Drawing on research, including insights from Harvard Business Review, our Crina and Kirsten unpack a core truth: employees expect a lot from their managers—and rightly so. In a hybrid world, managers are responsible for clarity, feedback, support, and connection, often without much face-to-face time. And the single best tool to meet that moment is a regular check-in.

But not all check-ins work. The good ones are not status updates in disguise. They are focused on the employee—their priorities, their obstacles, and what they need today to move forward. Done right, the employee leads. They come prepared with what’s working, what’s not, and the one or two things that actually matter next. This is real-time career development, not a box-checking exercise.

We also talk about structure: agreeing on expectations, who owns the meeting, what gets discussed, and how often it happens. And yes—frequency matters. Cancelling sends a message, and it’s not a good one.

Then there’s feedback. Clear, direct, and specific—the “rifle, not shotgun” approach. Avoiding honesty doesn’t build kindness; it builds confusion. Paired with active listening, though, feedback becomes a trust accelerator. When employees feel heard and supported, they’re more engaged, less stressed, and far more likely to stay.

The takeaway is simple but not easy: check-ins don’t need to be perfect. But they do need to happen—and they need to mean something.

Drawing on research from McKinsey & Company and Boston Consulting Group, the episode starts with a myth-busting reality check: early in their careers, women’s ambition tracks almost identically to men’s -  but by the manager level, that gap widens significantly not because women lose drive, but because workplaces systematically drain it.

So what’s actually happening? Crina and Kirsten unpack the structural issues behind the idea that there is an ambition gap between men and women: women are less likely to have sponsors, less likely to have career advancement conversations with managers, and more likely to carry the invisible “people management tax”—the mentoring, emotional labor, and team support work that keeps organizations running but rarely leads to promotion. Add in a lack of visible role models in leadership, and the message becomes clear: “this path might not be for you.” Over time, ambition to achieve the next level on the ladder doesn't disappear—it gets recalibrated.

And here’s the twist: what looks like an “ambition gap” may be a rational decision. Before anyone starts wringing their hands about women “leaning out,” the episode pivots to something far more interesting: ambition isn’t shrinking—it’s evolving. New data shows that 86% of senior women leaders feel more ambitious than they did five years ago, and 92% are energized about what’s ahead.

The difference? Women are redefining what ambition actually means. It’s less about titles and linear ladders, and more about autonomy, flexibility, impact, and multi-dimensional careers. Today’s leaders are executives and advisors, founders and board members—crafting portfolios that reflect their values and lives, not corporate scripts.  

Crina and Kirsten land on a powerful reframe: the issue isn’t that women lack ambition—it’s that traditional workplaces lack imagination. When ambition is supported, visible, and aligned with real human priorities, it doesn’t fade. It expands - and that, listeners is what is happening for women who work.  Women aren’t opting out. They’re rewriting the rules.

SHOW NOTES

Tension starts it—a nagging sense something's wrong. Acknowledgment names the violated value. Escalation shares the concern calmly. Threat of Noncompliance draws your line. The Act seals it with clear action.

These aren't always linear, but spotting your stage turns anxiety into strategy.

Using the Defiance Compass: Ask three questions under pressure:

• Who am I? Anchor in your core values and legacy.
• What’s this situation? Weigh stakes, impact, and power plays.
• What would I do here? Match action to identity. This cycle keeps you intentional, dodging rash moves or spineless compliance.

Build Your Defiance Muscle:

• Anticipate: Replay past silences—what would you change?
• Visualize: Rehearse the moment in your mind.
• Practice: Role-play phrasing with a trusted ally.
• Repeat: Small challenges compound into real strength.

Picture greenlighting shaky marketing copy. Instead of nodding, you ask clarifying questions, flag the risk, then hold firm: "I can't sign off yet." Result? Better decisions, not chaos.

 SHOW NOTES

For over a decade, this report has tracked slow, incremental progress. Women now make up nearly 30% of the C-suite, up from 17%. But the underlying systems? Largely unchanged.

And now, a new shift: women’s ambition is declining.

What We’re Seeing (Again)

Some findings won’t surprise you—but they should still frustrate you:

• The “broken rung” persists: for every 100 men promoted to manager, only 93 women are—dropping to 82 for Asian women and Latinas, and just 60 for Black women.  
• Representation shrinks at every level: from ~48% at entry level to ~28% in the C-suite.  
• Microaggressions remain common: 30–40% of women report daily bias.  
• The double burden is real: women continue to carry more unpaid labor at home.  
• Flexibility helps—but comes with penalties: remote women are less likely to be promoted.  
• Performance systems still favor men: women are less likely to be rated “excellent.”  
• Most companies still aren’t doing the full set of things that actually work.

What’s New (and Concerning)

This year’s report introduces a real shift:

• The ambition gap is growing: women are now less likely than men to want promotions (80% vs. 86%), with sharper gaps at entry and senior levels.  
• Corporate commitment is slipping: only 50% of companies prioritize women’s advancement—and many are rolling back programs.  
• Burnout is peaking for senior women: 60% report burnout, higher than men at the same level.  
• Flexibility stigma is measurable: remote women are advancing less, while companies reduce hybrid options.

So… What Gives?

If the system hasn’t meaningfully changed—and in some cases is backsliding—opting out starts to look less like a personal choice and more like a rational response.

What Needs to Happen

For companies and managers:

• Fix promotion pipelines with real data and accountability.  
• Invest in sponsorship (not just mentorship).  
• Address microaggressions in real time, not just in training decks.  
• Support managers so they can actually develop people.  
• Normalize flexibility without career penalties.  
• Stop quietly backing away from diversity commitments.

For individual women:

• Track your impact and advocate clearly for advancement.  
• Build networks and sponsorship relationships.  
• Make bold career moves—even before you feel “100% ready.”  
• Push for equity at home as well as at work.

The Bottom Line

The issue isn’t that women lack ambition—it’s that the cost of ambition remains too high.

So first: regulate. When cortisol is driving the bus, our executive function is in the back seat. Breathe. Take notes. Ask for 72 hours to review. We don’t have to debate our entire careers in a single meeting. And don’t sign blindly if you disagree—request time, add written comments, clarify whether you’re signing as “received” rather than “agreed.” At the same time, don’t give anyone ammunition; professionalism is our shield. Get clarity for what is missing in writing: ask for specific examples, request measurable targets, and what “success” looks like at the end of the period. If something feels legally risky—protected leave, discrimination—loop in HR or an employment attorney early. Calm is strategic.

Then comes the paradox: work the plan, even if you’re skeptical. We can translate the PIP into our own micro-goals. Treat it like a project with deliverables, evidence, and weekly metrics. Use check-ins wisely—bring receipts, ask what an “A” looks like, request training or resources, and get specific about the skills you’re expected to build. Meanwhile, manage the nervous system somewhere other than the manager’s office. And we need to consider whether we have the skills, experience and mindset to achieve the goals the employer set for us - and whether we have a chance at convincing our employer that his the case.

And yes, consider a parallel path. Update the résumé. Polish LinkedIn. Network quietly. Doing our best and planning our exit are not mutually exclusive; they’re smart risk management.  A PIP requires action, whether that be bringing our A game or finding something new - in the end, the choice is ours.

Our hosts unpack how and when PIPs are effective and conversely, what is just a waste of time and a cause for unnecessary tension and conflict.  Employers must trade vague critiques (“needs to be more proactive”) for measurable targets (“submit weekly reports by Friday at 3 p.m. with zero data errors”). A well-crafted PIP defines specific goals, timelines, support resources, and consequences—because fairness lives in clarity. It’s not about catching someone failing; it’s about giving them a fair shot at succeeding.

We also explored the delicate balance between empathy and accountability. Employers walk a tightrope: offering coaching, training, and regular check-ins while holding firm on standards. A PIP isn’t just a document; it’s an ongoing conversation. Done right, it becomes a roadmap for growth. Done poorly, it becomes a paper trail for regret.

And yes, documentation matters. Not because employers enjoy paperwork (they don’t), but because consistency protects everyone. A transparent process reduces bias, reinforces culture, and ensures that performance management isn’t arbitrary. It signals to the broader team that standards are real—and that support is, too.

Ultimately, PIPs can be good leadership in action. They require courage to address issues directly, discipline to measure progress objectively, the generosity to offer reasonable support and humanity to recognize that behind every metric is a person. Sometimes a PIP ends in renewed performance and restored confidence. Sometimes it ends in parting ways. Either way, when approached thoughtfully, it reflects an employer’s commitment to clarity, fairness, and the long-term health of the organization.

Social psychologist Tessa West considered anxious niceness—when politeness becomes a coping strategy rather than a leadership skill. Instead of honest feedback, we get:

• Vague praise
• Avoided questions
• Festering conflict
• And meetings where everyone agrees… then complains later

Unfortunately, harmony and effectiveness do not always go hand in hand.  Thoughtful disagreement is where creativity and effectiveness are more likely to occur.

We know about the likability labor women carry - the emotional load at work:

• 56% of women feel pressure to be likable (vs. 36% of men)
• Half hold back their real opinions
• Many feel compelled to “smile more” or soften statements with “I might be wrong, but…”

Being agreeable may feel safer—but it comes at a cost.  Agreeableness means people don’t get the information they need to improve; high performers feel invisible or stuck and confidence and growth stall.  Teams are also affected because problems stay underground until they explode; a nice culture quietly bleeds talent and psychological safety drops—even if everyone is kind.

How do we trade niceness for kind honesty - being specific; making candor routine, not dramatic; addressing conflict early and using simple structures that protect honesty.  Do away with nice and bring on kind honesty and candor.

Emotions involve your nervous system, body sensations, thoughts, and sometimes outward behavior; they are adaptive signals, not “good” or “bad.” The intensity, duration, and context of an emotion matter: how long it lasts, how strong it is, and how meaningful the situation is all shape whether your reaction fits the moment.

Cognitive psychologists like Aaron Beck and Albert Ellis showed that emotions are driven by interpretations of events, not the events themselves, which means your feelings often reflect your thoughts about reality more than reality itself. When those interpretations are biased or extreme, your emotions become “amplified,” turning manageable concern into overwhelming dread and often driving unhelpful behaviors at work and in relationships.

The seven emotional amplifiers

1. All‑or‑nothing thinking: Only total success “counts,” so anything less feels like failure.
2. Overgeneralization: One bad outcome becomes “this always happens to me.”
3. Magnification/catastrophizing: Low‑probability worst‑case scenarios feel like near‑certainties.
4. Jumping to conclusions: Neutral events (a missed call, a short email) get a negative meaning without evidence.
5. Mind reading: Assuming you know what others think about you—usually something critical—without checking.
6. “Should” statements: Rigid rules about how you, others, or the world must behave that fuel anger, resentment, and shame.
7. Personalization: Taking responsibility for outcomes shaped by many factors, leading to excessive guilt.

Thanks for Listening!

Nearly every cultural or religious tradition celebrates something this time of year, reminding us that humans are wired to pause, connect, and acknowledge progress. The same is true in the workplace.  Yet many of us struggle with this. We forget to mark milestones, skip over achievements, and move on to the next task. The research is clear: celebration isn’t frivolous; it’s foundational.

Celebration has transformative effects for individuals. A Socialcast study found that 69% of employees would work harder if they felt more appreciated. Celebration cultivates mutual uplift, shifting recognition from self-promotion to shared success. It increases visibility in a fast-moving workplace, helping people avoid anonymity and reinforcing a reputation for competence. And the act of pausing to reflect on accomplishments strengthens self-awareness and personal growth.  Celebrations boost morale, engagement, and loyalty while reducing turnover. They signal emotional safety and genuine appreciation—key ingredients of a healthy culture. 

And celebration doesn’t have to be elaborate. A recognition wall, a spontaneous team breakfast, a surprise treat, a personalized note—each small gesture plants a seed. The point isn’t perfection; it’s intention. When we celebrate, we tell our people they matter—and that changes everything.  Listen in for celebrations stories from Crina and Kirsten - so fun successes and some horrible warnings.

Brooks suggests that the ability to see others deeply—and to allow ourselves to be deeply seen—is essential to human flourishing. He posits that many of today’s social ills, including the loneliness epidemic and widespread mistrust, stem from our habit of skimming relationships, treating people as functions rather than as full, complex selves. The workplace, where we discover what people truly need—everything from health care, rest, culture, belonging—is one of the most powerful settings for rebuilding this lost capacity.

Brooks frames the aspiration of knowing others through the figure of the Illuminator, the person who makes others feel visible, valued, and understood. People - and particularly leaders - who act as Illuminators create psychological safety, mattering, and authenticity— can be cornerstones of strong workplace culture. Illuminators ask better questions, remain present in conversation, and resist one-size-fits-all assumptions. Their counterpart, the Diminisher, those who unintentionally lessen others, sees people through narrow judgment or distraction.

The book unfolds in three broad movements. “I See You” explores the foundations of genuine perception: curiosity, disciplined attention, and the humility to resist fast judgment. Brooks examines the obstacles—egotism, anxiety, naive realism, static mindsets—and contrasts them with the qualities that bring people closer: tenderness, receptivity, affection, generosity. Good conversation becomes an act of care: listening loudly, favoring familiarity, asking questions that make the speaker the author of their experience, and embracing silence as meaning-making.

“I See You in Your Struggles” addresses how disconnection fuels political animosity, technological dehumanization, and profound loneliness. When people aren’t seen, misunderstandings escalate—even to violence. Brooks emphasizes this concept he calls accompaniment: which means being with someone in hardship without rushing to fix them, honoring their unique point of view, and approaching them with humility.

Finally, “I See You With Your Strengths” turns to helping people live into their gifts. Understanding personality traits, life stage, and changing identities allows us to appreciate people in their evolving fullness. Seeing others deeply—at work and beyond—is ultimately the antidote to loneliness and a path to more humane, connected communities - and, as Brooks posits, may even be part of the antidote to our political divide.

Brooks suggests that the ability to see others deeply—and to allow ourselves to be deeply seen—is essential to human flourishing. He posits that many of today’s social ills, including the loneliness epidemic and widespread mistrust, stem from our habit of skimming relationships, treating people as functions rather than as full, complex selves. The workplace, where we discover what people truly need—everything from health care, rest, culture, belonging—is one of the most powerful settings for rebuilding this lost capacity.

Brooks frames the aspiration of knowing others through the figure of the Illuminator, the person who makes others feel visible, valued, and understood. People - and particularly leaders - who act as Illuminators create psychological safety, mattering, and authenticity— can be cornerstones of strong workplace culture. Illuminators ask better questions, remain present in conversation, and resist one-size-fits-all assumptions. Their counterpart, the Diminisher, those who unintentionally lessen others, sees people through narrow judgment or distraction.

The book unfolds in three broad movements. “I See You” explores the foundations of genuine perception: curiosity, disciplined attention, and the humility to resist fast judgment. Brooks examines the obstacles—egotism, anxiety, naive realism, static mindsets—and contrasts them with the qualities that bring people closer: tenderness, receptivity, affection, generosity. Good conversation becomes an act of care: listening loudly, favoring familiarity, asking questions that make the speaker the author of their experience, and embracing silence as meaning-making.

“I See You in Your Struggles” addresses how disconnection fuels political animosity, technological dehumanization, and profound loneliness. When people aren’t seen, misunderstandings escalate—even to violence. Brooks emphasizes this concept he calls accompaniment: which means being with someone in hardship without rushing to fix them, honoring their unique point of view, and approaching them with humility.

Finally, “I See You With Your Strengths” turns to helping people live into their gifts. Understanding personality traits, life stage, and changing identities allows us to appreciate people in their evolving fullness. Seeing others deeply—at work and beyond—is ultimately the antidote to loneliness and a path to more humane, connected communities - and, as Brooks posits, may even be part of the antidote to our political divide.

Moonlighting encompasses everything from freelance work and gig economy jobs to online businesses and passion and experiment projects. The concept of two jobs has evolved beyond traditional notions of “after-hours” work and now includes diverse forms of supplemental employment. Working two jobs raises questions about burnout, work-life balance, performance impacts, and whether to implement formal moonlighting policies.

The economic driver behind dual jobholding appears to be motivated by stress over job insecurity, with Gen Z, in particular, struggling.  69% of our Gen Zers live paycheck to paycheck, up from 57% in 2023. Burnout is also escalating. A March 2025 survey revealed 68% of Gen Z workers report burnout, and they’re hitting that wall earlier in life—around age 25—compared to prior generations. The pressure is compounded for women, who are more likely to juggle paid work with caregiving responsibilities, leading to chronic stress, health risks, and strained relationships.

Despite these challenges, second jobs often don’t hurt performance—but they do increase the risk of burnout and work-family conflict. That reality is prompting many forward-thinking employers to rethink their stance on moonlighting, which has generally been negative. Rather than discouraging side gigs, progressive organizations are adopting flexible schedules, mental health support, and career development strategies that align with employees' evolving needs.

Ultimately, moonlighting is not a fleeting trend—it reflects a structural shift in how Americans work and live. By acknowledging and supporting employees who hold second jobs, employers can foster engagement, loyalty, and resilience in an evolving economy. Supporting moonlighters isn't just about accommodating outside work—it's about adapting to a changing workforce with empathy, flexibility, and foresight.

From political turmoil to women's healthcare rights and the financial crunch from inflation, countless issues amplify our anxiety. With 1 in 5 women facing mental health challenges—think depression, PTSD, and anxiety—it's crucial to spotlight the unique hurdles women encounter, including the burden of unpaid labor and the ever-present pay gap. 

Recent research shows that women experience mental health conditions differently than men, and we're unpacking it all. We'll discuss the critical role of connection—our go-to remedy for many mental health issues—even when social interactions feel like climbing a mountain. Setting boundaries and carving out time for self-care isn't just important; it's essential. 

Join us as we break the stigma, share our insights on mental wellness, and ponder if a smaller circle might just be the secret to healing in our demanding world. It’s time to put your mental health first—tune in for the tools and conversation you need to thrive!

The magic happens when the right pairs are formed—think introverts with extroverts—to spark dynamic conversations. Engaging mentees in the process is key, as addressing any fears about crossing hierarchical lines lays the groundwork for trust. Without commitment, even the best matches can fizzle out.

The perks are hard to ignore: Companies with reverse mentoring programs report a 72% boost in communication and an impressive 96% retention rate for younger employees. Participants leave feeling empowered, fostering innovation and keeping leaders in tune with market shifts. Plus, it amplifies diversity and inclusion by shedding light on workplace challenges.

Take BNY Mellon, where the program has deepened connections and encouraged leaders to seek employee input. Others, like Estée Lauder and British Airways, have tapped into reverse mentoring to drive culture change and dismantle barriers.

In short, reverse mentoring is a two-way street, turning the wisdom of experience into fresh perspectives that invigorate the workplace.

Observation creates the feeling of being seen and heard—for both the observer and those around them. Observation requires not focusing cognitively, but noticing yourself, others, and the environment in real time, with awareness and intention. Writer David Brooks refers to particularly attentive individuals as “illuminators”—those who are persistently curious about others and help people feel truly understood. In contrast, “diminishers” are too self-absorbed to notice what’s happening around them.

Despite our good intentions, there are forces that work against our ability to observe. Power, for instance, has been shown to reduce perspective-taking and awareness of others. To combat this, leaders and people in power should deliberately switch into “observer mode,” especially in rooms where power dynamics are unequal. Other barriers include our negativity bias (we over-focusing on flaws), inattentional blindness (we miss what’s routine or familiar), and our psychological state (stress and urgency diminish our ability to notice others' needs).

There are practical, field-tested strategies to restore and strengthen observational power. Techniques include strategies listing “three good things” noticed during the day, using two-column notes (content vs. process), timeboxed round-robins to ensure equal airtime, and asking diagnostic questions like “What are we not seeing?” or “How could this fail?” Silent writing before group discussions helps quieter observers contribute, while brief reflective summaries during meetings—e.g., “Here’s what I’m hearing; what did I miss?”—can flush out hidden disagreement and signal active listening.

Finally, leaders should watch out for “power fog.” When those in charge speak with certainty, it’s critical to double-check assumptions and seek out dissenting or overlooked perspectives. 

Observation is a particularly crucial leadership tool—but it is important for all of us - and as Kirsten says, observation is surprisingly entertaining, often revealing, and always worth slowing down for.

Good Reads:

PubMedMoodle@UnitsPMC

The Silent Sex: Gender, Deliberation, and Institutions

Are Women the Silent Sex?

Power and Perspectives Not Taken

What Great Listeners Actually Do

Leaders must redefine success from personal achievement to enabling team performance. This includes developing empathy, resolving complex team conflicts, and delegating effectively. Delegation is especially crucial—it not only distributes workload but also fosters team development. New leaders must learn how to set expectations, offer appropriate support, and monitor progress without micromanaging.

Our motivation at work changes because our role changes - we are no longer the top performer, but supporting others to be the top performer.  Self-awareness also becomes more important. A leader’s emotions and behaviors have broader impacts, so maintaining composure and understanding one’s influence on others is key. Conflict resolution becomes even more important in a leadership role.Reflection takes on a larger role; leaders need to routinely evaluate what’s working, what’s not, and how their leadership style affects outcomes. 

Common pitfalls derail many new leaders. These include trying to do too much too quickly, over-relying on authority, micromanaging out of fear, making hasty changes, and lacking clarity around leadership philosophy and mindset. New leaders also struggle with setting boundaries, aligning with their boss’s priorities, and effectively communicating unpopular changes.

Harvard suggests three major mindset shifts to ease the transition:

1. From Expert to Coach: Instead of being the smartest person in the room, leaders help their managers develop judgment and independence. Asking probing questions and tolerating ambiguity are key to this shift.
2. From Execution to Driving Impact Through Others: Successful leaders move away from task management and toward creating the conditions for others to succeed. Although this shift can feel intangible, its effects—like better decision-making and long-term team growth—are meaningful and distinguish the exceptional leaders.
3. From Oversight to Scalable Systems: As responsibilities expand, leaders must focus on high-priority areas and create systems that enable delegation and escalation. Establishing clear thresholds for manager autonomy (e.g., budget limits or hiring decisions) prevents overload and ensures oversight remains strategic - and allows time for reflection - the thinking work of the leader.

Success in leadership comes from building systems, letting go of control and trusting others.

GOOD READS

Navigating the Jump from Manager to Executive

Ease your Transition from Individual Contributor to Leader | Odgers

Transition Traps - Inspired Leadership

Let’s go back to the holy grail of Google’s Project Aristotle, which took team-obsession to a new level.  Google spent twp years studying 180 teams to crack the high-performing team code. They discovered that talent and resources aren’t the magic ingredients—they’re just the gravy. The meat and potatoes or tofu and rice for the team? Psychological safety—the freedom to speak up, take risks, and make mistakes without fear of public humiliation. It turns out, when people feel safe to contribute, they get bold, creative, and collaborative.  Leaders create psychological safety with dependability, structure and clarity, meaning, and impact. 

McKinsey’s research builds on this, showing that effective teams come in different “archetypes.” A cycling team is like a NASCAR pit crew—specialized, coordinated, but with independent metrics. Agile software teams are more like relay squads—high interdependence and shared outcomes, where dropped balls ripple through the race. Surgical teams? Think rowing crew—total synchronicity, clearly defined roles, and an unshakable sense of belonging.  

To truly hum, teams need to tend to their “health drivers,” grouped into four areas. Configuration means having the right roles and perspectives. Alignment is clarity on purpose and shared commitment. Execution covers collaboration, communication, decision making, and feedback. Renewal—the often-overlooked one—ensures long-term sustainability through belonging, psychological safety, recognition, and trust.

Not every team needs to nail all of the team health drivers - of the 17 identified health drivers even top performing teams are only “very good” at about 11, which is like a C-! Four health drivers stand out as the performance heavyweights: trust, communication, innovative thinking, and decision making. 

Much of this is what we know - what is surprising is that just getting some of the elements that create healthy and effective teams right is a game-changer in the workplace.

And let’s not forget the recency bias. Most of us can’t remember what we had for lunch last week, let alone your Q1 wins. Performance reviews often rely heavily on the last six weeks—which means your January brilliance is now irrelevant.

We start with a flawed process that can feel deeply personal, which as we know is a bad mix for our ease, meaning and joy at work.

So what can we do?

Before the review, ask: What’s expected of me? What’s the goal of this review? Do you want a response? When?

During the review:

1. Listen—sometimes that’s enough.
2. Keep your cool—even if your face betrays you.
3. Ask questions—gently, curiously.
4. Buy time—especially if you didn’t see it coming.
5. Hunt for the helpful—what’s useful, what’s noise?
6. Craft your response—thanks, questions, or a plan.
7. If you're underperforming—own it. Ask what improvement looks like.
8. Show don’t tell—words are easy, action is powerful.
9. Create a plan—share it, follow up, stay engaged.

If you're surprised by feedback, that’s probably not failure—it’s probably information. Maybe your boss doesn’t give real-time feedback. Maybe expectations were never clearly shared. And there are times when we can be just not plugged in and self-aware - considering why we are surprised can be very helpful.

And remember: this isn’t just feedback on you. It’s also a window into your boss, your team, and your company. There’s data in how they deliver feedback, what they notice, and what they miss.

So take a breath. Accept the review as just one piece of a much bigger picture. Learn what you can. Then, let it go, Elsa. Let it go.

GOOD READS

Why You Might Want to Say Goodbye to the Annual Performance Review | Working Knowledge

How to Respond to a Performance Review: 9 Tips Employees Need to Know — ManageBetter

(32) How to Respond Effectively During Your Performance Review: A Guide to Standing Out and Driving Growth | LinkedIn

17 Phrases To Respond to Constructive Criticism, According to Psychologists - Parade

Responding to Feedback You Disagree With

Performance Reviews

So why do we overshare at work?

Sometimes it is because we want to feel seen. Without our usual support systems—family, friends, faith, community—we sometimes turn our coworkers into unwilling therapists. Stress is another biggie – and can cause all of us to vent from time to time. We mistake emotional outbursts for “processing.” Sometimes we don’t realize we’ve gone too far.   Sometimes we misread culture.  Social media has created norms of sharing that are in many cases not appropriate in the workplace.

Oversharing risks include: damaged credibility; gossip fuel, confused boundaries and just uncomfortable moments, which lead to uncomfortable relationships.

There is some clear guidance here - graphic health details, romantic chaos, money problems, coworker critiques, political or religious rants, constant negativity, and good old-fashioned trauma-dumping are no-gos.  Save that for your best friend.

But here’s the nuance: not all sharing is bad.  Strategic vulnerability builds trust when we consider relevance, timing, and audience. Saying “I’m overwhelmed” during a tough week = helpful. Saying “my child was arrested this week and is in jail” in the middle of the Monday morning staff meeting = probably nope.  Telling your supervisor – in private – or a trusted coworker, probably yes.  Your child’s arrest is not relevant to the Monday meeting, but it could very well be relevant to your performance and the need for time off so talking with your boss is appropriate because it is relevant and just with your boss at a time which of course you have confirmed is convenient.  Relevance.  Timing.  Audience.

Boundaries aren’t walls—they’re fences with gates. Absolutely we should open those gates, but wisely.

