Credibility Over Charisma with Heather Hansen (Pt 2)

🎧 Episode 204: Credibility Over Charisma with Heather Hansen (Pt 2)

In Part 2 of this powerful conversation, Sonnie continues her discussion with Heather Hansen, credibility expert, leadership strategist, and author of The Elegant Warrior: How To Win Life's Trials Without Losing Yourself.

After unpacking the foundations of credibility in Part 1, this episode explores how those principles play out in the real world…especially when leaders are navigating conflict, uncertainty, and pressure.

Heather explains why our nervous system often hijacks our communication in difficult conversations and shares practical techniques leaders can use to stay grounded and respond thoughtfully instead of reacting emotionally. New Episode 392026, 102513 PM

The conversation also explores how credibility has evolved in the digital era, why influence on social media doesn’t always equal expertise, and how leaders can communicate with authenticity in a world full of curated highlight reels. New Episode 392026, 102513 PM

Heather also offers powerful insights for women navigating executive leadership, explaining why belief, evidence, and inner confidence shape the way others perceive authority and presence. New Episode 392026, 102513 PM

This episode is filled with practical leadership wisdom for anyone who wants to communicate with conviction, build trust that lasts, and lead with credibility in moments that matter most.

Key Takeaways from This Episode

✨ Your nervous system influences your leadership.

In tense moments, leaders often fall into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn responses unless they intentionally calm their nervous system. New Episode 392026, 102513 PM

✨ Three simple ways to ground yourself in conflict.

Heather shares three techniques leaders can use to regain control during difficult conversations:

• Breathing patterns that calm the nervous system

• Adjusting body posture

• Simple physical grounding techniques like hand pressure holds. New Episode 392026, 102513 PM

✨ Influence on social media doesn’t always equal credibility.

People often trust voices that understand their pain, even if those voices lack expertise…which creates both opportunity and risk in the digital age. New Episode 392026, 102513 PM

✨ Stories need evidence to be credible.

Persuasive storytelling must be supported by facts and evidence, or trust begins to erode. New Episode 392026, 102513 PM

✨ Confidence begins with belief.

Your tone of voice reflects your internal beliefs, which means executive presence begins with building genuine belief in yourself and your preparation. New Episode 392026, 102513 PM

✨ Collect evidence that you belong in the room.

When self-doubt creeps in, act like the attorney arguing your own case…gather evidence that supports your capability and readiness.

A Few Moments That Stand Out

• Heather explains the four instinctive reactions leaders have in conflict and why most orga

A rising tide raises all ships, and I invite you along on this journey to Evoke Greatness!

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Transcript

Why Visible Hands Build Trust

SPEAKER_01 0:00

There are parts of charisma and credibility that have to do with your body language. One of the things, for example, if people can see your hands, they are more likely to trust you. There's a study that I love that showed that in a criminal trial, if a defendant has their hands on top of counsel table during the trial, the jury's more likely to find for them than if they have their hands hidden under the table for the trial. Because when someone can see your hands, they can see.

Fight Flight Freeze Fawn In Conflict

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Welcome to Evoke Greatness, the podcast for bold leaders and big dreamers who refuse to settle. I'm your host, Sonny. I started in Scrubs over 20 years ago doing the gritty, unseen work and climbed my way to CEO. Every rung of that ladder taught me something worth passing on. Lessons in leadership, resilience, and what it really takes to rise. You'll hear raw conversations, unfiltered truths, and the kind of wisdom that ignites something deeper in you. Your courage, your conviction, your calling. This show will help you think bigger, lead better, and show up bolder in every part of your life. This is your place to grow. Let's rise together. What happens when tension rises, conflict surfaces, and your credibility is suddenly being tested? In part two of this conversation with credibility expert and former trial lawyer Heather Hansen, we move from theory into real-world leadership moments. Heather reveals practical strategies leaders can use to navigate conflict, calm their nervous system, and maintain credibility even when emotions run high. You'll also hear a fascinating breakdown of how social media has reshaped credibility and why influence today doesn't always belong to the most qualified voice. If you've ever walked into a tough conversation, questioned your confidence in a high-stakes moment, or wondered how to build executive presence without pretending to be someone you're not, this episode is for you. Now let's hop into it. What do most leaders do instinctively in in those sort of tense situations or conversations that actually works against them?

