Self-advocacy & how to coach your team to be better self-advocates w/ Shailvi Wakhlu #153

I believe that advocating for yourself is also advocating for the needs of the people that you care about. So if you consider yourself as part of a team, part of a community, part of a group, and if, you know, their happiness matters to you, if they're comfort matters to you, advocating for them is advocating for yourself, because if they're happier, you're happier. So I feel that for leaders who want their teams to be successful, like this is something you do for yourself too, because you want them to be successful.

Hello and welcome to The Engineering Leadership Podcast brought to you by ELC, the Engineering Leadership Community. I'm Jerry Lee, founder of ELC, and I'm Patrick Gallagher, and we're your hosts. Our show shares the most critical perspectives habits and examples of great software engineering leaders to help evolve leadership in the tech industry.

What if you could better communicate what you needed? What if you could better express how someone can support you? What if you felt confidence in asking for what you really want? Joining us on the show today is Shailvi Wakhlu, data leader and author of Self-Advocacy, your guide to getting what you deserve at work.

In this conversation, we discuss different practical strategies for becoming a better self-advocate, and then the skills to help you improve negative self-talk and how to prioritize your happiness. We also cover how you can empower and coach your teams to become better self-advocates. Plus, we also talk about how to apply all of these principles to real life scenarios, to job promotion conversations, job offer negotiations, and more.

I've known Shailvi for a number of years, and one of the things that admire about her and her husband is that they both think through different principles and consciously apply them in different areas of their life. Shailvi's distilled years of hard lessons learning to advocate for what you want. Her new book sharing all those lessons just launched.

So if you want to learn more about self-advocacy and go deeper, check out the link for the book in the show notes. Enjoy this conversation with Shailvi Wakhlu. We are here to talk about self-advocacy, and I've been really excited for this conversation for a couple of reasons. I think one of them being, this is something that I feel like I struggle with in terms of either advocating for my needs or figuring out the right way to help advocate for whatever that goal is.

And I believe that a lot of folks in our community also equally struggle with that same challenge. And so I think where I wanted to start with is how does somebody who's a, you know, a data leader and an analytics leader become so deeply focused on self-advocacy and helping other people become better at this? What's your story behind, you know, how you became passionate about this topic?

Yeah, I often tell people this story that I think most people at some point say that, hey, college taught me how to code and maybe taught me a lot of other skills. But I have yet to hear anybody say that they went to a class in college that taught them how to stand up for themselves or taught them how to position themselves for success at work.

Like maybe they had a few mentors, maybe they had a few people who give them some tips and tricks. But I think especially for people who work in technology, it is not a skill that a lot of us have built. I am a woman of color in technology, the fact that I'm a data leader and I don't see a whole lot of people who look like me just meant that I had different experiences which required me to advocate for myself a lot more.

So I have gone through my 16 year career at this point having had many moments when I either successfully advocated for myself and was happy about that or when I didn't advocate for myself and felt bad about it and felt that I wanted those skills that I could pick up. And so eventually all of that just sort of came together for me with a talk that I gave about four years back and it just resonated so well with so many people that I just doubled down on it as the topic that I spoke about.

So half of my efforts in the public sphere were on data and the other half became on self advocacy because I just felt like this is an industry which really benefits from people from diverse backgrounds, from diverse skill sets. Women for example, I read a start somewhere that said that 50% of women in technology leave by the age of 35 and obviously if they felt they were successful if they felt that they were getting the right opportunities that number would not be that high.

So if through my focus on self advocacy if every time I talk or write something if I can change even one person's focus and make them a little bit more interested in getting those skills or helping somebody else with those skills like I would count that as a success.

I want to jump to the moment for the talk four years ago I believe that our industry will be so much better if more engineering and data and the heavy technology leaders create and share their insights and storytell and so that moment where you're inspired to first formulate this self advocacy talk.

I think it's so powerful because I think so many folks in our community are probably like maybe at that early stage where they're planning that talk was there a specific experience that inspired the need for that self advocacy talk at that time four years ago that really ignited you along this journey.

Oh absolutely so I write about this in my book as well that it was a series of events at the job that I had at that point where I had to really advocate for myself and it was a very long drawn out process and again was I successful was I not you're still out on that but I think that whole process made me realize that one there were a lot of things that I had learned along the way and there were a lot of things that I still needed to learn.

So I think that that entire experience made me think about it a little bit and made me realize like I'm a very structured person so I said okay what can I sort of take from this and turn it into a framework and I was not framing this as I have the answers to everything I was rather framing it as here's something that I think is worth thinking about and here are the pieces of thought of so far and you know how can we all come together as a community to think more about this and I completely agree with you that a lot of people in technology I see that quite often that people.

