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Ida del Mundo

Apr 10
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1048: Transforming Insecurities into Strength and Action with Margie Warrell

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Margie Warrell explores how to build the courage to move beyond fear and unlock new possibilities.

You’ll Learn

  1. How to identify your insecurities and overcome them
  2. The two dimensions of courage
  3. How to take action despite your fear

About Margie

Margie Warrell is a five-time best-selling author, keynote speaker, leadership coach, and Forbes columnist. With twenty-five years of experience living and working around the world, she has dedicated her life to helping others overcome fear and unlock their potential.

From her humble beginnings on a small farm in rural Australia to her former role as a Senior Partner at Korn Ferry and Advisory Board member for the Forbes School of Business & Technology, Margie has learned that courage is essential for every worthwhile endeavor. A mother of four and an advocate for women’s empowerment, she inspires others to live bravely and refuse to settle in any aspect of life.

Resources Mentioned

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Margie Warrell Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Margie, welcome!

Margie Warrell
Great to be with you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m super excited to hear your perspectives on courage. And I want to start by hearing, what’s one of the most surprising and fascinating and counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made about courage in your career and researching this matter?

Margie Warrell
Ah, it’s probably that courage is not always about stepping bravely forward, putting yourself out there, saying a big yes and climbing out onto the far limb. Sometimes courage is saying no, sitting still, doing nothing, and reconnecting, disconnecting, pressing pause on all the doing and the bold acts of bravery, and just reconnecting with who we’re being, and being still and being unproductive. That is, sometimes, even more challenging and requires even more courage than being busily in action.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. Could you share with us a story that illustrates that?

Margie Warrell
Well, look, I’ll share from my own life. So, I am someone who has a bias for action. I am someone who tends to be an Energizer bunny, sort of productive, productive, doing, doing, doing, doing. That’s almost my comfort zone is to be out there, furiously working hard, and doing a lot of things and juggling many balls. And that can be, in some ways, affirming of a sense of identity, and I’m in action.

And so, for me, over the years, is recognizing that there is actually a deep-seated fear of slowing down and doing nothing because, “Well, what if I become lazy? What if I never achieve anything again? What if this means I’m amount to nothing? What if…?” And so, just looking at where fear is pulling the strings and sometimes pushing me into the state of doing and busyness, and actually confronting that and going, “You know what, I don’t have to do more to be worthy. I don’t have to achieve more to be worthy. I am worthy.”

And, actually, right now, the most valuable thing for me to do is to just sit and pause and get really present and grounded in who I am and what I’m about rather than being in action. And then that enables me to then actually upgrade my action so that when I go back into action, I’m far more aligned, have far more clarity, much more intentional about what I’m doing. So, does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, intriguing. And I’d love if you could share a little bit more in terms of what are the scariest things that may be lurking for us in the solitude, in the quiet, in that silence?

Margie Warrell
Well, we have to come face to face with just like who we are at the deepest place because it’s easy, busyness can be a great tool for distraction. When we’re busy, it almost can be addictive because it can be feeding us and giving us a sense of significance. And, I mean, we all want to feel significant in our lives. To be human is to want to feel significant in some way. And we can achieve that through healthy means and we can achieve it through unhealthy means.

And I think that the busyness can provide that sense of, sort of like, “Oh, you know, look at all that I’m doing.” And people are going, “Wow, aren’t you doing a lot?” And so, the confronting part of just pressing pause on that is to go, “Who am I if I’m not doing that? And what are the deepest fears that are sometimes lurking there out of immediate line of sight?”

And I think, for many of us, there’s a deep-seated fear of being unworthy, of being judged and found wanting, “You are not smart enough. You are not clever, capable, experienced, intelligent, educated, likable, lovable, leader-like enough,” insert something before the word enough. And I think it’s part of the deep work of growing into who we can become to kind of pull back the covers on those fears.

Because they’re not always obvious but they can pull invisible strings that shape how we show up, how we speak up, the presence that we give to other people, how we lead, whether or not we are in tapping into our own intuitive sense of what’s going on around us and what’s going on for the people around us so that we can speak into their listening and be someone that builds trust and others come to count on  for the integrity and the character and the courage that we bring to situations, but not always loud courage, sometimes quiet courage.