SPEAKER_01 2:25

So it is completely natural in these conversations to, and it's almost undeniable to slip into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Right? These are it we think of typically the fight and flight instinct. So in conflict, you fight the other person or you run away and avoid the conflict. And that's what you just described a couple of minutes ago, Sunny, the two different sort of cultures. Some people just fly away from it. They take flight and they don't have the conflict at all. And others, it's super aggressive fighting. But there's also freezing where you sort of get into the room and don't know what to say and you don't say anything. And then often there are people who fawn. They submit. They just say, you can have what you want. I just want to keep the peace. And so those things are utterly natural. They are natural responses. But what you have to do is sort of get to a place where you can calm your nervous system and focus on the goal, the big goal, not the goal of like this little, this little battle, but the bigger goal of a healthy culture, of innovation, of achieving the goals of the company over time that is not going to be served by this high-stakes aggressive conflict, because most leaders don't tend to fawn anymore. They tend to fight. And that fight can leave a lot of destruction in its wake. And so to take that step back and just calm the nervous system before you go into what you're seeing as a conflict situation is going to be really powerful and help you to respond instead of reacting.

Three Ways To Ground Fast

SPEAKER_00 4:00

What are a couple of ways if someone is in that situation and they're like, gosh, I wish I had a takeaway. I may live in this may be the water that I swim in, and I really want to ground myself better. What are a couple of just small things that they can do that are only, they're the only ones who are who know that they're going to be doing this. But once they're in that situation again, they can ground themselves through these things. I love this question.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

So I also am certified in hypnosis and I've done a lot of work with studying the nervous system and the body and how it responds. So there's three B's that they can do, and it depends on which of these you like. One is breathe. You know, we talk about breathing a lot, but what we don't sometimes know is that inhaling activates the sympathetic nervous system. It's going to get you more excited, more likely to fight. It's the exhale that activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which is going to calm you down. So if breathing is the bee you choose, then you want to do an inhale of four, hold for four, and an exhale of eight. And that's going to calm down your nervous system. So breathing is one. Another is bending. When you bend in, and if you're listening and not watching, it's that slouching over, it's the fetal position, it's that protecting of the delicate parts of your body in the front that can be hurt. That is telling your nervous system that you are in danger. And so you want to bend out or extend, right? You want to pull your shoulders back. You want to sit up straight because it's telling your body I am safe enough that I'm comfortable exposing my vulnerable body parts. So that's bending. And then the last one is I call it binding. And this comes from the ancient Japanese art of Jin Shin, J-I-N-S-H-I-N. And it's a form of acupressure. And they have all these holds that they do on different parts of the body for different things. But there's a very straightforward one that has to do with your hand. So if you just take one of your hands and you grab your thumb of the other hand and apply a little bit of pressure, that enginshin is a bind that will allow you to calm the nervous system because there's a lot of anxiety receptors in your thumbs. This is why thumb sucking for some people has was effective as a child. And so you can do it with either thumb. I love that one because when I was doing a lot of television, before I even knew about gin chin, I would find myself grabbing onto my thumb in the makeup chair. And so when I heard about it afterwards, I knew that that my body just goes there without me telling it to. But so you've got the bind of grabbing your thumb. And let me just finish because it's an interesting thing for gin chin. All of your fingers have different receptors. So your index finger is for fear, your middle finger is for anger, very appropriately for anger. Your ring finger is for sadness, and your pinky finger is for trying too hard. So it spells out fast. So if you're a leader going into conflict and you're feeling really angry, grab that middle finger under the table. No one has to know. And it's also a reminder to your subconscious, okay, we want to respond and not react. If you're afraid, you grab the index finger. But if you're just feeling all the feelings, then grab onto those thumbs under the table. No one knows the difference. You can even do it like if you're standing in front of a group and you just, you know, right now I'm I'm grabbing my thumb and no one knows the difference. So I like binding, but breathing and bending are also really effective.