That people feel that they have to be experts before they can tell their stories before they can share their learnings and I couldn't disagree more like people's stories are valuable you know if you even if you share that this is you know 42 miles stretch that you decided to walk on like even hearing about how you master that first mile is really powerful because there's people who haven't even started there's people who haven't even thought about it so the more stories you can share the more you can share your learnings and learn from other people's learnings I think it's good for a good person.

I think is good for our community and I think it's good for our industry as a whole to normalize that story telling and that sharing of experiences.

I love that perspective so much we just had our big annual conference and there was somebody in the community I've met them and gotten to know them over the last few years or so and they had mentioned that they had been putting together blog posts and they were talking about you know being nervous or having some trepidation around sharing things and like well I don't know if what I have to say is new

and what I told them very much aligned with you is that my one of my favorite quotes when it comes to creating because I every time we do podcast stuff I always come up with a face imposter syndrome of like you know who am I to be able to do something like this and I told them like one of the quotes that I repeat my head all the time is there are no news stories only news story tellers so whatever you have to share it could be your story that makes a difference for somebody I want to ask you to you know directly like for for somebody maybe in that position where they're writing their first blog post they're putting together their first talk and they're bumping up into some of that.

And so I think that's a very important thing to do is to get into some of that narrative like what advice would you have for them like reflecting on your own experience like in that that first moment what would you do to make that content creation like that active creation easier better or more fun or meaningful. I would suggest that people not have the expectation from you know their first blog post or their first video that that this is going to change the world.

I almost treat it as a trial run so treated as something that you'll finish that blog post and at the end of it then at least be one learning and then one learning could be as simple as you now know how to write it and click submit and then maybe

something happens during that time and then you have to go back and change some settings but you know what you got your first one out of the way like maybe the first one was just for you to understand the logistics and the next one you can improve on your content.

And the fact that you put out content the first time is still going to teach you something you know you look at it two weeks later you want to change the tone that you wrote it in or you want to change the voice or you want to maybe feel like I should have picked a different example that's more relatable to a wider group of thing but every single time you do something especially when you put it out there for people's commentary or sometimes even the lack of commentary tells you tells you something that you can learn so

you can't just cross it but you still have to take that first step so don't put a lot of pressure on your first step and just start. This has been so excited to dive into everything else that we're going to talk about I think that is such a powerful piece of advice like don't put the pressure on yourself you don't have to finish the first one even if it's just learning the logistics I think that's incredible

self-advocacy you mentioned in the beginning like no one teaches you how to stand up for yourself like when you're in any type of schooling environment and this is so hard to learn can you start by maybe sharing from your perspective like what is self-advocacy and what do we mean by when we're talking about this self advocacy is just you speaking up for yourself and for what's in your best interest so it is about that act of taking the reins of your life and career in your own hands and then just doing your best what can you do to optimize your

ways for the outcomes that you want where can you speak up when something is happening that's not in your best interest and where can you speak up proactively so that you can position yourself in a better way to get the big outcomes my focus is on self advocacy in the workplace like I you know of course it's valid in people's personal lives but I tend to focus on self advocacy pieces in the workplace in other different types of self advocacy so workplace being one are there is there a broader portfolio.

So the workplaces it's the part that I focus on but in your personal life right like it could be within relationships it could be health care is a very common example like I feel like health care is a place where we often have to advocate for our needs we often have to seek the care we get legal situations.

There's tons of places where self advocacy would be useful to you but it could even just be daily things right like maybe you're trying to make friends with somebody who lives in your building and you want you want them to think of you in a in a good light and then there could be sort of other situations where you're negotiating something with somebody around you so I split that into proactive and reactive self advocacy so proactive is when you are preemptively trying to make sure that you are seeing the same thing.

So I think it's a very important thing to make sure that you are seen in your authentic but good way like in a good light and reactive is if something's going on which is not really in in your best interest you know what to say and how to handle that situation so you can get the outcomes that you want.

Probably the most concrete way people can grasp this is like the is the workplace context and considering most people listening into this so proactive self advocacy what does that look like in a workplace environment and can you share a little bit more context around around that example.

Proactive self advocacy would look like maybe you have a daily I think in a lot of engineering settings people have like a daily standup where you just expected to share what you're working on or what hurdles you crossed so again making sure that even something that's like a regular daily situation you're making sure that people understand the value of your work and maybe people have context maybe people don't but you know don't undervalue that moment of you getting an opportunity to share with others.

