Find Your Voice - Sarah Hanson on Confidence, Impact and Better Conversations

In this episode of It’s Your Business, Kath is joined by Sarah Hanson from Interactifs for a thoughtful and empowering conversation about confidence, communication and the power of getting the right words out at the right time.

With a background in HR and 10 years of training and coaching behind her, Sarah helps people have more impact in conversations, speak up more clearly, and handle difficult situations with greater confidence and ease. She shares how she came into the work by chance, why so many people struggle to say what they really mean at work, and how small shifts in language, tone and preparation can completely change the outcome of a conversation.

Kath and Sarah explore the reality of workplace relationships, awkward meetings, difficult bosses, and the challenge many women face when trying to be direct without feeling they are overstepping the mark. They also talk about how these skills go far beyond business, helping people communicate better in everyday life with family, friends, colleagues and communities.

This is a warm, insightful episode about finding your voice, speaking with more purpose, and learning that better conversations can lead to better outcomes in every part of life.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahdhhanson

Want to start YOUR own Podcast? 

Your Fairy Podmother®️www.fairypodmother.co.uk

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Hello and welcome to It's Your Business with Me, KLG, your Fairy Pop Mother. This is the podcast that shines a spotlight on inspiring UK businesses, the mindset behind their success, and the practical tips that could help you too on your business journey. Let's get started. Hello and welcome to this episode of It's Your Business, where I'm delighted to have in my studio Sarah Hansen from Interactives. Hi Sarah.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Hi, Kath. How are you? Oh, I'm really well. I've had a really fantastic day and I've been looking forward to this conversation with you for a couple of weeks. So very glad to be here.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Oh, I'm glad to have you. And I think something about today that I want to try and get across to people as well is that you have been thinking about having this conversation with me for a while and thinking of a way of getting your voice out then. I think this will highlight to anybody, women in business or not women in business, whoever you are in the business, that this is a good way of getting your voice out on podcasts.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

Yeah, because I I remember saying actually in the email I sent you, I kept your email inviting people onto the podcast in my inbox for a while, and there was something inside that just stopped me deleting it automatically or putting it into a folder. And I remember thinking, if not now, when? When are you going to have a conversation with somebody that you've met before where you can just say what it is that you do, what your business is about, and how you want to help other people find their voice and speak up more easily about what they do too.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

Exactly. And you can't encourage other people to do it if you don't do it yourself, can you? No, I know, that's the tricky part. Now we met in Dunfries and Galloway. I was doing a training for South of Scotland Enterprise all about podcasting for business and why people should podcast. And you were in that audience. And from there, you were in my email list, and like you said, something told you this was the time. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

I've continued working with South of Scotland Enterprise for a couple of years, actually. And so often I'm on the other side of the table asking questions to people, asking them what the business idea is, what it might take for them to do something about that in the next 10 days, and coaching them to a point where they're ready to either approach their first client, make their first sale, attend their first event, and talk about what it is they do. So this is really just an opportunity for me to remind myself that I need to talk the talk as well.

SPEAKER_01 3:17

Absolutely. You need to be doing what you're telling everybody else. Yes. It's really difficult though, isn't it? Because I do this podcast now as regularly as possible to prove that I can do podcasts without fancy equipment by just sitting talking, then editing and producing it. But for a while I wasn't even doing it because it drops off. And somebody said, Don't you do a podcast? You encouraging everyone else. I'm like, Well, yeah, I do, but I just seem to drop it off because I'm that busy helping other people, you know.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

Yeah, yeah, I do. So um, well, I'm glad that this may be ticks boxes for us both then.

SPEAKER_01 3:59

Yeah, absolutely. It's a win-win. Now, your business is interactives, and you are a trainer and a coach.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 4:11

And you manage a team of freelancers as well. Yes. And they also train and coach other people, mainly women. So, how did you get into that in the first place?

