Speaking and Communicating Podcast

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I think it's important not to be attached. You we'd like to have a good result. We'd like to step in there, but I think it adds extra stress if we're attached to getting what we want or this is the bottom line now. Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. I'm your host Roberta Ndlela. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into.

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Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development. By the end of this episode, please log on to Apple and Spotify and leave us a rating and a review. Now let's get communicating with our guest today, Arlene Cohen Miller, who is an AV preeminent rated attorney. She is a negotiations and settlement expert.

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and is here to help us with more work-life balance and also how to communicate and lead with courage. And before I go any further, please welcome her to the show. Hi Arlene. Hello, nice to be here. I'm glad you are as well. Welcome. Why did you first of all choose to be an attorney? I don't know. I just was 15 years old and I got this inspiration and I decided I was going to become an attorney. And I was like,

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first one in my family, my mom and dad, they sort of bonded and smiled. They didn't think I would really go through with it. My father really supported me the whole way. You know, he helped me to pay for college. He helped me to pay for the law school bit. And I'm very grateful. I think I had a distant cousin and he was an attorney and he lived the next state away from me in Ohio. We lived in, I grew up in Kentucky. That was the only attorney that I knew. So I don't know. I just got an inspiration and I followed through.

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Was it something that you expected? Because I've always wondered, I've never, you know, been in the law profession. I've always wondered when people go into law, is it because, and I watch a lot of legal dramas, do you think that it's going to be like suits or? No. When real life strikes, you think, did I really want to do this? It was hard. You know, I don't know if I'd go through it all again. It gave me the opportunity. mean, I've owned two.

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my own law firms. worked for another attorney when I first got out of law school. And when I was 29, I opened my own solo practice. And then I found out I was pregnant. So I was a mom and a new business owner at the same time. And when he was nine, I sold the practice and became a partner in a small boutique firm out in Colorado. So I was never in a big firm. I admire those people a lot where they have like different sections and things like that.

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I was trained in the area of family law and commercial law. And I was a family lawyer for 12 years and I was like, I just can't do this anymore. It's pretty hard. And so I ended up in a law firm that helped businesses collect their debt. In both of these professions, really knew I didn't know how to communicate and how to negotiate, how to work with all different kinds of people in distress.

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And I don't know, I didn't have any preconceived ideas. There weren't that many. I'm a lot over you. And he shows until you do like there are now or movies, you what the practice of law was like. I just figured I could take care of myself. It sounded interesting and I wanted to help people. So I sort of went in there a little bit blind. I really didn't really big clue about what the law was about when I first decided at 15. Right. Okay. So you didn't work for big law because

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one of the things that at least as the public we generally assume is the long hours. And it's interesting that you talk about work-life balance because I find that, so I worked in corporate finance for a few years. And you know, when you have a mergers and acquisitions deal, you're going to have the lawyers draft the memorandum of agreement and things like that. We used to sit until almost midnight, them debating the including, not limited to

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of clauses. And I'm thinking, is that the reason they always stay up late? I don't know. I don't, I can't get in the mind of all attorneys. It is a different kind of profession. And I really feel that it's important to balance the masculine and the feminine in the law, which I really didn't, wasn't encouraged to do as a young attorney. I think that both are important, but I did, it was stressful to be a solo practitioner.

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Because even though I had worked for another attorney for three and a half years, when you're out on your own, you're out on your own. Maybe I could contact other people, but the buck stopped with me and so I had found a great grandmother to take care of my son and I'd pick him up and I'd take care of him, I'd bring my work home. So I didn't get a lot of sleep the first three years of his life. You just do what you gotta do. And do you feel that the profession was the reason that you acquired those negotiation skills?