But you're no more higher stake sort of situation it could be when you write your performance reviews your self performance review which is I think pretty common for people to rate their own performance and submit that to their manager or maybe it's your weekly one on one that you have with your manager when they ask you like what are you working on and if you're just like nothing super important like guess what your manager is going to remember I like to say there's no wrong answers but there's definitely answers that are more right than others that is not going to be a good example.

The others that if you get into the habit of not underplaying the value that you add under valuing yourself and I think people people remember that more and it is better for your career when you get into that habit of just not undervaluing yourself and I would say reactive self advocacy turns up in situations where maybe your work environment has changed in some way so I think one of the common examples that people are dealing with is that they were promised remote work forever and then that has suddenly changed.

So you know what do you do in that situation like if that was really like a key benefit that you really cared about how do you then negotiate with your company with your manager that like what happens as a result of that changed that change thing and they can be you know this is just a is just an example but they can be lots of things advocating for yourself when you are looking for a promotion advocating for yourself when you're looking for a raise or a new job.

How do you how do you show up proactively well while you're interviewing and then reactively if they offer you very low low salary how do you how do you make sure that you advocate for yourself.

I think the conversations and the stakes that you highlighted there are so powerful like you know these are all important and really meaningful needs for people if you don't know how to navigate those conversations in a way then you are sort of left to the impact of other people sort of dictating their terms.

On you whether that's good for you or not so I know we have a few examples we want to get into but before we dive into that I'd love to dive into why is this so hard like why is self advocacy so difficult for people like why am I why am I having such a hard time doing this shall be that's what I want to know.

Yeah I mean I feel like the societal reason is pretty common right like we as a society really don't like self promotion I think we're trained to ignore ads we're trained to ignore anything that seems salesy and then there can be cultural reasons right they can be there's a lot of cultures which have that thing of keep your head down like don't draw attention to yourself and that could just be because that's you know that's the culture in your home that's what your parents said or maybe it's from sort of the larger.

Region you are from or something like that and you know of course for me I noticed that there were a lot of gendered components to this that women are often told like you know don't make noise don't don't cause trouble and things like that so I think for everybody it really helps to dive into what are those phrases that are in your head when you are hesitating from advocating for yourself because I think when you understand those phrases you can then look at them objectively and say is this something real or is this something that you can do that is really hard to do that.

So is this something that I've just heard somebody repeat over time and it's not actually valid anymore so our self talk is usually what inhibits us we may have heard it because of cultural reasons because of gendered reasons or anything else but if we don't question that statement in our head that stops us from asking for a raise that stops us from advocating for ourselves it's harder to figure out what to do about it right and some of these reasons can compound like you know you can have a cultural component to it you could be what it is.

So if you can do it you could be worried about how society will perceive you you could have lots of other other reasons that you don't actively think about but they're all there somewhere.

I wanted to have into the self talk component here I think first how do you identify a moment of this is an opportunity for you to self advocate for like how do you kind of like how do you identify like this is kind of the threshold where maybe this is a need I need to advocate for like how do you know it bothers you like it because I think for me I'm so like I don't want to I don't want to disrupt anything and so I'm sort of evaluating a situation where how I can't identify myself.

So I think that's a good question. I feel a lot of times people are maybe able to identify the sort of the opportunities for reactive self advocacy more.

So something happens which is not going your way you were promised a project and then it was just randomly given to someone else without any explanation or whatever you know if there's if there's a situational prompt it's sometimes easier to see that you have that option at that time right like what do you do about that do say something do not say something do you just

do in your in your corner or do you just go do something else but I think the proactive ones are the opportunities that you rightly pointed out it's harder to catch them.

So just a simple example right that you could have a team meeting where people say like hey does anybody want to share something cool that they're working on at that moment maybe you are working on something that is actually cool but if you don't raise your hand and talk about it nobody gets to hear about that cool project but that's very hard to identify you could be sitting in that situation and you could just say that oh I'm not the type of person who raises their hand.

It doesn't feel like you've missed out on something because you're just so happy to hear about other people's cool projects you celebrated and you know everything's fine but you may not necessarily recognize it as an opportunity that you missed out on in the moment but I always encourage people to sort of self reflect over time.

Do you over time feel like you are not you know your perception of the value that you're adding and other people's perception of the value that you're adding is that misaligned and I think that's a good prompt to sort of explore so maybe it's not that moment but over time if you start seeing that you should be rewarded and repeatedly you feel like you're not being rewarded.