Pete Mockaitis
And when you say enough, I always wonder, enough for what?

Margie Warrell
Yeah, enough. Enough of what gives us a sense of innate worthiness.

Pete Mockaitis
Enough to have worthiness.

Margie Warrell
And so, yeah, when people say enough, that can be many things, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, enough for your life to, fundamentally, have value.

Margie Warrell
Yeah, for you to have value.

Pete Mockaitis
A human being identity.

Margie Warrell
Yeah, and I think that can be, we can carry sometimes a sense of inadequacy in that we’re flawed, fallible in some way. And of course, let’s face it, we are all flawed and we are all fallible in some way. None of us are, get a 10 out of 10 on every category. That is part of the human condition, right? And so, my experience for myself, but also working with people, many whom have achieved incredible success, there’s often this insecurity in them that can be driving and driving, and actually can drive them to be work really hard and achieve amazing things.

But actually, they get to a level and that insecurity, if they haven’t done the inner work required to make peace with their vulnerabilities, to heal those childhood wounds, then that insecurity actually can cap them and ultimately can be a saboteur.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I would love to get your pro take. You’ve been working with many CEOs of large organizations with your time at Korn Ferry and your own work. So, just for funsies, could you share with us, roughly what percent of super high-achieving, big-deal executives have substantial levels of insecurity?

Margie Warrell
Well, substantial is a big word. But what percentage of high-achieving executives have some insecurity? I don’t want to say 100%, but I would say close to it because we all have something in us that can feel insecure at times. We all have moments of feeling insecure. None of us are invulnerable to things that can trigger something in us. So, I would say it’s close to 100 % of high-achieving executives have moments where they can feel insecure. But it’s whether they have their insecurities or their insecurities have them.

And so, when you use the word substantial insecurities, well, then that’s where, obviously, there’s a lot of insecurities that are running them versus them going, “Yeah, I’ve got this thing. This can make me feel insecure, but I’m self-aware enough.” And that’s where that self-awareness is so crucial to being a great leader, to being an effective executive, because we aren’t being governed by our insecurities and our fears.

And, of course, our fears don’t always show up as, “Oh, I’m really nervous. I’m so scared I’m going to mess this up.” You know, it’s not necessarily paralysis, it’s not panic, it’s not outward, overt self-doubt. More often, those insecurities can show up as intellectualizing emotions, being controlling, not delegating downward effectively, micromanaging, second-guessing people, being someone that is not okay with being challenged, so people don’t challenge because they know that this runs a risk.

And so, there’s lots of different ways that our insecurity, and let’s just be clear here, insecurity is just another term for an unfaced fear, an unprocessed fear.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Well, so you nailed it in terms of that’s what I mean by substantial insecurity, like you have a hard time being wrong or letting someone else shine, or clearly acknowledging humbly, it’s like, “Yeah, you know a lot more about this thing than I do. So, I’m going to let you take over.”

Margie Warrell
Yeah, you bet.

Pete Mockaitis
“And, hey, I like your idea better than mine. Let’s go with yours and forget what I said.”

Margie Warrell
And not just that, but actively seeking that out, too, and saying to people in the room, “Hey, look, I don’t know everything. You know, what is it that I could be missing here?” And actively soliciting people to put forward opinions that may actually contradict or, if not contradict, may not line squarely up with your own.

And when they say those things, that you might actually disagree with, you might actually think they’re wrong. And maybe they’re critical of you and the judgment that you’ve made, that you don’t get defensive, and you go, “Wow, tell me more about that. Tell me more about that.” And that people never have to hesitate to say that. And, to me, that is an indicator of a leader who has done their work, and who is well and truly leading from values and not emotions and not insecurity.