Good Reads (and a video!):

How to Stop Oversharing at Work (and Move On If You Slip) | The Muse

What to Share, What to Hold Back

The risks of oversharing at work are real. Here's how to set better boundaries - Fast Company

…vulnerability vs. oversharing — where to draw a line?

 Why Women Speak In TMI

Let’s start with a clarification: happiness and joy are not identical twins. Happiness is that bubbly high you get from winning a raffle or finding a parking spot downtown—it’s external,  fleeting, like confetti in the wind. Joy, on the other hand, is more of a soul-deep warmth—steady, internal, and linked to meaning and purpose. Happiness is like a 4th of July sparkler and joy is a campfire that keeps you cozy when life gets chilly.

Research says we all need three things for a fulfilling life: achievement, meaning, and joy.

Most overachievers nail the first two. But joy? That elusive third wheel often gets left in the dust under a pile of emails and grocery lists for our resident overachievers.

Why? It is just a matter of time, or rather lack thereof. A study of 1,500 busy Harvard alums found that after work, chores, and basic hygiene, people had a whopping three hours a day left for discretionary joy-seeking. How those three hours are spent is as important as the three hours themselves. Some folks squeezed the last drop of joy out of those hours and others, well, not so much.

So, how do the joy-masters do it?

• Engage with Others: Want joy? Get yourself some good friends—and Kirsten called it -particularly some friends who are good at joy - aka Crina. Meaningful conversation, shared laughs, music and maybe even some outdoor adventure. Joy multiplies when it’s a group project.
• Avoid the Couch Trap: Passive downtime (we’re looking at you, Netflix and doomscrolling) scores low on the joy meter. Opt for active pursuits—gardening, hiking, baking, even volunteering. Your joy-o-meter will thank you.
• Follow Your Passion: Do what you love. Autonomy is joy’s secret sauce.
• Mix It Up: Variety is the spice of joyful life. Too much of one hobby leads to diminishing returns (yes, even pickleball). Keep your free time fresh.
• Protect Your Time: Guard your off-hours like a mama bear. Detaching from work is essential. Each extra work hour may rob you of joy—each hour of leisure gives it back.

In the end, joy isn’t a luxury—it’s a rebellion, a survival tactic, and maybe, just maybe, your best productivity hack yet.

How the Busiest People Find Joy

Unwrapping the Science of Joy - John Templeton Foundation

Drawing on guidance from the Mayo Clinic, the episode breaks down assertiveness as a healthy, balanced communication style—firm but respectful, confident without being combative. It’s a powerful antidote to stress, resentment, and burnout, especially if you tend to overextend yourself in an effort to keep the peace. Unlike aggression, which bulldozes others, or passivity, which erases your own needs, assertiveness helps you communicate clearly while still honoring relationships and boundaries.

Listeners are reminded that assertiveness isn’t about being the loudest voice in the room—it’s about knowing what you need, expressing it directly, and listening to others with the same respect you expect in return. It’s a skill, not a personality trait, and it can be learned and practiced. The episode offers practical tools: use “I” statements to own your feelings, practice saying no without apology, and pay attention to your body language—standing tall, making eye contact, giving yourself some time to respond and staying calm in moments of tension.  And any of us who struggle with this may want to start small.

You’ll also learn how to identify the traps of passive or passive-aggressive behavior—like saying yes when you mean no, or expressing frustration through sarcasm—and how these patterns can damage relationships and leave you feeling powerless. With time and effort, assertiveness can lead to greater self-confidence, healthier connections, and more honest communication both at work and in your personal life.

The takeaway? Assertiveness isn’t just about getting what you want—it’s about being clear about who you are. Whether you’re dealing with a pushy colleague, a longtime friend, or a well-meaning but overbearing father-in-law, learning to assert yourself with clarity, confidence and calm is one of the most powerful tools we can develop.

Good Read:

Being assertive: Reduce stress, communicate better - Mayo Clinic

Now, let’s clear something up: mattering isn’t the same as belonging. Belonging says, “You’re one of us.” Mattering says, “You’re essential to us.” It’s not just about being invited to the meeting—it’s knowing your presence changes what happens in the room.

We explore how leaders can make mattering happen through one simple (but wildly uncommon) practice: noticing. It’s seeing your team for more than their output. It’s remembering that Ava’s prepping for a big client meeting or that Margaret is quietly holding the team together. As an example, it is the lovely leader who wrote down one meaningful detail about each employee every Friday and followed up on Mondays. No grand gestures—just consistent, personal attention. Her team was consistently the most engaged in the building.

And it’s not just about seeing—it’s about hearing. We go beyond the nod-and-smile version of active listening to something deeper. It’s listening for total meaning—what people say, how they say it, what they don’t say, and what they’re feeling underneath. It’s following up. It’s asking, “What did you mean by that?” or “How did that feel?” or “Tell me more” and being ready to actually hear the answer.

We also talk about how to affirm people without sounding like a motivational poster. True affirmation is personal and specific. It’s not “you’re amazing”—it’s “your attention to detail really added to the quality of our work product.” When people feel their unique strengths are noticed, they show up stronger, take feedback better, and stay longer.

Ease. Meaning. Joy. They’re not nice-to-haves. They’re what happens when people know they matter. Let’s get after creating some mattering!

More to read:

The Power of Mattering at Work

Four out of five non-graduates say they’ve experienced some form of judgment for not having a degree. Education-based stigma and discrimination among young adults not in 4-year college | BMC Psychology.  Many employers still cling to degree requirements as if they are a magic wand for competence. Meanwhile, a generation of students is waking up to the fact that college isn’t the only (or even the best) path. In 2023, there were four million fewer college students than a decade ago. Interesting.

But for non-college women, the journey without packing a college degree is anything but scenic. The economic reality is significant. Half of working-age non-college women aren’t working full-time. Their median annual income is just $35,000—30% less than non-college men. And while non-college men still find decent-paying jobs in fields like manufacturing or construction, the landscape for women is shrinking fast. Their sectors—think retail, caregiving, service—are unstable, underpaid, and rarely lead to careers. Third Way.

And yet, these women are the backbone of millions of households. Nearly four million homes with children rely solely on the income of a woman without a college degree. And while certificates and credentials could help, they don’t offer women the same financial bump they give men. A woman earns just a 16% wage premium from a certificate; men get 27%.

So why do degree requirements still rule? Employers think they signal capability. But studies are questioning the ROI of four-year degrees, and forward-thinking companies (and states!) are finally ditching the B.A. bias. More than 20 states have scrapped degree mandates for government jobs, and Congress is cooking up bipartisan plans to fund non-traditional learning paths through the Stronger Workforce for America Act and the Workforce Pell Act.

The takeaway? The “paper ceiling” is cracking. But breaking it wide open means recognizing that skill, drive, and talent don’t come with a diploma. It’s time we rewrite the rules—and the résumés—to build a workforce that actually works for everyone.

Another good read:

Americans can get behind dropping degree requirements—but employers and hiring managers keep propping up the 'paper ceiling' | Fortune

Research on authentic leadership shows that effective leaders don’t follow a specific checklist of traits or styles. Instead, leadership grows from a much deeper place: our life stories. Drawing from interviews with over 100 leaders and thousands of pages of transcripts, researchers found that great leadership is shaped through real-world challenges, self-reflection, and a willingness to lead from our values.  Discovering Your Authentic Leadership

Authentic leaders aren’t simply “being themselves”—they’re doing the ongoing work of knowing themselves. That includes:

-Reflecting on life experiences, including adversity, to understand what drives them -Practicing their values, especially when it’s hard or costly -Balancing extrinsic rewards (recognition, promotions) with intrinsic purpose   (meaning, impact) -Building strong support teams that offer perspective, truth, and unconditional encouragement

This research challenges the idea that leadership is about image, status, or "executive presence." Instead, proposes effective leadership grounded in honesty, clarity, and the courage to lead with integrity—even when it is uncomfortable or comes at a price.

Our life experiences are what can create a platform for strong leadership - everything from working with some not-so-great bosses to how parents, losses, and major setbacks can unexpectedly shape our leadership style.

Authentic leadership isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about having the courage to live your questions out loud.

Another good read:

Why Trust in Leaders Is Faltering and How to Gain It Back.

SHOW NOTES

A break is not a luxury—it's a necessity. A German study found that we respond to physical overload with back, neck and shoulder pain.  Our bodies are talking to us, but are we listening?  And our brains do something similar - short-circuiting into anger, passivity, or full shutdown mode (hi, doom scrolling in the bathroom).  Breaks help avoid those responses - and in fact are alarms from our bodies, brains and souls that we need to give it a minute (and maybe lots more)  While there is nothing wrong with guilty social media scrolls or fake “I’m just checking email” moments, we need actual pauses—time for your body and mind to reset.

We may think that breaks are the enemy of productivity—but research says breaks are golden ticket to performance and productivity. Breaks replenish glucose, reduce stress hormones, and activate the brain’s “default mode network,” a magical zone responsible for creativity, introspection, and those “aha” moments (yes, even Pixar movies have emerged from a well-timed lunch break).

And it’s not just your brain that benefits. Animal shelter workers who took breaks lasted longer in their careers, and team breaks build trust and improve collaboration. Even short “microbreaks” matter—especially when they come after tough meetings or demanding tasks.

The barriers? Hustle culture, guilt, tech, and the glorification of burnout. But changing the narrative around unproductive time is crucial. Walk.  Get out in nature - heck, check out those orca videos.  Stretch. Nap. Stare at trees. Laugh at a meme. Walk your dog. Daydream. Call your mom. Whatever recharges you.

Because the ultimate flex isn’t grinding 24/7—it’s knowing when to step away. 

Good Reads:

• A Guide to Taking Better Breaks at Work – Harvard Business Review, Feb 2025
• How to Take Better Breaks at Work, According to Research – Harvard Business Review, May 2023
• Impact of Recovery Breaks on Work-Related Musculoskeletal Disorders – Applied Ergonomics, 2023
• The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-Tech World, Rosen & Gazzaley

SHOW NOTES

The five-day workweek is one of the the results of worker safer reforms in the 1930s.  As a society, we concluded and adopted laws that provided greater compensation for workers when they worked in excess of 40 hours in a week.   This was consistent with what has been a 100 year trend of working less - at least until the 1970s—when we started working more. This working more may explain the growing number of companies and countries (aka Iceland) that have adopted the four day work week,  

Let’s start with Iceland—the poster child for all kinds of worker and gender rights.  After a wildly successful pilot starting in 2015, 90% of its workforce now enjoys a 36-hour week, full pay, and more time for fjords, knitting, or just plain breathing. The best part? Productivity didn’t drop. In some sectors, it rose, as did mental health and happiness. It sounds like employee satisfaction and improved mental health for the win!!

Here in the U.S., four-day weeks are gaining ground. In 2024, 22% of workers said their employers offer one (up from 14% in 2022). But not all 4-day weeks are created equal. Some compress 40 hours into four 10-hour marathons, while others reduce hours and pay and, the best for employees, reduced hours without a reduction in pay. 

Still, it’s not all sunshine and extra Sundays. Critics warn of scheduling chaos, uneven workloads, and—gasp—selection bias in studies. And let’s be honest, if the culture still glorifies overwork, slapping on a shorter week won’t fix burnout.

So what now? Tune in for the full scoop—history, data, debates, and what it takes to truly work less and live more.

GOOD READS

Iceland Embraced a 4-Day Workweek in 2019 – Now, Nearly Six Years On, All Gen Z Forecasts Have Materialized

Days of Work over a Half Century: The Rise of the Four-Day Workweek - Daniel S. Hamermesh, Jeff E. Biddle, 2025

4 Day Week Global

Challenging The Hype: Why A 4-Day Work Week Won’t Solve Burnout

A Guide to Implementing the 4-Day Workweek

The rise of the 4-day workweek

SHOW NOTES

Emily, a mom on the internet, said the quiet part out loud: admitting they daydream about being hospitalized—not because they want to be sick, but because it’s the only way they’d be "allowed" to rest without guilt. Another mom chimed in, saying her fondest memory of the year her third child was born was, bizarrely, the emergency appendectomy that forced her to let her husband give the baby formula, pawn off the toddlers, and finally sleep. It’s not the hospital gown that’s appealing—it’s the mandatory break, the absence of decision-making, and the fact that, for once, no one needs anything from you.

This kind of exhaustion isn’t just a mom problem—it’s a work problem, too. Work and health are in constant tug-of-war. When we sacrifice sleep to meet deadlines, skip meals to catch up, or forgo vacation because "the team needs us," the cost isn’t just burnout; it’s actual, measurable harm to our well-being. Studies have shown that people who don’t take vacations die younger, those in high-stress, low-control jobs face skyrocketing rates of depression, and shift workers can experience full-blown health crises just from disrupted sleep.

But work isn't inherently bad. Done well, it gives us purpose, community, pride, and even joy. The problem is when it tips into overwork, disconnection, and stress without relief. Research as far back as the 1930s and current research all point to the same thing: whether it’s unemployment or toxic employment, when we lose the ability to balance work with health, meaning, and community, we suffer.

And the kind of work we do can also impact our health:  miners; airline pilots, law enforcement - these are all jobs that even in the best of circumstances present challenges to taking care of our physical health.

The message here is be aware of how your work impacts your health and consider measures to mitigate those aspects negatively impacting health and emphasize those aspects that improve your health.

First things first: stop punishing yourself for things beyond your control (looking at you, scale). Instead, focus on what is in your control—like making smart money moves, setting yourself up for financial success, and dodging bad investment advice from that one cousin who just put every penny they have in crypto.

Women have historically been encouraged to save, but not necessarily invest. That’s changing. More women than ever are putting their money to work—seven in ten now own stock, a massive jump from last year. Gen Z women are leading the charge, with 71% already investing in the stock market, outpacing older generations. Even so, financial stress is real. More than half of working women feel behind on retirement savings, and nearly half say money negatively impacts their mental health.

Despite the challenges—hello, gender pay gap, unpaid labor, and single-parent superhero status—women are financial powerhouses. We are most proud of providing for our families, paying off debt, and saving for the future.

Unfortunately, the financial industry still has work to do to provide the kinds of services we women want. Nearly two-thirds of us lady breadwinners say it’s patronizing, catered to men, and assumes their spouse is the primary earner. But that hasn’t stopped us from taking charge of their money. The reality? By 2030, women in the U.S. will control much of the $30 trillion in assets currently held by baby boomers. That’s a serious power shift.

What is the biggest money regret we have? Not investing sooner. But here’s the good news: it’s never too late. Step one is checking in on your financial health—do you know your 401k balance? Can you cover an emergency expense? Then, put your money to work. 

Women are stepping up, showing up, and investing like bosses. So let’s keep the momentum going—our future (and our wallets) depend on it.

SHOW NOTES

Status is everywhere, whether we acknowledge it or not. It’s reflected in whether we are acknowledged in a meeting, how fast our emails get answered, or whether we are invited - really anywhere. Unlike power, which controls resources (think money, hiring decisions, or influence), status is all about perception—how others value us. And the kicker? We can’t just take status; it’s earned (and re-earned) through the judgments of those around us.  Power is something given to you (and probably because of our status), unless of course you stage a coup, which is tricky in the workplace. :-)

But here’s where it gets tricky: women face the likability bind—the frustrating double standard that says we can be warm or assertive, but not both. Allison Fragale discusses her book, Likable Badass on Work Life with Adam Grant.  She shares how women often self-sabotage by downplaying success, rejecting compliments, or apologizing unnecessarily. The key to breaking free? We build status by owning our story, being bold about our ambitions and letting others see what’s possible through our confidence.

So, how do we build status? Two drivers lead the way: competence and care. 

Competence is about doing good work, and also conducting ourselves in a way that inspires confidence in our competence.  We do this by showing up, adding value, and not being afraid to contribute our talents.  Have we made a commitment to be aware of where we can add value in the workplace?  Do our coworkers and bosses trust us to do what we say we will do and do it well?   

Care is about earning respect and influence through authenticity and generosity. We are women - of course we know what “care” is - well, mostly anyway (and kudos to those of us who live a little more free in this area).  Care is sharing credit, lifting others up, being generous, seeing other people, doing something extra (selectively), letting others know we know the importance of our work and our commitment to that work.  

As we show up and do our work with competence and care, we build status.  And status is what elevates us in the minds of others and leads to more opportunity and reward.  As we manage our status, we need to think of these two elements - competence and care and how we create that in the workplace.  

Managing our status is about presenting our authentic self at work - it is not about being something you are not.  Listen in on how to manage your status . . . 

Worklife with Adam Grant

Likable Badass: How Women Get the Success They Deserve by Allison Fagale

The report's findings show that while companies have taken action that led to some progress—more women in leadership, better policies for employees, and increased efforts to foster inclusion—change is hard and messy. Gains are fragile and less extensive than they appear, and company commitment to diversity is declining. Despite an increase in women’s representation and expanded company efforts, the workplace has not gotten better for women. Women continue to worry it will be harder for them to advance, and their day-to-day interactions look largely like they did in 2015.

The report also found that women continue to face barriers at the beginning of the pipeline. For every 100 men promoted to manager, only 81 women were promoted. This "broken rung" makes it nearly impossible for companies to support sustained progress at more senior levels. In addition, women's progress in senior leadership is fragile and diversity efforts are decreasing, which is concerning.

The McKinsey report concludes that the elements needed to create equity in the workplace are declining. It's clear that companies need to do more to support women's advancement and create a more equitable workplace!  This includes continuing to work on changing employee behavior, engaging men to be part of the change, and continuing to deliver the inclusion message…keep it up, sisters!

The idea? Ask for things you want until you get 10 rejections. Why? Because asking builds resilience and rejection isn’t as painful as we think.

What should you ask for?  Well, anything you want - from asking your partner to not only make dinner, but also clean up to a raise or more flexibility, maybe a sabbatical, or how about just an upgrade to your hotel room?

Not to say it is not hard to ask - it sure is.  We feel vulnerable.  We assume that people dislike us for asking, which is actually an incorrect assumption.  Asking someone for a favor makes them like you more, not less. People enjoy being helpful, and they’re happier than we assume when they get the chance to say “yes.”  We overestimate how much we will inconvenience people and we fear loss more than we crave gain.

Rejection stings—literally. Studies show social rejection lights up the same part of the brain as physical pain (some researchers even tried treating it with Tylenol—yes, really - and that worked at lessening emotional pain).  Likeable badasses don’t wait for success to be handed to them—they ask for it. And if they hear “no” along the way? They shake it off, pop a Tylenol, and keep going.

As Brene Brown reminds us, hope isn’t a fleeting emotion; it’s a cognitive process. It counters the suffocating weight of hopelessness, which arises from negative thought patterns and self-blame. Instead, hope is a skill—one that can be learned and harnessed to drive individual and organizational success. Psychologist C. Rick Snyder’s research defines hope as the ability to create pathways to goals and summon the motivation to pursue them. This dynamic combo of "willpower" and "waypower" sets hopeful people apart, making them more effective problem-solvers and leaders.

Rebecca Solnit takes it a step further: hope thrives in uncertainty. It acknowledges the unknown but embraces the idea that our actions matter—even if the outcome remains unknown. Optimists may wait passively for better days, but hopeful individuals roll up their sleeves and get to work. History is full of hopeful changemakers whose influence often became clearest after their time.

In the workplace, hope is a game-changer. Studies show hopeful employees outperform their peers, producing more creative solutions and tackling challenges with grit. Hope ignites virtuous cycles: workers who feel supported develop stronger waypower, creating a ripple effect of collaboration and resilience. Organizations with shared visions of hopeful futures—whether it’s making breakthroughs, changing lives, or improving margins—fuel collective motivation and perseverance.

Leaders play a vital role in cultivating hope. Here’s how they can turn hope into strategy:

1. Set Shared Goals: Align teams around meaningful, values-driven missions. 
2. Empower Teams: Give people agency over their work. 
3. Celebrate Progress: Highlight wins, big and small, to reinforce a sense of control and accomplishment.

Hope isn’t naïve or impractical; it’s a deliberate belief in action. It builds connections, creativity, and growth. By anchoring strategies in hope, leaders can steer their organizations through uncertainty toward brighter horizons. Hope doesn’t just dream of a better future—it equips us to build one.

GOOD READS

Hope as the antidote; 

The Strategic Power of Hope; ‘Hope is a​n embrace of the unknown​’: Rebecca Solnit on living in dark times | Society books | The Guardian; 

Research: The Complicated Role of Hope in the Workplace

And the workplace is our first stop because, well, it's not such a great place for people experiencing menopause. A Mayo Clinic study revealed menopause costs American women an incredible $1.8 billion annually in lost work time. And we have lots to do with that time, folks!  Fifteen percent of participants reported cutting back hours or missing work due to symptoms, with the worst-affected women 16 times more likely to face “adverse work outcomes.” Disturbingly, over 1% of women quit or were laid off due to debilitating symptoms. Black and Hispanic women often face even harsher impacts, reporting higher rates of symptoms and workplace struggles.

In the UK, a similar story unfolds. Nearly half of menopausal women report work-related challenges like low energy, poor concentration, and feelings of isolation. Many fear disclosing their struggles to employers; 47% avoid sharing the real reason for taking sick days. This culture of silence drives one in ten to leave their jobs entirely.

So, why does menopause get such a raw deal? Unlike conditions like cardiac disease, menopause doesn’t slot neatly into existing workplace health frameworks. The unpredictable, chronic nature of its symptoms demands nuanced solutions—something most workplaces lack.

But change is on the horizon. Forward-thinking companies and organizations are beginning to recognize menopause as a workplace issue. From the British Menopause Society to the European Menopause and Andropause Society, folks are advocating for tangible support around menopause: flexible schedules, breathable uniforms, and health plans that cover menopause treatments. 

Studies show interventions like yoga, cognitive behavioral therapy, and work-life coaching can make a world of difference. With the right support, menopausal women can thrive—not just survive—in their careers. Let’s ditch the stigma, embrace the conversation, and build workplaces where every stage of womanhood is valued. Menopause isn’t the end; it’s a new chapter, and it’s time we wrote it right or maybe write it right?!  You get the point listeners.

Study Shows the Staggering Cost of Menopause for Women in the Work Force

Impact of Menopause Symptoms on Women in the Workplace; 

Without support, many menopausal workers are quitting their jobs; 

Menopause in the Workplace - Women's Health Concern

January is a great time to reflect on what 2025 will look like for each of us - and not just because it is the beginning of the year, but also because we do the least amount of productive work in January as compared to other months of the year, which means we have some time to consider what we can do in 2025 to create more ease, meaning and joy.

Ideas for 2025:

-Try unexpected appreciation in the workplace.  Surprising coworkers with lunch or a compliment or if you are the manager, sending folks home an hour early can lift spirits.

-Remember the why and connect with how we serve our customers and clients, which is best done through examples. 

-Devote some time in the new year to experimentation - try something new with your personal routine or consider what Shopify did - cancelling all meetings for two weeks to reconsider what meetings were productive and necessary

Wishing you a 2025 filled with ease, meaning and joy.

Let’s talk about relational energy and why it’s a game-changer for organizations! With new books bursting onto the scene every year, it's like rummaging through a treasure trove of ideas. But what if we told you that the magic ingredient isn't charisma, charm, or sheer brilliance? Nope! It's all about that vibrant, uplifting energy that flows between people!

SHOW NOTES

Enter Kim Cameron from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. While diving into the dynamics of various organizations, he made an electrifying discovery: some groups were absolutely buzzing with productivity, and it wasn’t just luck. What was their secret? It’s what we call relational energy — that wonderful sense of positivity that comes alive during interactions. Some people ignite our spirits, while others leave us feeling a little flat. You know the ones who light up the room just by walking in? Yup, that's relational energy in action!

So, why is this so important? Leaders who radiate positive energy are like magnets, attracting motivation and enthusiasm from their teams. When you surround yourself with these energizers, the performance of the entire organization skyrockets. Think about it: when a leader embodies positivity, the whole crew vibes off that energy, leading to a healthier, happier workplace. 

Now, what makes someone a true positive energizer? It boils down to a handful of essential qualities. These folks genuinely care about others, uplifting everyone around them. They show support during tough times, inspire their teams to focus on the bright side, and celebrate successes. They embrace meaningful contributions and treat everyone with respect and kindness. Most importantly, they nurture a loving relationship with themselves, ensuring they radiate that positivity outward.

Why does this all matter? Research reveals that positive energizers significantly boost engagement, lower turnover, and foster a culture of well-being. When organizations are led by these energetic dynamos, they often see a flourishing bottom line too!

It turns out the positive relational energy doesn’t just benefit the workplace — it’s like a health potion for our brains and bodies! Studies indicate that when we soak in this vibrant energy, we reduce stress, boost our immune systems, and foster healthier connections all around us.

GOOD READS

The Best Leaders Have a Contagious Positive Energy

Relational energy - what it is and why it matters to organisations

SHOW NOTES

Globally, women control about $20 trillion in annual consumer spending, and that figure could climb as high as $28 trillion in the next five years.   These numbers amount to women controlling and/or influencing 85% of all consumer spending.  Wow - that’s a lot of votes with our economic dollars.  We buy for ourselves, our families, including children and spouses and so many of the people we care for.  And yes, women find the shopping experience unsatisfactory and in many cases shopping experiences are foolishly geared to men.  Ladies, let’s leverage our economic voting power for women owned businesses.  

The number of new women owned businesses is outpacing the number of businesses owned by men.  In 2021, women owned about 25% of all businesses in the US and by 2023, that number had reached 39%.  While women owned 39% of business in 2023, we employed about 9% of the employees and about 5% of all revenues.  Just under 40,000 women owned businesses employ 50 or more people.  This is all to say there are lots of small women owned businesses out there.

Women owned businesses face particular challenges - such as lack of access to capital - but the impacts of women owned businesses are significant, and that incongruity does not make sense.  So let’s use our dollars to support the business making the most difference.  Women tend to start businesses to make a difference rather than just to make money; and women owned businesses are more likely to support their communities.  

Turn Black Friday into a political act and shop women owned.

More good reads:

Women Owned Directory 

The 2024 Impact of Women-Owned Businesses

Women-owned businesses | U.S. Small Business Administration

Women Ownership Statistics 2024 | Advocacy

New Report Finds Growth of Women Business Owners Outpaces the Market

Supporting Women-Owned Business Giving Back To Communities | Bankrate

When bosses change their minds it impacts us as workers.  These changes mean we often redo our work or work we have done becomes unnecessary.  This impacts the meaningfulness of our work - and what was useful work is often not meaningful work when we just need to redo it.  The impact of mind changing can also make us feel disregarded and not valued - and demoralizing.

Implicit - and maybe obvious - in changing a decision is there is change and change is hard and lots of change can really mean chaos.  

What are some approaches to managing situations when it seems like direction from those above us is changing?  Harvard Business Review suggests a “tee-up” with what changes in process, events and decisions have occurred that led to how your team got to a particular place - through whatever circuitous journey.  Another idea is to ask questions about the change, which can help us understand how we got to the place and may provide useful feedback to your boss.  Bosses do not have all of the information we have and communicating that can be helpful.

And it may be you just need a cocktail or a hot bath - or both - because change and revisiting work can be exhausting especially when it happens again and again.