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because you have to negotiate on behalf of your client. You have to try and come to a compromise with the other party. Well, I did take moot court my third year of law school, but I don't really feel that law school taught me how to negotiate. I got a clue about it when I was looking for another attorney when I first got out of law school. It's more, felt like on the job learning. And that's why about six years before I sold my second firm with my partner,

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which was about nine years ago, I got a diploma in coaching and mentoring and a diploma in transformational holistic counseling and meditation certification because I didn't feel like I learned it well enough. You know, I needed something that like the International Coaching Federation that really teaches you how to listen, teaches you how to communicate with people so that they feel seen, heard and understood. I didn't learn any of that in law school. A lot of attorneys learn it out on

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from working with mentors who are in their law firm. But I feel that the legal profession could be significantly upgraded by teaching attorneys to be how to do a lot of this kind of stuff because it's not taught in law school. Maybe it is now, but it wasn't when I graduated. Yeah, because think about it. When I'm your client and I come to you and I say, Arlene, I've murdered someone, please defend me. I want to feel seen, heard, and understood by you as my attorney.

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when you go to court and represent me. So you would think that would be one of the key, I should say modules at least, when you study law, when you're in law school? You're preaching to the choir. I studied it for a whole year to get my diploma. And it's the best thing I ever did because I really didn't realize what it took to be a good communicator and negotiator. As an attorney in the second law firm I was in, did

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take a certification in mediation, you when people come to you and they want to try to resolve things. And that was really interesting. And they taught you how to mediate and talk to one person and then the other, but they did not teach me listening and communication skills really. And what have you found in your experience now that you've learned those skills? What has been the big differentiator? What I like to share with people is like there's active listening and it's basically common sense.

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But what we're doing when we're active listening, and maybe you've heard this before on your show, I don't know, is that we cannot be triggered. We cannot be defensive. We have to be in really calm, centered, grounded space. Like here I am. I don't have any axe to grind. I don't have any agenda that I have to push in this moment. I just want to know about you. When I'm actively listening to somebody, I'm genuinely curious. I've been trained to like, I'm really grounded into the planet.

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and I have this big heart and I'm just holding you and me and this energy. And I'm asking you questions so that I can understand you and what you're looking for, whether it's personally or professionally. So active listening is about being a good listener and not thinking about what I'm going to say while you're sharing with me or with anybody else. We have to really be, how else can we really know what's going on? And so the very first step is to learn how to be fully present.

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in your body here now, curious, genuinely curious and willing to learn about the other person, what they're looking for if you're doing a negotiation, what their bottom line is, anything that they want to share with you is gold. Let's unpack that further because I think what you touched on is very important. First of all, that visual effect really sounds really beautiful. I'm going to use that in the future. And secondly,

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I think sometimes what happens is when somebody's talking and no matter how well meaning we are, we filter through our experience. think we're listening and we think we're hearing it through their perspective, but when the message is decoded internally, we filter it through our experience. And that's why sometimes we project whatever response we give them, we project our own experience off the thing.

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instead of what they experienced. Right. And I don't know about you, but this is me. If I'm telling someone half the time, if I'm talking and I'm sharing something, also, I really want them to do is listen. I don't need them to fix me. If someone tries to share their experience and all of a sudden it's about them and not about me, I was just wanting to share. So I find it kind of disconcerting when people do it to me. And I certainly don't want to do it to others. But I used to when I was young, when I really didn't know.

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that that wasn't helpful, that most of the time most people just want to be seen, heard and understood. If someone wants my advice, they're gonna ask me. It's not up to me to be presumptuous and say, let me tell you what you should do because what's good for me might not be good for them. That's right. Which then begs the question, when you work with your clients, obviously you have male and female clients. As a coach, have you found that

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because usually men typically, I'm not saying everybody, but typically they are wired to be problem solvers. So, you know, a lot of wives would come home to their husbands and they go, honey, this happened at work. I say, you know what, babe, this is what we should do. You know, because they always fear that the problems are gonna pile up if we don't, you know, solve this one now. They're just wired that way. So have you found that they struggle with that versus your women?

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Clients or it doesn't matter. It's an individual thing. I feel it's more individual and in before I coach somebody, you know, I let them know what the coaching experience is like if they're not familiar with it. And you know, I haven't fill out a client interview form and maybe our first session is not a coaching session. It's just more of a conversation or letting them really talk so I can really have a better picture of who they are, what they're looking for.