Social Media And Credibility Shifts

SPEAKER_00 7:26

Excellent. I love that. I love when we can give listeners just that thing, that little thing, that subtle thing that they can do that can add some sort of value in the situation that they are in, especially when it's like a de-escalation moment. Totally. I'm curious your perspective, you know, as I think about credibility and I think about confidence and charisma, all of those things. How do you think social media has impacted this sort of credibility where we used to be in front of each other and you get a sense of somebody's body language and the way that they're engaging? Whereas now so much of it is digital and we're behind images that, you know, may or may not be highlight reels. How has that impacted? I'm I'm curious about your take on that.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

I so there's two things I would like to touch upon there. There's the fact that it's on screens and not cameras, which is where your question is going. But I want to remember to go back to the credibility um triangle with that. But let's start with on camera. It is a very different endeavor to connect with people and build credibility on camera, because there are parts of charisma and credibility that have to do with your body language and your facial expressions, and most importantly, your tone of voice. But one of the things, for example, if people can see your hands, they are more likely to trust you. There's a study that I love that showed that in a criminal trial, I never did criminal work, but in a criminal trial, if a defendant has their hands on top of counsel table during the trial, the jury's more likely to find for them than if they have their hands hidden under the table for the trial. Because when someone can see your hands, they can see you're not holding a weapon. And the primitive part of your brain feels more safe. And because on camera, our hands are, I tend to be hands-y, so you can often see my hands as I'm talking, but it makes our primitive brains already a little bit less comfortable with the person we're talking to. And so if you're looking to build your credibility on camera, you want to make sure that your hands are within the space of and not crazy. Although crazy may actually be helpful. I've told uh witnesses before testifying about the importance of hands. And I had one witness who kept knocking the microphone off the stand because he was so active with his hands. And he, we still won. So maybe error on the side of the hands. But that's one thing on camera that's different. And then also there's this sort of, you know, we've talked about vulnerability. And now I think the pendulum has swung that there's a lot of people who are being overly vulnerable or almost fake vulnerable on social media because they think it builds their credibility. And people are getting savvy to that. So I think that the camera thing, it's very context dependent. And so if it's a leader who's addressing their team or their board on camera or via Zoom, that's going to be a different type of presentation and body language that we want to talk about than a social media entrepreneur who wants to connect with their people. But I do think that people are getting very tuned into, and then with AI, it's a whole other thing, right? So is it human and all of that? It's a it's a big topic that we all need to be very discerning. I mean, the other side of the coin that we can talk about with credibility is how do you judge other people's credibility? But that's but that's an important thing. But also, I think one of the things that leaders need to know is that social media is a great example of, especially in the medical space, there's a lot of wellness people on Instagram and the social media and TikTok that are telling people, don't go to the doctor, drink this drink, or you know, you can you can head off your diabetes or your hypertension by just doing this thing. And they don't have the experience, they don't have the training, they don't have the expertise, but they have that bottom foundation of the belief triangle where the people watching say, this person has been through what I've been through. They have felt my pain, they understand how life-changing it is, they understand I don't want to go on these medications. And so if they're they're over-indexing there, and you as a well-credentialed leader are over-indexing on one of the sides, they might beat you out on the credibility question. So you really want to be aware of talking to people in a way that they feel like you understand their problem, or else your expertise may not have the weight you want it to have.

SPEAKER_00 11:49

Yeah, I think it's taken an interesting shift as an observer on that side of things, is you know, it used to be like, oh my gosh, so-and-so has this amazing life. And gosh, my life is nothing like that. And of course, you know, no one's life is perfect. And that's where the kind of the term highlight reels is someone only shows the really great times. And then now I think it's gotten to this place where it just like social media platforms, and likely because of whatever influencer or person who is, whether that's a medical professional, you know, true social media influencer, they are gaining such credibility that it's from my perspective, it's a little scary how much credibility when they're really less of an expert and more of an influencer. I mean, that's kind of part of the role.