That's a good prompt for you to go back and say like is there a component of this that's in my control because you can't always control like maybe somebody's just never going to give you a promotion or never going to give you a reward but is there something that could have changed if you had proactively done something to try to get a different result.

The reflection questions you're sharing are so powerful like I'm thinking of the first one you brought up with noticing yourself talk and asking is this real to this one and reflecting on the value of your perception of yourself.

The perception of your value from others in bridging the gap there I think is so powerful diving into the mental narrative part how do you get better at self advocacy from the self talk perspective like how can you start to notice or change your self talk around those types of moments. For everything the awareness is the first piece that actually take moments when you hesitate and think about what's going in your head and try to write it down.

It's a phrase that comes in your mind or whatever it is and I think actively like just articulating it in a simple sentence rather than like this big paragraph that's in your head which is like all little bit of this in a little bit of that like okay break it down break it down into individual sentences.

I think it really helps to look at those sentences and so in my book for example I give some examples of common things I've heard people say over the years and the reason I've heard them is because when you talk to people who are mentors people who are coaches you have to say it out loud like this is what is stopping me.

So one of my favorite examples to reframe is people say something like you know if I start sharing all these things it will either attract envy or maybe it will attract judgment or people will laugh at me or something like that you know similar to what we were discussing about that first blog post like that feeling of that imposter that like who am I to do this and you know why am I putting putting myself out there.

And then there's a negative thing which is like people maybe maybe they get enviars and then I lose some allies at work but it helps to sort of like articulate that and then really say that okay if there was a positive spin on what I'm doing what would that be.

So actually go through that exercise that okay what are you actually doing you know you could frame it as I'm just like saying something and maybe people will judge me but what you're actually doing you're not just saying something you're sharing and sharing can have a lot of positive.

For you for others when you share like if you share about a project that you worked on maybe somebody gives you good ideas on oh that's a cool approach and here's another one I tried that could be helpful so it it will benefit you if you share more because you invite that participation you invite that collaboration and it benefits others as well you know there's a lot of people who really want to see examples of things that are successful when I tell people that I am a technology person who is really good at it.

I'm a technology person who wrote a book there are more people who come and ask me like that school how can I do it to like can you help me so you know maybe there's going to be some percentage of people who are going to be envious but there's a lot more people who are just going to be wow this is useful like I didn't I didn't think that this was possible and maybe this is a person I can learn from maybe I can teach them something too so sharing benefits everybody and that's a good way to reframe that original thing like you know here's one reason not to do it but I can give you 10 to do it.

I the next question I wanted to ask you was you know how do you help somebody get the courage to raise their hand and proactively share and the practice you just shared of you know if there's a positive spin what would that be and to think through all the examples of like the positive benefits like I think is so powerful I'm like okay cool I I now and thinking through all of those possible benefits have the courage to raise my hand.

Is there anything else you'd add to like give somebody courage to take that initial action to go from maybe self talk that prevents them from self advocating to then have that courage to to proactively share. Every opportunity where you might dramatically fail you also have the have the capacity to really learn something along the way maybe it also just tells you that okay this voice that I like I raised my hands and I said this and you know what it didn't feel like I'm not going to do it.

I know what it didn't feel like me next time I say something I'm going to use a different phrasing I'm going to I'm going to find me and find a way that I can authentically share that feels more natural to me that only happens when you actually start trying out things you know you you're you're experimenting you're almost trying one thing seeing if it fits doesn't fit try something else right so I would say anybody who's really just thinking about the courage piece.

You have to remember why you're doing it in the first place like I think self advocacy is critical for people's career success if you talk to anybody who has reached really important milestones in their career none of that just happened like they didn't just get lucky their entire career and just have one great manager often another who like to care of them like that's not happened right like to get places you have to take steps.

That requires courage that requires intention if you're just waiting for somebody to pick you up from the bus stop and take it away you need to go like that bus may never come or maybe it's not even going in the direction you wanted to go.

So for somebody who wants to put this into practice and to begin to develop like the skills and the capability and the habits of self advocacy what would be opportunities to practice that you might recommend like maybe an entry level and then maybe like a cultivating mastery level.

You know one thing that I really like is how I think today it's easier than ever just because of social media that there's a lot more places where you can practice and yes it might be super scary for people to publicly announce something but I would say start small start with yourself get a journal and actually start writing down like I think I think this is a minimum that I recommend to everybody there should not be anything stopping you from.