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where it's not more of a coaching situation, more of a a consulting or listening situation. And I don't know, guys that are my friends or I've been in relationship with, what I usually say is that, I know you're gonna wanna fix this, but I really, really, really just need someone to listen to me. And I think that men are responsive if you're directed with them and I'm a pretty direct person. I think one of the things as well, at least what we assume is that,

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they respond more logically, we respond more with emotion? Yeah, men and women do things differently. There's problem solver abilities, but it's not like black and white. There's always a spectrum, you know, and we all have masculine and feminine abilities and parts of us. I think they should both be honored and respected and something's more masculine or more feminine. We just really accept people where they are, you know?

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everyone's a little bit different. And yeah, you there are tendencies that are specifically masculine and that are specifically feminine. And I think they both come in beautifully to come together to be a better communicator and a better negotiator. Which is what we all strive for, Because I think a lot of relationships, especially when it comes to negotiating, when people negotiate, are they coming into that negotiation with, I wanna win?

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And if that means Arlene loses some, I better win. Or I'm going to find a win-win solution with Arlene. Well, the thing is you have to be aware of where people are at. If someone comes in and they're negotiating across from me, the way it was explained to me with a guy in the terms of football, he said, like, Arlene, the only person the other person wants to do is take that football, knock the heck out of you, you're down on the ground, and he's going to run across the goal line.

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Don't bother with a conversation with this person. They're not interested. The only thing they want to do is when they don't want to compromise. They don't care about you. You're wasting your time. So valid point. That's maybe an extreme example. I think maybe hopefully only a small percentage of the population is that over the line that way. But a lot of people are. And we just have to be really cognizant. Is this person worth communicating with or am I just wasting my time?

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as you say, yes, you do have a percentage of the population who think I will do whatever it takes to win as I come into this negotiation, which means, as you said, there's no compromise and they're not going to acquire the skills that we keep talking about. Right. And so people have a choice. You know, I don't choose to really negotiate with those kind of people. I don't run into them very often, but sometimes people don't even understand or know that that's where they're coming from.

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if they're just a regular person like you and me, you know, they really don't see that that's the way they're behaving. And if your only goal in communicating with me is to a hundred percent get your way and not find some sort of solution together, then maybe we're just wasting our time. Nothing personal, but you know, what are we really here for? And sometimes that kind of direct communication is good as the person is really good hearted, but that's just how they been taught. Right. Now you say that

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some leaders have a weight that they carry. What weight is that? I'll give an attorney example, but it could be in any business arena. If you're a partner, a managing partner, an equity partner, equity, you've got a monetary investment in the firm partner, you're just part of the, anyway, there's doesn't matter. There are person in a place in the law firm that they worked very hard to get to and people are looking up to. So they're not going to only have

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you know, high end clients and cases and trials and things to write up to do. They're going to have associates and junior partners in the firm to guide. They're going to have economic issues where they have to bring in a certain amount of money for clients business, you know, as part of being a partner. And that can be very, very stressful, you know, so they've got a lot of plates spinning. Maybe they have kids or aging parents or other things on their plate as well.

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So, and that applies to any business. And if you're on the other end, like I'm just giving a law firm, because I know that more intimately, if I'm a young associate, I might not really know that much about what I need to do in the practice of law. I might really need those partners or those senior associates or those junior partners to be more of my mentor and guide and maybe get my name out there in the law firm. So I can maybe go watch what they do, watch a deposition, watch a pretrial, watch a trial.

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begin to learn, you know, in the real arena. whatever business you're in, lots of times there's a lot of plate spinning. It's not just your business that you have all that work in, but you also have a personal life and it's a lot for people. Hence the lack of work-life balance. Because another thing is when you carry that weight, do you find that that's when no matter how much you've acquired those communication skills, those soft skills,

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because of what you have to deal with sometimes, not that they fall by the wayside, but I just think that sometimes the urgency of the situation. Do you feel that some leaders think, I don't have time to be all humanly right now, it just has to be done? Right, know, everyone reacts to stress differently. And that's why it's really important not just to have those good communication and negotiation skills, but self-care skills as well.