Because no matter what anyone says about them, they don’t get triggered by that, they don’t take offense, “How could you say that?” They’re, like, curious, they’re humble, they’re eager to learn and they listen with an ear to how they could be wrong. And then they always acknowledge when they’ve changed their mind and they share that, and go, “You know, I thought this, but, yeah, I realized I was wrong. I wasn’t factoring in these other things,” and they can share that openly. And there’s a lot of senior executives who are not in a place where they’re able to do that.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, that’s what I’m getting at. I think you’ve painted a lovely picture on what I mean by substantial insecurity versus substantial security. So, could you give us a very rough figure, like, at the top levels, who’s got that substantial insecurity and who doesn’t as a rough percentage?

Margie Warrell
I would say a solid 50%.

Pete Mockaitis
Fifty-fifty, all right.

Margie Warrell
Yeah, I mean, that could vary and it varies in organizations because there’s different cultures. So, I’ve worked in organizations where the culture is very grounded in purpose, and values, and authenticity, and people who posture and who are ego-driven, you know, overtly ego-driven. Their behavior gets, their, like, white bloods, they get ejected out.

Like, they can be really brilliant at what they do. But it’s like, at the end of the day, people are recognizing, “Ah, very ego-driven.” They’re an insecure person, even though they might be brilliant at what they do. And so, then there’s cultures where, “You know what, it’s about what are your numbers? Honestly, we don’t care much about all the other stuff. What are your numbers?”

And sometimes the people who get the best numbers are people who can be massively ego-driven and not the least bit, or very only mildly self-aware. And so, it’s all about, “Hah, who’s winning?Who’s winning? And who can get the biggest number fastest?” And that gets rewarded and that gets promoted.

And so, you end up with an executive bench of people who are all very, very ego-driven, competitive, but not necessarily particularly self-aware.

Whenever executive teams don’t make great decisions, and you see over time, there’s a leakage of value and the organization starts to lose edge and the culture grows, there’s toxic elements to it and disengagement and higher turnover, etc., it’s never because the people on that executive team lack intelligence individually or collectively, that they lack expertise and skill individually or collectively, that they lack access to information and resources.

It is because of the ego, and I’m talking about ego, I’m talking like, “I got to prove that I’m right and you’re wrong,” and there’s a defensiveness and it’s that insecurity at play because that undermines the dynamics in the team, and it undermines the quality of decision-making. There is not open, candid conversations. There is silos. There is protecting of information. There is a whole lot of conversations going on outside of the room. There is not good upward and sideways feedback.

And all of those factors at play, they are what create this slow leakage of value that, over time, you see organizations start to lose edge. And so, yeah, it’s not that they don’t know what to do, it’s that they’re not doing what they know.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, this reminds me, we had Pat Lencioni on the show and talking about smart versus healthy with regard to teams and dynamics and how it’s, a lot of times they got the know-how, but in terms of the courage and going there and having those conversations, it’s great.

So, it sounds like we’re pretty strong on the case here for how having more courage will help you be more awesome at your job with regard to just feeling good, facing down those monsters, as well as better teamwork, etc. Any other key things you’d put forward in terms of the case for why professionals would be better off with an extra dose of courage?

Margie Warrell
Well, let me just share, there’s two core dimensions to courage. And we often focus in on the field of fear and do it anyway, “Be bold. Take a risk. Put yourself out there. Set a bold vision. Have the crucial conversations. Take those risks for yourself, professionally,” in terms of then leading how you manage others.

But what we often fail to factor in is the second dimension of courage, and that is the regulation of our fear, the management of our anxious thinking. Because courage is action in the presence of fear and the presence of risks, real or perceived, but often we’re more afraid than we need to be. And right now, it’s a perfect case in point.

There are a lot of people right now who are feeling incredibly anxious because there is immense uncertainty. Yes, there is a new administration in the White House. There has been massive disruption. The markets are volatile. People are worried about the future. But you know what? There’s always been uncertainty. We’ve always had disruption. And, yes, it may feel like, “Oh, no, but not like this.” But these times have come before and they’ve gone before.

And so, a lot of the time we are victim to what’s called certainty bias. When we look back at the past, we know how the story ended, so we go, “No, it wasn’t like this,” because we don’t know how the story is going to end. But five years from now, we’re going to look back on this moment right now and go, “Oh, well, you know, it worked out,” and because there’s going to be new uncertainty.

