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Conversation themes
- Kendra’s personal journey, including her experience as an adopted child and how it influenced her need to belong and excel, shaping her communication skills and career choices.
- Empathy as a Superpower: The ability to empathise deeply with others by understanding their thoughts, fears, and barriers.
- Misunderstanding and Connection: How misunderstandings arise from the gap between intention and perception, and how they can lead to disconnection but also offer opportunities for deeper connection and understanding.
- Building Scaffolding: The necessity for people, especially those who are curious and caring, to build personal scaffolding to thrive in environments not always conducive to authenticity and growth.
- Authentic Communication: The importance of authentic communication for mission-driven organisations to effectively share their stories and connect with their communities.
Recorded 7 March 2024
Episode Intro
Everyone has that superpower – the thing about them that makes them unique, that makes them really good at what they do. Those are all because of the scaffolding that we've built around ourselves and in the things that we've learned and come through.
The phrase I like to use for my superpower is my 'empathy sandbox'. It's being able to take my ego, put it aside, and figuratively put on the shoes of the other person and play around in that space. What are their thoughts? What are their fears? What are they worried about? What are they thinking about? What barriers are they going to have to the things that I am trying to communicate, so then we can work through it together.
I work with mission driven organizations to find their voice and share their story. You know how to talk about your thing, but just because you have the language for it doesn't mean that the other person understands your
language.
How people receive it is as important as what say. So, being able to speak to people and meet people where they are is a big piece to the types of problems that I like to help solve.
You’re listening to the Still Curious Podcast with me, Danu Poyner, the show where I meet people who insist on relating to the world with curiosity and care – the people I call grokkists – and talk to them about the red thread that runs through their life story and which ultimately empowers them to flourish as their unrepeatable selves.
The voice you just heard belongs to my guest today, Kendra Fee-McNulty, who is the Founder of Raveloe+Co, an empathy-driven marketing and communications consultancy that helps impact-driven organizations and individuals better weave their own stories and connect with their communities, so they can do more good.
Today’s conversation is all about the power of communication.
We live in a world awash with misunderstanding. The messages we put out into the world are not are often not the same ones that other people receive.
Misunderstandings enter the world through this gap between what we intend and what others experience. And once the air is tainted with misunderstanding, what often results is confusion, hurt feelings, disconnection, and withdrawal.
Each of us has a deep need to feel seen, heard, valued, accepted, and understood, and often our journey through life is propelled by the momentum of those moments where that failed to happen.
This is a common experience for grokkists in particular.
I had recently asked my husband Drew to build a scenario where, if he had to build my worst nightmare, what would it be? And he said put you in a situation where there are authority figures who will not listen to you. When you actually do have the context and you know a lot and you're in a position where there's a higher up or someone with more authority who disregards that experience, and that would drive you bonkers.
Perhaps one of the reasons grokkists have a thirst for understanding is precisely because we are ourselves so used to being misunderstood.
If we can get inside people’s heads enough, if we can gather enough information, if we can understand all the rules of how the world works and see how it all fits together, maybe, just maybe, we can avoid the pain of being misunderstood next time.
If we can step outside misunderstanding as a place of fear, hurt and shame, we might also find that it can be a bridge to greater connection and belonging – a bridge built from curiosity and care.
More than that, misunderstanding can be an opportunity for connection. It can be a place where superpowers are born.
Being adopted, one of the things that my parents would tell me was 'you're special, we got to pick you.' So there was always that sense of belonging.
Inverse to that, I think in my tiny toddler brain, there are parts of me that were like, 'well I'd better live up to that! I'd better make sure that I'm an exceptional individual. I'd better make sure that I'm good in all of these things and in pleasing these people who chose me.'
That shadowy story arc has definitely played a big role in my life in how I engage and how I interact. It also gave me my superpower to a certain extent.
Kendra has always been interested in making a positive impact. She loved learning about maths and science and, with genetics and gene therapy all the rage in the early 2000s, she started out studying biotechnology with the aim of using genetics to cure a disease.
But when she got into a lab and found herself alone taking meticulous notes while moving a pipette back and forth all day, she realised this didn’t really fit who she was.
Already a keen photographer, she switched into biomedical photography and then into visual media, where she found an outlet for her creativity. A threshold moment came when she took a public speaking class with a woman who would become her mentor, Eileen Benz, igniting her passion for persuasive communication and leading her into the world of marketing.
Kendra readily acknowledges the ‘ick factor’ of marketing, which for many people is a thing that belongs in the devil’s toolbox and is responsible for emotional manipulation and the commercialisation of creativity.
But she also emphasises the importance of authentic communication that helps purpose-driven organisations and individuals to find and share their voice, because how people receive our message is as important as what we have to say.
In our wide-ranging conversation, we explore this tension between creativity and commerce, and the scaffolding work that curious and caring people must build around ourselves in order to function n situations and environments that aren’t always built for us to flourish as our authentic selves.
We talk about Kendra’s ADHD diagnosis and how this impacts her work, and the relief of finding communities of people you can relate to.
That moment of 'ohhh wait, you do that too? That's not just me? Like, I'm not failing as a human because I can't remember a date?!' That's so cathartic to feel when your entire life you felt like there was a deficit.
We also discuss Kendra’s experience with Toastmasters and how practising public speaking has helped her navigate imposter syndrome.
We consider how working with clients who have a shoestring budget can force creativity from constraints, and how her love of language and the imaginative worlds of sci-fi, fantasy and Dungeons and Dragons have all enriched her appreciation for the infinite game of finding the right words.
There's power in a name. That's Patrick Rothfuss, right? To pull another nerdy reference – the power of 'The Name Of The Wind'.
But I think that's probably too why I have such a love for branding when comes to marketing. Being able to talk to a company and get to the heart of it and getting those phrases, those words, those things that really speak to what they are or what they're trying to accomplish. I think that's super fun.
Through it all, Kendra returns to her touchstones of empathy, curiosity, and continuous learning, aiming to be a guiding force for others much like her mentor, Eileen Benz, was for her.
Kendra’s story is a testament to the power of personal passion and professional perseverance on the ebb-and-flow journey to becoming our whole selves. It’s a journey that contains many moments in which we are sure to recognise ourselves and I am grateful to Kendra for communicating it to me with such candour and clarity.