SPEAKER_01 12:31

100%. And the thing is, and it's something that leaders worry about, right? Because if that person has more influence than you do, then things are going to change in a way that you will lose control. You will lose your ability to collaborate with people if they're being influenced by someone who doesn't understand, truly doesn't understand. And so you can either bemoan that or you can learn how to build that credibility where the people you're talking to really believe that you can help them.

How To Judge Credibility Better

SPEAKER_00 13:01

Yeah. Going back to your comment, how do we judge others' credibility?

SPEAKER_01 13:06

Yeah, it's really important to really, it's I hate to say this because I don't want people walking around like defensive and suspicious, but you want to be a little suspicious. If you have a little voice that says that doesn't sound right to me, explore it and ask questions. And the biggest thing is look for inconsistencies. You know, inconsistencies are a sign of some sort of mismatch. It doesn't necessarily mean someone's lying. But if someone tells you, yeah, I went to Harvard, but then you look on their LinkedIn and you don't see that they went to Harvard, or if they talk about the time that they did this, you know, this, they try this innovation at this other place, and then you do a little bit of research and you see that they weren't actually at that other place, those inconsistencies are worth following up on. Because so many times, you know, I once wrote an article about Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos and that that whole thing. And I think that what happened there, I mean, there's a lot that we're still finding out, and there's like male, female, and there's a lot there. But I think also people were just people were recommending her, and they were relying, everybody was relying on the credibility of the person who recommended her without actually diving into what is she saying and what's the what's actually going on? What's the science behind that? What are the facts behind that? What's the evidence? And does the evidence, the evidence, like evidence is everything? Does the evidence support the story? Because stories without evidence are not credible, but we're buying it more than we should be. And so there's really it's a skill to be discerning. And it's really just asking yourself, what's the evidence here? What evidence supports what this person is saying? And what evidence also negates it, contradicts it?

SPEAKER_00 14:52

You want to be aware of that. Yeah, I also think that helps um by way of navigating uh circumstances. And so what that made me think about was a situation recently where we're evaluating whether or not, you know, we're evaluating leaders, right? Let's just say kind of as a blanket statement. And it's we are when we're new to a situation, it's kind of difficult for us to assess, right? And so you have to dive in, you have to learn more about the situation. And what just through transition, sometimes we fail to learn as much as we should. And then if someone should leave and we didn't know everything that they did, boom, you have this immediate gap and you didn't see it coming. You didn't anticipate it. And so a conversation that I've driven with my team is around like, hey, do you fully understand what someone does? Like, are you asking all the questions where you really get, you know, and and worst case scenario, if this person leaves, what does that look like? And best case scenario if this person stays, what does that look like? But the evaluation really causes us to like look deeper, investigate, and learn the details. And sometimes we just want to kind of take a big picture look at things and feel like, okay, that checks the box. But I do think that comes into play when you're really like deeply evaluating something because it's like you have these little things that go off in your mind for a reason. And I think it does, I think it's an art to be able to start paying attention to those things. Some people will call it a you know, gut feeling or um a sort of like spidey sense. But I think we really do, to your point, have to pay really close attention to those things.

Executive Presence For Women

SPEAKER_01 16:24

Absolutely. And you have to be willing to um not just be Pollyanna about them, but actually say, you know, what could happen if this goes wrong? It's, you know, the the pre-mortem that they often do in again in medicine. Like if everything, if this went badly, what would have to happen for it to have gone badly? You know, and to really pick that apart. If if I'm wrong, what what would have, if at the end of the day I made the wrong decision, what would have led to that decision? Who did I trust? What story did I buy? What did I not explore further? And when you're making those, you can't do it every day. You know, Jeff Bezos talks about the two-way doors and the one-way doors, right? There are some decisions that you can make the decision and then you can go back on the decision easily. And those would be the two-way doors, right? But there are some decisions that once you walk through that door, it's going to be very difficult to walk back out. And when you're facing those decisions, you want to look at it and say, okay, let's say this decision was wrong. What are all the reasons it was wrong? And tap into your team. I mean, you you mentioned that you did that, right? You said, do we really know? That just again shows your leadership abilities and your emotional intelligence to say, because they know things you don't and they see things you don't. And this is why psychological safety makes such a difference in organizations, because if they're able to say to you, I see something you're missing, or just I see something, they don't even have to tell you that you're missing it, then you might really stop yourself from making a major mistake or allow yourself to adjust the decision so that you take that into consideration.

