don’t.
In the relationships that do matter to us, she says conscious conversations “are really important conversations to continue having, because when you have that place of understanding, this relationship will deepen that way.
And also allow yourself to honor when you are with someone where they say things that will trigger, where you can step out. You don’t need to have that conscious conversation with them. You don’t need to try to fix every single person. Pick and choose. And who you pick and choose, that’s up to you.”
Consider the Legacy You Want to Create
Elaine says that when she considers actions to take to shape change, she thinks about it in terms of creating the legacy she wants to have for herself.
“My biggest legacy I wanna create is making sure women of color [can] create a sustainable and equitable future in their career and business, with their life.”
She also thinks about the generations that came before her that didn’t have opportunities to advocate for themselves the way that she has. “I acknowledge how privileged I am to be born at the time I am, to be in this generation where I can speak the way I can speak, and in doing so, it’s honoring the generations before me.”
Erica adds that it’s important to remember that legacy doesn’t have to mean a big thing. It can be “the smallest of ways that maybe didn’t feel safe for someone to reclaim their own power and autonomy. Every time that you do it, you are filling in that generational bucket.”
Elaine says, too, that it’s important to learn to listen to your body and your intuition when you’re in situations that might not be right for you, and honoring that. She recalls leaving a particular group after ignoring her discomfort with statements that were being made until she finally listened to her body and realized she needed to give the feedback and remove herself from the situation.
“If you have that inkling, there’s a reason why you have that. And explore that with curiosity.”
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Instagram: @elainelou_