SHOW NOTES

In this episode, we discuss signs that indicate it might be time to consider a career pivot, such as persistent unhappiness, lack of motivation, health implications, increased comparisons to peers, and reticence towards career commitments. We also share Crina's story of feeling burnt out and uninspired in her job, prompting her to consider a change.

Of course there are ways to make a successful career pivot, especially when you focus on the "working identity" approach. Instead of following the conventional wisdom of knowing what you want to do next before taking action, we explore why doing comes before knowing in the process of career change. And of course there are  pitfalls of relying on self-knowledge, advice from friends and family, and consultations with career professionals when considering a career pivot.

Tune in to learn more about how to navigate a career pivot successfully, what to expect after making a change, and how to build a new working identity that brings more happiness and fulfillment. Thank you for listening!

GOOD READS

A Mid-Life Career Shift Is Not a Crisis — Here’s Why You Should Consider One & How to Pull It Off

What is Workaholism? The term was coined by psychologist Wayne E. Oates back in 1971, likening chronic overwork to addiction. Just like any other addiction, workaholism can interfere with our health, happiness, and relationships. So, how do we know if we’re truly addicted to work or just really engaged? The answer lies in the motivation behind the grind.

Could this be you?

Sometimes we overwork because of external circumstances such as financial problems, distraction from an unsatisfying marriage, or maybe pressure from our workplace. The differentiating feature of real workaholism from similar behaviors is the excessive involvement of the individual in work when it is not required or expected.

Norwegian researchers the University of Bergen created a work addiction scale which uses the following seven criteria to assess the likelihood that an individual possesses a work addiction:

1. You think of how you can free up more time to work.
2. You spend much more time working than initially intended.
3. You work in order to reduce feelings of guilt, anxiety, helplessness and/or depression.
4. You have been told by others to cut down on work without listening to them.
5. You become stressed if you are prohibited from working.
6. You deprioritize hobbies, leisure activities, and/or exercise because of your work.
7. You work so much that it has negatively influenced your health.

If you answered with “often” or “always” to any of these points, you may be a workaholic. And if we are agreeable, neurotic, intellectual or imaginative, we are more likely  

People identified as workaholics often ranked high in terms of these three personality traits:

• Agreeableness – Workaholics are more likely to be altruistic, compliant and modest.
• Neuroticism – Workaholics tend to be nervous, hostile, and impulsive.
• Intellect/imagination -Workaholics are generally inventive and action oriented.

But what to do about it?

• Redefine “urgent”
• Reinvent the to-do list
• Learning to say “no” and delegate
• Fixing the workaholic clock
• Controlling rumination
• Embracing rest and recovery
• Psychological detachment. 
• Physical activity. 
• Relaxation. 
• Mastery experiences (which mitigates the inclinations around workaholism)

Our lives are too precious to be consumed with work.  While work is fun and rewarding - it is not all things, so let’s not get caught in workaholism or even workaholic behaviors.

So, what do you do when you’re stuck working with someone you dislike?  There are some good strategies, but first, get some perspective.  How much does it matter and are there ways of looking at it differently?

What to do:

As always, the person we control is ourselves, so when we have feelings of dislike for a coworker, looking inward can be very helpful.  Do you let your brain run with every little incident?  What do our reactions say about us?

Here is the hard one - be the grown up.  The emotionally intelligent grown up. We can stay away from the resentment spiral and remove ourselves from unproductive conversations.

Work very hard to find something you like or admire.  People are rarely just one thing and we can usually find something to like or admire.

Being anything less than respectful ends up leaving us with metaphorical egg on our faces.  Try compassion and respect - who knows, we may find ourselves surprised by the person we dislike.

If we feel pretty confident with checking in with ourselves, being the grown up, seeing the good and embracing compassion and respect, we will find ourselves in connection, which of course is the big payoff.

And if we cannot get to connect, then we can be strategic about how we expose ourselves, which includes being very intentional about what we need from the interactions we really have to have with the coworkers we do not like.

Not everyone we work with needs to be our friend or even someone we like.  While it sure is great when it happens, we can work well when we respect others and ourselves.

Survey Reveals the Most Annoying Coworker Habits - LLC.org

How to Work with Someone You Really Don’t Like

Most of us pride ourselves on our planning – we are prepared, we are ready for anything and we are efficient and effective – BUT, let’s consider the unplanned.

Spontaneity According to Webster’s Dictionary, spontaneity is “without constraint, effort, or premeditation, unplanned or impromptu.” Spontaneous shows our openness, flexibility and our confidence in our ability to handle something new or unexpected.  

Why You Need More Spontaneity in Your Life A poll by OnePoll for Cub Cadet, a tractor company, found Americans make an average of 18 spontaneous decisions per day.  Those who identify as spontaneous are more likely to be happy, content, and even stress-free. We’re talking about major decisions here too: spontaneous job changes, last-minute vacations, or adopting that adorable rescue dog.

Tiny Acts of Spontaneity at Work Spontaneity isn't just for your personal life; it’s for work.  Spontaneity boosts creativity and enhances problem-solving.  The 10 minute walk you take may lead to a fresh brain and a great conversation with a colleague who you see when you walk in the door. We exercise our agency in the moment and we are refreshed and ready.

Barriers to Spontaneity Lots of things get in the way of our spontaneity.  Fear of the unknown, a need for control, or others’ expectations can make being spontaneous feel uncomfortable. But here’s a challenge: free up a couple of hours this week, leave it unplanned, and see where your mood takes you. Even blocking free time in your calendar, which is kind of a plan, to see where our hearts and mind take us counts because of the spontaneity in the moment.  Spontaneity is the ultimate form of agency, folks. It’s about trusting ourselves to handle whatever comes your way.

How to be more spontaneous: 7 tips to live in the moment — Calm Blog.

Misogyny is defined as the hatred, contempt, or prejudice against women or girls, which keeps them at a lower social status than men, perpetuating the social roles of patriarchy. Misogyny can manifest in obvious and subtle ways, affecting women in various aspects of their lives.

Feminist scholars like Andrea Dworkin and Kate Manne have shed light on the insidious nature of misogyny in our culture.  Dworkin argues that society regards women as contemptible and subjects them to violence and discrimination, while Manne describes misogyny as a shock collar that enforces women's subordination in a patriarchal society.

The demographics most affected by misogyny is also alarming,  with BIPOC women experiencing its effects in conjunction with racism. From medical research to athletics and law enforcement, examples of misogyny in plain sight illustrate the lack of value placed on women in our society.

Finally, there’s the importance of fighting misogyny in the workplace, advocating for oneself, and celebrating International Women's Day. There are so many amazing women and influential figures like Drew Afualo, who uses her platform to combat misogyny and empower women. 

Join us as we unravel the complex web of misogyny, sexism, and patriarchy, and explore ways to challenge these harmful ideologies in our daily lives.

Good Reads:

Misogyny - Wikipedia

Kate Manne: The Shock Collar That Is Misogyny 

Celebrating International Women’s Day! [2024 DEI Resources] | Diversity for Social Impact

How Misogyny Became Part of Our Culture & Workplaces | InHerSight

How to Fight Misogyny in the Workplace | Inc.com

SHOW NOTES

Obsolescence is a reduction in our competence as an employee resulting from a lack of knowledge of new work processes, techniques, and technologies that have developed since we completed our education - and that we have somehow missed out on acquiring.  As humans we have been becoming obsolete since we stood up on two feet - the hunter gatherers became farmers, the farmers became factory workers and the factory workers have become technology and service industry workers.  We know how to do this - on the macro level, as an economy and society.

Trucking is a great example of worker obsolescence.  In the early 20th century, truck drivers replaced the cart and horse for deliveries and now the promise of self-driving trucks, making truck drivers obsolete, has done a couple of things in the market - truckers are generally older and the wages have risen according to NPR.  

The mysterious threats and impacts of workforce obsolescence : NPR.  Older workers with less time in the workforce are willing to keep or go into these jobs, but younger workers with more time to work are far less willing to enter an occupation that may very well go away.

According to a recent Gallup Poll 22% of workers are worried that technological advancements will make their jobs obsolete, a 7% jump since 2021. The increase is being driven "almost entirely" by college-educated workers. The Gallup data shows that men and women currently express equitable trepidation levels when it comes to being replaced by technology.  Good to know there is some equity in FOBO!

Fearing obsolescence is not just self-doubt, rather, we fundamentally question our ability to participate in the workforce. When we experience this kind of fear, it can affect our behavior at work and our experience of ease, meaning and joy.  In a study of counterproductive work behaviors, researchers found some common counterproductive work behaviors in workers who were experiencing FOBO: attention-seeking behavior; being hypervigilant; and drawing unhealthy comparisons.  We can counteract FOBO by focusing our efforts on training - either for the current job or a new one; taking on new opportunities, saying yes and telling yourself the truth about your skills and your current job and its future - and being willing to consider what is next.

MORE GOOD READS

How to Stop Worrying About Becoming Obsolete at Work (hbr.org).

U.S. Workers Face Growing Fears Of Becoming Obsolete— Here’s How You Can Fight Back Against ‘FOBO

’Face Your Fear of Becoming Obsolete

SHOW NOTES

Asking great questions isn’t just for consultants and lawyers (aka Crina and Kirsten). It’s a universal skill that makes you more likable, empathetic, and approachable. This ability fosters better decisions and collective intelligence, whether you’re a marketing guru or a freelance artist.

Per the norm, we find gender issues embedded in question asking.  Men and women use questions differently. Men often ask fewer questions interpersonally but more in professional contexts. Women, however, are less likely to ask questions in high-stakes professional settings but more in personal conversations. A 2018 study found women were less likely to ask questions in academic seminars, often due to feeling less confident or intimidated by the speaker.  Interesting, yes?

There are all kinds of questions and it is good to get clear about these when asking questions.

Investigative Questions: What’s known? These questions can dig deep to unearth nonobvious information, like the time the French railroad overlooked platform measurements and bought train cars that were too large for existing platforms, leading to costly train modifications.

Speculative Questions: What If? These broaden perspectives, sparking creativity. What if we create

Productive Questions: Now What? These assess resources and execution plans.

Interpretive Questions: So, What? These synthesize information, turning analysis into actionable insights. For instance, Tesla’s revolutionary appeal was missed by competitors because competitors focused on Tesla’s minor imperfections.

Subjective Questions: What’s Unsaid? These address personal reservations and emotional dynamics. British Airways missed the emotional reaction of its public when it rebranded. 

Listening: The Unsung Hero

To ask good questions, you must listen actively. Presence, curiosity, and connection are key. As Daniel Ek of Spotify says, questioning always circles back to purpose: “Why are we doing things? Why does it matter?”

Questions are more than a tool—they're an art form. From igniting innovation to fostering deeper connections, mastering the art of asking questions can unlock endless possibilities. So, why are you still talking? It’s time to ask your next great question and listen.

Show Notes

The adversity from personal challenges can lead to personal growth, enhancing life appreciation, personal strength, relationships, spiritual growth, and recognizing new life paths. Although painful experiences are something any of us want, many people experience Post-Traumatic Growth (PTG).  No one really wants or asks for that gift, but there it is - even at work.  

When we are managing employees in crisis, we can be most helpful by bringing our best in terms of compassion and flexibility. Managers should set a compassionate tone, offer creative solutions, and check in regularly without becoming overly involved or making unfulfillable promises - and even with flexibility remember boundaries. Consistency in treating similar situations among employees is crucial.

Personal crises can impact our work lives - everything from divorce, bankruptcy to illness and death.

During a crisis, brain function is impaired by stress. It's essential to process emotions fully to avoid burnout. Stress perception impacts our functionality: however, viewing stress as a challenge can enhance concentration and performance, while viewing it as a threat increases fear. Key questions to foster a challenge response include identifying control points, specific actions, strengths, and resources.

10 Ways to Function at Work When Your Life is a Mess

1. Vent Wisely: Vent to a friend outside of work, not coworkers.
2. Manage Information: Inform your manager and selective coworkers about your crisis, keeping work as a non-therapy zone.
3. Prioritize Clients: Maintain professional boundaries with clients, sharing minimal personal information.
4. Prioritize Tasks: Make lists of non-negotiable tasks and break them into manageable pieces. Use a timer for focus.
5. Take Personal Days: A productive day off is better than multiple unproductive days at work.
6. Respect Flexibility: Ensure your flexible schedule meets both personal and organizational needs.
7. Utilize Benefits: Leverage Employee Assistance Programs, bereavement leave, etc.
8. Set Boundaries: Establish clear work-life boundaries to manage stress.
9. Seek Help: Enlist support from team, family, or friends to manage life outside of work.
10. Colleague Support: Encourage compassion, flexibility, and regular check-ins without becoming overly involved.

While adversity often results in PTG, leading to renewed life appreciation, enhanced strength, deeper relationships, spiritual growth, and new life directions, we acknowledge that these challenges are painful and exhausting - and yet, most of us need to continue to show up at work even during these hard times.  

Good Reads

10 Ways to Function at Work When Your Life is a Mess

How to work when your life is a mess | Alexandra Samuel

PERSONALITY PROCESSES AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES Rethinking Stress: The Role of Mindsets in Determining the Stress Response | Semantic Scholar

Working Through a Personal Crisis (hbr.org)

How Adversity Makes You Stronger

How to Manage an Employee Who’s Having a Personal Crisis

Enter fault lines: the cracks that split groups into subgroups based on aligning attributes like race or age. For instance, young Latino players might form a clique separate from older white players in a Major League Baseball team, creating internal conflicts that erode team cohesion and performance.

Faultlines can breed conflict and hamper communication, however, they can also foster a sense of belonging within subgroups. Accountants and marketers might struggle to collaborate due to their different professional languages, yet find comfort and cohesion within their own teams.

To combat entrenchment, leaders need to first understand the different types of subgroups and their effects. Consider spatial presence, surface-level characteristics like gender or race, knowledge bases, and deep-level identities like values and beliefs, which all play roles to a greater and lesser degree in subgroup formation and entrenchment.

Observing team interactions—who talks to whom, who aligns with whom—can reveal existing subgroups. Leaders should also be aware of their own potential alignments with these subgroups.  To break down these entrenched barriers, leaders can mix up team memberships, emphasise shared goals and adversaries, encourage formal and informal time spent together, and engage boundary spanners who can navigate between groups. Embracing curiosity about other subgroups is also key.

Other Good Reads:

Toward A Temporal Theory of Faultlines and Subgroup Entrenchment - Meister - 2020 - Journal of Management Studies - Wiley Online Library  

Is Your Organisation Digging Trenches or Building Bridges?

Faultline Theory: Why Teams Fall Apart | by Small World Solutions Group | Medium

Let’s shout out to the ladies’ memories - which are better than males - at least according to 

The Wonder Of You: Why Women Have Better Memory Than Men.  This may be because memories “stick” better when we pay attention, focus on details and they are accompanied by feelings. It is kind of like telling ourselves a story and it makes our memories better.

Neuroscientist Lisa Genova has done a deep dive into memory and neurological disorders - in fact, she is scientist turned fiction writer telling stories about the experiences of people who experience neurological disorders.  Her most recent book, Remember: The science of memory and the art of forgetting is non-fiction.  She tells us that memory is essential to almost everything we do - walking, talking, interaction, watching a movie, eating. Without memory, we are  untethered to the life we live.  

Our brains are designed to remember what is meaningful, emotional, surprising, new and what we repeat and practice. This applies to our four kinds of memory: muscle memory, semantic memory (facts and information),  episodic memory (what happened in your life) and working memory (doing things like writing, talking and problem solving).

We create memory when our brain takes in information, weaves it together and stores it to a neural circuit we can later access.  Every memory actually changes our beautiful brains.  And our memories are surprisingly accurate.  We can train our brains to be better at memory, but the passage of time does impact the reliability of our memories.  

Stress, lack of sleep, poor diet and lack of sleep can impact our memories. In short, think self-care for a better memory.  In addition, writing things down, repeating what you have heard, telling yourself stories, making connections and calming down can all improve memory.  

This is all to say memory is remarkable and also not always reliable - if we take care of ourselves and pay close attention our memories will better serve us.

Hearing is just your ears doing their job. Active listening? That's your brain going into overdrive, focusing on sounds and extracting meaning. It's a full-on mental workout involving attention, contemplation, and response.  According to Harvard's Robin Abrahams and Boris Groysberg, active listening breaks down into three parts:

• Cognitive: Pay attention to all the info, both spoken and unspoken.
• Emotional: Keep calm and carry on, even if you're annoyed or bored.
• Behavioral: Show you're interested with verbal and non-verbal cues.

Ingredients for Active Listening

1. Presence: Be in the moment. Put down your phone, make eye contact, and show you're engaged. Avoid jumping to conclusions or trying to "fix" things right away.
2. Curiosity: Stay curious and humble. Ask questions to clarify and understand before you respond. Keep power dynamics and past feedback in mind.  
3. Connection: Listening is about forming a connection. Understand and honor what the speaker values. This approach can lead to better progress for both parties involved.  

Mastering the Art of Active Listening

1. Know Your Style: Identify if you're task-oriented, analytical, relational, or critical. Each style suits different situations.
2. Choose Wisely: Determine the best listening style for the moment by considering the conversation's goals and the speaker's needs.
3. Stay Focused: Don’t let insecurities or distractions (like checking emails) get in the way. Use mantras or meditation to keep your mind on track.
4. Ask Questions: It shows you're engaged and deepens your understanding. Questions can also uncover hidden emotions or unspoken points.

Remember, listening is more than just nodding and saying "Mm-hmm." It's about asking insightful questions and being truly present. If we stay curious, stay present, we can not only hear but understand and connect on a deeper level.  Active listening isn’t just a nice-to-have skill; it's a game-changer. So, lend an ear, and who knows? You might just hear the next big idea.

What’s Your Listening Style?

What Is Active Listening?

SHOW NOTES

In this episode of Crina and Kirsten Get to Work our hosts discuss Adam Grant’s new book on the science of achievement.  Ever thought about what you’d like to get better at? Crina wants to learn how to have more fun and Kirsten is still working on figuring out “no.”  Sigh.

Mastery can start at any chapter of your life. Take Laura Ingalls Wilder, who penned her first success in her 60s, or Vera Wang, who leapt from ice skates to runway gowns. Julia Child didn’t publish her first cookbook until 50, and Phyllis Diller took up stand-up comedy at 37.  Or consider Steve Martin who spent years doing the labor of writing his own jokes to get really good at it - he did not start out being good, he learned to be so very good.

Dr. Adam Grant argues in his new book Hidden Potential that those who might lack natural flair but possess the grit to persist, embrace discomfort, and seek advice often outpace the naturally gifted. Think about it: the kid on the soccer field who isn’t the fastest but keeps pushing might just outshine the rest with sheer willpower.

Society tends to glorify innate talent.  First off, it is just fun to watch someone who is innately good at something.  We may value innate talent because it gives us an easy out when we are not naturally good at something - we do not have to experience the discomfort of trying.  And yet we know that real satisfaction comes from finding our way through the tough stuff.  Child prodigies often find real-world challenges daunting precisely because they haven’t navigated the messier, less predictable paths of life.  The dichotomy of talent and challenge is fundamental to understanding our hidden potential.

Grant suggests that we embrace the discomfort that signals we are learning, mix up our routine to keep things interesting, and engage in the dual dance of seeking and giving advice.   And there is so much more in Hidden Potential so give it a read.

There is so much we can care about at work - what other people think, what other people do, outcomes we cannot control, what information we do not have - just so much and yet when is it really worth it to care?  

Our duo starts with what is worth caring about:

• Our personal relationships.
• The responsibilities we agree to take on at work, in community, or with our family and friends.
• Our professional/ personal development - being our best selves, which also includes really liking who we turn out to be.
• Our financial security.
• Our values and ethical and moral principles - living with integrity.

Work weaves its way through many of the things we care about.  The challenge with work is that many of us tend to define ourselves by our work.  

Harvard Business Review interviewed 700 employees and concluded that while passion at work is generally a good thing, too much passion leads to burnout and a little detachment goes a long way to creating a sustainable relationship with work, with reduced burnout, enhanced creativity, increased resilience, better focus and better decision making. Don’t Let Passion Lead to Burnout on Your Team (hbr.org)

So how to do we give less of a #%$X without getting ourselves into the #%$X?

Ask yourself why:  Carefully consider why you care so deeply about something?  Is it just about ego or is it really consistent with the list above (relationships you value, principles you hold dear . . .).

Ask yourself whether your response/involvement is really that important: Doing nothing can be perfectly appropriate; and remember most people care far less about what we do than we think.

Pur your job in context: A job is not the be all and end all of your life and if it is, that is a new issue to consider.    For most of us a job funds our lives and those of the people we love.

Create boundaries between work life and personal life. Boundaries between work and personal are key to caring a little less when caring is overwhelming.  Do you leave on time, do you check your emails all evening, do you cancel time with friends and family because of work emergencies?  Creating stronger boundaries can help us create that work life balance, which may just need a little less caring.

And remember there are really always four responses to a situation:

• Exit: remove yourself from the situation; do nothing; LET THEM 
• Voice: take action and try to improve the situation
• Persistence: stay in, kind of grin and bear it
• Neglect: stay but reduce effort

We have options in deciding how much we care.  And we need to wisely use our caring energy.

In a great story out of Australia, we can all have a good chuckle about an art installation that excluded men and the legal challenge that ensued from a man who felt he was not getting his money’s worth because he could not access an exhibit only available to women.  The Court disagreed with the man who filed the suit finding that he was  experiencing exactly what the artist wanted him to experience - exclusion.  Museum behind ladies-only art exhibit sued by man who was denied entry - National | Globalnews.ca 

And here in the US, women are reentering the workforce at a record pace.  This resurgence appears to be linked to women coming back to a more diverse set of industries and positions more women in leadership and the flexibility offered by hybrid work.  3 Reasons Women Are Reentering The Workforce At A Record Pace

In a study commissioned by the non-profit Girls Who Code and its Moms First campaign,  Boston Consulting Group found that on-site childcare, close to site childcare, backup childcare and childcare stipends had impressive returns on investment - anywhere from 90% to 425% - all we can say is WOW!  BCG Report, 2024 - Moms First

NPR reported on Icelandic women continuing their tradition of striking to create equity in pay for women and non-binary people.  Women and nonbinary Icelanders go on a 24-hour strike to protest the gender pay gap

And last up - we know women have typically had to work harder than men for the same pay and recognition.  This travesty does not apply to exercise.  The Journal of the American College of Cardiology found that women get more benefits than men from the same amount of exercise.  

And that is the good news, listeners.

Hewlett conducted surveys in 2012 and again in 2022 that tell a story of significant shifts in our view of executive presence.  The New Rules of Executive Presence (hbr.org).  Hewlett says, “[t]he old ideal—shaped and embodied by white male CEOs who ruled the U.S. and European corporate worlds through the beginning of this century—has long been eroding.”  

Executive presence is made up of gravitas (think confidence and decisiveness); communication (think clear and  direct) and appearance (think authenticity).  In 2012, Hewett’s survey showed that having “a blue-chip” pedigree was important for gravitas, and that characteristic did not even make the list in 2022.  In 2022, respect and inclusiveness were more important to executive presence than they were in 2012.  Another shift was seen in the communication element of executive presence where in 2012 “forceful” was important and in 2022 “listening to learn” was important to executive presence.  Even our view of executive presence as it relates to appearance has changed - while being polished is still important, authenticity has risen to one of the most important factors in the appearance component.  

Executive presence is learnable - and you do not have to master all of the elements.  Focusing on your authentic strengths can improve your executive presence.  Hewlett’s work tells us two important things: 1. we can be our authentic selves and have executive presence; and 2. executive presence in the workplace is more inclusive than ever before.  

SHOW NOTES

While traditional stress arises from major life events, microstressors are small, often unnoticed, and yet they can accumulate and significantly affect our well-being. Microstress, unlike what we think of as more conventional stress, does not provoke the same physiological response as bigger stress - so our body is not working to protect us from stress in the same way.  Microstressors can be categorized into three main types:

• Draining our capacity to get things done: These microstressors often make us feel like we're failing at work and in our personal lives. Examples include misalignment with collaborators on roles or priorities, uncertainty about others' reliability, and an overwhelming number of tasks or responsibilities.
• Draining our emotional reserves: These microstressors are caused by others and can leave us feeling emotionally depleted. Examples include feeling responsible for the success and well-being of others, confrontational conversations, and a lack of trust in our social network.
• Challenging our identity: These microstressors can trigger feelings of discomfort, making us question if we're truly living in line with our values and goals. Examples include pressure to pursue goals that don't align with our personal values, attacks on our self-confidence or worth, and negative interactions with family or friends.

The effects of microstress extend beyond mental health, impacting physical well-being as well. It disrupts the body's ability to maintain internal balance, leading to issues like "brain fog," where cognitive function is impaired - and even affects our body’s ability to process food. Despite these challenges, there are strategies to mitigate the effects of microstress.

Pushing back against microstress in practical ways—such as learning to say no to small requests, managing technology to reduce interruptions, and readjusting relationships to prevent others from putting microstress on you—can be effective. Rising above these stressors, by keeping them in perspective and not letting them consume us, is another valuable approach.

Human connection emerges as a powerful tool in combating microstress. Engaging with others helps develop brain circuits that manage our reactions and emotions, alleviating the burden of stress. By cultivating diverse connections and engaging in meaningful activities, we can create a multidimensional life that buffers us against the effects of microstress.

Join us as we explore the world of microstress, uncovering its hidden impacts and discovering strategies to combat its effects. Learn how small changes in daily life can lead to significant improvements in overall well-being. 

SHOW NOTES

Science tells us embarrassment is a unique emotion - unlike an emotion such as fear, we need to think before we can feel this emotion.  Rowland Miller at Sam Houston University tells us, “we become embarrassed when we perceive that the social image we want to project has been undermined and that others are forming negative impressions of us.”  But there is more to embarrassment.  

John Sabini of the University of Pennsylvania and his colleagues found embarrassment is likely to arise when a person anticipates a disruption of smooth social interaction and/or faces a situation without clear social expectations . She is not worried about making a bad impression, but rather she does not know what to do next.

Sabini defined three kind of embarrassment:

1. Faux-pas - food in your teeth when meeting your new boss
2. center-of-attention - being the guest of honor at a surprise party
3. sticky-situation embarrassment - having to fire someone or give hard feedback 

Crina adds a fourth type, vicarious embarrassment, to this list - the feeling of being embarrassed for others.  

Embarrassment serves a few important purposes.  Embarrassment signals others that we know we stepped in it and these negative feelings discourage us from doing it again and encourage us to make repairs with others.  It can also encourage us to prepare for a situation to avoid being embarrassed.

Research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found people who expressed more outward signs of embarrassment while describing their embarrassing moments (such as tripping) also reported a tendency to be more "prosocial" — that is, kinder and more generous.

Researchers also found that when the study’s actor expressed embarrassment, study participants found the actor more trustworthy and wanted to affiliate with him more.  Embarrassment can humanize a leader because it helps break down the barriers between team members and the leader and ultimately allows for stronger connections to form.  Does the leader have some humor about her embarrassment or are they prickly and defensive about the embarrassment?  A leader’s response to embarrassment can set the tone for the team.  