SPEAKER_00 4:24

Completely by chance. I saw an advert on Mum's Net, oh, about 10 years ago, and I'd worked in HR, but I'd enjoyed being very close to a business, so being an HR manager, a business partner for a particular group of clients. But I saw this advert that said they were a French company looking to expand in the UK and looking to recruit people, to train others, to increase their impact and have more influence. And I thought about the times in my corporate career where I'd really struggled with having enough impact to encourage people to do things, despite them not really wanting to do things, whether that's having awkward conversations, whether it was announcing a change. And I found, particularly through my twenties and early 30s, I'd never really learnt how to have that presence or more confidence, really. I'd been taught skills like presenting skills or how to um how to facilitate a session. But by chance, as I say, I thought, well, I was intrigued. I was curious about how you can teach someone to have more impact in a conversation. What could this sort of secret ingredient be? And once I went on the training to experience it myself, I was so convinced that I skilled up and became a trainer. And yeah, in the last 10 years I've trained and coached, goodness, nearly 2,000 people now. My goodness to find easier ways to have any type of conversation, whether it's with the colleagues, whether it's with their boss, whether it's about joining a business, about leaving a business, starting a business, um, navigating the day-to-day stuff that too often keeps us awake at night. Um, so that's how I spend my time.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

Wow. So it was originally, well, it is a French company, but you work in the UK. So this isn't um a franchise as such. How does that work?

SPEAKER_00 6:57

So it was discovered in France. So my colleague Philippe, he had been working in the 80s in sales, business development, and noticed at the time a lot of the training was very prescriptive. And that was quite good for people who were new in the team. But in terms of translating it into actual results, it didn't always work. It was too formulaic. So then at that time, there was a lot of profiling tools came across, more psychological approaches for people to understand more about themselves. But again, he didn't find those particularly helpful because some of the ideas had either been really generalized and dumbed down, or it was tempting for people to perhaps behave in different ways if they thought maybe the person they were dealing with had one type of preference, but that was in contrast to how his colleague in the team tended to behave. So Philippe turned all that on his head and he started looking in his team at who was able to have really good conversations with people that would produce the results they wanted, that would get the outcome they were after, that would go really well. And who were those that found that really difficult and kept encountering different challenges along the way? Then he looked at who can do these things quite quickly and efficiently so that it doesn't cause them stress, pressure, or even burning themselves out. In contrast, again, there were sort of two groups, some who were able to do it quite effortlessly, and some that it seemed to be really hard work. And then he looked at the third and final part, which he saw as the most important. Who was able to build and maintain really genuine relationships with people? Ones where they can be themselves and be really comfortable, they can trust the other person, they're not hiding an agenda, they're being more transparent, and they're willing to either pick up the phone or see those people again. And who, on the other hand, actually can sometimes shut down relationships because of the way that they treat other people? So he started to look at these three elements together and think, okay, well, how can you be more consistent in doing the stuff that works? How can you get the outcome you want? How can you do it with the right amount of effort, but how can you always make a good impression so that the person's more likely to see you again? And that is essentially what he and my colleagues um have been teaching people to do since.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

Wow, and you've been doing that for 10 years. Yes. Where do you get your clients from then?

SPEAKER_00 10:12

Well, most of our clients are people that discover us through word of mouth. So we work with people at every level of an organization from customer service advisors up to people who lead and manage international businesses. It's people that often they've tried to sort things out, they've tried to explain, perhaps internally to their teams, how they want things to work, but something's just not quite working. People are getting frustrated, they might be getting a bit annoyed at each other, tensions are beginning to show. And we work with people in those contexts to bring them around and start collaborating with each other, start working and negotiating and pulling in the same direction, and finding that they've got more in common with each other than perhaps fighting over budgets and resources and spend and time.

SPEAKER_01 11:19

Yeah. So it's about the more about the relationship and the people, and like you said, talking to them in the right way, I guess. I can see how your HR has come in really well for you in particular, I think, in in in your business. Because you would have to have that skill in your corporate HR to deal with that already.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

I did. And it was a skill that was hard to develop because often in HR you're pulled in so many different directions. You're trying to hold the company line, but at the same time, you're dealing with human beings and you're dealing with an aspect of their life that certainly for me is really important. Um in terms of that routine consistency, expectations, um, a lot of pride that people have in their careers.

SPEAKER_01 12:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:17

But how you manage that message while still being approachable and likable and respected and kind, that's hard to do. But that's hard for a lot of people, whether they're managers or whether they're colleagues. And I think in HR, often you deal with these issues once something becomes a bigger issue.