Once a week sitting and writing the top three things that you are proud of for that week like at the minimum at least get comfortable hearing yourself praise yourself and it takes the pressure off because it's just in your journal no one's no one's ever going to see it you know unless you decide to but at least like start getting your brain trained to the fact that you have positive things to say about yourself it doesn't it does a bunch of things right like when you start practicing in private you start seeing themes that.

All my praises for myself are typically always about this topic I don't seem to be building skills on this other topic like so it has a lot of value besides like just the self advocacy component like I think it has a strategic component in there that it tunes you to what you should be thinking about but that private practice written you know graduate to speaking talk about yourself recorded your and actually go through that exercise but eventually I think it really helps to practice in public so social media.

Social media you can find like a more lightweight way to do it or start with your team find a friend who over lunch agrees to sort of like just spend two minutes with hearing you how you're talking about yourself maybe they give you some feedback maybe you can hear them to and offer them some feedback there's always going to be these really high sticks situations that just kind of creep up that suddenly you have the situation where you need to advocate for yourself and it helps that you've already practice.

It helps if you've already built that muscle of practicing in public in private and finding the words that resonate with you to make it more natural when you really really need it.

Absolutely I'm already thinking about a few ways that I can incorporate more of this in in my life like I definitely don't have anybody that I typically talk to about the sharing the the wins in my life and that's something that can immediately do and I'm also like playfully in the back of my mind I'm thinking right now like if you're listening to this and you post on LinkedIn tagging like

like Shalvi and myself and the LC team like one of your wins I'm like shoot like if you do that if somebody does that I will send you a copy of Shalvi's book like let's if you're here this I'm sending you a copy of the book. Tag is on on LinkedIn I love that.

You know actually there's a it just gave me the idea but you know who has no judgment chat GPT like maybe you just want to talk to chat GPT and say like hey want to hear about something cool I did and I can guarantee you like I don't know I haven't tried it but I feel like chat GPT is going to be really supportive.

Well so I was oddly enough I was talking to somebody today starting an AI LLM based company and they're in kind of the resume space and what they do is like you feed a resume and it tells you if it aligns with like a job posting and so I was I was talking to them and I was like so the long term implication is that this is the death of the one paid resume where like you no longer limited so what that means is like you probably need the list all of the accomplishments all of the projects that you've done so not only like right now if you start yourself advocacy journal of your wins and the three things you're most proud of.

You're probably also setting yourself up for a future like dominated by like an AI tool like that so I think like there's there's some definitely like emerging trend implications here in a really positive way.

So this not only has an impact on the individual like we talked about some of the different cases but this also has huge impact and implications for the teams that people lead in the organizations that they support first off like what's the value of self advocacy on others that maybe you're working with and interacting with and then how do you then help those other people as either the leader or as the peer culture.

So if you consider yourself as part of a team part of a community part of a group and if you know there's happiness matters to you if they're comfort matters to you advocating for them is really important to you. So I feel that for leaders who want their teams to be successful like this is something you do for yourself to because you want them to be successful.

So I also think that there are almost direct benefits like if you have a team that is comfortable speaking up comfortable comfortable articulating what they want comfortable telling you when there is something they need maybe it's a new tool maybe it's their resources maybe it's you know how you work with another team like all of those things if they are comfortable directly sharing that with you that's a risk reduction tactic right like somebody's not going to leave

because they didn't get a raise that they never asked you for and if they'd asked you you would have given it but you know they just didn't ask and they were upset and they left it's a smart tactic to actually proactively try to reduce that risk try to make sure that the work

better like if I say that hey Patrick you know this coffee is terrible like it would improve my work like it would improve my 9 AM meeting so much more if you just had better coffee in the office like other people benefit too right like maybe there's other people who benefit with that coffee too.

So I think it makes sense for leaders to actively make time for that and one of I mean I think there's multiple ways that leaders can do it but one of the easiest ways is to just normalize it like one do it yourself tell your team about times when you have gone to your leaders and either asked for things or highlighted your work your teams work and like give those

examples because your team typically does learn from you so when you start sharing those examples of this is how you operate there are more people who are likely to normalize it for themselves and the second part of that is just don't wait for people to do it themselves like have a prompt built into your team meetings or your one and

the other ones which prompts that thing like make it comfortable for them to be proud of what they're working on and share that with you like if you proactively like ask that question some people might find it very uncomfortable like you know if I if I asked one of my reports like the first time I ever meet them that what are you working that you're that you're proud of like maybe they get thrown off by that question but you you can have ways of reducing the moment like it could be something very simple I always played this game with my team where we do rainbows and clouds and

they would share something that happened over the week that they were happy about they would share something that was a challenge and maybe they just needed to went and I mean I think all leaders will recognize that it's a very useful excise like when people part of speed that you get to really understand the pulse of that team. There's many other excises like that that can be super helpful.

