When the Experts Turn the Lens on You

The episode

I’d been watching Erica Ehm for years before I understood what I was watching.

I knew the MuchMusic version — everyone my age did. But what I was actually watching, by the time I found her on LinkedIn, was someone who had built a digital agency in 2006, engaged hundreds of Canadian mothers as freelancers and contributors across the country before that model had a name, and was quietly one of the most sophisticated community builders in the country. The VJ was the public face. The strategist was the thing worth paying attention to.

I met her sister Leslie the same way I meet most people — by watching who Erica talked to. Leslie trains global corporations in communication and creativity. Disney. Google. Fifteen years. She wrote a book called Swagger about what happens when you stop assimilating and start showing up as the thing you actually are.

I had wanted to get them both on the podcast for a while. I said so publicly. Then I just asked. They said yes — and Leslie mentioned it was their first joint interview ever. I didn’t take that lightly. I said so: “Thanks for trusting me with your first joint interview.”

That trust is load-bearing for everything that follows.

What I heard

About twenty minutes in, Erica stopped the conversation and turned it around.

We’d been talking about listening — how she and Leslie both developed different versions of the same underlying skill, how their mother shaped both of them, how their approaches to reading people diverged while the purpose stayed constant. I’d been responding the way I always respond when I’m genuinely in a conversation: tracking not just what someone says but what they mean by what they say, and building on it.

Erica noticed.

“As we’re talking,” she said, “you keep responding with very insightful comments that imply you’re not just hearing us, but you understand a few levels down — not just what we’re saying, but what we mean by what we say.”

Leslie: “You’re a people lover. You’re a profound people lover. And I think that’s always at the heart of it — if you genuinely love and care about other humans, you pay attention.”

Erica kept going. She talked about how I use social media — not as a broadcast, but as the beginning of a conversation. That I introduce people. That I show up. That this is what social media was actually designed for and almost nobody uses it that way.

Erica: “Social media is not a push. It’s the beginning of a conversation. Every single thing that you post should be with an intent to have a conversation, to get feedback or to build a relationship in some way. I feel that you do that.”

I did something I don’t always do. I stopped and took the compliment. Out loud. On record. “I just want to highlight that and actually take that moment to shine.”

Where the AGA shows up

The assumption I want to examine isn’t theirs. It’s mine — and it’s the one most people in that chair would have bypassed entirely.

Most people, when two expert communication trainers pause mid-interview to give them specific, substantive feedback about how they show up, deflect. They say something like “oh, I don’t know about that” or “you’re too kind” or they laugh it off and redirect the conversation back to the guest. The deflection feels like humility. It isn’t. It’s the assumption that accepting the feedback would be somehow inappropriate — that the host’s job is to disappear into the service of the guest, and taking up space in the observation would violate something.

I didn’t do that. And I’ve thought about why.

Part of it is that I knew what I was walking into. I had studied these two women for years. Leslie can read what’s happening under the surface in five minutes — she says so herself, and the people she’s worked with confirm it. Erica watches how people engage, not just what they say. Inviting them onto the podcast meant inviting that level of attention. I knew the lens would turn at some point. The assumption I carried in was: I can handle what they see.

That’s not arrogance. It’s a different kind of preparation. Not I’ll impress them but I’ll be available to whatever they notice.

The AGA question this surfaces: what do you have to believe about yourself to stay open in the room? Not to perform openness — to actually be available to feedback from people who are very good at giving it?

Most communication training skips this question. It teaches the technique for receiving feedback without examining the assumption underneath the technique. If you believe, at some level, that what you’ll hear will diminish you — the technique won’t hold. You’ll deflect anyway, just more gracefully.

Leslie’s framing from Swagger applies here: no company handbook says assimilate into the Borg but people make that choice themselves. The same thing happens with feedback. Nobody tells you to deflect from a genuine observation. You just do it, from an assumption you’ve never examined.

What I've carried forward

Two things, and a postscript.

Years after we recorded this conversation, Erica was preparing for her interview for Blue Rodeo: Lost Together — a 2024 CBC documentary. She posted on Instagram asking her community for fan perspectives to bring into the room. I commented. She used my quote in the film. I found out months later when someone messaged me out of nowhere: “I was watching Lost Together and Erica was reading quotes about Blue Rodeo and one was from Nola Simon — wait, I know a Nola Simon.” My words, in a national documentary, right after Sarah McLachlan. I had no idea it was coming.

That’s Erica’s philosophy made visible. She takes what people give her genuinely and she uses it — not to promote them, not as a transaction, but because it’s good and it belongs in the room. The relationship produced that. The consistent presence over years produced that. The podcast didn’t cause it. The podcast was just one moment in a longer pattern that was already operating.

The first thing I’ve carried forward from the conversation itself is Erica’s distinction about social media, which I think is actually a distinction about all communication: it’s not a push, it’s the beginning of a conversation. Every post, every introduction, every connection is an invitation. The assumption that you’re broadcasting — that the transmission is complete when you hit send — misses the whole point of what you’re building. I knew this, but having it named out loud, in the context of being told I was doing it well, made it more precise. More usable.

The second is the moment itself. Taking the compliment. Not as a performance of self-confidence but as an act of intellectual honesty. If I’m going to ask people to examine the assumptions they’re carrying into rooms, I have to be willing to do it in mine. That means staying open when the feedback is good as well as when it’s hard. Deflecting a genuine observation because it centers me too much isn’t humility — it’s another form of self-protection.

That’s an assumption worth auditing.

If you want to go deeper

Listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts →

If you lead people and you’ve been trained in how to receive feedback but haven’t examined what you believe about what you’ll hear — that gap is worth looking at. The Assumption-Ground Audit starts there.