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You know, if we don't put things in place to take care of ourselves on a basic level, we are going to burn out. We spend all of our time at the law firm or at the company, we are going to burn out. And so it's important to know, you know, how to engage in self care, things that make our heart sing, you know, don't just be buried in stuff because our brain will stop functioning. We need that rest and relax mode as well as that work hard mode.

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Do you find that in those situations as well, leaders struggle to retain good talent? That really depends. And that's one of my passions is helping companies, law firms mostly to build a culture and it takes time where there's actually real mentoring, you know, where it's built into the culture of the company that one of you're not just graded by how much money you bring in or how many billable hours, but you're also graded by

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who you mentored, how you help somebody, where you help to sponsor them behind closed doors so that their name would get out there and they would have some more interesting work to do at the firm. So those kind of activities build a culture where the people that are younger and less experienced feel like they have a chance to really use something major in that company. And if they don't do that and they don't have a supportive culture,

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you people can leave, you know, and that's very, very expensive for companies. They'll have invested a lot of money in training them and then the person's gone and then they have to start from square one all over again. The cost is really, really high for my research. know, one like four or five year associate in a medium to large law firm, if they leave, it could cost the company like a million dollars, which seems like, oh my God, how can that be? But positive having them there.

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the cost of training them, they're leading the cost of bringing in someone you're going to have to train. So it takes a lot of time and stress on the higher ups in the law firm. And that's why it's really important to have a supportive culture. Right. You say that stress impacts their behavior as well. So does that mean it impacts their behavior on how they interact with their team members?

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It could. mean, if you think about what you're like on the day when you have so much to do and you let it get to you and it just feels like all this fear comes up, all this anxiety comes up, how am I going possibly get all this done? When we're in that state of mind, you don't think clearly. There's no way that you can do your best. That's why it's important. Self-care, things we do with family or friends or for ourselves, whatever the deal is, so that we can come there with being our best self.

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I don't know if I answered your question, but I mean, even in our personal lives, even with family, you know how when you're stressed, when mom comes home from work and she's stressed and the kids want to hold on to her ankle, sometimes she's just not just doesn't have the energy to give. Yeah. Right. Right. Now, when I was little, my father, sorry, my father used to come home and he owned his own business. He was an entrepreneur, too. You walk in, he gets newspaper. He had his chair.

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He for himself a drink. We all knew we left dad alone for like half an hour or really until dinnertime because he came home at five. We eat like quarter to six. That was the rule of the house. You know, he worked hard all day. He loves us, but he needs a time out. And so that was his time out. And you didn't feel rejected as his kids that he's not spending time with us? No, we didn't want to be with him. Maybe he's grumpy. And, you know, it made sense to him.

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Us too, way that my mom explained it, you know, he's worked all day, he's tired, give your dad a break, and then he'll spend some time with you. Because it is very reasonable. And I think even moms today, and I'm not one, so please, anything I say disclaimer, please don't hold it against me. I will not. No, any of the moms listening as well. But even moms, to just take that one hour to yourself outside of mommy duties.

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There's even a friend of mine, so she's got two little ones. So she and another mom, they will babysit each other's kids. So if she needs some time to herself to just in this one afternoon, just go downtown and just do whatever she wants to do, then the other mom will babysit her kids. And obviously she's already sitting with her own kids. And then she will do the same thing in return. And she says that it has really made a difference.

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Because I think moms, there's sometimes this thing of mom guilt, I can't live my kids, you know, am I really, am I a bad mom? No, you're not. Yeah, my parents, we had moved like up to a different place than where I grew up and where I went to law school. So all of our family was six hours away. I didn't have any of that. So I found a really nice athletic club, a really big one. And I took my son with me. They had a daycare and there was other kids there to play with.