I was just reflecting on the question of what would I be most proud of this morning this is a part of my I'm in a journaling season of my life right now and so it's just so awesome it's for me it's like serendipitous that this is this is coming up right now to your point of like the extended benefits of self-appity on your on your teams the perspective shift that happens when you start to think about like what am I working on now that I'm most proud of or even thinking about in your know your personal road map in the next three to six months like what would make you most proud in the next six months.

For me I like experience like an immediate perspective in mood shift where I had like had more energy I had more momentum on I was like I'm willing to you know to work harder I'm more immersed in the things that I'm doing because it I'm connected to how this is going to make me feel proud.

Yeah and it helps that people actually start thinking about that and most people don't think of it that way like there's in that very tactical mode of like project one done project to not started like actually actually give them that space where they can pause and reflect. And what does it mean that you got brought it one done like why is that exciting why is that fun why is that why is that something that's good for you.

Oh my gosh and I'm just going back to like what you shared earlier and I wanted to highlight how important this is the experience that I think so many leaders face where the person wants a promotion or wants to advocate for a salary increase but doesn't share that and then is looking at other opportunities and then they then they leave and they never tell you that I feel like that's something that every single person who is leading a team right now has experience in the next six months.

And I think that's a big difference in the experience and are like grasping for how do I solve this well the answer is like help cultivate self advocacy on your teams because if they ask you for that then you are in much better position to help make sure that they're happy and that they're taking care of in the way that's for them and you can also be just transparent with them right like if they are actually seeking something that is just not possible for you.

And I think that's a deal breaker for them and you know you can I think I think again helping people requires you to take some amount of risk that there may be a chance that you cannot actually help them with what they want but isn't it much better to just know on both sides what is and is not possible.

Talked lightly about a couple different areas we were just bringing up like this promotion element I was wondering if you could walk us through like how self advocacy shows up within like the job promotion conversation and maybe we can kind of look at it from like the I'm seeking a promotion perspective so can you share that scenario and what successful self advocacy would look like in that situation.

Yeah absolutely so I think you know the similar to what we were talking about right now that there would be so many leaders who are like hey why didn't this person tell me like that would make everybody's life much simpler.

I think a lot of individual contributors feel that too that they would like more clarity on what a promotion process even looks like and I can understand that I think you know by default a lot of companies keep that whole thing a little bit guarded like they know what I'm doing.

They never want somebody to feel that they're entitled to a promotion they never want to feel some have someone feel that like okay if I just check all these boxes and guaranteed a promotion they never want to sort of commit to a timeline that like yeah so I'm going to promote you in six months like maybe the person stops working as hard and so I understand that there's again a lot of risks in these situations on both sides but I think the part that everybody should actively seek is asked for more clarity.

Like what is a promotion process look like in this company you know especially I think that's true for a lot of early career professionals who are just not sure of how this works and honestly if I join one company versus another company the process could be completely different even if I'm in the same company the process in one team versus another team could be completely different so I think it helps to have that very candid chat I know this is a part where people really hesitate because they're like okay the minute I say the word promotion to my manager.

Their radar is going to go off and they're like oh my god oh my god oh my god this person you know wants a promotion and I can't give it to them or like they're going to leave if they don't so I think you can frame it in ways where it's like hey I want to grow in my career and I want to make sure that the things that I'm doing are aligned with showing that continued growth path so can you help me understand how people are considered for promotions because I want to make sure I'm doing I'm working on the most valuable things and and do that and I think that lowers the situation.

That lowers the stakes a little bit like people are much more amenable to sharing information when you are framing it as something that you're trying to learn and understand hopefully you work in a company that has clarity about this already like maybe they already have a leveling guide maybe you already have a process outlined but if they don't like ask for it and if they don't have the capacity to give it to you say okay I go good and I found this other thing that some other company uses like do you think this would make sense.

So I think there's a lot of pieces that people can do themselves. I recommend like documenting very specific things so I have a I have a worksheet that's available which is you know document like these 12 pieces regularly so you understand exactly what is needed and then you can kind of keep

you know you're taking on it you can touch base with your manager or whoever can help you with that to just sort of make sure that you're on track and you're heading in the right direction because what you don't want is you've gone down a direction for ages and then somebody tells you's supposed to have taken a left three roads back so you want to make sure that you course correct when things are not aligned so you can actually do something about it.