unknown 17:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

I'm curious, you know, we go back to kind of this age-old um executive presence, you know, and kind of defining and and getting at what really is executive presence, but kind of a different spin on it. What advice do you have for women who are told they need to be more confident or more charismatic in order to continue advancing in their career?

SPEAKER_01 18:17

Yeah, I think it's a real thing. And I think that there is executive presence is important. The way that you hold yourself, the way that you enter a room is important. But I love to talk about this because I think that there's a there's science about it and it sort of supports a different take. So there's science out of Yale that says that you can tell more about a person's emotions from their tone of voice than their body language and their facial expressions combined. So that's important for a couple of reasons. What, right? One is that that same research also says it's very difficult to fake your voice. You know, we can do power poses and look like we're very confident coming into a room and we can smile even if we're sad or scared or frustrated or angry, but our voice will betray us. So some of you might be like, well, that's just great. What am I supposed to do with that? But the good news is that means that your work, especially as a woman, is to work on your beliefs because your belief is always exhibited in your energy, your tone of voice. And so before you go into that room, you've got to manage. I hate the imposter syndrome thing, but I know many of us feel it. That's it's a real thing. You've got to manage that. You've got to, and we can talk about how to do this, but you've got to build the belief that you belong in that room. You've got to build the belief that, and it doesn't, you don't want to gaslight yourself. You can't fake yourself into believing it, but you've got to use evidence to build a belief that you really believe so that you can reflect that in your tone of voice. And it might not be, I'm the best thing since sliced bread. It might be, I belong in this room. It might not be, I'm gonna knock this out of the park. It might be, I'm going to do myself proud. I'm going to learn a lot in this conversation. I'm going to prove to myself that I can do hard things. All of those beliefs are going to reflect something more positive in your voice than the belief, I don't belong here, I am petrified, I'm not ready. I mean, those way that that will reflect in your voice is going to hurt your executive presence. So you've got to sort of, I've thrown a lot of things at you, Sonny, but you there's a ladder of beliefs and you've got to find where on that ladder is accessible to you. And then you've got to collect and create evidence that gets you to that belief.

SPEAKER_00 20:45

It's awesome. There's a sense of self-awareness there too. You you really do have to identify where you are and what is accessible to you, right? If I were had all the belief in the world and I wanted to go be a lawyer, but I don't have the education to do so, that's that's not accessible to me. So I think that's there's also that kind of dose of reality to say what really is accessible. Now, there are things that you have to do in in order to open up some accessibility. But I think that's continued up the ladder.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

100%. Evidence is everything, right? I if I wanted to be a gymnast, do I have any evidence that that's accessible to me? Right. And it may be that I am never going to get that evidence. And that's something that we don't talk about enough. But there are some things that aren't accessible. But most things are. And I think a lot of women step away from things before they look at the evidence that it is accessible. I think we err on the side of, oh, that's not accessible. Instead of looking at, so for example, you know, if you have left the workforce for a period of time because you are raising children, and now you want to return to the workforce and you say, Well, I don't believe that I have anything to bring to this situation because I've been doing, you know, raising children all this time. Well, what have you been doing that is evidence that you would be good in the work? You've been leading your Children, you've been handling conflicts, you've been managing the finances of your family. There is evidence there that you can believe that you have something to bring to the situation. You know young people, you know what it is to have a whole bunch of things, you know, uh plates in the air at the same time. There's a lot of ways to collect and create evidence to support the belief that you do belong in that room. And so you've got to play, you know, I talk about evidence a lot. You've got to play with the evidence. You've got to act as if you're the attorney who's given the case that you do belong in the room. If you were that attorney, what would you use for evidence? And then just start playing with it to see if there's something there that can sort of bring you up on that ladder of belief.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

I love that sort of role play though, because that really it almost allows you to visualize that the whole process.