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And some of them became my running buddies. I was a runner back then when I was younger. And it would just be, oh my God, it was wonderful. We'd just be out there jogging. We'd be talking to each other and the kids would come back and they had played and they were happy. And it's like, oh my goodness, thank goodness. You know, we need that break, whether we're parents or not, to recalibrate and to let go of stress. Which means work-life balance is possible even when you're ambitious.

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Because I think sometimes we have this idea that does that mean that I work less hours? That means I'm not going to climb the corporate ladder as fast as someone who never takes time off. Well, good for them. What kind of light was that? I understand that there's that competition in big business. Some people really want to be there and that's great. But we also have to know thyself. What are my values? What are important to me? And we can't be all things to all people and then nothing to ourselves.

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Because if we don't fill ourselves up, our cup up, our heart up with self love and self care, we're going to have nothing to give to anybody else. And we're probably going to be cranky and irritable on top of it. So I agree with your friend who they switch places with the moms and drop off the kids and do something that's just a refresher. I think those moments are really important in life that we need to say. There was this really great thing I saw on Facebook and it was a woman and she was talking about

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all the different things that women do and people are judging you, whatever it is, whether you're a mom, stay at home mom, or whether you're working, whether you work full time or whether you work part time, whether you're thin, whether you're fat, whether you're in between, there's always something to judge people about. It's like, what's that? People have something better to do. So no matter what we do, someone's going to judge us. It's like, your opinion is none of my business. Thank you. Absolutely.

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Yes, you have to pour into yourself. You know what? I know it may sound simple nowadays that your dad would just take his time to read the newspaper, but that was him pouring into his own cup. That's when after dinner, you guys are done with dinner as a family, then he can spend time with you all because he's had his, you know, newspaper moment caught up in the news and the sports. I don't know what section was his favorite, but he's I don't know either.

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He's had that moment. It just shows that it doesn't have to be something big as long as you take time to yourself. And it doesn't have to be long so that you don't think the minute work-life balance is mentioned, think, oh my goodness, does that mean that I don't have to devote myself into my career? I've got goals, I've got ambitions. You know, I'm not listening to that narrative. You know, I think we have to work it out within ourselves. And if we have a partner or whatever, work it out together.

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Otherwise, what's the point if we're both walking around really, really stressed all the time? There's a lot of stressors out there and we have to find ways to take care of each other as friends or our partners or whatever it is and find something that works. And what works for us might not be what works for our friend down the street. If somebody is listening and they're just about to go into a negotiation, what is the one thing you can tell them? What is the mindset you can tell them when they get there?

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and how should they courageously communicate their point of view to try and see if in the negotiation they can get what they want out of it? You have to prepare. If there's no such thing as magic fairy dust that comes down, we have to really know our stuff. Whenever I'm negotiating, I have to really know the pros, the cons, what I'm looking for, my arguments for, maybe what the arguments might be against, and where I'd like to come out, what my bottom line is.

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and where I'd like to come out by the end of the discussion. And so we have to do our homework, you know, before we walk into like a real business negotiation. I mean, it's different if you're talking to a friend or a partner, you have an idea of what's working, what's not, it's not the same kind of preparation, but it does help to walk in with a mindset that works for you. And one of the ways we can do that is if we're in business to maybe have

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a mentor or a couple of mentors or some friends or maybe a couple of steps ahead of us, then I can say, this is what I'm working on. Do you have any advice that we're not going in totally by our own research and everything that we put together? Sometimes it's just as simple as making sure you're not going in with low blood sugar and you got some food in your stomach and maybe just taking a couple of deep breaths. know, if you're walking into a room with other people, make sure you're grounded like a tree.

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maybe make some pleasant conversation. It doesn't have to be adversarial to come out with a result that works. And I think it's important not to be attached. We'd like to have a good result. We'd like to step in there, but I think it adds extra stress if we're attached to getting what we want, or this is the bottom line now. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.

