Hello, everyone, and welcome to What Fresh Hell laughing in the face of motherhood.

This is Margaret.

And this is Amy.

Today we're talking to Dr. Kate Mason.

She is a communications coach, a world champion debater, the mom of two boys, 10 and 7,

and the author of a new book which we'll be discussing today.

Powerfully likable, a woman's guide to effective communication. Welcome, Kate.

Thank you so much for having me.

I was so lit up reading this book. This is a topic I'm thinking about so much. I have a 13-year-old daughter, and we've had discussions about it on the podcast, balancing this idea of niceness and strength

and being the right kind of woman versus being the kind of woman you want to be.

There's so much wrapped up in having a teenage daughter.

And you start to examine these things for yourself as you start to try to model and parent them for your child.

You talk about starting to explore this first in your debate career. So tell us a little bit about how you came to this topic.

Yeah, I think teenage me was the first who started thinking about this as well. I started debate

when I was 10. I would turn bright red and I would physically shake. I'd be so nervous,

but something kept drawing me back and back to this space where I felt like, in hindsight,

I realized it was a place that I could have the stage. You know, you had the floor for a number of

minutes that were all yours. And probably as a place where I could get out all of that like I told you so

energy that I think I had as a young girl right you have sort of permission to do that so that was the

beginning of me thinking about that and certainly in Australia where I grew up debate is a very

male dominated or it was at the time a very male-dominated place.

So I was constantly in all-male teams. I was often the only girl or the only young woman in

...