So, often people are feeling more anxious than they need to be, and anxiety magnifies our perceptions of risk. And people pull back and they triple on what they can control and they try and find certainty so they get really short-sighted, and then they fail to take the very actions that would actually expand future possibilities, that would grow and accelerate learning curves, so that they’d be in a better position for whatever unfolds out the other side of this disruption, whether that’s Gen AI, whether that’s regulatory policy changing, etc.

And so, I think it’s just so important for people to realize it’s not just about, “Be brave. Just put yourself out there.” It’s also going, “Where am I scaring myself because of how I am perceiving all of the risks and all the uncertainty and all the unknowns? And where am I being a little short-sighted and not looking far enough ahead to the horizon and go, what is it that I could be doing right now that will put me in a better position, one, three, five years from now?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, can you share with us what are some of your favorite tips, tricks, interventions, actions, things to do to get more courage?

Margie Warrell
Well, obviously in The Courage Gap, I talk about five key principles for closing that gap between what we could do and what we actually do, between our insight and the impact we make for ourselves, for others. And the first one of those principles is focusing on what it is that you want, what is the highest outcome you want to achieve.

And that could be, right now, today, “With an employee, my boss, a co-worker, I’m having a difficult time with. There’s a lot of frustration. Maybe I’m feeling really resentful toward them. Maybe I’m feeling underappreciated.” So, ask yourself, what is your highest intention for that relationship? Or, if it’s your career, “What is my highest intention for my career over the next one year, three years, five, 10?”

Because, if we’re not clear about what it is we want, our vision and our values, then our attention is going to be held captive by what it is we don’t want, because fear is a really potent emotion. We naturally gravitate to the negatives, to what’s wrong, to what we can’t do, to what we hope won’t happen.

And so, there is a huge power that we unlock within ourselves, but also it expands our field of vision of what actions we can take when we connect to what it is we do want and what our highest intention is, what our ultimate outcome is, because what we focus on expands. Energy multiplies by a factor of what our attention is on.

And so, that is a key principle. And many people don’t realize how much of their time and how much of their energy and how many of their conversations are all about what is wrong, and what can’t be done, and what shouldn’t happen, and what a pain their boss is, or what a pain this colleague is, versus “What can they do? What do they have? What do they want? How can they work better with this colleague? How can they help foster a better relationship with their boss?”

And the way I could go about doing that versus kind of being stuck in either a self-pity, you know, feeling like a bit of a victim or getting stuck into a blame like, “Ugh,” or just having a story that we are powerless to improve our situation, which is never true. And the biggest way we disempower ourselves is telling ourselves we can’t do anything.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, when you say highest intention, you mean highest in the sense of most noble and in fulfillment of our deepest, most important values, as opposed to just a really big achievement, like high, like Mount Everest high.

Margie Warrell
The two don’t have to be mutually exclusive. So, you can have a really high intention to live a life of adventure and do amazing things, and that means you want to climb Mount Everest. But it also could mean, “I want to have a really good relationship with the people on my team. I want to do what I can to be the kind of person that I would want to work with.” But the highest intention, whatever it is, it has to align with our deepest values. So, what are your deepest values that want to define you and how you live your life?

And it’s funny you mentioned, you know, climbing a mountain. Several years back, I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with my husband and our four teenage children, which was a pretty bold, audacious undertaking at the time because we lived at sea level in Australia. We didn’t go mountain climbing on weekends for fun because there weren’t any mountains near us. And so, it was pretty bold to kind of go, “All right, let’s do this.”

But one of my kids, Ben, said, “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool to climb Mount Kilimanjaro for dad’s 50th birthday?” He did this whole PowerPoint deck. He rallied the whole family behind this vision of climbing to the rooftop of Africa for dad’s 50th, “Our family will always remember it.” So, we created an intention for, as a family, right, to do this thing that would be so cool. There was a chance we weren’t going to get to the top. The altitude can really take a toll on our bodies, particularly younger bodies. My youngest was 13 at the time, but that intention to do that is what kind of galvanized our collective resolve to go, “Let’s try.”