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You just reminded me of what Shonda Rhimes, the creator of Grey's Anatomy said recently at an interview. She said when she goes into a negotiation, she goes in there knowing that she's willing to walk away. Like you said, you shouldn't be so attached to getting the outcome that you were hoping for, that you're willing to do anything to get it. Because then that you might be shortchanged, you might compromise your values or whatever it is.

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And then ask yourself, especially if it means that you're gonna work with this person going forward, is this how you wanna get started? Is this how you want the foundation of this partnership to be if you're willing to do whatever it takes just because you're attached to the outcome? And this is also where that after listening comes in. Because if the person across from you, the group across from you, you're asking questions, you're genuinely curious, you're interested in what they want,

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and why they want it and hopefully finding out what their bottom line is and what they're willing to let go. If you really listen to them, you're not butting in, you're asking open questions, maybe you're reflecting back what you've heard using their words and phrases, which help people to feel heard and understood. They're going to be a lot more open, most people, not all people, to coming to some sort of agreement. And if not, you're both walking away from the table.

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with more maybe mutual respect and understanding of the other person because it was approached in a respectful way. And for leaders in order to retain good talent, what communication skills should they hone in on so that they make their teams full seen, heard and understood? Well, that's process, you know, at least it is for law firms. I'm assuming for medium to large sized companies, if you're

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If you're wanting to change the culture, it takes time. But one thing that companies can do is maybe sometimes bring in an outside consultant, attorney, coach, whatever, that meets your area of expertise and have them confidentially talk to everyone at each layer of the strata of the company and have maybe three basic questions so you really know what the heck is going on in this business, what the heck is going on in this firm, what's working, what's not.

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where they wish someone had asked them a question and didn't. And then what the company can do is get a synthesis of everything without any sort of confidentiality being broken. And then like within 30 days of getting it, say, we've heard what everyone has said, and here's the first step we're gonna take. And then they implement, you something that's important to a bunch of people who the independent person spoke to because...

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If you get a law firm or you get a big business, they have so much on their plates, it's going to fall by the wayside. You really need someone who's outside of the picture, can give them that confidentiality, who can give them that time to talk to the people, to find out really what's going on, what they want, what's falling by the wayside, so that the leaders of the company or the leaders of the firm can make a first step, as people are going to notice, let them know they're going to do it, and then actually follow through.

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So it's a process over time, but that would be like the first recommendation that would probably have. The fact finding mission for sure. Any last words of wisdom? Anything I haven't asked you, you were hoping to share with our listeners and viewers today? It's a big topic. If you're learning to be a better communicator, if you're learning to be a better negotiator, maybe take a coaching course or if you find a way to learn more about it from

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I know somewhere if you're interested, but it's important to be kind, patient, and tolerant with yourself if you're learning a new skill. It takes time to really know how to act of listen. I had no clue when I was younger. People would call me and I'd just jump on them off of my problems. It's like I wonder how they were still my friends when I was in my 20s, but that's how I thought you bonded with people. So it takes time to learn how to listen. It takes time to learn how to

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reflect back what you've heard using a couple of your friends or someone in your company's keywords and phrases and to really be okay with yourself and hold that presence. There's a lot of information on my website if you're going to provide that information. Yes, please tell us about your website. You're going to reach out. It's Jewel Consultancy, like Jewel, like the diamond and consultancy.com. I have a big blog with all kinds of information, any kind of

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area of communicating and negotiating you'd be interested in. It's all free and there's some videos on there as well that can help you step forward. So, yeah, take a look and it's a process to be able to do this. You know, I didn't learn in a day and most of us didn't learn in a day. We sort of learn sometimes by the school of hard knocks and that's okay, but it is nice to be able to have a place to go to do a little bit of investigation.

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Thank you so much Arlene for offering them to us. Arlene Cohen Miller, this has been such a pleasure. We appreciate you being on our show today. Thank you for having me. My pleasure as well. Arlene, AV preeminent rated attorney, ICF certified coach who has helped us with work-life balance and demonstrated how important communication skills are.

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