When we think about how to respond to embarrassment, research suggests most people tend to overestimate how much others notice our embarrassment. We can help put embarrassment in context by detaching ourselves and thinking about how we would react as an observer of our embarrassing situation.  It’s likely we will find grace, distance and context in that exercise.  

We know embarrassment does not feel good, but it communicates we care and presents opportunities to consider our behavior and be more connected with those around us.

The Surprising Perks of Being Embarrassed

Oh no you didn't!

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,

Countering embarrassment-avoidance by taking an observer's perspective | Motivation and Emotion

SHOW NOTES  

First, we know that women are more likely to speak up for others than they are for themselves.  We also know from the research that women are far more likely to be interrupted and talked over.  A 2014 study by Harvard Business Review found that while men and women see this as a problem, men tend to attribute this to a woman’s failure to make their point in a strong, clear way - or getting rattled and allowing themself to be interrupted.  Women tend to attribute this to feeling isolated and not liking conflict.

Our hosts delve deeper into what the research says about why and here is what they found:

1. Insinuation anxiety, which is the fear of insinuating distrust or disapproval of someone else.
2. Fear of embarrassment, need we say more?
3. Pluralistic ignorance, which is when we tend to sit around thinking someone else in the group will speak up - also known as the bystander effect.

When we do not speak up , we end up less of all the good things - physical and emotional well-being and more of what we do not want, stress and unhappiness.  

There are some key times to speak up: when our boundaries are violated, when we notice someone is upset, when something goes against the rules, when we recognize danger and when no else does.

Dr. Sunita Sah at Cornell University suggests preparing to speak up can be helpful and asking for more time if you need it.  Crina and Kirsten add, being clear, avoiding over-explaining, being compassionate and honoring your preferences.

The benefits of voicing your thoughts are high - more authenticity and more satisfaction.  It is also critical that each of our very special and unique voices are heard.

MORE GOOD READS

Speak Up at Thanksgiving. Your Health Demands It

The Unavoidable Trap of Politeness: Why Is It So Hard to Just Say “No”? ‹ Literary Hub

Opinion: Why you find it so hard to resist taking bad advice - Los Angeles Times

Women, Find Your Voice (hbr.org) 

Speaking Up for Yourself Is Important — 11 Steps to Get It Right

Why Is It So Hard to Speak Up at Work? - The New York Times

The Effect of Gender on Interruptions at Congressional Hearings | American Political Science Review | Cambridge Core 

SHOW NOTES

Crina and Kirsten dive into love and work, where Albert Brooks,  Oprah Winfrey,  Marcus Buckingham, Bob Rosen and Joe Ricciardi serve as guides to infuse our conversation about doing our work with love. Forget the notion that work and love should be kept in separate corners of our lives; we're here to blend them together like the perfect cocktail - at work!  As Kahil Gibran said, “work is love made visible.”  Our work is an amazing opportunity for us to express love - something we are made to do.

Our duo digs into the different flavors of workplace love. There's love of purpose, love of accomplishment, love of colleagues, and even love for ourselves. Each adds its own unique flavor to the workplace stew, creating a recipe for success that's as fulfilling as it is rewarding.

There is also the opportunity to infuse the work we do with love, which is something we do not talk about as often - how we talk with customers and clients; how we build the thing we are building at work; how we write the memos and letters and emails - with each task there is the opportunity to infuse the task with love.  

How do we put this into practice?  We can adopt a service mindset, practice generosity, show compassion, and create trust. And let's not forget to sprinkle gratitude on top—it's the secret ingredient that ties everything together.  Expressing love in our work is a blend of these concepts.

So, as we bask in the love of Valentine's Day, let's make a pact to bring more love into how we do our work. 

GOOD READS

What's Love Got to Do With Work? | Psychology Today

Marcus Buckingham: Why “Love” Is the Key to Career Success (hbr.org)

The Only Career Advice You’ll Ever Need - The Atlantic

How To Bring More Love Into Your Work - Eat Your Career

Love At Work: Here's How To Truly Show Love To Your Colleagues This Valentine's Day (forbes.com)

Crina begins with a story about her husband, Barry, that illustrates what can be the natural and organic creation of social capital. Despite facing skepticism from some team members who deemed it a waste of time, Barry's emphasis on communication among co-workers is creating a cultural shift at his work, fostering collaboration and teamwork. This anecdote parallels a study of chickens, yes, chicken!  The study reveals that individual productivity, while initially successful, ultimately hampers overall success when it comes at the cost of suppressing others and focusing on self.

Robert Putnam's research at Harvard helps us understand that social capital extends beyond the workplace, encompassing community bonds and shared values. It differs from mere friendship or networking, encompassing trust and reciprocity - and it is kind of all of those things rolled into one. Social capital is a catalyst for societal well-being, impacting employment levels, academic performance, physical health, economic growth, and even crime rates - and really impactful to teams. 

Research highlights the numerous benefits of social capital in the workplace, including lower turnover, improved performance, increased knowledge transfer, innovation, and career mobility. 

Social capital at work looks like giving, connecting, and valuing others' expertise without expecting immediate returns is emphasized. It's about building trust and authenticity through reliability, transparency, vulnerability, and empathy.  Social capital is not a quid pro quo - or you scratch my back and I will scratch yours.

However, the downside of social capital is also acknowledged. Tight-knit networks may inadvertently exclude non-members and create conformity pressures, potentially limiting personal freedoms.

Social capital is not just a soft skill but an imperative for individuals and organizations. It involves creating a culture that values relationships, fosters trust, and recognizes the unique contributions of individuals. In the dance of productivity and success - and well being -  social capital gets us a long way to creating a harmonious and thriving workplace experience.

In the pursuit of “happierness,” we come to understand that happiness is not a constant state but rather a dynamic interplay of three crucial elements: enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. Unlike the elusive state of perpetual happiness, happierness proves to be a more achievable and sustainable goal.

The global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been catastrophic for public happiness, with percentages of those happy and unhappy experiencing a dramatic shift. Long-term trends indicate a gradual decline in happiness, further exacerbated by the advent of social media, proving detrimental to overall well-being.

Contrary to popular belief, money, power, pleasure, and fame are not the key drivers of happiness. True happierness stems from faith, family, friends, and work that serves others, offering a deeper and enduring sense of fulfillment.

Breaking down the components of happiness, we discover that enjoyment is distinct from pleasure, involving shared experiences and memories that contribute to lasting joy. Satisfaction arises from the struggle and progress toward goals, requiring a delicate balance between ambition and contentment. Meaning, the understanding of one's purpose and the significance of actions, completes the trifecta.

Work, being a significant part of our lives, plays a pivotal role in happiness. The happiest workers find joy in earning their success by creating value and feel a sense of purpose by serving others. Positive relationships at work, commitment, and a genuine desire to make a difference contribute significantly to job satisfaction.

And the key to the happiness puzzle seems to be metacognition, or the ability to step back and observe one's emotions, emerges as a key to happiness. Being aware that happiness is contagious, individuals can consciously choose their emotional responses and influence their well-being positively.

Developing emotional intelligence involves tools such as journaling to improve metacognition, gratitude practices, laughter, and storytelling to create a diverse emotional bank, promoting better emotional well-being.

Choosing hope over optimism becomes a powerful strategy in the pursuit of happiness. Deep friendships, family relationships, and the ability to turn attention away from negativity contribute to a more resilient and content life.

Embark on this insightful exploration of happierness and learn how to build the life you want in 2024. Remember, happiness is not a destination but a journey of continuous growth and self-discovery.

SHOW NOTES

Did you know that January 1st has been celebrated as New Year's Day since 45 B.C.? The month of January is named after Janus, the ancient Roman god symbolizing transitions and new beginnings.

Crina shares her learnings from 2024, including how to travel alone and the importance of letting go of control in her daily life. She discovered that even small changes can have a significant impact on one's life. Kirsten, on the other hand, realized that her goals were inconsistent, particularly in relation to travel, health, and savings. For the upcoming year, Kirsten plans to focus on mastering the things that have been working well for her and finding more happiness in her life. This includes refining her reactivity, exercising regularly, spending time outdoors, and nurturing her friendships.

Crina's plan for 2024 is to continue traveling as much as possible and also prepare herself for aging well physically and financially. Both of us are on this journey of self-improvement in service of ease, meaning, and joy in our lives. 

In the next episode, we will discuss the importance of learning in every situation. And don't forget to stay tuned until the end for some hilarious outtakes in our blooper reel!

SHOW NOTES

Authenticity is about being genuine, your original self - and there is also an element of being worthy of acceptance.  Authenticity does not mean you need to share your life story or connect with everyone on a deep personal level or share every unfiltered thought or opinion you have.  We know from the research that being authentic makes all things work better - engagement, performance, innovation, retention, belonging - just all of it.  And according to the Harvard Business Review - it makes us more ethical. Why Authentic Workplaces Are More Ethical (hbr.org)

And, we are still hiding things at work.  

A recent study by JobSage found more than 3 in 5 workers said that they are currently hiding at least one thing about their identity from their employer and 64% said that they’ve experienced backlash after revealing something about themselves, most often being treated unkindly or ignored completely.  What do people hide?  The top three are political views, information about their families, information about their own mental health.  JobSage reported that employees hide things about themselves to avoid making people uncomfortable (49%), avoid being stereotyped (43%) and, understandably, out of fear that revelation might impact their career advancement (41%).  Interestingly, men and women are almost equally likely to be hiding something from their employer (66% and 62%, respectively), but for slightly different reasons. While men don’t want to make people uncomfortable, women are more concerned about being stereotyped.  A shocking 4 out of 5 employees have repressed some aspect of their identity for the sake of their career.

Some of this hiding is wise and protective.  But according to Dorie Clark, author of Stand Out, there are impacts to hiding.  It consumes energy, it can create the loss of confidence and increased fear, career stagnation and isolation, as well as stifling creativity.    The Real Dangers of Hiding Our Whole Selves at Work: An Interview with Dorie Clark - Navalent…

Listeners, you are precious creatures - not everyone gets your preciousness - use your energy wisely - whether you reveal or not.  

More good reads:

Authenticity at Work: Everything You Need to Know (betterup.com)

Re-thinking authenticity at work | LSE Business Review

Find all of our episodes (and cool pictures of Crina and Kirsten) at https://yougettowork.com/

Our co-host, Crina, is on a mission because, in her words, so many people are impacted by the "people in charge." Today's episode is an exploration of leadership, exploring why it's so darn crucial in our modern jungle of responsibilities.

Newsflash from the Fortune 500 universe – it's raining women CEOs – relatively speaking anyway! In January 2023, the Fortune 500 list had a glow-up moment with more than 10% of companies now led by women. Finance, healthcare, retail – you name it, women are turning corporate landscapes into their own VIP parties.

Leadership is a dance of focus, influence, perspective, and emotional connections. According to the leadership maestros, Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall, the secret sauce is meeting the "we" and the "I" needs of your team.

But how do we get that secret sauce of the “I” and the “we?”  Project Aristotle, actually a deep look by Google on what makes better teams, reveals the magical ingredients, from creating psychological safety (no public shaming, please) to modeling dependability and providing crystal-clear structures.  The societal expectations we women often wrestle with? Turns out, those are the very things making women fantastic leaders. Decades of psychological research agree; when women lead, magic happens. Dr. Alice Eagly's studies reveal that women make better leaders, with a dash of transformational leadership and out-of-the-box thinking.

We know leadership can be stressful and University of Southern California research finds that women make better decisions than men when under stress. Ladies, our brains are like stress-proof shields, managing cortisol like wizards handling wands.

Women leaders make work better.  Women leaders aren't just breaking glass ceilings; they're transforming the leadership landscape into a place where there is more ease, meaning and joy. 

Find all of our episodes at https://yougettowork.com/

But hold on, before we can fully embrace AI, there are a few things standing in our way. Maybe it's our lack of awareness or understanding that's holding us back. Or perhaps it's concerns about privacy and security. And let's not forget those resistant-to-change folks out there. But hey, just like any other skill, we can overcome these obstacles with a little practice and training.

Here's some mind-blowing news for you: a recent Goldman Sachs report reveals that generative AI could impact a whopping 300 million jobs every year across various industries. We're talking healthcare, education, social work, finance, law - you name it! That's HUGE.

But guess what? AI isn't just a game-changer for everyone; it's a game-changer for women too. From inclusive hiring practices to learning platforms for skill development, remote work support, and empowering women entrepreneurs - AI has their back.

Now, we can't ignore the potential downsides either. If AI is trained on biased data or designed without considering equality, it could perpetuate gender bias. That means discrimination and inequality might become part of AI's programming. And who knows, AI might even snatch jobs traditionally held by women.

All that being said, AI can also be a whole lot of fun! So why not give it a shot? Sign up for ChatGPT, Bard, Copilot, or Bing and let your imagination run wild. Write a letter, plan an office party, or even whip up a killer job description with the help of AI. The possibilities are endless!

The origin of the term “work wife” is from 19th century UK and was first used to describe a very close and aligned working relationship between a government minister and his male secretary.  The term then went on to describe female assistants as work wives - taking care of the male bosses personal needs at work.  We have moved away from this - thankfully!

Today the term workplace spouse describes someone at work who is a gender to which we are attracted and with whom we share something of an exclusive, intimate, nonsexual bond with at work.  We need to take care with labels as what we call something can be self-fulfilling.  Simply Hired  reports that half of women and 45% of men report having a work spouse at work and a significant percentage of these folks feel sexual attraction to each other.  In a time where we recognize the benefits of keeping sex out of the workplace, why do we continue to sexualize people who are really friends - let’s just have more friends.

Listen as Crina and Kirsten take issue with sexualization of the workplace - and advocate for workplace friends.

The state of the world and participation in the executive and legislative parts of government remains unequal.  There are 195 countries in the world and only 26 countries have women heads of state - and the US is not one of those countries.  Only 6 countries in the world have reached gender parity in their legislative branches of government - and the US is not one of those countries.  Facts and figures: Women’s leadership and political participation | UN Women – Headquarters.

When women are able to gain access to these roles activities the government engages in change.  For example, In India, local jurisdictions with women-led councils are more likely to have a clean drinking water project as compared to male-led councils.  Women are also more likely to champion issues of gender equality, such as the elimination of gender-based violence, parental leave and childcare, pensions, gender-equality laws, and electoral reform.

As the National League of Women Voters tells us - EVERY VOTE COUNTS.  So get informed and vote - you can change the trajectory of women’s experience at work and in our communities.

SHOW NOTES

Female rivalry is something that has been identified as keeping and holding women back from success in the workplace - and from equity, which is another one of those messages to us that our lack of equality in the workplace is our own fault - because we are catty and mean. 

A large meta-study in the Journal of Organizational Behavior found the research on this topic is conflicted and concluded that the studies thus far on this issue have been inadequate to reach a real conclusion.

There appear to be two competing perspectives on this issue – one is that women compare, compete and undermine each other; while the other is that women support and cooperate with each other.  What our hosts believe is that female rivalry as something in itself does not exist and rather when it exists it is the product of a biased and dysfunctional system.

Let’s start with bias. Women are expected to be communal and collaborative and supportive in the workplace.  However, the workplace also expects us to compete for influence, promotions, and power.  When woman act in opposite of the expectations around the “nice” behavior and engage in the competitive behavior, they are more harshly judged than their male counterparts.  This is yet another situation where the same behavior is differently judged based on gender.  As Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant write “[w]omen aren't any meaner to women than men are to one another. Women are just expected to be nicer. We stereotype men as aggressive and women as kind. When women violate these stereotypes, we judge them harshly."

What the research does say is the fewer opportunities there are for women, the more likely women are to report female rivalry.  When there are fewer opportunities for women, there is often something wrong or dysfunctional about the system, which results in dysfunctional behavior from women.  This is not to say queen bees do not exist – just like men – but it is to say women are more harshly judged for it and tit is more likely to occur in an environment when there are fewer opportunities for women.

More good reads:

Catty, bitchy, queen bee or sister? A review of competition among women in organizations from a paradoxical‐coopetition perspective - Kark - Journal of Organizational Behavior - Wiley Online Library

Gossip, Exclusion, Competition, and Spite: A Look Below the Glass Ceiling at Female-to-Female Communication Habits in the Workplace

Opinion | Sheryl Sandberg on the Myth of the Catty Woman - The New York Times

What everybody needs to know about female rivalry in the workplace - AB Media & Communication

Research shows that meaningfulness is more important to us than any other aspect of our jobs — including pay and rewards, opportunities for promotion, and working conditions. When we experience our work as meaningful, we’re more engaged, committed, and satisfied.   Meaningful Work | Michael F. Steger.

When we experience meaning at work, our performance it better, we are more loyal, our jobs become more dear to us to such an extent that we are willing to give up money, we are more engaged, our attendance is better, we are more likely to be promoted and we experience more well-being,  7 Surprising Benefits of Doing Meaningful Work.

Leaders have a significant role in creating meaning at work for those they lead.  Leaders who are able to communicate the work’s greater impact, recognize and nurture potential, articulate values and act on those values with their own personal integrity and give employee’s some freedom and autonomy in their work are more like to have employees articulate their work is meaningful. 7 Surprising Benefits of Doing Meaningful Work.

As individual women at work, we can experience more meaning in our work by being more mindful and aware- of both ourselves and others.  As we are more aware of our environment, we are better in our daily interactions and able to see and articulate what we need and be more aware of what our co-workers need. As we are more mindful and aware, we are more creative in our solutions to problems, and as we solve problems, we experience more meaning. What Makes Work Meaningful?

Meaning may be the most important element of workplace satisfaction.  It can turn the mundane into the magical.

What is play? It is an in the moment activity with the goal of amusement or fun.  Our mammalian brains love play.  The bigger the brain in an animal, the more play the animal seems to engage in.  This is because play is how we learn and explore the world - and mammalian brains have made this activity feel good so that we are motivated to do it.  In one study of play in bears, bears who played more were more likely to survive.

But what about play at work?  Research has found evidence that play at work is linked with less fatigue, boredom, stress, and burnout in individual workers.   Play is also positively associated with job satisfaction, sense of competence, and creativity.  

Studies show that when a participant receives a task that is presented playfully, they are more involved and spend more time on the task. It also improves our emotional, attitudinal, cognitive being.  Teams of workers can benefit from play via increased trust, bonding and social interaction, sense of solidarity, and a decreased sense of hierarchy. 

Furthermore, findings suggest that play at work can benefit whole organizations by creating a friendlier work atmosphere, higher employee commitment to work, more flexible organization-wide decision making, and increased organizational creativity.  WOW!

As we mature, we develop a style or mode in which we are most comfortable being playful. Dr. Stuart Brown, author and founder of the National Institute of Play, calls these styles of playfulness, “play personalities.”  These are not based on scientific data, rather Dr. Brown discerned them from thousands of interviews and observations:

Connector, Joker, Kinesthete, Explorer, Competitor, Director, Collector, Artist/Creator, Storyteller, and Connector.  

Which play personalities speak to you?

Read more at: 

How to Have Fun at Work Science of People

Cultivating a sense of playfulness at work and in life

Forced Fun Sucks - So Why Do Organizations Keep Doing It?

How to Have Fun at Work

Everything You Wanted To Know About Play At Work (But Were Afraid To Ask)

Stuart Brown: Play is more than just fun | TED Talk

Joan Williams and her daughter Rachel Dempsey, wrote What Works for Women at Work.  Joan has decades of experience as a law professor and she runs a project focused primarily on women at work called Work Life Law at Hastings Law School.  Rachel is a journalist.

The authors have characterized womens’ experiences at work into four patterns:

Prove it Again stems from assumptions about how women will behave at work.  This pattern looks like being penalized for mistakes that men make with little or no consequence; having to defend your decision or back it up with data, even if you are a seasoned professional; and the “stolen idea.”

The Tightrope stems for the precarious balance women are expected to strike between masculinity and femininity.  This pattern looks like being “too much” or “not enough”, being either a bitch or a doormat; and being pressed into traditionally feminine roles, such as taking notes. 

The Maternal Wall stems from the strong negative competence and commitment associations triggered by motherhood and prescriptive bias (mothers should be at home). Joan and Rachel say “the ideal worker is expected to be unreservedly devoted to work, while the ideal mother is expected to invest similar levels of devotion to her children. As a result motherhood is perceived as incompatible with high levels of work effort.”  This pattern looks like not getting hired or promoted because of the assumptions others make about the obligations of motherhood.

The Tug of War stems from women working in what is a dysfunctional system.  Rather than supporting each other, we can pit ourselves against one another, we can also buy into male norms. Sometimes our different strategies to deal with a dysfunctional system pit us against each other.

Joan and Rachel remind us of a few important premises when we consider these four patterns:

• There is a stubborn gap at the top between men and women and their success at work
• A lot of what we are told at work is wrong
• Denial does not help - we cannot assume our excellence will save us from these experiences
• Everyone's a little bit sexist
• Know the rules, then break them - “there is no right way to be a woman” 

The book is full of strategies to address the four patterns and a chapter on lessons learned from the research. 

Joan’s Work LIfe Law institute has developed what they refer to as bias interrupters, which are assessments and training to address the bias which is the root of the four patterns.  Check out Bias Interrupters on the Work Like Law website.

Joan and Rachel’s book is a comprehensive look at women’s experience at work.  They remind us what we experience is real, they help us to clearly define that experience and they provide excellent strategies, tools, lessons and stories for us to best manage that experience.  

SHOW NOTES

Why do We Working Women Need Rest?

According to Saundra Dalton-Smith in The 7 Types of Rest that Every Person Needs,  “[w]ithout attention to rest, we are creating a culture of high-achieving, high-producing, chronically tired and chronically burned-out individuals.”  According to psych central, 70 percent of visits to the doctor are due to stress-related health issues. “Rest is the only way to engage the part of our nervous system that allows for relaxation.” It is literally vital for our physical and mental health.”  The 7 types of rest that every person needs | (ted.com)

What Does the Data Say about the Effectiveness of Rest?

Researchers at Stanford did a series of experiments looking at the effects of walking on creativity, as measured by a test of divergent thinking—which asked people to come up with novel ways of using an everyday item, like a brick or a doorstop. The researchers compared participants’ performance under four conditions: while walking on a treadmill, while seated inside, while walking outside, or while being wheeled outside in a wheelchair. Their results showed that walking and being outside each separately led to better performance on the test. Moreover, in one experiment, the researchers showed that the benefits of walking on creativity did not fade immediately, but carried over into performance on future tests. ”https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_resting_more_can_boost_your_productivity

The company Basecamp added another day to the weekend and found productivity unchanged.  Workers got done in 4 days what had taken 5.  8 Minute Read Why Restorative Rest Makes You More Productive And How To Achieve It

How Do We Achieve the Restorative Rest 

Whether you schedule a walk with a friend (or by yourself), commit to get up from your desk once every hour to get a glass of water, meditate for 10 minutes before you start your day or book your solo vacation - get it on your schedule!  

If you want to restore your creative energy - get inspired by listening to music, getting outside in nature, watching the sunset or enjoying beautiful art. If you want to restore your physical energy, sleep - of course, but also just sitting.  If you find yourself irritable and unable to concentrate, you may have expended too much mental energy - which is classic Kirsten.  Schedule a time to take a breath.  Crina schedules lunch and commits to healthy, nutritious food and it is an anchor in her day and restorative in many ways. If you are on sensory overload - turn everything off and shut your eyes - just for 10 deep breaths - and avoid going home and turning the tv on - find some quiet. Emotional energy is complicated - are you holding others emotions or has life just sent you on an emotional roller-coaster?  Identify what you need - maybe you need to authentically express your emotions in a safe place or to wrap a metaphorical quilt around your tender soul?  Social rest is an obvious one for those of us who are introverts - we need time to ourselves, and so do those of us who are extroverts - we just tend to need less of it and sometimes not realize it.  Spiritual rest is the energy to find deep meaning, a sense of purpose and belonging and love.  When those things are missing from our lives, it may be time to up our spiritual energy quotient.  It could be faith or religion, but Dalton-Smith suggests that you can cultivate a sense of purpose with music, uplifting and inspiring videos, focusing on the magical - such as the bloom of a flower or dew on a leaf - and then going back to these moments when you feel disconnected.

Check out Dalton-Smith’s article above - it is a rich trove of ideas and the inspiration for this show.

Crina and Kirsten talk about self-care from the Audre Lorde perspective. Not as a massage or a bottle of fancy bath bubbles, but as actions that put our needs before those of others to create practices that are restorative. Crina and Kirsten discuss their own restorative practices and how to create those so that you can bring your best self to all things, including your work.

GOOD READS

The history of self-care

The problem with self-care

SHOW NOTES

Burnout is a  real diagnosis - and defined as “chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed” by the World Health Organization.  This relatively new diagnosis is defined as a “syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is characterized by three dimensions: 1) feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; 2) increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job; and 3) reduced professional efficacy. Burnout refers specifically to phenomena in the occupational context and should not be applied to describe experiences in other areas of life.”

Christina Maslach (creator of the Maslach Burnout Inventory) first identified the syndrome - and it came out of her work with healthcare workers and their families.  Here are her inventory questions:

1. How often are you tired and lacking energy to go to work in the morning?
2. How often do you feel physically drained, like your batteries are dead?
3. How often is your thinking process sluggish or your concentration impaired?
4. How often do you feel emotionally detached from co-workers (or customers) and unable to be sensitive to their needs?

Does it sound like you?  If you are like most of us - yes, at least some teimes.

How does this happen?  When we carry too much for too long and cannot effectively process our emotions, our neurological system gets overloaded - and we are unable to effectively deal with this overload.

Who does this happen to?  Well, all of us, but those of us that are anxious or have a low self esteem or poor boundaries are thought to be more likely to suffer burnout, according to a study of Spanish nurses.  According to authors Rachel Montane and Erika Pryor, women of color also carry the emotional burden of discrimination, fear of retaliation - and of course much of the emotional labor of diversity in the workplace..

Employers contribute to burnout by unfair treatment, an unmanageable workload, unrealistic deadlines, poor communication and a lack of support.

Enter Drs. Emily and Amelia Nagoski, authors of Burnout, who just happen to be identical twins.  They have concluded, based on their research, that the key to preventing burnout is to manage the emotions you are having so that we do not become emotionally exhausted.  They encourage us to process the emotion - actually turn towards it, and feel it.  Scary!!  But we can do it.

Here are the twins’ suggestions to deal with, process and get on the other side of our emotions.

• Engage in physical activity
• Try breathing exercises
• Make positive connections with people you love and care about (call someone or better yet go for a walk with a friend)
• Laugh - a great big belly laugh
• Hug for 20 seconds - the full slightly uncomfortable 20 seconds
• Cry - they promise it will not go on forever
• Be Creative - paint, sing, dance, write

The key is to send our body a signal that the danger is over, we are safe.  And how do we know our emotions have been processed and we are “done?”  The twin doctors promise your body will tell you.

Be aware of your depletion clues.  Are you sleeping well and enough?  Are you engaging in activities where you do not think of work? Are you taking breaks at work?  Do you have work-life boundaries?

The solution to burnout is actually more than self-care.  It is more about managing emotions.