Is that worksheet on your website. Yes so it is on my website but it is technically for people who have read my book and then that's where the that's where the link to the website is available but I do have like some talks on my on my website that you know I gave for free a long time back and they're still linked so those are accessible for free.

I was just I was just making sure that we can include a link but I think the link is read the book and then find the worksheet so awesome okay related to this also I feel like a high tense high stress moment for me is negotiating a job offer I was reading if you could talk to us about some of the dynamics there and if you have any more incredibly powerful shall be frameworks for talking about is self advocacy in a way that doesn't come off as self promoting and defuses this is the cause of the

everything you shared about the navigate job promotion like the phrases that you use like I felt all the stress of it was defused it's like I'm helping support my manager this way by sharing things in this way so let's talk about negotiating a job offer what's going on there and what is a successful self advocacy conversation look like in that space.

Yeah so you know I love that as an industry I feel even from the time that I first started working I feel that there's a lot of aspects of the pursuit of a new job which have been normalized like when somebody interviews you they are expecting you to outline like key projects that you worked on the impact that they had calling out specific results that you achieved how that made a difference to the company you were at like I think I think those things are normalized so hopefully people

find it a little easier to turn on the interview voice and you know frame that things and I think I think here there's a lot of great resources on on the internet even for specific roles like for engineers looking for jobs for data folks looking for jobs like I think there's a lot of good examples of how to phrase things that you've worked on I think the part about that final job offer negotiation so you know hopefully you've done a great job sort of that proactive self advocacy and then you are given an offer

if it doesn't exactly meet your needs like if that's not exactly what you were looking for I think that's the situation where you have to really think about how do you phrase it in a way to get what you want and here I always call out the distinction that a job offer is not just about salary everybody has a different way of looking at it like for some people it has to meet with threshold and everything above that is it's flexible For some people, they just want the most money.

They can get out of any job. And yeah, I mean, I love money too. Like I'd like the most money possible in every situation too. But I have to really think about for that longer term happiness, what would actually be more meaningful to me that is $10,000 gonna meet more or is like a lot of other books and benefits and whatever it is that you care about.

Like I definitely have met a lot of people over the years who say that they would take less money to work for a manager who they're really like working for. You know, they like, I don't want a manager who might romanticist me and like, you can't pay me more to work with them. So think about like that, like again, you know, with everything like start noticing there's a theme like first be aware of what you actually want and what would you be willing to trade off on?

Who are the mentors and coaches that you can talk to? How can you arm yourselves with the right data so that you walk into a salary negotiation or a job offer negotiation or be the right data about what you can negotiate and what's in your best interest? I think the reflection question of what would be more meaningful to you, I think is really powerful.

One final scenario that I have been so excited to talk with you about has been the scenario of prioritizing happiness in like this idea of self-avocacy for happiness. The reason being is like probably the last month in my journaling practice, like the question has been, I want to cultivate a life more full of hobbies and in these different elements beyond like the professional side of things that help cultivate happiness for me.

And sometimes I struggle either with myself, like doing the things that I know that I love or carving out within my professional life, a professional workplace that allows me to then be able to, and knowing me happy. And I know that you have a very intentional approach to how you make decisions around prioritizing happiness.

And so I was wondering if you bring us into that scenario in that perspective and why prioritizing happiness is so important to you and what that looks like in a self-avocacy context. I am a nerd, surprise, surprise. So one of the things I live my life on spreadsheet, so one of the fun exercises that I did was I actually plotted different things that happened on a regular basis, maybe during work.

And I plotted like sort of how much of a happiness boost, it gives me like, you know, whatever, low medium high. And how hard it was to do. So, you know, listening to music at work, it's pretty easy. Proportionically, it actually gives me a lot of happiness. The days I don't listen to music, I just feel like there was something missing the whole day. Like I feel more stressed, I feel more on edge, and it feels odd. So it's like a small thing that I can do to increase my happiness.

Sometimes there are some very big things you need to do. For example, I hate long commutes. I have a role that I only work within a walking distance from my job. And because yeah, the time I didn't do that, like I ended up, I got stuck with a three-hour commute. And I absolutely hated it. I love the job, but I hated the commute. And it was a big deal enough for me that I actually left that job eventually, because I was like, you know, I love this. And I can't move.

Remote work was not possible in that company. And at some point, I was like, I just can't do this. Like it's negatively impacting my overall happiness. So, you know, having that awareness and actually thinking about those trade-offs of what would it take to make me happier? I think that honest assessment can, either sometimes give you an answer that does not much you can do.