And as it was, we did make it to the top of Kilimanjaro. It was a really tough day, but our intention will always align with some value. I mean, I have no desire to climb Mount Everest after climbing Kilimanjaro, but for us as a family, like this would be a really cool thing to do as a family. That was a value.

But for some people, it could be, “I want to just build a business that contributes to my community, that serves the needs of these customers, these people in my local geography,” or maybe it’s to do something that’s on a global scale, but there’s still a value that it’s aligned with. But for people listening to this, I know for me, professionally, I have always wanted to do work that aligned with, one, yes, my value to make an impact for others, to help others live their purpose, to use their talents for the greater good, but also to use my talents in a way that honors those talents.

And so, we all have different talents. People, we come out of the womb with different gifts and, yes, we have to hone them. But so it could be that you just really want to do something that lights you up. You’re leveraging your strengths fully. We thrive the most when we are leveraging our strengths in service of something that’s meaningful to us versus something that’s purely superficial. And while when we’re younger, sometimes it is superficial. As we go through life, people who thrive the most are doing things, they’re working hard toward meaningful goals.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, and I guess that’s what I’m zeroing in on when I say highest intention is it’s like, you could have, maybe you want to build a business to prove everyone wrong, “They thought I couldn’t do it. Look at me now.” Or it’s like, “I want to have a sick Lamborghini.” So, these are things that motivate some people. But I’m guessing that if we dig deeper into values work, those wouldn’t be, in fact, the highest intention that have the most potency for boosting the courage.

Margie Warrell
Well, look, and if you love cars and you want to have a Lamborghini, like, great, knock yourself out and work hard for that Lamborghini. I’m not a car person myself, but if your sense of security and identity is coming from sources outside of yourself, then you will always feel a little insecure. Because once you’ve got that Lamborghini and you drive it right up the main street of town and you’ve got the music blaring and you’re making sure everyone’s looking at you, and they’re like, “Wow, you’ve got a Lamborghini.” It’s like, “Great, it feels good. Like, yeah. See? See my Lamborghini?”

But, okay, after a while, it gets a little, it wears off. We habituate to, “Okay, now what do I have to do?” Because it’s a cup with a hole in the bottom. It’s never going to fill up if your sense of worth and value has to be externally validated all the time. And that’s not to say, it’s natural to want to have external validation. I love external validation.

But if that’s what our identity is built on, it’s going to be built on a house of cards because, you know, what happens if you lose your Lamborghini? What happens if you lose all your money? That can happen. That does happen to people. And so, I think we have to be really careful about where our sense of identity comes from. And there is no greater source of identity than being really living in alignment with our values. It is got to be an internally sourced identity versus externally validated all the time.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we’ve got five principles. The first is the highest intention. What’s the next?

Margie Warrell
Second is re-scripting the narratives that are keeping you stuck, stressed, or living too safely. So, of course, we all tell ourselves stories all the time, like, “Oh, it’s a nice day out there today.” As it is, while I’m talking to you, I can see the cherry blossoms coming out here in North Virginia. But sometimes our stories get in our way and keep us from doing the very things that would serve us.

So, our stories can stoke up our fear. They can make us feel more stressed like, you know, we tell ourselves stories, “Oh, it’s the end of the world,” “I’m never going to get another job,” “I’m too old.” There’s a lot, I’m surrounded by people who use even language, “It’s a nightmare situation. I’m never going to be able to figure this out.”

And so, they make themselves feel more stressed than they need to be. But sometimes our stories can give us air cover for living too safely, for going, “Oh, well, you know, it’s not so bad. And everybody else has got it worse than me. Or, at least I’ve got a job.” And I’m like, “Yeah, but are you happy in your job?” “Yeah, but at least it pays the bills.” I’m like, “Come on, like life’s short.” And so, we can often tell ourselves stories that keep us from taking the very actions we’re wholly capable of taking.