SPEAKER_01 22:51

Well, and it allows you to take that step back, right? You know, Iliism is a word that means talking about yourself in the third person. And there's research that shows that when you do that, you tend to get less emotional and you tend to be better at sort of getting the things that you want. LeBron James famously did it. One time he said, LeBron James is going to do what's best for LeBron James. Women don't do this. Like there's not as many famous people that you can cite to who do this. But I think that women tend to create alter egos or they tend to externalize in this way. And so if you can say, okay, you're the attorney for the contention that you do belong in this room. You're the attorney for the case that you are a good leader. What's the evidence? Make that case for me. Stop making the case that you're not, because that's what we tend to do, right? We tend to make the case that we're not ready, we're not good enough. And then our inner jury that has to choose what to believe only hears the negative. So at the very least, task yourself with being the attorney that you are ready, that you are good enough, that you are, you do have what it takes, and collect and create the evidence. And then creating evidence means going out and getting some experience to support the idea that you're ready.

SPEAKER_00 24:10

This conversation is so good. It's been so productive. Just again, as we talked about a little bit beforehand, some of it feels selfish, right? Because I feel like I get so much out of these types of interviews, but it also really, really serves my audience. And so I'm so grateful. As we wrap up, there's a question that I always love to ask my guests. And that is you've had a lot of lived experience throughout your career, throughout life. And if it were your last day on earth and of all that wisdom that you acquired, you could impart one piece of advice to the world. What would that be?

Final Lesson And Closing CTA

SPEAKER_01 24:40

You can't prove something until you believe it. And so when you are, and it goes back to the conversation we've just had, right? You have got to be in belief first because you won't see all the evidence if you don't believe it and you haven't looked at all the evidence. And your tone, your energy will relay your doubt. And so really work on the inner jury, your own self first, and then as a leader, go out and present to your team, your board, your constituents, because then you are far more likely to have that credibility and that charisma that's going to get you over the over the top. Love it.

SPEAKER_00 25:20

Well, Heather, it has been an absolute delight having you on. You have shared so many gold nuggets with things that people actively navigate in their work life, in their personal life. There have been takeaways that people can implement as soon as this podcast is over, as soon as they're done listening it. And so I always love to be able to share takeaways like that with the audience. But I want to thank you for your time and sharing all of your experience on this topic. And I think folks definitely should go out and take and check out the book, your podcast. Where can people find and follow you and learn more about you?

SPEAKER_01 25:51

Belief Builders is my website for the leadership stuff. So they will find everything there. And then on Instagram, um, well, I'm on LinkedIn, of course. And then on Instagram, I'm at AnneElegantWarrior. Um, and I share a lot of these things there as well. And Sonny, your podcast is just phenomenal. It really is giving people things across the gamut of topics that really help us to be better leaders. So I've been, it's been such a pleasure to chat with you.

SPEAKER_00 26:19

Well, thank you for your contribution and that effort.

SPEAKER_01 26:23

I will it's been awesome.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

I will have all of those links in the show notes as well. So you guys, it's a click away. Make sure to check out Heather. She is doing amazing things. So grateful to have you on. My pleasure. If today's episode challenged you, moved you, or lit a fire in your soul, don't keep it to yourself. Share it with somebody who's ready to rise. Could I ask you to take 30 seconds to leave a review? It's the best way to say thank you and help this show reach more bold leaders like you. Because this isn't just a podcast, it's a movement. We're not here to play small. We're here to lead loud, one bold and unapologetic step at a time. Until next time, stay bold, stay grounded, and make moves that make mediocre uncomfortable.