SPEAKER_01 12:45

Yeah. If they're being caught regularly, they're always aware of how to speak to people, how to be consistent, and how to manage people on a day-to-day basis.

SPEAKER_00 12:57

They're better equipped to do that. I'm smiling because often when I first meet people, they'll often think, actually, I'm fine. But if other people could have a greater attention to detail, really concentrate on what I tell them, follow through, prioritize, come to me if they've got issues, then things would be easier. But the more I work with them, the more they realise that at times they're not helping themselves, they might be rubbing people up the wrong way, unintentionally, but saying things that are taken out of context or that people might feel offended by, but they're just being themselves.

SPEAKER_01 13:39

Yeah. And I think even tone, the tone in which you come across to people, you might think that that's okay, but other people might be thinking, Oh, that's quite offensive, and I'm quite upset by that. And you go, Well, I didn't mean that.

SPEAKER_00 13:55

And it's how you recover from that. And exactly, it's when people say things like, Oh, you're obviously very upset, that can really create a distance in a relationship and lead to things breaking down because the other person may not be upset whatsoever. They might be thinking about the consequences, but when you put someone else in an awkward position by putting words in their mouth, then it really doesn't help the relationship. So I help people rephrase things to talk from their own perspective that they want to fix it, or I want to make it up to you, or I want to find a way for us to get on better, or look, I sense there's a bit of an issue between us, and whether there is or not, I'd really like to know that when I call you're gonna pick up the phone or something like that, so that it's less confrontational.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

Yeah, I mean, words are so powerful, aren't they?

SPEAKER_00 14:58

Yeah, and I you mentioned working with women earlier. I think, in particular for women, we've been taught to think very carefully before we open our mouth. Remember, you can't take back what you've said. If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. And subtly that leads to a lot of people holding back on actually what they think, or how they feel about some really important stuff at work. And too often the moment passes, they feel to be able to say something. So often when I'm working with people individually, they'll bring up something that they want to be able to deal with more easily so that they don't kick themselves for saying nothing. So I'll work with them on those sorts of um scenarios. Like if your boss always says something like this, well, what can you say differently so that you're always balancing that um challenge between being direct and clear, but also being kind and respectful without overstepping the mark.

SPEAKER_01 16:13

Yeah. Because I guess a lot of people would leave jobs when they didn't need to just because they can't have that conversation or don't feel they could have that conversation. And also a lot of um managers would like to retain certain people. If they could speak to them better, they would retain the staff. So it's worthwhile being able to speak to people properly so that you don't lose those staff because the cost to the business is mammous, isn't it? When you're re-advertising and training, onboarding new staff, and they might not even be half as good as the one you've left because you didn't know how to have a conversation with them.

SPEAKER_00 17:01

Yeah, and I often think about that whole in HR we called it the employee life cycle, all the positive excitement of people joining a new business because they finally got that job, they've done all the hard work, they've done the applications, they've done the interviews, they've got through, they've got that position and they've been trained up. But they don't tend to leave unless it's another fantastic opportunity somewhere else. Often people leave because the relationship's just not right anymore with either their boss or their colleagues, or something's changed. It's not the place that it was when they first joined, or the place that was sold to them in the interview. But the sooner you can bring that up, then the easier it is to do something about it. And again, I often think when I work with people, they'll say to me, Oh, my partner said I just need to go in and have a chat with my boss, which is well-intended advice. But the difficult part is knowing how to prepare for that, how you're gonna start it, how you're gonna react when your boss replies. Um, and that's really where most of the hard work's done with me. Around, okay, well, what do you think they're going to say? Because a lot of people avoid these conversations because they say, Oh, I don't know what it is, I just don't know how they'd react to it. I don't know what they'll say. But actually, I I coach people through. Well, if you've worked with them for a while, even if that's just a matter of weeks, you'll know them better than me. What do you think they might say? And then that gives us a way to start really planning. Okay, when you do speak up, how are you going to hold your ground? How are you going to ask for what you really want to happen rather than over-explaining or justifying yourself or going into the past or even saying it doesn't matter or it's not an issue, or things that actually contradict what your head and your heart are saying in the moment.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

Yeah. And don't wait until it's a case of if he says this, I'm leaving, or whatever. Because I think a lot of people would be scared to approach their boss in case they were then got rid of, in case in case they act negatively to it. So I guess would you do some sort of kind of role play as well in that coaching? Because it's quite intimidating for somebody to go in and be scared to do it. But it's more cost-effective for them to be coached by someone like you than not have this good job that the salaried for all the time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:56

Well, do a couple of things. So I'm absolutely so I'll work through role play or practice rehearse, I call it. Let's rehearse the conversation. And I'll give people the choice either in this scenario, either you play your boss or I'll play your boss.