While burnout is prevalent, there are things we can do to recognize our vulnerability, determine whether it is happening to us and work to relieve that chronic stress through the processing of emotions.  

More good reads:

How to Recover From Burnout & Love Work Again According to Science

How to Eliminate Burnout and Retain Top Talent

SHOW NOTES

Before our hosts take off on the vacation topic, they consider the advantages of shorter, yet still meaningful breaks in your day.  Crina talks about her time with trees, and as usual, Kirsten has her head in a book called Stillness is the Key by Ryan Holiday, which discusses the benefits of space to your intellectual, physical and spiritual well-being.  

The data about vacations very clearly tells us that vacations increase productivity and satisfaction in the workplace.  In fact, studies show that even planning your vacation can lift your spirits.  And, just an additional 10 hours of vacation can improve performance according to a study by Ernst & Young.

Too many people let cost, pets, concern about work coverage, too much work, fear of being gone from work or home get in the way of what is an uplifting and rejuvenating experience, including the 52% of Americans who do not use all of their vacation.  WHAT??!!

Our host end this show with some tips about how to make getting out of and coming back to the workplace easier, a discussion about whether you work while you are on vacation (mostly no) and how to make the most of your time away.  So get out there and enjoy!

GOOD READS

5 reasons you need to take a vacation according to science.

Opinion | Relax! You'll Be More Productive

Why You Need to Take a Vacation (Even When You Can't Afford One)

USTravel.org

What to Do With a Day off

DISCLAIMER: This episode addresses language and gender - language also impacts race and other aspects of identity, including sexuality and non-binary gender identity.  These are real issues, but there is not enough research nor do we have the expertise on the topics, so those issues are not addressed in this episode.

SHOW NOTES

Phrases like the girls out front, man up and drama queen are demeaning and degrading to women.  Other feminine words have been made derogatory - such as the word mistress, which used to define a role in a household and is now a word to describe a woman engaging in infidelity.  

Another impact on language is whether or not it is gendered.  Languages like French and Spanish are gendered, meaning that some words are designated as feminine or masculine  For example, in Italian an apple is feminine and bread is masculine - not the case with English.  Why is that and what is the impact?  Owen Ozier and Pamela Jakiela conducted a study for the World Bank, which analyzed over 4000 languages and found that 38% of those languages are gendered - and for women who speak primarily a gendered language are 15% less likely to participate in the workforce as compared to those women who speak a non-gendered language - that is 125 million women.  They also found people who speak a gendered language are more likely to agree with statements like “On the whole, men make better business executives than women do” or “When jobs are scarce, men should have more right to a job than women.” And women hold these attitudes just like men.

In addition to participation in the workforce, language impacts how we attract candidates, advancement and retention for women in the workforce.

The language in job descriptions can attract - or not - women to apply for jobs.  It may be hard to believe that simple changes to language could lead to more women in the workplace.  Instead of male coded words like “dominate,” “competitive” and “drive” -  words like “team” and “interpersonal” and phrases like “we will support you with the tools you need to do your job” can attract women to apply.  

We also see gender bias in the language in performance reviews, which affects retention and promotion.  In a study involving military performance evaluation, researchers concluded more negative characteristics were recorded for women than for men.  They also found that the negative characteristics attributed to women were about their personality rather than their performance.  

So what to do about this?  Be specific, and careful and thoughtful; use tools like Ongig to evaluate the language.

Gendered Languages May Play a Role in Limiting Women’s Opportunities, New Research Finds

masculine- and feminine-coded words

The coded language that holds women back at work - BBC Worklife

SHOW NOTES

Manners are behaviors and etiquette is the social code or cultural values of a community.  According to the anonymous blogger, peaceigive, the word “etiquette” comes to us from French and it referred to a physical ticket that explained the social rules in the court of Louis XIV. And of course, you only got a copy of the rules if you were “in.”

While manners and etiquette are fundamentally about kindness and respect, manners and etiquette can also be racist, ableist and sexist – and tools of exclusion.  Manners and etiquette in the workplace present an opportunity, as Judith “Miss Manners” Martin says, to maintain personal dignity, to balance cooperation and competitiveness, to take responsibility and remain flexible, to be attentive and discreet as well as honest and tactful  Manners and etiquette can be empowering to create a culture of inclusiveness.

Tune in to hear about the specifics of introductions, who pays, who buys gifts, remote work and all of the fabulous opportunities we have in the workplace to use manners and etiquette to create more ease, meaning and joy at work.

 GOOD READS

School of Disruptive Etiquette

Psst… Manners Are Racist and Ableist Too. – PEACE I GIVE

SHOW NOTES

The first step is the scariest because there are so many unknowns, but it is the check in - check in with your co-worker about how they are doing.  The reason this can feel scary is because you do not know what the reaction with be - you could get tears, a brick wall, anger - you just cannot be sure how someone is doing until you ask - but being open allows us to do the next important step, which is to hold space, which means we just need to pay attention and listen.  When we are holding space, telling someone how they do or should or will feel is often not helpful.  Once we have an understanding of how someone is going, then we can start to sort through whether we should just be with our co-worker or we should make an offer to help.  Listen is as Crina and Kirsten sort through these issues and the specifics.

MORE GOOD READS

The Best Way to Comfort Someone When They're Sad

How to Offer Support to a Grieving Colleague (hbr.org)

When Someone You Love Is Upset, Ask This One Question

Four Ways Hugs Are Good for Your Health

SHOW NOTES

It is helpful to know ourselves - always, but particularly with change.  In 1962, E.M. Rogers created the Diffusion of Innovation Theory - how change happens.  Innovators are the creators of change.  Early adopters are people in leadership who embrace change.  Early majority are those of us who are not in leadership, but are more willing than most to adopt a change.  Late majority are the folks who are reluctant to change, but will do it once most others have.  Laggards, are those who are reluctant to change - and just really do not like it.  Knowing who we are on this scale gives us a starting point to address the impacts of change.

When change happens, there can be things that frustrate us, worry us and create problems for us.  Change can create just about any negative emotion or experience.  McKinsey created the 7 S’s, which is really an organizational tool, but serves as an excellent evaluation tool:  

1 - is your problem or concern one of strategy - does the change impact the organization’s plan for building and maintaining a competitive advantage over competitors?

2 - is your problem or concern one of structure - does the change impact how workers are organized and who reports to who?

3 - is your problem or concern with systems - does the change impact how work is performed?

4 - is your problem or concern with values - does the change impact the core values or work ethic of the organization?

5 - is your problem or concern one of style - does the change impact leadership style?

6 - is your problem or concern one of staffing - does the change impact the ability of the humans to do their work?

7 - is your problem or concern one of skills - does the change impact the skills and competencies of the organization’s workers?

Analyzing your concern or problem through this lens provides a framework to better manage our responses.

Once we understand our problem or concern, there are strategies to manage those reactions:

1. Acknowledge the change. When change is happening in the workplace, acknowledge it  and our responses in a non-judgmental way.
2. Excavate your fears and concerns. Writing down these fears and considering what you will do about each can diffuse our reactions.
3. Be flexible. 
4. Be part of the change. Any time we can be involved, we have an opportunity to shape change.
5. Communicate. It is important to articulate problems and concerns to leadership.
6. Reduce Stress and anxiety. Of course!  
7. Have a sense of meaning. Understanding the value of our work can help us navigate change

GOOD READS:

(40) 10 Tips for Dealing with Change Positively in Your workplace | LinkedIn

McKinsey 7-S Framework - Making Every Part of Your Organization Work in Harmony

Diffusion of Innovation Theory

SHOW NOTES 

Looking for a job can be discouraging, but remember, 52% of applicants get 1 or 2 interviews after submitting 10 applications.  34% get none and 14% get 3 or more interviews.  It usually takes at least ten applications to get a job.

The first step to interviewing is preparation, which will take far longer than the interview.  And we assume we have the interview because our resumes are great, our cover letters do not contain typos and our social media presence reflects what we want to communicate to the world, including a potential employer.

Research the company and the industry, check into what their employees on LinkIn are posting, find people who know about the company and ask questions.  What would you like to know about the company or working there that you did not find out in your research?

Find a personal connection to the company and let that person know you have an interview.  Candidates that are referred and have personal connections are more likely to be hired.

Practice answering questions - no, really, don’t just consider what your answers would be, but actually say it out loud - preferably with someone you trust.  We should be prepared to answer the difficult questions about ourselves - be ready to explain gaps in our resume, a termination, a criminal conviction . . . we should be ready to talk about the challenging parts of our resume and work - and sometimes personal - history.  Practice with a friend or mentor.

And we have arrived at the big day - be early, comfortable, rested, hydrated, and nourished.  

It is okay to be nervous, it shows you care, but focusing on our nervousness can be distracting.  

Here are some helpful hints: answer the questions and be honest in your answers (this is BIG!); take notes if it is helpful to stay on track; have copies of your resume, references, writing samples etc in case those are needed; ask the questions that arose during your research. And feel free to be funny and add humor - funny people are more likely to be hired. 

GOOD READS

Tips for a Successful Interview

Strategies of Effective Interviewing

30 Mind-Blowing Interview Statistics to Get You Going in 2023 (legaljobs.io)

SHOW NOTES

Crina and Kirsten find it endlessly entertaining to consider why people arrive at certain conclusions.  We have all been in a situation where we have said something and two people who have heard it interpret what we say entirely differently - and maybe even differently than we intended.  This is true of so many things - i.e. is the email my boss sent supportive or is it a threat.  Kirsten is consistently surprised by employees who think they are being fired and pack up their office when their boss has no intention of firing them.  Why is this?

At first, our hosts thought that it was about family or origin and experiences, but new research suggests our beliefs may be more about what we decide is true versus what we actually experience as true.  Our hosts are quick to point out that trauma and adverse childhood experiences are not addressed in this research - at least not yet - and we should be cautious about applying this new research to those situations.

Our beliefs about whether the world is a good place stem from three main questions:

Is the world safe? 

Is the world beautiful and interesting? 

Do I have the ability to influence the world around me? 

Jer refers to these beliefs as Primal Beliefs - and they shape our experience of the world. Our duo explores what each of these questions is about. If the world is not safe, then it is unsafe.  If the world is not beautiful and interesting, then it is dull and boring.  If we do not have the ability to interact and influence our world, then it is just mechanistic and our efforts are futile.  These beliefs do not necessarily control everything we do, but research indicates these beliefs nudge our experiences and fill in the gaps when we do not have enough information.

The research is exciting because it concludes that experiences do not necessarily shape belief.  For example, people who live in relatively wealthier neighborhoods do not see the world as more abundant than people who live in poorer neighborhoods - and the same is true for safety.  People who live in safer neighborhoods do not believe the world is safer than people who live in more dangerous neighborhoods. The experiences of these people do not match their beliefs.

This research is new and there is more coming out in the next several years.  It is an exciting proposition that we can decide what beliefs we hold - and even work to increase our positive beliefs to improve our experience with the world.

Here is the link:

Workplace Mental Health & Well-Being — Current Priorities of the U.S. Surgeon General

SHOW NOTES

And don’t forget to read Surgeon General Murthy’s letter introducing the framework.  He discusses his parents’ experience in coming to America and what work meant to them. It meant connection and meaning - and helped them thrive - and provided for their family.  Sounds a lot like ease, meaning and joy!

The framework starts by citing the statistics on workplace mental health.  The vast majority of people are experiencing a mental health symptom due to stress at work, yet most are unwilling to seek help, which means people suffer.

Dr. Murthy then lays out the five components of workplace mental health and wellness.

Protection from Harm: Human needs: Safety and Security 

Protection from harm covers everything from adequate ergonomic equipment, safety in performing tasks such as lifting, clean air and water, sufficient light - and being free from impacts to our psychological safety, such as bullying and intimidation and discrimination.

Connection & Community  Human needs: Social Support and Belonging

Creating connections, relationships and networks at work offers all kinds of support to employees and can mitigate the tsunami of loneliness that is facing many Americans.  Creating a culture of belonging supports mental health and wellness.

Work-Life Harmony Human needs: Autonomy and Flexibility

The work-life harmony component of mental health and well-being at work acknowledges that most workers have more responsibilities than their work. Employers need to see workers as whole people with responsibilities outside of work, whether it is time needed for routine physical and mental health care, an unexpected family issue that requires urgent attention, or for regular time and space for rest, exercise, educational pursuits, and hobbies. Workers also need as much flexibility and autonomy as possible as to how their work is done, which helps them balance work on personal obligations.

Mattering at Work Human needs: Dignity and meaning

Workers want to know they matter and they make a difference.  This is about compensating workers in a way that acknowledges and communicates value as well as building a culture of gratitude and recognition.

Opportunity for Growth Human Needs: Learning and Accomplishment

Lastly, workers need opportunities for learning, accomplishment, and growth to support mental health and well-being in the workplace.  Workers become more optimistic about their abilities and more enthusiastic about contributing to the organization.  This can be education, mentoring, training or advancement opportunities.

Kudos to Dr. Murthy for bringing the issue of workplace mental health and wellness to the forefront of important health issues in the United States.

SHOW NOTES

Creativity is an activity that occurs by connecting the activities that occur in various parts of our brains.  Anna Abraham, a neuroscientist and author of The Neuroscience of Creativity said in Scientific American that one of the things that’s unique about creativity in the brain is that it draws from both sides. This is actually what makes creativity unique compared to other brain functions, like language or motion, that originate in a specific region.

In a 2018 study researchers determined creativity is higher in people who are able to connect the parts of our brain that provide imagining with decision making and focus and the ability to switch among these functions.  Usually brain activity doesn’t occur much between these networks, but in highly creative brains, interactions were strong. 

There are many studies supporting the link between creativity and happiness.  See the links below.  Participants who undertook a creativity priming task that required them to recall three situations where they had behaved creatively before completing another creativity task, reported a higher level of subjective well-being after the task than the control group. In a study of women with stage 1 and 2 breast cancer, creative arts therapy intervention enhanced psychological well-being by decreasing negative emotional states and enhancing positive ones. The authors of a 2019 article concludes creative individuals tend to be better problem-solvers, which in turn lowers their stress levels and promotes happiness. 

Creativity is also good for your performance at work and it is good for those around you.  A new study by San Francisco State University organizational psychologist Kevin Eschleman and colleagues found employees who pursue creative activities outside of work find these activities boost their performance on the job.  Creativity again makes us better problem solvers, and it also appears to make us more generous with our co-workers in terms of lending a hand.

The most effective way to increase creativity to make space for it, whether journaling as part of a morning routine or wood working in the evening after dinner.  If you cannot carve out the space try to build it into existing activities - maybe doodle when taking notes or focusing on creativity when preparing your evening meal.  

Doing routine activities in a different way can also fuel creativity, such as taking a different route to work or using your non-dominant hand or refraining from swearing - these kinds of changes “mix it up” in your brain.  

10 Studies Show Why Creativity and Happiness are Linked (trackinghappiness.com)

3 science-backed reasons having a hobby will help your career (cnbc.com)

Why Do We Treat Women's Creativity Differently? | Psychology Today

How To Be More Creative And Boost Happiness: 6 Ways To Get Inspired (forbes.com)

The Creativity Bias against Women - Scientific American

SHOW NOTES

White male entitlement exists because society has a dislike, contempt or ingrained prejudice against women  - also known as misogyny.  It is difficult not to reach this conclusion when we look at statistics about women’s health, women at work, women as parents, the economic status of women, women in elected and administrative governmental offices etc . . .. In each of the areas, the results for women are inferior to those of men.  Kate Mann, assistant professor of philosophy at Cornell University, writes misogyny is “the system that operates within a patriarchal social order to police and enforce women’s subordination and to uphold male dominance.” Misogyny is like a shock collar used to keep dogs behind an invisible fence, misogyny, Mann argues, and aims to keep women—those who are well trained as well as those who are unruly—in line.”  Mann asserts that misogyny is not directed at every woman, but rather is a system in which women exist.  Mann distinguishes sexism, which she defines as the ideas society has about women, with misogyny, which is the patriarchal system of enforcement of those ideas.

The misogynistic culture allows male entitled to thrive.  Male entitlement can be as simple as men acting like the master of the castle and treating women as there to serve and pamper. It can be seen in the policing of what women wear lest they leave a man unable to control his sexual desires.  We see it at work, much as we do at home, with the delegation of certain kinds of tasks to women, the frequency and duration that men speak - even the learned incompetence that we sometimes see in men who believe they are not required to be competent.  And this kind of behavior in the workplace negatively impacts job satisfaction and leads to burnout both for the entitled and for their co-workers.

This is a problem for white males to resolve.  And it requires white males to be aware of their behavior - their expectations, how much they speak, how much room they take up.  It requires active listening and a desire to give support as much or not more than they receive it.  Ideally, men call other men on entitled behavior.

Women can set good boundaries about what they are willing to do and not do and what behavior they are willing to be on the receiving end and what behavior they are not willing to tolerate.  

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Kate Manne

Being a good listener is an important learned skill.

What do we mean by male entitlement and male privilege? - SAFER (a resource to help Australian churches deal with domestic and family violence) (saferresource.org.au)

Healthy Entitlement: The Key to Gender Equity in the Workplace — Composure - The Art of Executive Presence

SHOW NOTES

Nancy Rothbard of Harvard and Steffanie Wilk of Ohio State University found that the start-of-the-day mood can last longer than we might think—and has an important effect on job performance. They studied the moods of customer service representatives (CSRs) as they started the day, how they viewed work events such as customer interactions throughout the day, and their mood during the day after these customer interactions. How a CRS started the day was the mood that stayed with them throughout the day.  For those CRS who started out the day in a calm and happy mood, customer interactions tended to enhance those positive feelings.  Those who started the day in a bad mood did not really climb out of it even after interacting with positive customers.  Quality and quality of work was also better among those who reported more positive feelings.  How Your Morning Mood Affects Your Whole Workday

Owning our mornings means we start our day in meaningful activity. To have time, we need to wake up earlier, but that does not mean we should cut back on sleep, it really means we go to bed earlier.  Over 60% of Americans hardly ever wake up feeling energized or rested, according to a 2020 survey conducted by RestoreZ.  We are already tired so moving our bedtime earlier is essential to preserving sleep and having a morning routine.

To wake up earlier …”we’re trying to not just shift your bedtime, but actually shift your entire circadian clock to be earlier,” said Kimberly Fenn, a cognitive neuroscientist.   This is a gradual process, say 15 minutes earlier to bed every night to allow our bodies to adapt.

Now that we are up, bright-eyed and bushy tailed with time before we have to be at work, what do we do with that time?  And here is the beauty of this - we get to create a routine that makes us happy, that is meaningful to us.

For some people a morning routine may be five minutes - a glass of water, an affirmation or intention for the day.  For others, a routine can be an hour - or even two - and include meditation, journaling, exercise - and a really good breakfast.  A morning routine is about priming our brains for positivity.  For women with children at home, caretaking obligations or lots of overtime, the five minute morning routine may be perfect.  The opportunity is to begin the day in a way that brings positivity to our day - and maybe even joy!

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

5 best morning routine ideas of productive people | Trello

Psychologists: Morning habits to help you be happier, more productive

Perfect Your Morning Routine With 10 Research Backed Steps

My Morning Routine

The “overwhelm” has physical, cognitive, and behavioral effects. Our bodies can feel shaky, or have those anxious sensations such as a racing heart or an upset stomach or that antsy skin-crawling sensation.  Cognitively, we can be slower to process information and even become confused and our judgment can be affected.  Our behaviors can also be impacted - we may eat more or less, we may treat others poorly, we may procrastinate or isolate ourselves.  In short - just feel and act in a way far from our best selves.

Overwhelm is a significant issue for women at work and about a third of us seek professional help to deal with overwhelming stress.  

Some strategies for dealing with overwhelm are:

• Make time for the emotion, as we know, strong emotions usually only last a few minutes
• Consider how the emotion feels in your body
• Consider the emotion in the context it arose, was is it a reasonable response to the situation or was it really about something else 
• Emotions are messages, which may be as simple as being tired or hungry - or something much deeper
• Be careful not to “grind” on this think piece - sometimes we just need to let things go
• Be really kind to yourself - we are not alone on overwhelm - it is a common experiences

Sometimes calling a friend can help manage and strategize through overwhelm.  Kirsten has “borrowed a brain” from a friend when hers was not working.  Sometimes completely mixin’ it up can also help - like heading out the door for a walk in the fresh air - or even just in different surroundings.  We can change overwhelm into something different - or at least alleviate its intensity - a critical piece to ease, meaning and joy at work.

Women Continuing To Face Alarmingly High Levels Of Burnout, Stress In The “New Normal” Of Work

Stress in America 2022: Concerned for the future, beset by inflation

SHOW NOTES  

Revisiting the very first episode of Crina and Kirsten Get to Work, our hosts take a deeper dive into material they discussed so many years ago. First, let’s review the three types of friendships, all of which contribute to the ease, meaning and joy we experience at work.

1. Friendships of utility: which exist between people who are useful to each other in some way. 
2. Friendships of pleasure: which exist between people who enjoy each other. 
3. Friendships of the good: which exist because of mutual respect and admiration. 

Our hosts wanted to take a deeper dive considering what is something of a loneliness epidemic in the United State.  Three decades ago, Gallup reported that three percent of Americans had no close friends.  In 2021, an online poll put the number of people with no close friends at twelve percent.  And over the pandemic thirteen percent of women report they have lost touch with friends over the pandemic.  

Loneliness at work can keep people “out of the loop.” Interacting with other people at work makes the office more enjoyable, it also provides a conduit for critical information. The informal conversations and communications we have with people at work is how information is shared - and friendships really “grease the wheels” of this communication.

Friendships at work create more committed employees, who are more productive and are better communicators.  According to the 2021 Workplace Friendship & Happiness Survey by Wildgoose, 57% of people say having a best friend in the workplace makes work more enjoyable, 22% feel more productive with friends, and 21% say friendship makes them more creative. 

There are some key strategies to creating friendships at work, according to research by Shasta Nelson, friendship expert, there are three principles behind any strong relationship:

• Consistency: how regularly and frequently you interact with each other. 
• Vulnerability: how you get to know and feel close to each other. Sharing, revealing, let people “in,” 
• Positivity: how much you enjoy each other’s company….kindness, validation, gratitude, affirmation, acceptance, love.

More good reads:

The State of American Friendship: Change, Challenges, and Loss

How Many Close Friends Do You Need in Adulthood? - The New York Times

The 2021 Workplace Friendship & Happiness Survey | Wildgoose USA

Why Having a Best Friend at Work Matters - businessnewsdaily.com

The Power of Work Friends

Frientimacy: The 3 Requirements of All Healthy Friendships | Shasta Nelson | TEDxLaSierraUniversity

SHOW NOTES

Dr. Trisha Hersey, known as the Nap Bishop, is spreading the good word about rest. Hersey’s movement on rest was inspired by studying slavery and realising that slaves working to exhaustion was part of the brutal origin of capitalism - and her own inheritance.  Hersey says her rest work is not just about the treatment of Black and Indigenous people, but fundamentally how Black and indigenous people are treated is a  bellwether for how society is functioning.  She believes everyone benefits when we question our attitudes around the “grind culture” of work and productivity.  Hersey’s message is literally about taking naps, but also about other kids of rest.  Her ministry comes with four tenets:

1. Resting pushes back on and disrupts on white supremacy and capitalism.  We’ve been programmed to believe that the more we produce, the more worth we have, which has negatively impacted our well-being.
2. Our bodies are a site of liberation. 
3. Naps provide a portal to imagine, invent and heal. 
4. Our dream space has been stolen and we want it back. We will reclaim it via rest.

Saundra Dalton-Smith is a medical doctor who was raised with the message that as a Black woman she would always have to work harder than others.  As a physician, she listened to her patients talk about fatigue and realized that her patients were not resting, which she turned inward to address her own deep fatigue.  Dalton-Smith, who wrote Sacred Rest - Recover Your Life, Renew Your Energy, Restore your Sanity, focuses her work on the different kinds of rest we need - emotional, physical, social, spiritual, mental, social, sensory, and creative rest; and the gifts that come from that rest, such as boundaries, reflection, freedom, acceptance.  

The message is rest, listeners, rest.  It is good for all the parts of our human-ness.

The Nap Bishop Is Spreading the Good Word: Rest - The New York Times

Sacred Rest - Recover Your Life, Renew Your Energy, Restore your Sanity

SHOW NOTES

A Harvard Business School Study found goal setting can create a narrow focus that neglects other areas; cause a rise in unethical behavior, erode the organization culture, and reduce intrinsic motivations.  The authors of the study suggest goal setting should be treated like pharmaceuticals, carefully dosed with attention to harmful side effects and under close supervision. It is with this research in mind that we consider goal setting for the new year.

We know that goal setting can be an effective way to create ease, meaning and joy in our work lives.  We also know that there are strategies for increasing the likelihood we will achieve our goals.  For example, writing down goals increases the chances of achieving them by 42%; people who follow a schedule of actions to achieve a goal are 76% more likely to achieve their goals; and presenting weekly progress reports to a supportive audience increases our success rate 40%.

Given all of this data and the importance of carefully choosing goals, what is a woman to do about goals?  Spoiler Alert - work on identifying and setting goals for more of what you want in your life.  It is important to be very intentional about what you are creating because we know that goals are also limiting.  

2023 is an opportunity to create more ease, meaning and joy in our lives - goal setting is one way to intentionally direct our energy and resources.

Additional Resources:

Goals Gone Wild: The Systematic Side Effects of Over-Prescribing Goal Setting - Working Paper - Faculty & Research - Harvard Business School

Compared to men, women view professional advancement as equally attainable, but less desirable | Gender Action Portal (harvard.edu)

How to Find Your Goals in Life

This year the study includes information from 333 participating organizations employing more than 12 million people, and surveyed more than 40,000 employees.  The study included women of diverse identities, including women of color, LGBTQ+ women, and women with disabilities.  The pandemic has changed what women want from their companies, including the growing importance of opportunity, flexibility, employee well-being, and diversity, equity, and inclusion.

What runs through all of the findings is women of color, LGBTQ+ women and women with disabilities are significantly more impacted than white women.  This  data point that runs through every finding in the report.

Women are breaking up with their employers in record numbers, particularly when it comes to women in leadership.  More women in management are leaving than can be recruited.  Why?  We know women want more flexibility at work.  The study confirms women leaders carry more of the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) at work than men.  It is ironic women leaders do more DEI work, which improves retention and satisfaction for employees, but results in these women leaders being overworked - and in many cases unrecognized.  And let’s not forget about the second shift many women carry at home.  Women leaders want a workplace culture that prioritizes employee well-being and DEI.  Finally, women experience less support and more bias in the workplace, which makes the workplace more challenging for women.  

For the 8th consecutive year, the “broken rung” at the first step to manager continues to hold women back.  For every 100 men who are promoted into management, only 87 women are promoted, and only 82 women of color are promoted. As a result, men in management outnumber women, and women can never catch up. Fewer women in lower management, means fewer women to promote into senior leadership.

Women in technology industries are underrepresented and struggling.  These women are twice as likely to frequently be the only woman in the room at work - and they face higher levels of bias based on their gender.  Tech roles are among America’s fastest-growing and highest-paid job categories.  If women in these roles have negative day-to-day experiences and don’t see an equal path to advancement, it could lead to larger gaps in both representation and earnings between women and men overall.