So, you either have to accept the situation or you have to change the situation entirely or you figure out, like, okay, can I do something else that helps me? So, in my situation, for example, I couldn't change my commute, but I could have come, like if I really wanted to keep that job, like maybe could have come up with other scenarios, that, okay, if I was traveling with someone else, would that make it easier?

If I was listening to a podcast, would that make it more bearable or things like that? So, yeah, you know what, I'm glad that you're into this as well. Cause I just think it's so important, right? Like, who wants to be stuck doing things every day that just suck out the joy? Two comments. Number one, you are amongst Kindred spirits. We're all nerds over here.

Number two, I just am so excited to be in conversation with somebody who is as passionate about frameworks in decision-making frameworks and conversation frameworks. If I had to create a name for a coffee shop, if I were to ever own a run a coffee shop, it would be called framework. And it would be kind of systematic around that. My wife and I have been kind of in a decision-making space as well.

And similar to the track, what makes you happy practice, one thing that we've been trying to do is to list out like, you know, the five possible choices and then qualities or intentions or like the emotions that we want. And then we've been doing just like a simple like how likely or unlikely is this specific choice going to be to cultivate this type of motion or this type of outcome that we're looking for. And that was really fun.

And then like following your framework there to also discuss then like if you do go down this route and it's unlikely to make you, you know, happy or to give you this sense of like commuting freedom, what can you do as an alternate to deal with or bear with or transform that particular experience. So that's helped me feel more proactive.

So I love that practice of even if you do make that choice that isn't necessarily fulfilling your happiness, like you can then now have the conversation of what can you do to make it as good as possible. Yeah, absolutely. I love it. I love it that you also have. It was love couples who make all their decisions on spreadsheets. Shavya, are you ready for some rapid fire questions? Yes. What are you reading or listening to right now?

So I just finished reading a book called The Speaker Auto by Louis Primer and Kathy Fioc. It's very relevant to what I'm doing right now. So great. Great. I love it. We've spent a lot of time talking about different frameworks and approaches. What tool or methodology has had a big impact on you? We can talk about frameworks for self-avocacy. This has been the theme, but I would love to know if there's been a tool or methodology within that or outside of that, that's had a big impact on you.

Honestly, the tool that I cannot live without, which comes into almost everything, is just stick tick. It's a little app that just helps you manage to us. And for me, it incorporates everything. Like if there are things that I need to do or set a reminder for myself, it's in that app. Even if it's self-advocacy related, or it's just, you know, whatever replacing my washing machine.

And so it's just, it's my life runs on it because it's my single source of truth of everything that I feel I need to do and everything I feel I need to do either one time or keep track of or something like that. Next question. What's a trend that you're seeing or following that's been interesting or hasn't hit the mainstream yet? I noticed a lot more people very proactively seeking the work-life balance. And I really like that.

And I don't think it's mainstream because I feel like there was either that, you know, those extremes of either I quit my job and travel the world or I'm working 60 hours a week and not getting any rest. I think people are now becoming a lot more okay. Taking time off as needed, highlighting when they're close to being burnt out or when they're even risking burnout. And I love that. Like I just see many examples of that in the industry.

Like people talking about it on LinkedIn or even on my Instagram. So I think I'm very happy to see that trend that people are getting about it. I believe it. And if you're listening to this and you're like, I want more of that, this is a great opportunity to check out Shalvi's book. Awesome. Yeah. The book is called Self Advocacy. Your guide to getting what you deserve at work. If you just search for Self Advocacy, it should show up. It is on Amazon on September 19th.

The ebook might be available in a little sooner. You can just go to my website, shelvi.com. So that should be easy enough. And there's more information there. Perfect. And we'll have some of those links in the show notes as well. Final question, Shalvi, to wrap us up and send off everybody listening. Is there a quote or a mantra that you live by or a quote that's been resonating with you right now? Live the life that you want.

Don't live the life somebody else wants for you or somebody else suggests for you. Everybody who takes the time to figure out what they truly care about and design their life around that. I think that's super, super powerful. And there are so many great journaling prompts. Just shared in this conversation alone, helps people move closer to fulfilling that vision of that quote. Shalvi, thank you so much for taking your time.

And for the years and years of effort and expertise that you've put into this, I'm so excited to read the book on self-afagasy. And to share it with other people. So just wanted to say thank you for joining and sharing your life's work with us. We really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you so much, Patrick. This was super fun. And thank you so much for hosting. I'm really grateful that you all chose to have me on this show.

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