SPEAKER_01 20:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:13

What do you think they're gonna say? And we'll take it from there. But again, you said something there around it's quite a scary conversation for people to have because they're they might feel a bit insecure or they might be unsure what will happen as a result.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:32

We've been taught not to bring up your emotions and work and sort of leave that out of it, but it's going to be written all over your face or it's gonna come through in your tone of voice. So, what I tend to do is encourage people just to verbalize that. It might be in a slightly different way to say, Look, I wasn't sure that bringing this conversation up with you was a good idea, but I've been thinking about it so much that I really want to talk to you about it now.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:03

That humanizes it rather than our voice starting to waver or at times just our eyes filling with tears. I mean, I've certainly been there myself, um, and only wish I'd found a way sooner to say, oh, this is hard, but I'm gonna spit it out.

SPEAKER_01 21:25

It must be really rewarding ten years of helping coach and train mainly women through this.

SPEAKER_00 21:33

Yeah, it is. And look, we work with men as well. We work with anyone um that needs to deal with other people to get their work done. But I've found with women in particular, they they almost change in their posture. Some of them they say, look, speaking to you, I really feel that I can go and nail this conversation now. I've had a chance to figure out what I'm gonna say and how I'm gonna say it, but more than That I've been able to think about what my colleague might say or what my boss might say, and be able to say, yeah, that is what I want. And that does give me a huge sense of job satisfaction, really, which is what I went into HR for in the first place, to try and bring that sense of motivation, satisfaction, people being happy at work, it mattered to me. So I wanted to make a difference to people like me in their workplaces.

SPEAKER_01 22:34

And do you feel that doing something like this, coming on a podcast, has has helped you? Because obviously you need to personally develop along the way as well. You're helping people. Do you think something like this is helpful to like sort of you as a trainer coach as well?

SPEAKER_00 22:54

I do. I think anyone in the services industry needs an opportunity to take themselves out of their normal day-to-day and have a very human conversation about how they spend their time when they're at work, what they do, who they help, what is uh rewarding about that. To be perfectly honest, over the last 10 minutes I've really forgotten that this was being recorded with you, Kath, because it just feels like you asking me questions and giving me a chance to really reflect on some of those interactions I've had with people and the difference that's made to some of them.

SPEAKER_01 23:41

Well, that's it. People don't take that time to talk about the business, what they do for the business, maybe in a quick 60 seconds at a networking or something like that, or you're putting it out on social media on marketing. But to be able to sit and talk about it and get genuinely asked questions about it, it does give you that moment to reflect and say, Yeah, I I do this. And actually, I've been doing this very well for 10 years. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_00 24:12

Well, it's amazing how suddenly the time does pass and you realize that you've worked with different people in different contexts and different circumstances, from school leavers through to people who are dabbling in a new career post-retirement from their original jobs. And um it's an opportunity to reflect really and think out loud about where those common threads are across the people that I've worked with over the last um few years in particular.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

Well, you're giving people a voice as well, in a way, but also coaching them to give them the right voice in the right scenario.

SPEAKER_00 25:02

Well, I like to think that the skills that they can use to um get on better with people at work, um, in particular where now we work in a very um collaborative way, often online, often at a distance, a lot of people relying on asking for things they need in emails or setting things up in um in written communication. Those skills are equally useful outside of work, with um communicating with family and with friends and with in-laws and with social groups or community groups or charities that we might volunteer with, um parent-teacher associations through to community groups. These principles are the same, and there's not many elements of our job when it comes to the technical training that can always be as transferable.