While the workplace for women is similar to the last eight reports from McKinsey and LeanIn.org, this study reports good and bad news.  The good news is women leaders are pushing back and not accepting the status quo.  The bad news is disparities for women of color, LGBTQ+ and differently abled are still significant and we are not making progress for women in leadership or in technology.  There is more work to do - so the podcast continues!

Women in the Workplace | McKinsey

SHOW NOTES

Procrastination has negative effects to all aspects of our well-being – from financial to physical health.  But like all things, there is a reason we do something that is not so good for us.  After a study, Drs. Pchyl and Sirois concluded procrastination is really about avoiding negative moods and emotions associated with a task.  And the task may be negative because it is hard, boring, frustrating, meaningless, ambiguous etc.  We just do not want to do it. Sooo, we delay because we want to avoid those negative feelings.

The delay creates something identified by many experts as the procrastination cycle.  We have an expectation of ourselves that we are supposed to do something, we have some discomfort about what we are supposed to do, which in the moment is rewarded by avoiding the discomfort associated with the task, but then we have not done what we expected of ourselves – and we feel bad. 

When we are in this cycle, we have a hard time imagining what it will be like when we do not meet the expectation we have set for ourselves – or let someone else set for us.  Our present self feels great avoiding the discomfort – and is not considering that our future self will be stressed, lose opportunities, get disciplined or fired by our boss, feel awful we let down a co-worker  . . ..

1. What does the research say about procrastination:
2. Get in touch with how your future self will feel if your present self procrastinates
3. As always, be gentle with yourself.  Students who forgave themselves for not studying for a test ended up procrastinating far less on the next test. Solving the Procrastination Puzzle
4. Get curious about why – what is the negative feeling?
5. Remember getting the thing done will relive the negative emotion 
6. Be OK with “not being in the mood.” It is okay not to feel like doing something, but still do it
7. Break tasks down into smaller bits
8. Make is easy for yourself - set a specific time to do something, combine it with something you like, break tasks into smaller bits
9. Bribe yourself – i.e., if I get this done, I will treat myself 

5 Research-Based Strategies for Overcoming Procrastination

The real reasons you procrastinate — and how to stop - The Washington Post

Why You Procrastinate (It Has Nothing to Do With Self-Control) - The New York Times

Vicious Cycle of Procrastination.pub

fMRI scans of people’s brains

SHOW NOTES

In this episode, our hosts consider what may be the most important element in creating ease, meaning and joy at work - belonging.Belonging is both external and internal.  Dr. Geoffrey Cohen from Stanford says, “[w]e are the engineers of each other’s experience” Geoffrey Cohen from Stanford.  Brene Brown says “[belonging] requires us to be who we are.”  Belonging is the result of integration of these external and internal elements.  

Thirty-four percent of people feel their greatest belonging at work - not family, not friends, but work.  How do we create belonging at work?  We revisit the paradox that we first spoke about - the internal and the external.  What can we do as organizations and what can we do as individuals?

As individuals, we can work on our ability to show up in the workplace as we are - which as we know from Brene requires vulnerability and courage.  We can then create alliances with a peer or supervisor who sees and values your contributions, we can engage in high quality interactions with our peers, we can look for and be courageous enough to enter into empathetic relationships with others.

As leaders and part of organizations, we can respect outside commitments, doster inclusive leadership, make our own connections, recognize work and its value, provide honest and regular feedback, respond to concerns, empower others, communicate openly and honestly, and show up as our authentic selves.

More good reads on this very important topic.

Speaking of Psychology: How the need to belong drives human behavior, with Geoffrey L. Cohen, PhD on Apple Podcasts

The Power of Belonging: - Coqual

The Value of Belonging at Work

Here’s How to Build a Sense of Belonging in the Workplace (betterup.com)

Belonging At Work Is Essential—Here Are 4 Ways To Foster It (forbes.com)

The research tells us we are using social media at work - and often for our own purposes, such as taking a break to check in with friends on Instagram or to manage our own on-line presence.  Getting distracted by social media at work is a real thing - some of us can get back to work in 20 minutes, but others take two hours to return to the original task.  

How we present ourselves can often influence our prospects to get a job.  Profanity, bad grammar, reference to illegal drugs, alcohol use and secual content are among the things that deter a potential employer for making a hire.

Why do we do this - well, the brain science says social media triggers the same parts of our brain that are triggered by other addictions such as gambling or alcoholism.

There is disagreement about whether social media is good or bad - and of course, there really is not an answer because it is both good and bad.  The good is that we can be inspired and informed by social media.  Did you find a great hike you want to take because you saw a picture on Insta?  Did something on Twitter alert you about something you could do for a positive change in the world?  So many things that can enrich our lives come from social media.

The bad of social media is that it encourages the false self - we do not disclose all of ourselves nor do others disclose all of themselves.  We end up believing that everyone is perfectly coiffed and engaged in a meaningful or fun activity, which is a false narrative.  The studies on social media report that it generally makes us feel more stress, particularly women, it lowers our mood, increases anxiety and depression, interferes with our sleep and lowers our self-esteem.  It dresses our well-being, interferes with relationships.  Social media also fosters negative emotions such as envy, belonging and loneliness.

Here are some helpful strategies to make the most of social media without it making the worst of us:

• Consider the source - are you in a great SnapChat group with dear friends? Are you looking for fun ideas for a vacation?
• Set limits and know when to stop
• Use social media to connect with people who inspire you, share interests provide a sense of belonging 
• Negative Emotions are warning signs it may be time to unfollow or sign off
• Try a social media fast - you may surprised how hollow it feels on your return

Crina and Kirsten have discussed the research on women’s behaviors in the workplace and how women excel in almost every leadership capacity.  This research is established and has been replicated.  It is clear - men and women behave differently in the workplace.  Those differences can create conflict.

How do we manage these behavioral differences without drinking beer, playing golf and being less of ourselves?  We found some pretty interesting strategies - and some backed my research.

• Surround yourself with powerful, female role models.  When we see others like us, we are more comfortable with ourselves and less likely to bend to satisfy someone else’s expectations of us. Seeing is believing: Exposure to counterstereotypic women leaders and its effect on the malleability of automatic gender stereotyping - ScienceDirect
• Connect, reach out, mentor, offer advice, and share power with other women.  Rather than diminishing influence, this openness to and sharing with other women seems to multiply impact and creates an environment where female influence at work is not a source of tension or conflict. Why Sharing Power At Work Is The Very Best Way To Build It (fastcompany.com)
• Remain true to yourself, but be open. women recognize others will have different perspectives and they listen.  Persuading rather than preaching is almost always a better approach - with men or women. 
• Set boundaries and don’t burn yourself out: we are most effective and our best at work when we have a rich, full life outside of work.
• Pitch-in, if that’s what you want to do. It’s ok to get the coffee because you’re kind and human. 
• Slow down, which allows you to assess what is going on rather than defaulting to the tapes that pay in your head and the stories that society has told you about who you should be in the workplace.
• Get really good at failure - our work culture is not set up for women - acknowledge when something goes wrong, and ask yourself why it went wrong and how you can change it to move forward.

Some more good reads:

How men's and women's brains are different | Stanford Medicine

Research-Based Advice for Women Working in Male-Dominated Fields (hbr.org)

Battle of the Brain: Men Vs. Women [Infographic] | Northwestern Medicine

These are the 7 surprising things I've learned from working with powerful women

Adam Grant says there are two fundamental tensions in organizational culture - the tension between results and relationship and the tension between rules and risk.  When these tensions are out of balance, it leads to a toxic workplace.

Grant says the first sin of a toxic workplace is bad behavior - or toxicity. What we are talking about here is disrespectful, demeaning and abusive behavior, people who are non-inclusive, unethical, cutthroat or overly competitive - and of course the list goes on.  The workplace where these negative behaviors occur prioritizes results over relationships.  This kind of behavior in the workplace is one of the drivers of the great resignation.  

If a workplace goes to the other side and flips the focus from results to relationships, we have the second sin, which is mediocracy. These workplaces value relationships above results to such a degree that people are not held accountable.  There is no incentive to do a good job because whether you do a good job or a terrible job, the rewards are the same.

The third deadly sin of the toxic workplace is bureaucracy. Bureaucracy helps up manage risk - and that is good. If a culture is focused on rules and procedures to manage risk, then there is no creativity, no change and no risk.  As with mediocrity, there is no reward for efficiency, innovation and collaboration.  

The other side of bureaucracy is anarchy, the fourth sin of the toxic workplace.  In a culture of anarchy, there is all risk and no rules. Anyone can do whatever they want, strategy and structure be damned. No one learns from the past or lands on the same page. It’s pure chaos.  Interpersonal relationships are difficult in a culture with no or few rules because everyone is on their own.

Grant has some questions to ask before you take a job to determine culture - and these are great questions for us to ask ourselves about our current work situation:

Tell me what happens here that does not happen in other places?

Tell me about a time when people did not walk the talk here?

Tell me a story about who gets hired, fired and promoted?

Learning about workplace culture is vital before you take a job.  For those of us who are currently in jobs, these questions can help us discern our discomfort and take action to address it - whether that means leaving a job, changing our attitudes, accepting what is - or even just getting affirmation that our discomfort is valid.

Why Every Leader Needs to Worry About Toxic Culture

Toxic Culture Is Driving the Great Resignation

SHOW NOTES

Researchers define gossip as “talking about someone who is not present” and, according to research, people spend an average of 52 minutes a day gossiping. Gossip is not always negative. In fact, as one study found, most if gossip is actually neutral, and according to researchers - boring. 

Since we have this strong impulse to gossip, it is important to get it right and to do it in a way that is not destructive to the workplace.  Gossip has a bad rap, and for good reason, but it allows us to feel closer to others at work and can raise trust and intimacy.  It also allows us to form workplace norms and to pass on information to others about those norms - and it builds cooperation.  And even though gossip can hurt - it drives self-reflection.

The problem with gossip is that unless it is done well, it can cause significant negative impacts in the workplace.  Just as gossip can build trust, gossip can erode trust.  Gossip can waiste our time and cause anxiety.  And of course, gossip can cause hurt feelings and create divisiveness in the workplace.

It is really important to gossip well.  Crina and Kirsten have some suggestions:

• Focus on the behavior, not the person
• Avoid triangulation
• Focus on our own experiences, not representing someone else's
• Understand the difference between valid information and hearsay
• Keep it “above  the belt” Don’t talk or make up crappy stories
• Be aware of the narrative you’re creating about yourself when you gossip! 
• Don’t use gossip as a way to damage someone or as a mechanism to get ahead
• Don’t distort the truth or embellish (remember the game of telephone?)
• Stay away from gossip over email  or in writing.

We are going to gossip in the workplace because we are, well, human, so let’s get it right at work!

Good Read:

The Science Behind Why People Gossip—And When It Can Be a Good Thing

Imposter syndrome was “discovered” in the 1970s by two psychologists, Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanna Imes.  They studied graduate and undergraduate students and found it to be very prevalent in women, ultimately designing a scale and a test to identify levels of imposterism - see the link to the test below.  Imposter syndrome is not a mental health diagnosis or condition, rather it is an experience most of us have at some point - and many experience it frequently - up to 80% according to some studies.

Imposterism is the persistent inability to believe one's success is deserved or has been legitimately achieved as a result of one's own efforts; the internal experience of believing one is not as competent as others perceive one to be, a fraud.  It is the belief that success and achievement are luck or a coincidence.  In low doses, these feelings and beliefs are just part of the human experience.  In higher doses, imposterism interferes with our ease, meaning and joy at work.  

Imposterism looks like:

• An inability to realistically assess our competence and skills
• Attributing success to external factors
• Berating your performance
• Fear you won't meet expectations
• Setting very challenging goals and feeling disappointed when you fall short
• Perfectionism 

And it feels like anxiety,fear and self-doubt.

Interestingly, recent data suggests it is just as prevalent in men - and the effects on men may be more significant and these effects cause more significant impacts to performance. 

We can be more vulnerable to imposterism by our upbringing (valuing of achievement, controlling parents, high-levels of conflict); a new experience or challenge; our personality (anxious, lack of confidence, perfectionism).

Consistently, the smart folks have similar strategies to address the imposter syndrome.  First - mindset - what if we take the approach that imposter syndrome is a growth opportunity rather than a deficit?  Second - tell the truth - the imposter is like a mean friend - call her out with your higher self, your own heroine - or your Sage (remember the foil to our Saboteur?).  Have you really always failed? Is this experience really certain to be a disaster?  Consider other situations that have been successful - or even not a failure - draw on experiences where your decisions and actions have worked out and apply them to the current situation - spend time revisiting positive experiences and feedback.  Peter Shepherd, who has an excellent TedTalk on this subject, calls it the two-step - like a dance - when a negative thought arises, address it with an evidence based analysis of your experience.   

Clance IP Scale

Prevalence, Predictors, and Treatment of Impostor Syndrome: a Systematic Review - PubMed (nih.gov) 

The Surprising Solution to the Imposter Syndrome | Lou Solomon | TEDxCharlotte - Bing video

What if imposter syndrome is a good thing? | Peter Shepherd | TEDxUniMelb - Bing video

SHOW NOTES

Self - sabotage is where we undermine our own goals, values, wants and desires, either consciously or unconsciously. We act – or fail to act – based on a set of habits – in a way that is against our interests.  This episode was inspired by a friend, but it turns out we all have our own saboteur.

It turns out self-sabotage comes from the patterns and beliefs we developed in early childhood, and into our teens and early 20s, that are designed to help us make sense of the world, protect us from difficult feelings, help us develop…but these patterns may no longer serve us into adulthood.   Dealing with your saboteur requires that we raise our self-awareness.

Shirzad Charmine, through his work which he calls Positive Intelligence, offers a process to identify our saboteur and get her out of the driver’s seat of our brains.  He proposes we put our higher, wiser self in the driver’s seat – and he calls her our Sage.

Shirzad says there are thoughts and voices in our head that generate negative emotions when we handle life’s challenges. They exist in the brainstem, limbic system, and parts of the left brain and produce much of your stress, anxiety, self-doubt, anger, shame, guilt, frustration, and mind chatter. These negative emotions are only helpful for a second as they alert you to dangers or issues. However, staying in these  emotions hurts our ability to see clearly and choose the most impactful response. Our Saboteurs generate all our negative emotions, including stress, anxiety, self-doubt, anger, avoidance, procrastination, insensitivity or discontent. A bit of pain is good - it tells us something, but we are not meant to live there.

Our Sage lives in an entirely different region of our brain, the middle prefrontal cortex, “empathy circuitry”, and parts of the right brain. It generates positive emotions while handling life’s challenges. These include empathy, compassion, gratitude, curiosity, joy of creativity, and calm, clear-headed laser-focused action. This region is wired for creativity and big picture awareness of what is important and the best course of action.

TAKE THE TEST to discover your Saboteur and unseat her!!  Shirzad’s site also provides guidance on strategies we are using that do not work for us and will help get our Sage in the driver’s seat.  https://www.positiveintelligence.com/ . When we expose our Saboteur, it takes away the power of these not so useful beliefs and responses and allows us to make different choices.  Dealing with our Saboteur also requires us to have some empathy for ourselves, get curious, be creative, choose and move into action. 

Shirzad’s wish for us is that we rediscover our own amazing, wonderfulness – the essence of ourselves we were born with - and let that truth guide our beliefs, reactions and responses to achieve the magic of ease, meaning and joy.  We love this approach.

 More Good Reads:

How women self sabotage their career and how to deal with it?

The Nine Ways Women Self-Sabotage

SHOW NOTES

Performance anxiety presents itself as racing pulse and rapid breathing, dry mouth, tight throat, trembling hands, knees, voice, sweaty hands, cold hands, nausea - and a queasy stomach.  Performance anxiety is often a self-fulfilling prophecy - distracting us from doing our best at whatever we are trying to do.

In 2019 the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (“RADA”), which provides communication skills training for corporate individuals, studied performance anxiety in 1000 workplaces and published a report.  RADA found we are most likely to suffer workplace anxiety in job interviews, dealing with disagreements or complaints, delivering big presentations, and even workplace socializing.  Men and women experience performance anxiety differently - men experience more performance anxiety around socializing and team-building and women in making presentations to a group, a job interview and asking for a raise.

RADA reports that most of what we are afraid of is really about our ego - looking stupid, agreeing to something we do not want to do, worrying what people think of us, we are not good enough - interestingly, we worry less about losing our job or not getting a promotion.   This makes sense when we remember that we seek psychological safety and validation from others. 

What do we do about this?  Here are some tips to deal with performance anxiety:

• If you are presenting or speaking, be prepared and practice, practice, practice.
• Shift your focus from fear to what you hope to accomplish.
• Be careful about what you put in your body - caffeine and sugar can increase those pesky negative feelings and body sensations.  Go for small, healthy meals.
• Don't focus on what could go wrong, rather, focus on the positive. Visualize your success.
• Avoid thoughts that produce self-doubt.
• Breathing and meditation are effective strategies to help you relax and focus on what is important.
• Try a quick walk or a few jumping jacks - just moving your body can alleviate anxious feeling before something important

Performance anxiety is something that affects most of us - and it turns out the impact is pretty significant - so try some of these strategies and move your energy to doing your best job to move yourself out of performance anxiety and into performance!

SHOW NOTES

According to the World Economic Forum 2020 Future of Jobs Report, the top key skills of tomorrow’s labor market are centered on problem solving - analytical thinking, active learning, complex problem-solving, critical thinking and analysis and of course, creativity, originality and initiative.  We know from our daily lives these skills are important and the data supports us.

So what do we do with the myriad of problems, big and small in our lives?  First, remember that problems are an opportunity to make something better and relieve suffering and discomfort.  Second, identify the problem, which many people find to be the hardest part of problem solving.  Sometimes we solve for the symptoms and not the problem, so get real curious about the root of the problem. Third, generate multiple solutions to create lots of options to choose from.  It is easy to find one solution and go for it, but taking time can allow creativity to work and often results in an even better idea to solve the problem.  Once we have long lists of great solutions, we can choose the best one - and afterwards, re-evaluate to ensure we solved the problem.

Creativity and innovation are extremely important to problem solving and making the most of the opportunity a problem creates.  There are steps we can take to increase our creativity - again start with that open and abundant mindset, which helps us remember all (or many, many) things are possible.  Collaboration and cross-pollination - which means including other people in the process.  These are rich soils in which to grow creativity.  

And some helpful hints on problem solving  . . .

The basics are important in problem solving.  Sometimes a glass of water and a snack - and maybe even a walk - are just the things we need physically to support the brain power needed for effective and creative problem solving.  

Keep an eye out for when it is time to let things go.  Sometimes there is no good solution, which means it is time to consider whether we can eliminate the problem, reduce its impact, pass it to someone else or even put off finding a solution until the circumstances are different.

Lastly, be careful of problems that are not ours to solve.  Solving for other people’s feelings, other people’s job responsibilities, other people’s mistakes or omissions, can sometimes be a kindness, but is often part of a pattern of dysfunction.

We know we will have a problem today - how can we create more ease, meaning and joy from it?

Iceland holds to #1 spot in the world in gender equity according to the World Economic Forum Gender Gap Index.  The US is ranked #53.  Most striking, 88% of Icelandic women work outside the home while only 57.4% of US women work outside the home.  What is going on in Iceland?!

HELPING PARENTS HELPS US ALL

Comprehensive healthcare for pregnant moms removes the burden of not having adequate prenatal and maternal care.  The government provides leave to both parents - up to 9 months between the 2 parents.  Subsidized high-quality childcare is available in most neighborhoods.  The government offers pre-k education along with a traditional schooling system, plus after school programming.  Iceland believes that supporting families supports society at large - and women who work.

STRENGTH IN SISTERHOOD

Women in Iceland have a long tradition of creating social networks and groups to foster connection.  In the past, it may have been a knitting or crafting group or a group that organized around philanthropy, while today it may be a cold water swimming group, hiking, art or other interest group.

STIGMA FREE SEXUALITY

Iceland has a relatively stigma- free culture of sexuality.  Transgender people feel alot of acceptance in Iceland.  Iceland’s results tell us when women and transgender people’s sexuality is not judged and controlled, women experience more equity.

CLAIMING THE CORPORATE PURSE STRINGS

Iceland has adopted broad laws that require equity.  Its pay equity law requires businesses to prove pay equity. It has also adopted a law to require 40% membership on corporate boards of directors.  Both of these laws have led to significant progress on both issues.

When we talk about what we can do to create ease, meaning and joy for women at work, Iceland may be the best place for us to look.

THE EFFECTS OF TOXICITY

Toxic coworkers suck up all the time, money and energy in the workplace.  In the article “How Toxic Colleagues Corrode Performance,” the authors polled thousands of managers and employees on the receiving end of antisocial behavior from a colleague and found that work quality and quantity of work decreased and folks also lost time - in terms of hours worked, avoiding that coworker or worrying about that coworker.  

The data also support the toxic coworker is often responsible for team dysfunction.  Functional teams are often called loyalist teams.  Dysfunctional teams are often called saboteur teams - and no surprise, are significantly more likely to contain a toxic coworker.

TOXIC TOP PERFORMER

Many people believe we need to put up with toxic behavior if the person is a top performer.  It turns out this is another one of those upside down common beliefs in the workplace.  The paradox for leaders is that the common traits of a toxic worker can mean they are a top performer in the company. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic writes in his article “Why Bad Guys Win at Work,” “for some toxic employees there is a bright side to their dark side. For example, Machiavellian traits such as superficial charm, charisma, self-confidence and interpersonal manipulation can be valuable when developing new client relationships. Likewise, toxic employees with narcissistic tendencies such as ruthlessness and selfishness can be the most productive – driven to achieve their targets whatever the cost.”

According to Michael Mccoby in the Harvard Business review there is clear evidence that productivity and performance do not justify or make up for the toxic worker.  “Narcissistic Leaders: The Incredible Pros, the Inevitable Cons.” Rather, it turns out these workers’ negative effect in the workplace is not justified by performance or productivity contributions.  Chamarro-Premuzic says, “[t]heir [toxic employees] success comes at a price, and that price is paid by the organization.”.

WHAT TO DO? 

Try an honest conversation with the person engaging in the behavior - this is usually always the place to start as long as you feel safe.  Research shows that most of us lack self-awareness, especially at work -  so a conversation can be very helpful.  Remember - feedback is a sign of functional teams.

Do not stoop to their level, keep your ego in check and practice empathy. Keeping an eye out for your own fight-or-flight response can help you with these tactics.  Some of these toxic behaviors can really tigger us - and our ego. Keep the high ground.  We can even try some empathy - we know that crummy behavior is a terrible burden and gets in the way of not just our ease, meaning and joy - but the toxic worker’s as well - and don’t leave yourself out of a big dose of empathy.

Talking with your boss about the behavior and getting some support can be very helpful.  Sometimes bosses are not aware of the extent of the problem.

Take Care of Yourself.  We need to be vigilant about our own emotional, psychological and physical health.  

Let’s do some hazardous waste removal, remediation and containment!

SHOWNOTES

We have a new word to describe our experience at work - LANGUISHING.  Crina and Kirsten check in with the smart people and the data to figure out languishing.  According to the American Psychology Association, languishing is the condition of absence of mental health, characterized by ennui, apathy, listlessness, and loss of interest in life.  Crina knows she is languishing when she is doom scrolling on her phone or computer.  Kirsten tends to be a Sunday languisher - when all of the activity and stress of the week catch up with her.

At work, languishing looks like:

• Feeling disconnected or dissociated from your coworkers
• Being irritable, confused, or sad
• Inability to get excited about upcoming projects
• Difficulty focusing or remembering 
• Cynicism about your leaders, colleagues, or career
• Procrastination or lack of motivation to complete assignments

Languishing is not a mental health disorder, but it is the opposite of flourishing. Lynn Soots describes flourishing as “the pursuit and engagement of an authentic life that brings inner joy and happiness through meeting goals, being connected with life passions, and relishing in accomplishments through the peaks and valleys of life.”  Important note here - flourishing is a state of being - a process.

Research suggests those who languish are more likely to experience serious mental illness later. This can include post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety disorders, and major depression. Adam Grant, in his famous New York Times article on languishing says, “[l]anguishing dulls your motivation, disrupts your ability to focus, and triples the odds that you’ll cut back on work. It appears to be more common than major depression — and in some ways it may be a bigger risk factor for mental illness.”  New evidence from pandemic health care workers in Italy shows that those who were languishing in the spring of 2020 were three times more likely than their peers to be diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Adam Grant suggests a few antidotes to languishing:

• Focus on a small goal:  We want to cultivate a sense of progress. 
• Give yourself some uninterrupted time: set boundaries with your time and normalize turning off your phone, email, etc - minimizing distractions when you are languishing is helpful because we are more vulnerable to distraction when we are languishing.

• Find ways to see that you’re “making a difference to other people” This may be as simple as doing something kind or generous for a coworker or another person in your life.

According to Dr. Martin Seligman’s research on flourishing, the best way to move from languishing to flourishing is the PERMA model.. It stands for:

• Positive emotions - create them
• Engagement - get into “flow”
• Relationships - receive and give support and intimacy from others
• Meaning - ahh - the hard one - create a valuable and worthwhile life
• Accomplishments - make progress.

And remember - flourishing is a process - not an end-game.

Are You Languishing? Here's How to Regain Your Sense of Purpose

Adam Grant: How to stop languishing and start finding flow | TED Talk

Feeling Blah During the Pandemic? It's Called Languishing - The New York Times

What To Say To Your “Languishing” Employees Post-Covid-19

SHOW NOTES

What is success at work to you? You can think about a job well done, tasks completed, a healthy team, and you can also think on a larger scale about a successful career.  The data shows that your definition of success changes as you get more experience, and is sometimes a reflection of where you live and who you live with - the external definitions of success can have a powerful impact on you.  The focus of this episode is the big picture of success and a subjective definition that aligns with each of our values, allows for authenticity, makes the best use of our skills and talents and challenges us to grow.

Traditional markers of career success such as title, salary, promotions, and the like are great to a point, but they are not the whole picture and are missing some of the important considerations.  Harvard Business Review points us to the subjective measures of success: 

• Performing work that we find interesting and fascinating
• Overcoming challenges
• Having autonomy in how you perform your work
• Developing new skills and deepening existing ones
• Having work and personal life complement and enrich each other
• Being recognized as an expert
• Having the trust of your colleagues and superiors
• Building valuable relationships inside and outside of your organization
• Contributing to shared knowledge in your organization by training others
• Collaborating effectively with a team of talented colleagues
• Receiving recognition for your achievements and contributions
• Seeing the positive impact of your work on end users or on society
• Leaving a legacy that you’re proud of

Success requires a growth mindset, goal setting and tracking, authenticity and self awareness and confidence.  Success is a long trajectory and will come with setbacks and change - these are the prickly parts to embrace as we create our own versions of success. As we define success for ourselves and move in that direction by setting goals and monitoring our progress, it is important to remember the big picture and treat not only the achievements but also the learnings along the way as markers that we are on the path to success, as we each define it.

Rethink What You “Know” About High-Achieving Women (hbr.org) 

How to write your own definition of success – step-by-step formula — Imogen Roy | Create a legendary life and never burn out again

Make Your Career a Success by Your Own Measure

5 Ways Success Can Change Someone | Psychology Today

SHOW NOTES

On this episode of Crina and Kirsten Get to Work, our hosts tackle teams at work.  For those of us who have been on good teams, we know the benefits:

• collaborative problem solving leads to better outcome
• we are willing to take more risks when we are supported by a good team and that leads to innovation  
• teams encourage personal growth, increase job satisfaction, and reduce stress.

The question is how to create great teams.  Google, with all of its data and metrics and algorithms, conducted a five year study of its teams (called Project Aristotle) to try to distinguish what makes a good team versus a dysfunctional team.  It turns out that psychological safety is at the root of what makes an effective team.  Psychological safety is the belief that you won’t be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes.  The Google Study tells us about the core attribute of effective teams, but how do we create the special sauce of psychological safety.

According to Dr. Timothy Clark, author of The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety: Defining the Path to Inclusion and Innovation, employees have to progress through 4 stages before they feel free to make valuable contributions and challenge the status quo.  The first stage is inclusion safety and is that basic need to connect and belong - which is really about bringing your unique self and being accepted to full participation in the group.  The second is learner safety, which satisfies our need as humans to learn and grow - where we can ask questions, make mistakes, where failure is an opportunity and not a punishment.  The third stage is contributor safety and is the place we satisfy our need to make a difference - it means we have a place to use our skills and talents.  The fourth stage is challenger safety, which meets our need to make things better and to speak up to challenge the status quo - and requires the ability to effectively deal with conflict. 

It turns out not only Google has concluded this concept of psychological safety is the hallmark of the most high performing teams, but so has Harvard University in a study of teams during Covid.  What were these folks on effective teams doing?  They were communicating more, particularly by phone, making an average 10 .1 calls per day as opposed to 6.1 for those teams who were less successful.  They were also running more efficient meetings - agendas, meeting preparation - which set the stage for more fruitful interactions.  These folks are also interacting with each other outside of work - the most effective teams were not always working together, but also playing together.  The Covid success teams were also recognizing each other with more frequency - for good work, for meeting challenges and the like - not just management, but among each other.  What we learned from the Project Aristotle Study was true here as well - the people on the successful teams felt they could be authentic at work.

This is a podcast about women and work and ease meaning and joy, so here is the juicy nugget about women and teams . . .  Scientists at MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and Union College suggest the most efficient groups — the ones who are the best at collaborating, analyzing problems, and solving them the fastest and most effectively — had three things in common, one of which was simply that they had more women.  Yesss! If we want more successful teams - just add more women - and of course psychological safety.

Good Reads:

The Secret To Efficient Teamwork Is Ridiculously Simple

The benefits of teamwork (as proven by science) - Work Life by Atlassian

What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team - The New York Times

The Secrets of Great Teamwork The benefits of teamwork (as proven by science) - Work Life by Atlassian

5 Things High-Performing Teams Do Differently

What Is Psychological Safety at Work? | CCL

SHOW NOTES

We know that work is changing.  58% of workers feel the pandemic forced them to rethink work-life balance and 25% of workers have changed jobs.  According to a new report from Bain and Company, the new workplace is driving a significant change in the balance of power between employees and companies - and leaders are rethinking their approach to talent.

Bain & Company engaged in an in-depth research project to help us define the broader implications of the future of work and identified five key themes that will reshape work into the future.

Motivations for work are changing - the reasons we go to work are changing.  With the decline in social institutions such as churches and social clubs, people are increasingly seeking out social connection at work.  As countries become more prosperous, the importance of leisure activities rises.  And of course - people are looking for meaning and a sense of higher purpose, including a commitment to 

Beliefs about what makes a good job are changing -  Bain & Company identified 10 dimensions of a job - and the dimensions are those factors folks consider in determining what makes a good job.  These are factors such as how much of identity comes from work, how important status is, our financial motivation,  autonomy, camaraderie, future orientation, variety, mystery and ability to make a difference.  These dimensions led Bain & Company to conclude that while we are all different - there are six meta categories of workers: Operators, Givers, Artisans, Explorers, Strivers, and Pioneers. 

Automation is rehumanizing word, which we see in automation, the ability of the internet to do our work for us and in new processes and technologies to make work easier.  

Technological change is blurring boundaries of the firm in that we are almost always available to work and always always available to our personal lives.  

Younger workers are increasingly overwhelmed.  Younger workers have been exposed to political polarization, geopolitical tensions, and concerns about climate change, not to mention a pandemic. 

And then our hosts take us through the best part of the study and report - so what?  Bain & Company suggests that this means that employers get better at being talent makers as opposed to talent takers - which means more focus and investment in learning and a growth mindset.  Employers will also need to stop managing workers like machines and manage for individuals.  This means a greater focus on mental health and recognizing that mental health is a key component of overall worker health.  Lastly, Bain & Company believes that successful firms will build an organization that offers a sense of belonging and opportunity for its many unique workers while remaining united through a shared vision and communal values.  As workers, Crina and Kirsten believe recognizing what archetype we each are and what we need from work, engaging in ways to boost our understanding and experience with tech are both important for the worker.  Oh - yeah - and they suggest being crazy kind to yourself because the world is bat shit crazy.

The Working Future: More Human, Not Less | Bain & Company

This episode of Crina and Kirsten Get to Work is in honor of and devoted to caregivers - those people, primarily women, who have devoted their professional lives to caring for others.  

Caregivers always play an important role in our communities, but with Covid-19, they have played a superhero role.

The episode explores women as professional caregivers, what professional caregiver roles remain difficult to acquire despite the fact that women dominate these fields; the challenges in the workplace for caregivers and ways we can support caregivers.

When you listen to this episode, think about the news reports we saw on television during the pandemic showing the appreciation the Italians showed caregivers at the change of shift - applause, music and singing, hoots and hollers.  If you are a caregiver, we hope you feel seen and celebrated and if you are not a caregiver, we hope to deepen your appreciation for these very important workers.

Good reads:

How Millions of Women Became the Most Essential Workers in America - The New York Times

Women in the labor force: a databook : BLS Reports

Why Don't People Care That Men Don't Choose Caregiving Professions? - Scientific American Blog Network

Women in health care suffer burnout disproportionately to men - ABC News

https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000008158650/covid-nurse-burnout-understaffing.html?smid=url-share

Caring for our caregivers during COVID-19 | American Medical Association

Agency is fundamentally about us being the captain of our own ship and shaping our lives (and our jobs).   Ruth Mahoney, President of KeyBank Hudson Valley / Metro NY District, who is responsible for dozens of regional banks suggests being specific and focused in developing our careers.  She believes it is important to make our aspirations known, and asking for and being open to feedback - and then actually doing something with that feedback.  

Authenticity is about being genuine - showing up in all areas of our lives as who we really are.  We can see this in Kathleen Tierney, Executive Vice President and COO of Chubb Insurance, in how she deals with a mistake.  She recommends owning up and acknowledging the mistake and considering what we can do with the information we glean.  Authenticity requires vulnerability and curiosity - and these are great tools to deal with our mistakes.  When we are living authentically, mistakes do not destroy our view of ourselves, rather mistakes are information to consider.  Because mistakes are necessary in achieving or learning almost anything, managing mistakes is critically important to achievement.  

The study also found that connection with other humans is a characteristic of high-achieving women - both professionally and personally.  Tierney tells us that personal relationships have been key to her success in the workplace, and we know from the study that relationships outside actually support us inside the workplace.

The study refers to this as self-clarity.  Self-clarity comes from understanding our values, motivations, and behaviors. It’s the desire to have a greater sense of self. Stacy Musi, a black belt in karate and managing director of Chadick Ellig Executive Search Firm, believes that establishing credibility is key to achieving our goals.  To be credible, we really need to understand ourselves.  Musi’s advice on credibility is an interesting mix of self-clarity and authenticity.

The last aspect of high-achievement the study points out is wholeness - which is the desire for experiences beyond work and the integration of those experiences with our work lives. It turns out high-achieving women value multiple roles, life beyond work, and a broader definition of success.  The study notes that high-achieving women can feel fractured and are sometimes concerned about whether they are living in the wholeness, but it is nonetheless of great importance.  This is encouraging because it tells us that there is a path to having wholeness in our life, which may in the end be the definition of “having it all.”

These five characteristics of high-achievement show up as tenacity, competence, results driven, vision, a focus on strengths, understanding the power of failure and apologies, not sweating the small stuff, stress tolerance, and emotional intelligence.

As we create our own definitions of achievement and work towards whatever that is, these five characteristics are important tools as we build lives that create an opportunity for ease, meaning and joy.

Some Good Reads:

5 Key Themes for High-Achieving Women Leaders

The six personality traits of high-achieving women in the workplace (smh.com.au)

SHOW NOTES

On this episode of Crina and Kirsten Get to Work our duo discusses workplace hack - just those little and big things to make your work day easier and make way for meaning and joy.

Crina and Kirsten cover hacks for your body - everything from water to rescue remedy gum to the shelf stable lentils in your desk drawer.  Our gals cover hacks for your sanity - particularly necessary when 9 out of 10 workers report that workplace stress impacts their mental health and 4 out of 5 employees report feeling emotionally drained from their work.  The brain hacks involve getting outside, listening to music, finding 10 minutes to stare into space or look at pictures of puppies (it really works!).

And for those of us behind a computer - one study reported that a survey of office workers reported an average of 6.5 hours behind their computers - there are also some hacks about drafting emails, setting your automatic response and getting those groovy glasses.

And of course our hosts provide some productivity hacks - because we want to get it done so we can get to the things that most matter.  Kirsten says to eat the big, hairy frog first - in other words - do the hard thing you do not want to do first.  Hacks such as rewarding yourself when you get through a task, prepping for Monday on Friday (or Sunday if you are like Kirsten) and really working on not multitasking.  

Crina and Kirsten suggest hacking your workplace environment - everything from whiteboard wallpaper to noise canceling headphones to plants in your workspace.  65% of workers report it is difficult to concentrate due to their work environment.  If we can make our workplace environment more pleasing - it allows us to concentrate more fully.

And of course the biggest hack of all in how to create more ease, meaning and joy in your workplace - JUST SAY NO.

SHOW NOTES

This episode is full of contradictions, which reflects the racism Black women face in the American workplace.  While Black women have always (and currently) participated more than white women in the labor force, regardless of age, marital status or the presence of children, they have not reaped the rewards of that higher level of participation.  

 Black women have been excluded from social programs because of their relatively high rates of employment as compared to white women, which is ironic when we consider the stereotype image of the black welfare mother with all the kids - turns out those programs did not even cover Black women when they began.  Legislative protections for workers have excluded Black women because the industries they have typically occupied have been excluded, such as household workers and agriculture.  Racism is many awful and injurious things, but it is also ironic.  

Studies show this reality affects the way Black women feel about their work - and we know from prior episodes the importance of our perceptions about the workplace.

According to a Gallup poll, Black women are less likely to feel valued, less likely to feel they are treated with respect, and less likely to feel treated fairly at work than any other group. Despite these feelings, Black women remain highly ambitious and ready to succeed in the workplace.

Tune in to find out what organizations and individuals can do about racism directed at Black women in the workplace.

Good Reads:

Black Women in the Workplace

Black women’s labor market history reveals deep-seated race and gender discrimination.

The “Angry Black Woman” Stereotype at Work

Black Women's Equal Pay Day Equals An Extra 214 Days Of Work

SYSTEMIC RACISM AND THE GENDER PAY GAP

SHOW NOTES

Today on Crina and Kirsten Get to Work, we are talking about FEAR!!  We can do this together - pour yourself a cup of tea and take a deep breath, let’s wade into the dark waters of fear and find the clear water.  

Signposts for this episode:

How does fear help us?

How does fear stop us?

How does fear impact our brains? Our performance? Our motivation?

What do you do when you’re afraid?

What do you do to avoid the things you’re afraid of: work too much? Get angry? 

Why Deal with Fear?

The first question you may ask yourself is why should we deal with big, hairy, scary fear?  Because it gets in the way of leading our fullest lives.  Remember the saying, “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”  If we are too afraid to take a shot, we miss it.  And the amazing Nelson Mandela said, “The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”  And one of our favorite stoics, Seneca, said, "We suffer more often in imagination than in reality."  The quotations all tell us something about fear - what it gets in the way of, the benefits of conquering fear - and of course what we make up in our heads.

Addressing your fears allows you to be more of who you are in the world - oh yeah - and some of that ease, meaning and joy.

What is Fear?

At its basic level, fear is a physical and emotional response to some external stimulus. Sometimes the stimulus is known—like a loud, unexpected crash in the middle of the night—but often the trigger for fear is subconscious and is not easily traced, i.e. a dark basement or a steep ski slope.

Science tells us that some aspects of fear are evolutionary.  In other words, we are hard-wired with a set of autonomic responses that have been critical to our survival. Other fears are conditional i.e. developed through a complex set of interactions with the world and often through observing the behaviors of others.  It turns out there is quite a bit of debate about what we are born with and what is conditioned into us.  And some of the conditioning comes from the stuff we keep telling ourselves.

Is Fear Positive or Negative?

Most of us think that fear is negative because it can stop you from doing things.  Fear also has negative impacts on your physical health, memory, brain processing and mental health.

However, fear does have a positive side - the positive power to stimulate action and unlock potential. When we face our fears, acknowledge and give respect to the power within those fears (what is true), parce out what is not true and turn that power into action, we can make remarkable progress in our lives.

What are Some Workplace Fears

Workplace fears include fear of organizational change and fear of risk taking, which includes fear of failure, success, fear of what others will think, and fear of uncertainty.  Sometimes we are afraid to speak up at a meeting, express an unpopular or new view or opinion, ask for that raise - just so many things.

How Do We Overcome Fear

Tim Ferris has a great exercise - that has taken from the stoics - to overcome fear - in fact, he is such a believer in this process he says people would be better off addressing fears than setting goals.

Tim suggests three sheets for this exercise.  

On the first sheet define what you are afraid of, what are the worst things that can happen - try to come up with a column of at least 10 and closer to 20 awful things.  For each of the awful things, figure out how you might prevent the awful thing in the second column or steps for a repair in the third column.

On the second sheet list all the benefits of an attempt, of partial success or wild success. Will you be rich and famous (if you want to), will you build confidence, learn skills, have an experience, free yourself from something?

One the last sheet list the cost of inaction - what will doing nothing look like in 6 months, a year or three years.

References and Good Reads:

(PDF) Fear as a strategy: Effects and impact within the organization

Impact of Fear and Anxiety | Taking Charge of Your Health & Wellbeing

Sigal Barsade - Knowledge@Wharton

Why you should define your fears instead of your goals | Tim Ferriss - Bing video

SHOW NOTES

Today on Crina and Kirsten Get to Work our hosts discuss - drum roll please - clothes!  What do clothes have to do with ease, meaning and joy?!  Turns out it is a lot - and what we may think is a light subject in fact brings us deep into creating meaning in our lives.

The idea for this show came from a listener who sent us a Wall Street Journal article on the pandemic closet purge.  It turns out many of us are cleaning our closets because our experiences during this pandemic have changed what we wear and how we see clothing.  What to Wear The Pandemic Closet Purge is Under Way, Anne Marie Chaker.  Chaker says that nearly seventy-five percent of respondents in a November 2021 survey by consumer research firm CivicScience of more than 4,200 U.S. adults said their closets contain many things they will never wear again. Only 15% said they want to leave their closets as-is.  The pandemic closet purge isn’t merely an exercise in swapping formal clothes for casual ones. This closet purge is more of a desire to simplify during complicated, uncertain times. 

As Crina says, what she thought would be a light show on clothes and women and work, went deep - into meaning.  Women have always been using clothes to fit in, express themselves and at times make political statements.

We pick clothes because they make us feel good in some way - maybe for comfort, maybe for fun, maybe to express something, or maybe to fit in, feel a part of the group - or set us apart from the group.

Women wore green, white and violet jewelry during the suffrage movement to signal GWV - or Get, Women the Vote.  A century later, in the 1980s, women wore “feminized” suits with big shoulder pads and bow ties to mimic male professional dress style in an attempt to access the social and economic capital that lay on the other side of the glass ceiling. If the Clothes Fit: A Feminist Takes on Fashion - Ms. Magazine (msmagazine.com)

What we wear affects our mental state.  So called “power clothes” can make us better negotiators; wearing a uniform can make us more conscious of our job duties, and, in fact, just looking at a lab coat can make us more accurate and precise.

What we wear affects the environment.  We have drastically increased the amount of clothing produced - and much of it is synthetic fabrics that do not biodegrade.

What we wear also affects the people who produce it - who are mostly women.  An estimated 60 million workers power the global garment industry and the fashion industry is not known for providing women worker friendly wages or benefits.  In fact, it is just the opposite.

So when we consider how clothes affect our feelings, how clothes affect our job performance, and the impact of our choices on the environment and other working women, what is a woman to do?  Simply put, clothes are another opportunity to make choices about how we live in and show up in the world.  We can use clothes to be more of our authentic selve - to make a political statement - or to live out our deepest values around the environment and worker rights.  

Good Reads:

The Inherent Sexism in Women’s Professional Clothing – FEM Newsmagazine (femmagazine.com)

If the Clothes Fit: A Feminist Takes on Fashion - Ms. Magazine (msmagazine.com)

How Women Have Used Fashion As A Feminist Tool Throughout History (bustle.com)

Does What We Wear To Work Affect Our Productivity? | Hive

Research Shows That the Clothes You Wear Actually Change the Way You Perform | Inc.com

Exploring Enclothed Cognition (schoolofselfimage.com)

Gender Discrimination — Clean Clothes Campaign

SHOW NOTES

On this episode of Crina and Kirsten Get to Work, the timely topic for tillitating tete a tete between our co-hosts is resilience.  Let’s be honest - we are two years into a pandemic, regardless of your political persuasion many feel political and economic certainty and, oh yes, let’s add all of the regular challenges of being human in this world.  IT’S A LOT!  So what do we need - of course we need ease, meaning and joy - and there are good things out there - a dear friend, a beautiful sunrise, a long walk, a sweet dog - lot’s of good things.  We just need to get ourselves in a place where we can enjoy those things and that is where resilience comes in.

Adversity doesn't discriminate. If we are alive, we are going to have to, or have already had to, deal with some tough times.  Navigating those tough times requires resilience - and resiliency is something we control.  

In the world of positive psychology, resilience is being able to recover and adapt quickly from a traumatic event or stressor. In other words, it’s a kind of inner strength.  Generally speaking, resilient people have a positive outlook; deal with difficult situations with ease and don’t exhibit excessive negative emotions during difficult times.  

Resilience helps us minimize stress, improve performance and leads to more ease, meaning and joy at work.  But a word of caution -  some folks are critical of the ' ‘resilience movement” because it puts the burden on the individuals who have little control over the systems they’re affected by.  Think of racism or sexism or ableism.  While resilience can be very helpful in these situations, an individual’s resilience does not, for example, resolve racism.  Resilience can help us manage but it is not a solution for systemic distrimination.

The good news is that because there is a concrete set of behaviors and skills associated with resilience, you can learn to be more resilient.

One, resilient people get that shit happens. They know that suffering is part of life. This doesn't mean they actually welcome it in, they're not delusional. But, resilience people seem to accept that suffering or challenges are part of every human existence.

Two, resilient people are really good at choosing where to focus their attention. They analyze a situation and focus on the things they can change and accept the things they cannot change. 

It is not about diminishing the negative as much as it is focusing on where they can get traction in changing their situation. 

Three, resilient people ask themselves, iIs what I'm doing helping or harming me?"  They seem to be aware of whether their actions are taking them in the directions they want to go - or not.  This requires self-awareness and honesty.  

Four, resilient people respond to stress rather than reacting and to stress and mental agility, which is the ability  to cognitively take a step back from the experience,  label thoughts and emotions and change their attention and/or the narrative about the situation.

Five,  resilient people compartmentalize so that they are not juggling or managing too much. This is similar to where resilient people direct their attention - and sometimes it makes sense to ignore some things and focus on others..

Six, resilient people understand the importance of connection - knowing they have a circle of support and being able to reach out if necessary.

Seven,  humor, which is an indicator of a positive outlook in general, also contributes to resilience - for all of the reasons - endorphins, a flat stomach  . . ..

Eight,  resilient people have optimism and hope or or belief or something like it - this can be a small kernel of hope or a belief that something good will happen.

Resiliency is a skill we can learn and improve over time and with practice.  Resiliency can be as small and simple as enjoying a hot bath at the end of a hard day or as big and complicated as losing a job,  taking  steps to redefine what we want in a job and getting out there to get it.

References and good reads:

5 Ways to Boost Your Resilience at Work

Lucy Hone: 3 secrets of resilient people | TED Talk

SHOW NOTES 

In this episode of Crina and Kirsten Get to Work, we get to ring in the New Year with Part 2 of a 2 part series on Reflections and Realizing Intentions.  In Episode 75 (what?!! 75 episodes!) we learned about the power of reflection.  Reflecting on the past year is a great start to setting intentions for the new year - and this episode focuses on how to make those intentions real.  As Crina says - and she says someone else said it - you are going to be someone in 12 months, you are going to have done things in 12 months and experienced things in 12 months - so who do you want to be and what do you want those things done and experiences had to be?

Last year we focused our “intentions” episode on setting mental intentions to achieve who we want to be, how we want to feel and how we want to react.

Take some time to reflect on last year - and organize the reflections.  It can be as simple as good and bad or you can define the categories you most resonate with.  Kirsten uses emotional, physical, work, relational, financial and spiritual.  Pick whatever feels right.

Once we reflect on last year, think about what we want to repeat (or not) in the coming year. We can set specific goals - anything from finding that new job, going on a date a month or creating one new experience a month - whatever our jam is, this is the time to clearly define it and set a goal.  And those goals can mirror your reflections - or not.

Once we set goals, we can direct our intentions to make those goals come to life.  How do we focus our intentions so that “stuff happens?” Depak Chopra writes, “intention is the starting point of every dream. It is the creative power that fulfills all of our needs, whether for money, relationships, spiritual awakening, or love.”  So, Depak, how does that work?

Many people find that reminders are helpful - post goals on the bathroom mirror, create a vision board or a vision box, journal and make a commitment to review that goals list once a week or once a month.  If we set a goal in January that does not feel good in August, dump it.  We can be flexible and allow for the space to change our minds.

Some people believe that just imagining it can make it so - those are The Secret folks.  And while there is certainly magic in the Universe and sometimes those things just happen - it’s usually not the case.  A friend of Kirsten has had many goals of owning a second home somewhere and the opportunity seems to appear out of nowhere - so much so that the friend’s husband has asked her to stop.  This is not most of our experiences.

Other people advocate for positive thinking, but it turns out that is not what it is cracked up to be.  Gabriele Oettingen is a Professor of Psychology at New York University and at the University of Hamburg. She wrote “Rethinking Positive Thinking” which synthesizes 20 years of research on the science of human motivation.  The research shows that positive thinking is much less promising than we think.  In the moment, positive thinking gives us pleasure, but in the long run if we simply have positive thoughts, we put in less energy and have fewer successes towards our goals. This leads to reduced happiness and loss of motivation.  

Positive thinking is very helpful to explore possibilities in the future - and here is the catch, when positive thinking is combined with a good sense of reality. 

It turns out that small steps and planning have a lot of influence on whether you achieve your goals.  

It is important to take one small step towards your goal - and then another and another and another - and soon enough you will be there.  Kirsten tells a story about Dr. Nicole LePera who essentially changed her whole life by starting with drinking a glass of water every morning to begin to hydrate her body for the day.  If you want to save $1000, start with $100 - or even $10. 

Another strategy is to plan, which is well articulated in a system called WOOP - in fact that is the name of the website advocating this method.  According to the WOOP (which stands for wish, outcome, obstacle, plan) website, “The obstacles that we think most impede us from fulfilling our wishes can actually help us to realize them. WOOP instructs us to dream our future dreams but then to imagine what obstacles inside ourselves prevent us from achieving these dreams.”  In other words, we need to understand what we want, what does getting it look like, what will get in our way and how to we get around, through or over that obstacle.

The New Year is a great time to go through this process of reflection, goal setting, intention setting and directing and goal actualization, but we can do this any time of year or multiple times a year.  Our lives are precious - creating something we love will give us ease, meaning and joy!

SHOW NOTES

Today on Crina and Kirsten Get to Work, our work babes reflect on the power of reflection.  Sometimes we intuitively know something is helpful, and that is true for reflection,  but the statistics on the effects of reflection are particularly compelling.

WARNING - do not proceed if you are going to beat yourself up about the past - this is a learning experience.  No beating up!

Reflection is pretty simple - it is thinking about what you do, say, feel, experience and perceive.  It is closely linked to the concept of learning from experience in that you think about what we do, feel and perceive and what happened, and consider whether we would do differently next time - or hopefully whether we have landed on the magic formula.

Thinking about what has happened is part of being human. However, the difference between causal ‘thinking’ and ‘reflective practice’ is that reflective practice requires a conscious effort to think about events, and develop insights into them. And here is that word again - curious!  It's about getting curious.  Once you get into the habit of using reflective practice, you will probably find it useful both at work and at home.

Reflection is important for skill building, mastery, self awareness and self assessment.  We learn from what happened so next time it can be intentionally the same - or different.  This is a key component to creating ease, meaning and joy in your life and in your work.  Looking back when things go well: we learn what worked for us and know we can use those behaviors or strategies again to our advantage.  Looking back when things go poorly: learning from hindsight is not about wishing you had done things differently, which is more like regret. It’s getting curious about whether there is anything you want to do differently going forward. But be careful of what is called hindsight bias: which is the tendency for people to perceive past events as having been more predictable than they actually were - meaning that we think we had more control over the outcome than we actually did.

WHAT THE DATA SAYS:

Recent research from the Harvard Business school into the power of reflection showed that when employees spent 15 minutes at the end of their day reflecting about what they’ve learned, they’ve improved their performance by 23%‌ in just 10 days, in comparison to those who did not reflect. Amazing - huh!  Can you imagine increasing your performance not just at work, but in your life as well just through 15 minutes of reflection?!.  

Giada De Stefano, professor at HEC Paris - an economics and business management school,  tells us we work five more weeks per year now than we did in the 1970s.  This means that gains in productivity are the result of working more - not working differently.  Stefano proposes that we do not need to give more time to work to increase performance and productivity.  In fact, we need to do less and think more.

To Stepfano’s point, studies have found that, once we have gathered a certain amount of experience, the benefit of continuing to perform similar tasks is far inferior to that of pairing that experience with efforts to analyze and reflect on it.   And it turns out that more training has its drawbacks as well - because according to BetterUp we forget about 75% of it!  Research has found that, regardless of work experience, all employees experience loss of knowledge over time. The amount of information that people remember depreciates over time, but this occurs at a significantly higher rate among individuals who work for organizations who don’t actively practice reflection (Argote & Miron-Spektor, 2011).  It turns out practice and training have their limits in increasing productivity.  Reflection is that secret sauce to add in.  