SPEAKER_01 26:02

Do you know what? I never thought about that really. If you're getting coached to do that, you can use that in so many different scenarios in your personal life. Like you say, it might be dealing with children or elderly parents, or like you say, if you volunteer, or just having those conversations, but in a more meaningful way, that's a better outcome for everyone, just by the way that you speak in and saying it all.

SPEAKER_00 26:33

And that better outcome so often is talking about what you want to see in the future, because you cannot change the past, and too often we get drawn back over what happened last time or where this all started, or examples of things that haven't worked well in the past, and that's the one area that we can't change, and that's where the relationships again, the tension starts to build because very soon people are arguing as to why they did something or what led them to do that then. Whereas with young children, it's next time we're there, I need you to do this, or I want you to do this, or I'd like you to do this instead and talk about the present and the future.

SPEAKER_01 27:26

Yeah. I I can't remember where I was reading something about that. The past is in the past for a reason that you need to be leaving it no matter what it was, and be starting from now in today and moving forward. And too many people don't do that, they desperately want to keep going over the past, and by the time you've gone over that bit, you never get to the next bit because you've fallen out by then.

SPEAKER_00 27:56

Yeah, yeah. Or in business settings, often people say, Well, our meetings are all right. We always start our meetings by reviewing the actions from the last meeting. And I just imagine the sense of dread that must fill the room and think people thinking, Oh, I've not had a chance to read those yet, I've not had a chance to do those yet. Maybe by the time we get through all this, we're only going to have a couple of minutes left and things are going to be carried forward rather than starting with the end in mind instead, around right, given we're all here, given we've got 30 minutes, what are the priorities that we're going to need to cover? And then we'll make sure those are replaced and the actions from this meeting, or those are added to the meeting notes from last time, so that people then feel far more comfortable that they're not waiting to be found out or oh told off, all that sort of childish behaviour.

SPEAKER_01 28:56

I literally could not agree more. That was my biggest dread with going to these meetings. Oh, we've got this on so meeting. Right, let's have a look at the action points from the last meeting and and the summary of the last meeting. I'm like, hang on. I used to go, hang on a minute. Why are we having a meeting about the last meeting? We've had that meeting. Can we just talk about today's agenda? Because by the time we get there, we've got five minutes, and then we'll we'll not have done that, and that'll have to carry over. And we're having meetings about meetings about meetings, about previous meetings. I used to go in those meetings with a dread, and I used to say, if ever I'm leading these meetings, this is not gonna happen. Honestly, in corporates, it's a nightmare. You'll know this. It's just a meeting about a meeting about a meeting, and people, you can see they walk in, they bent over, they they go out, they're half bent over still, because they're like, oh, it's drudgery, you know.

SPEAKER_00 29:59

It can be and that's where too much of what you've said to me goes unsaid to the people that organise it. And those types of conversations, when I hear that, I can think of three, four, five things that people can bring up around making some of that a change, making it a cultural change in the way that they can have that impact on starting the conversation differently next time, or having more influence so that the next meeting does have a chance of being done in half the time rather than people suffering, just suffering too much and dreading going back into that sort of environment.

SPEAKER_01 30:45

It is, and then nobody wants to go to the blooming meeting anyway, let alone talk at the meeting or if give their input in the meeting because they think, oh god, it's just gonna go on even longer, so I'm not gonna speak out. So I think what you're doing is amazing that you're giving people that opportunity. If anybody wants you to coach them or train them and being able to speak up, speak properly, get what they want, have meaningful conversations, how do they get in touch with you, Sarah?

SPEAKER_00 31:19

LinkedIn is the easiest way to find me. Um we have a website, interactives.com, but because we're a French company, it's spelt unusually. So my name is Sarah Hansen, H-A-N-S-O-N, and it's far easier to find me on LinkedIn. And I would absolutely love to continue this type of conversation with any of your listeners.

SPEAKER_01 31:46

Thank you for joining me today.

SPEAKER_00 31:48

It's been such a pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 31:50

Thank you for listening to It's Your Business. If you want help with podcast training, podcast production, or support with your show, visit www.furrypodmother.co.uk. And if you've enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, follow, and leave a review. It makes a huge difference and helps other businesses just like you find it. See you next time.