The data tells us that reflection not only improves productivity and performance, but it also makes us feel better.  Studies show that brief, positive reflection practices at the end of a work day can lead to decreased stress and improved health.  Bono, J. E., Glomb, T. M., Shen, W., Kim, E., & Koch, A. J. (2013). 

WHY DOES REFLECTION WORK:

Research shows reflection is critical to helping us deepen and integrate learning, and effectively apply it to our work and our lives. ( BetterUp)  It is like the glue of progress - it seems to help it all stick and be solid.

HOW TO BUILD REFLECTION INTO YOUR WORKPLACE

Reflection is simple and building reflection into your day can also be simple.  BetterUp has some great examples for managers, including:

• Communicate the value of taking time for quality breaks 
• Encourage employees to schedule whitespace into their day to allow for reflection
• Hire a coach for yourself or your employees - or ask a trusted friend or colleague to be your reflection partner
• Do a project post-mortem
• Integrate reflection into meetings

We can also do this ourselves.  Self-reflection requires us to look at ourselves with interest, curiosity, and inquiry, particularly when exploring our thoughts, behaviors, perceptions and emotions. 

• Set aside some time - even starting with once a week - the same day and time every week
  • Create a list of questions for yourself
  • Learn to identify and question your assumptions and perceptions
  • Give yourself some time to check in to your feelings
• Take time to reflect in-the-moment, whenever you try a new task
• Talk with colleagues about your experiences
• Ask for feedback and observation from co-workers/supervisors
• Write down your reflections - even just brief phrases and sentences - looking back on these reflections is powerful.

As we end this year, this is a perfect time to look back as we move into a new year to set our intentions and plans for what we want to create for ourselves in the new year.

Good Reads:

The Power of Reflection in Workplace Learning

Making Experience Count: The Role of Reflection in Individual Learning by Giada Di Stefano, Francesca Gino, Gary P. Pisano, Bradley R. Staats :: SSRN

Reflecting on Work Improves Job Performance - HBS Working Knowledge

How to Practice Self-Reflection at Work | by Neve McBeal | The Startup | Medium

The power of reflection at work: Insight by HEC Professor Giada di Stefano | HEC Paris

Reflective Practice | SkillsYouNeed

Getting started with Reflective Practice

SHOW NOTES

Norms are essentially expectations of the group and can be conscious and formal, or unconscious and informal. A couple of examples of group norms at work include the expectation that all members show up at group meeting times, that all group members focus on the group instead of personal matters (for example, turning cell phones and other distractions off), and that group members finish their part of the work by the established due date. Norms are also expectations such as don’t disagree with the boss or don’t ask your assistant to perform personal errands for you.

Gender norms are particularly problematic at work.  Gender norms are learned in the home and reinforced in school, at work, in our institutions and in our social interactions.  They perpetuate power differentials and equality and often negatively impact women.

Norms around race, while more complicated, are created similarly to the way gender norms are created.  White norms often define what is “professional” at work - in everything from hair to grammar.  Defining professional as primarily white cultural norms excludes and separates people from other cultures from the workplace.

Norms do have a positive side - they simplify group process - when we know the “rules” we know how to act and do not have to guess.  

There are two kinds of workplace norms - technical norms and social norms.  Technical norms focus on skills and information and are communicated by policies, procedures and rules.  Social norms guide interactions, particularly with regard to conflict, challenge, accountability and disagreement. Social norms are transmitted through observation or trial and error.  For example, not disagreeing with the boss is learned by observing not from the employee handbook. 

Workplace norms change over time, which is good because there are some workplace norms that need to change.  Top candidates for change include getting rid of long and painful meetings, mandatory afterwork events, set work hours, coming to work sick, work - life separation and micromanaging.  What would you add?

GOOD READS

4. Establishing and Maintaining Group Norms

Politics, love & slacking: Managing new workplace norms | HR Morning

7 Workplace Norms That Need to End in the New Normal (idesign.com)

The Bias of ‘Professionalism’ Standards (ssir.org)  

SHOW NOTES

Today on Crina and Kirsten Get to Work our gals engage in an exciting exchange on empathy.  Let’s get clear about what we are talking about.  We often use sympathy, empathy and compassion interchangeably and narrowing down on what each means helps us better understand the concepts.

Sympathy means we can understand what the other person is feeling.

Empathy means that we feel what a person is feeling.

Compassion is the willingness to feel what a person is feeling and to relieve the suffering of another.

Now that we know what we are talking about, why are we talking about empathy?  Because it turns out it is a really good thing and we all should want to give and receive more of it in the workplace.  We rarely “should” on our listeners, but this is a first for a reason.  Empathy is powerful.

Of course, Brene Brown has created a spectacular and hilarious video should be the first stop on a tour of empathy. Brené Brown on Empathy - Bing video

It turns out that we are hardwired for empathy.  Children as young as two demonstrate an appreciation that others hold perspectives different than their own, as evidenced in a study at Lund University in 2018.  Lund University, And research at the University of Virginia found when people saw their friends experiencing threats, they experienced activity in the same part of their brain which was affected when they were personally threatened. See - literally - empathy is wired into our brains.

Empathy contributes to better mental health, better physical health and more ease with work-life balance for employees.  And it turns out that what is good for employees is good for employers - empathy increases innovation, engagement, inclusivity and performance, according to a .2021 study by Catalyst.

What about the gender gap in empathy?  Women self-report that they are more empathetic; however, it turns out the vast majority of studies on this issue report no significant gender difference in empathy ability.

How can we bring more empathy to work:

Give your full attention to people

Consider other people’s perspectives

Actively support people 

Start meetings, calls, emails and other communication with a personal check in

Open your written communication with a signal of gratitude

Ask specific questions (not “how’s it going) and be curious about the answer/body language

Speak directly with individuals

Show active listening skills

Follow up after life events (how was your time with your parents this weekend?)

Create more informed policies and statements about social issues

See The Power of Empathy in Times of Crisis and Beyond (Report)

SHOW NOTES

Today on Crina and Kirsten Get to Work out hosts talk about the concept of good enough as an important part of ease, meaning and joy.

Pascal Bruckner said, “unhappiness is not only unhappiness,; it is, worse yet, a failure to be happy.”  This quotation acknowledges the expectation that we all be “happy” and when we are not, we have somehow failed, missed the point or missed out generally.  The point of this show is to explore that possibility that “good enough” can actually contribute to ease meaning and joy. 

Some people, like Kirsten, experience work as deeply meaningful – although stressful.  Crina’s son works when he needs money.  These are two very different approaches to work.  Is it realistic for everyone to “pursue their passion?  Do you really have to find a dream job so you never work a day in your life?  Can it actually be about something more than the money – or is it just a matter of paying the bills?

Our hosts posit that putting pressure on ourselves to create the perfect job probably takes away from ease, meaning and joy at work – and at the same time, is there something more than just a paycheck?

Rather than dig into the research, our hosts dig into the history.  The idea that we love our work is a relatively new phenomena.  Historically, work was never supposed to be enjoyable.  In fact, author Sarah Jaffe, whose book Work Won’t Love You Back hits stores in January of 2022, argues that the “love your work” mantra is a myth of capitalism.” She says that in the 1970s, just when manufacturing began to die and labor movements began to lose ground, bosses started handing down aphorisms like, “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.”

When we carry the belief that we must find meaning and fulfillment from work, we can be disappointed – and we can neglect other parts of our lives.  If our jobs are our sole source of fulfillment, we not only create unrealistic expectations, but also miss out on other parts of our lives.

Enter the idea of the "good enough" job – relatively enjoyable paid work that meets your financial needs while leaving you with enough time and energy to pursue your passions and callings outside of work.   Maybe you love the people you work with, or the work that you do – or even the mission of your employer – the point is that there is something in the job you find enjoyable.

The "good enough" job embraces the reality that not everyone’s call is this work, the "good enough" job leaves you time to focus on other meaningful aspects of your life – art, music, volunteering, reading, relationships etc.   The "good enough" job is more flexible because you have less investment.  It is easier to leave a "good enough" job to do something else because your interests have changed or to move somewhere else.  Because there is less energy and connection and commitment to the "good enough" job, it is less likely to hold you back from other parts of your life.  Consider, friends, the "good enough" job!

Good Reads:

Fredi Founders Discuss The Fallacy Of "If You Love What You Do, You'll Never Work a Day in Your Life." Why Wellness, Not A 'Dream Job', Is The Key To Fulfillment At Work

In Praise Of 'Good Enough' Jobs — What A Girl Gotta Do

Why Young People Want Comfortable, "good enough" jobs

The Research We've Ignored About Happiness at Work

SHOW NOTES

Burnout is a  real diagnosis - and defined as “chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed” by the World Health Organization.  This relatively new diagnosis is defined as a “syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is characterized by three dimensions: 1) feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; 2) increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job; and 3) reduced professional efficacy. Burnout refers specifically to phenomena in the occupational context and should not be applied to describe experiences in other areas of life.”

Christina Maslach (creator of the Maslach Burnout Inventory) first identified the syndrome - and it came out of her work with healthcare workers and their families.  Here are her inventory questions:

1. How often are you tired and lacking energy to go to work in the morning?
2. How often do you feel physically drained, like your batteries are dead?
3. How often is your thinking process sluggish or your concentration impaired?
4. How often do you feel emotionally detached from co-workers (or customers) and unable to be sensitive to their needs?

Does it sound like you?  If you are like most of us - yes, at least some teimes.

How does this happen?  When we carry too much for too long and cannot effectively process our emotions, our neurological system gets overloaded - and we are unable to effectively deal with this overload.

Who does this happen to?  Well, all of us, but those of us that are anxious or have a low self esteem or poor boundaries are thought to be more likely to suffer burnout, according to a study of Spanish nurses.  According to authors Rachel Montane and Erika Pryor, women of color also carry the emotional burden of discrimination, fear of retaliation - and of course much of the emotional labor of diversity in the workplace..

Employers contribute to burnout by unfair treatment, an unmanageable workload, unrealistic deadlines, poor communication and a lack of support.

Enter Drs. Emily and Amelia Nagoski, authors of Burnout, who just happen to be identical twins.  They have concluded, based on their research, that the key to preventing burnout is to manage the emotions you are having so that we do not become emotionally exhausted.  They encourage us to process the emotion - actually turn towards it, and feel it.  Scary!!  But we can do it.

Here are the twins’ suggestions to deal with, process and get on the other side of our emotions.

• Engage in physical activity
• Try breathing exercises
• Make positive connections with people you love and care about (call someone or better yet go for a walk with a friend)
• Laugh - a great big belly laugh
• Hug for 20 seconds - the full slightly uncomfortable 20 seconds
• Cry - they promise it will not go on forever
• Be Creative - paint, sing, dance, write

The key is to send our body a signal that the danger is over, we are safe.  And how do we know our emotions have been processed and we are “done?”  The twin doctors promise your body will tell you.

Be aware of your depletion clues.  Are you sleeping well and enough?  Are you engaging in activities where you do not think of work? Are you taking breaks at work?  Do you have work-life boundaries?

The solution to burnout is actually more than self-care.  It is more about managing emotions.

While burnout is prevalent, there are things we can do to recognize our vulnerability, determine whether it is happening to us and work to relieve that chronic stress through the processing of emotions.  

More good reads:

How to Recover From Burnout & Love Work Again According to Science

How to Eliminate Burnout and Retain Top Talent

SHOW NOTES 

We know that perfection is the state of being without flaw or defects - and we all know that perfection is not really attainably.  It may be that some of us everyone once in a while achieve perfection, but perfection is not something most of us achieve.  Perfectionism is the refusal or inability to accept anything short of perfect.  Friend, do you see the cognitive dissonance here, the undeniable catch-22?  Perfectionists are trying to achieve the unattainable.  Painful - to the individual who is the perfectionist as well as those around her.

We want to make sure not to confuse high achiever with perfectionist.  And there are even some great descriptions for this.

Adaptive perfectionist: aka high-achievers: adaptive perfectionism means that a person thrives on doing some, but crucially not all, things well. In the words of Stoltz & Ashby 2007 “adaptive perfectionism is characterised as a normal, healthy type of perfectionism and is defined by deriving satisfaction from achievements made from intense effort but tolerating the imperfections….”

Adaptive perfectionists are the women who embrace the reality that it’s simply impossible to achieve complete perfection and instead aim for a high standard of work in those tasks they do well, and that play to their unique strengths.  These women are telling themselves more of the truth about who they are and the circumstances that are in - they are adaptive.

Maladapted perfectionism is such a great descriptor because we start off right away knowing this is not a good thing.  The maladapted perfectionist is likely on a path to pain.  These women are very hard on themselves when perfection is not achieved.  And these kinds of unrealistic expectations and responses lead to depression, anxiety and increased levels of stress.

We can have high standards, the question is what happens when reality comes crashing in and our high expectations have not been mer.  Failure is inevitable - and, you guessed it - far more stressful on the maladapted gal than the adaptive gal.  Crina shares a story about her own sense of perfectionism getting in the way of her own fun - she wanted to be excellent and when she was not, she gave up - until, smarty chick that she is - she realized that approach was no way to love and it was far better to have more fun - even if she was not excellent at whatever was fun.  

As with most things, none of us neatly fall into one category or another and may see ourselves in both.  What are the indicia of tipping over into maladaptive rather than the sweet spot of adaptive:

Do people tell you you are difficult to change

Do you want to change your body?

Do you notice others’ mistakes?

Do you notice the mistakes you made?

When you try something new that you are not good at - do you give up?

Do you focus on the success or the failure?

Do you procrastinate or avoid tasks regularly?

Mistakes are flaws versus opportunities to learn?

Kirsten shares that the legal profession is toxic perfectionism.  Making a mistake can hurt your client - and is malpractice - there is no room for mistakes.  It is the part of practicing law she has most struggled with over her career because it is based on a falsehood - we all make mistakes and that standard of perfection fails to acknowledge the human behind the work.

The disturbing news is that perfectionism is on the rise. A 2019 study that evaluated more than 40,000 college students found a 33% rise in perfectionism from 1989 to 2016.

But this should be good news for the workplace, right?  We want a bunch of perfectionists doing great work, right?  Surprisingly, no - we do not! A vast meta-analysis of 30 years of studies, conducted at the Georgia Institute of Technology, found there was no relationship between perfectionism and job performance for either group (failure avoiding or excellence seeking) , says researcher Dana Harari, who worked on the meta-analysis. “To me, the most important takeaway of this research is the null relationship between perfectionism and performance,” she says. “It's not positive, it's not negative, it's just really null.” Is that the craziest thing?  Perfectionism does not lead to better work performance.

You know our hosts are not going to leave our lady friends hanging!  

• Go for the B

• Give 80%- As Cinzia BuBois says, “Giving 100 percent should be saved for those special passion projects or for those most treasured people in your life. If you give 100 percent to everything and everyone around you, the quality of your output will go down. You’ll become burnt out, exhausted, and resentful. Not only is 100 percent unrealistic, it doesn’t allow room for learning. Getting an 80 percent always puts you in the higher tiers of anything in life; it’s not perfect, but it’s still rather outstanding. By striving for 80 percent, you allow room for perseverance, flexibility, and diligence, uncorrupted by the fear of failure (or rather, imperfection).”  The Perfectionism Epidemic. We live in a society where failure is… | by Cinzia DuBois | Achology

• Don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good. Done is better than incomplete or worse, never started

• Realizing failure isn’t the opposite of success, but part of it. No one can learn without making mistakes, and no project, skill, or relationship can grow without learning. We’re not supposed to be perfect the first time around

• Recovery activities are critical when you do give it your all - you need to rest and restore and re-energize - you know self-care.

To all you fabulous females out there, some of this may be counterintuitive in the workplace, but the data supports that perfectionism is not correlative with performance - and it can cause suffering - to our minds, our hearts and our bodies.  Get yourself a B and carefully choose when you bring the A game.

Good reads

Being a perfectionist is good for your career, right?

Obsessed with Perfection: How to Overcome Toxic Perfectionism in a Highly Competitive World

The Trouble with Toxic Perfectionism

The Pros and Cons of Perfectionism, According to Research (hbr.org)

Obsessed with Perfection: How to Overcome Toxic Perfectionism in a Highly Competitive World

Is perfect good? A meta-analysis of perfectionism in the workplace. (apa.org)

SHOW NOTES 

On this episode of Crina and Kirsten Get to Work, our pair of pretties riff on what has become known as The Great Resignation.  Yes, people are leaving the workforce in droves, and not returning to the workforce after being laid off due to COVID. There is essentially a mass exodus from the workplace.  

So here are some jarring stats:

• According to the U.S. Department of Labor, during the months of April, May, and June 2021, a total of 11.5 million workers quit their jobs.   This is significantly more than this time last year - about 40% more.  Sure there were layoffs, but these are quits - folks who leave of their own accord.
• A survey of over 30,000 workers conducted by Microsoft found that 41 percent are considering quitting; that number jumps to 54 percent when Gen-Z is considered alone. 
• Gallup found that 48 percent of employees are actively searching for new opportunities.
• And Persio reported that 38 percent of those they surveyed planned to make a change in the next six months. The Great Resignation Is Here, and It's Real | Inc.com
• A recent survey by the search firm Korn Ferry found that over 90 percent of retailers are struggling to fill empty positions, even though nearly one in three offer sign-on bonuses and another third have instituted paid referral programs. The Great Resignation: Why Millions of People Are Quitting (and How Employers Can Earn-- Not Lure--Them Back

• As of May, 1.8m of the 5m women who lost their jobs in 2020 have not returned to work.  Women Rush To Entrepreneurship In ‘The Great Resignation’ (forbes.com)

We know a little about why they are leaving.  The vast majority spent that time trapped in their home thinking about their current work situation and realized they needed a change.  Stress and burnout are also significant factors as people, particularly women push the eject button.  Some are just dissatisfied with how their employer has handed COVID, others cite unfairness and others just decided being a two income household was too much and made the decision to live with just one income.  And some have been motivated to take the leap and start their own business.

If you are one of those employees looking for the door, our hosts have some ideas:

1. Getting another job before you leave is safer, but staying can be unbearable
2. Consider having at least 6 months savings and stop spending money
3. Do the work to understand what you want, what you need, what your values are (listen to the meaning episodes!). Remember that you take yourself with you wherever you go.
4. Change one variable at a time at your current job 
5. Give your current job some time to settle, especially if you’re compensated well and it aligns with your values
6. Lean on your network to find other opportunities
7. Set up job alerts
8. Work on your resume
9. Remember that while it’s a job seekers market, there are still a lot of other people who will be competing with you for the job

If you are one of those managers looking to keep your employees, consider these strategies:

1.  Once pay and benefits are fair -- not industry-leading, just appropriate and reasonable -- how you treat people makes a huge difference.
2. Talk to your employees to determine whether the company’s mission and values align with employees; mission and values
3. Make sure your employees know what is expected of them
4. Take the opportunity to recognize and make use of employees; strengths
5. Be fair and kind to your workers
6. Invest in internal communication and transparent decision-making
7. Build trust and team

And there is some anecdotal proof that these kinds of measures work.  A study of more than 400,000 people published in Harvard Business Review found that when employees believe promotions are managed effectively, employee turnover rates are half that of other companies in the same industry. 

The last 20 months have been a very unusual and upsetting time.  It is understandable that the vast majority of us are reconsidering how we spend our work time - and it makes sense that we are considering a change.  If you are a manager, accepting that reality and being the preferred employer is important if you want to retain your employees.  If you are an employee, plan carefully, but the workplace is your metaphorical oyster (you know, the one with the pearl)  in ways it has never been.

SHOW NOTES

Boundaries separate what we think and feel from the thoughts and feelings of others. How to Define Healthy Boundaries at Work — Melody Wilding

Crina talks about capital “B” boundaries that are strong, not subject to negotiation with little flexibility.  Lower case “b” boundaries are more porous, flexible and may change depending on circumstances.  

A boundary is a container around your time, mental and emotional energy, relationships, physical body and material and energetic resources.

Where do we see boundaries at work?

How you spend your time

What you agree to do - or not do

How you spend your energy

What do you need for your physical space

How you want to communicate in the office

Our job descriptions and our fte status are significant boundaries at work.

Boundaries are important because they allow you to be more of you. They walk hand in hand with our self-worth.  They allow us to maintain our energy and resilience.  They guide healthy relationships.

We see boundaries in action at work when we do not allow others to speak to us in a rude or condescending manner, when we protect our space - a closed door, separation from a co-worker in a meeting, setting priorities in your work.

Boundaries between work and our personal lives are also important.  Workers tend to fall into three categories as they define their work and personal boundaries - separators, integrators and cyclers.  Separators are 9 to 5ers (or whatever the hours) - folks who clock in and clock out and work and personal do not bleed into each other.  Integrators tend to go between work and personal all of the time - these are the folks who cannot tell you how much they work because they are meshing their work and personal lives to a significant degree.  Cyclers are those folks who spend a significant amount of their energy and time on work in big chunks - firefighters who work for a week and then are off for a week.  Understanding how you separate work and personal is helpful in analyzing your own boundaries and whether those are respected.

Our hosts conclude with examples of boundaries gone bad in the workplace.

More good reads:

Kossek inpress10 Managing Work-Life Boundaries in the Digital Age.pdf (bc.edu)

How to set clear work boundaries — and stick to them | (ted.com)

The Successful Woman’s Guide to Setting Boundaries – Without Being a Bitch - Women Igniting Change

SHOW NOTES

In this episode of Crina and Kirsten Get to Work, our hosts tackle part II of this two-part series on meaning in the workplace.  In Part I, Crina and Kirsten discussed the importance of meaning at work and that meaning arises when we find alignment with our values.

Identifying our values allows us, hopefully, to match those values to those of our employer.  This is where our internal work on values can overlap with the external world – in this case our employer. 

The good news is that meaning is more about what we do with what we have instead of what we start with.  Some folks may be in a job that completely aligns with their values – maybe a teacher who values teaching and children and being of service and her employer supports her in those values.  Not that she loves everything she does, but her internal values coincide with her external work experience.

So, what do we do when that is not the case?

There are a number of ways to modify our internal and external worlds to align with our values and create meaning.

Amy Wresniewski. professor of Organizational Behavior at the Yale School of Management, with the assistance of her colleagues, introduced the concept of job crafting.  In studying the work of a group of janitors at a hospital, she discovered the janitors experienced the same job in different ways – and fell into two distinct groups.  One group saw themselves as just janitors, did not think they were highly skilled and would describe their job as cleaning.  The other group talked about their work in relation to patients and visitors’ care. In fact, most of how those in this second group described their job was not even in the job description.  They discussed tasks such as changing the art on the walls of patients who were in a coma or cleaning the floor extra times in the rooms of patients who did not have visitors, or guiding visitors to where they were going.  This second group viewed their work as providing a safe and clean place for people to get healthy and heal or as ambassadors for the hospital.  She called what the second group was doing job crafting.

Wresniewski describes job crafting as “[w}hat employees do to redesign their own jobs in ways that foster engagement at work, job satisfaction, resilience and thriving.” (Berg, Wrzensniewski and Dutton, 2010) Job crafting can be changing the task you perform – adding or dropping responsibilities – like the janitor cleaning the floor of a lonely patient several times a day.  It can also be in creating certain types of interactions – who do we want to work with and how?  We can choose who we brainstorm with, sometimes who we work with on a project and even sometimes who we serve so that these people add meaning to our work.  Job crafting can also be changing your mindset about what you are doing, which is also something the janitors did – realizing their job was not cleaning floors, but providing a place for people to heal and get well.

People who job craft tend to have more satisfaction, commitment, happiness and better performance in and with their jobs.  It is a really good way for people to find meaning at work.

Employees will likely job craft– often not even being aware of it.  Managers and supervisors should recognize this and support it.  We know it has an incredibly positive effect in the workplace when employees find meaning in their work – and job crafting is one significant way employees find meaning in their work.  Leadership can consider:

1. Giving autonomy and support to employees
2. Encouraging employees to identify their values and create plans for themselves at work that align with those values
3. Communicating company values and goals so employees can see how they fit into achieving those goals and living those values
4. Allowing and encouraging task reassignment that fits values, such as holding a job crafting “swap meet” where people talk about whether given values and strengths of each employee, certain tasks can be traded.
5. Recognizing and celebrating and supporting employees who take the ownership in their work necessary to job craft.

 And here are some good reads:

 Job Crafting - Amy Wrzesniewski on creating meaning in your own work

The 4-Hour Meaning Week. 4 power-hours of super-meaning per week… | by Taylor Foreman | The Startup | Jul, 2021

Help your employees find purpose--or watch them leave

Igniting individual purpose in times of crisis

The Why Of Work: Purpose And Meaning Really Do Matter

Positive Workplace What is Job Crafting? (Incl. 5 Examples and Exercises)

SHOW NOTES

In Part I of a two part series on finding meaning at work, our hale and happy hosts spend some time diving into what meaning is, why it is important and the backbone of meaning - identifying your values.

What are we talking about when we say meaning?  Meaning is the connection between two or more things or ideas that together fulfill a higher purpose, create esteem or admiration, have a positive impact, transcend our instincts or our view of what we can achieve or makes sense (aka lofty goals).  This is according to Kirsten and The Meaning of Life (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Meaning is not happiness, it is not good character.  It is the connection between ourselves and one of those “lofty goals.”  Sometimes we find meaning because we are providing for our families, or helping someone else, being of service, discovering something new, solving problems, protecting the environment etc . . .

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

“People who live their purpose at work are more productive than people who don’t. They are also healthier, more resilient, and more likely to stay at the company. Moreover, when employees feel that their purpose is aligned with the organization’s purpose, the benefits expand to include stronger employee engagement, heightened loyalty, and a greater willingness to recommend the company to others.” Help your employees find purpose--or watch them leave

Simply put - meaning is good for us and good for the workplace. Meaning at work makes us:

• 2.5 times more likely to be free of dementia
• 22 percent less likely to exhibit risk factors for stroke
• 52 percent less likely to have experienced a stroke

And if this wasn’t enough, individual purpose benefits organizations, too… People who find their individual purpose congruent with their jobs tend to get more meaning from their roles, making them more productive and more likely to outperform their peers.  Igniting individual purpose in times of crisis.

HOW DO WE FIND MEANING:

Ideally, work is a place where you can express your values - it is a calling.  There are external factors - the work and the workplace that affect this and well an internal factors.

As always, the good and bad news is that we have more ability to affect change when it comes to our internal experience.  

• Identify Your Values

Values are the things that are most important in our lives.  When values and goals are aligned, we are much more likely to motivate ourselves towards action and success.  

According to Simon Senik values need to be actionable  Here is his terrific TEDTalk: Honesty is NOT a Value | Simon Sinek Values are not nouns, but actions.  He gives these great examples:

Honesty vs “tell the truth”

Innovation vs “allow for experimentation”

Humor vs. “laugh everyday”

Most of us have a sense of our values and can list our values.  However, it is interesting to move past your assumptions and reflect on them from an independent source.  For example, The Values Project is a decades-long effort to get people in touch with their values.  Click on the link to test your assumptions about your values. The Values Project | Let's reveal what matters to you.  Getting clear on your values is the first step to finding meaning at work.