Sometimes we tell ourselves lies. We call them vital lies, the soothing myths, truths that spare us from having to look at ourself and go, “What is the price I’m paying for the story that I’m telling myself? It’s making me feel okay in the moment, but it’s actually keeping me stuck. It’s actually keeping me from connecting in more meaningful ways with other people, or making a change that I know deep, deep down, I really need to make because I’m not feeling a sense of purpose. I’m not feeling like I’m living the life I want to be living?”

And so, just recognizing that if your stories aren’t making you feel more powerful, like they’re not empowering you, if they’re not aligning with something that gives you a sense of meaning and purpose, and if they’re not making you feel more positive about your future, then your stories are working against you.

And I often say to people, like, “Tell me, what’s your ultimate vision of success?” And then they’ll go, “Well…” And when they let themselves really connect with that vision and they focus on what they want, I’m like, “Well, what story would you need to be telling yourself for that to become your reality?” because our beliefs are the software of behavior. Everything we do is belief-driven. So, what’s the story that you need to tell yourself so that you’ll take the actions to create the outcomes you want?

And if you’re feeling stuck in your career or you’re feeling like you’re hitting your head against a wall, I would just say to you, like, “What’s the story you’ve been telling yourself? And what emotions does that create? Where is that keeping you playing too small? Where is that keeping you stuck in excuses? Where is that keeping you showing up in a more diminutive way than really serves you? And so, what’s another story you could tell and re-script that story? Because you create your stories, but your stories then create you.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And the third principle?

Margie Warrell
The third principle is about embodying courage and connecting to the sources of courage within us, but also around us in our relationships with others. And often we don’t recognize how we’re moving through the world in an anxious state. John Wooden, the great iconic basketball coach, once said, “It’s not about how tall you are. It’s about how tall you play.”

And often we don’t realize how much fear is trapped in our bodies, keeping us from showing up, stepping up, speaking up, walking into a room in a way that not only changes how others perceive us, but changes how we perceive ourselves. Some great research out of the Kellogg School of Business that found that postural expansiveness literally shifts how people perceive us, as well as how we perceive ourselves, regardless of our actual status on an organization chart. And so, just stand tall and take a deep breath and reset your nervous system, named a nervous system for reason at that ground level, and, likewise, connect with people around you who make you feel braver, who help to quell the doubts versus to feed them.

 

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And the fourth?

Margie Warrell
That’s about stepping into discomfort and really resetting our relationship with discomfort. All of us are wired to want to avoid what’s uncomfortable, but the more willing you are to do uncomfortable things and embracing discomfort, embracing the growing pains, it actually will expand your behavioral repertoire to do the very things that are going to set you up for success.

And there is a lot to be said for recognizing that our fear constricts what we do. And the more we’re willing to get comfortable, practice getting comfortable being uncomfortable, then it expands us to do all sorts of things. Because when you’re willing to feel anything, it emboldens you for everything.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And the fifth?

Margie Warrell
And the fifth is all about making peace with our failures and making peace with ourselves for failing to show up as the person we most want to be sometimes because no one is brave all the time. And the more we can be kind to ourselves in those moments when we either try something and fail, or we fail to try, and that little inner Chicken Little wins out, then the quicker we’ll be able to pick ourselves up, to dust ourselves off, to learn the lessons that our failures and our mistakes hold, and then to move forward more wisely.

And for those who are listening who can be really hard on themselves, I think this final step which is about finding the treasure when you trip can be the most, the biggest unlock because we’re so often really hard on ourselves. And when you’re really hard on yourself, it doesn’t make you braver. It actually makes you live a little smaller and hold back from taking the very risks that would serve you most.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, let’s talk about the rescripting narratives for a bit. Could you give us a common narrative that you’ve seen hold folks back and an example of a finer script to replace it?

Margie Warrell
Yes. So, as people are moving up in their careers, often they’ll look at management, the leadership, and it’s them, they over there, you know, “They don’t care. They have no idea what’s going on. They’re just, you know, they’re all so disconnected and removed from what it’s really like to try and run this business at the ground level and deal with the clients, etc.”

And so, there’s this kind of othering of those people in management, those who are on the executive team. And the reality is those people were once in your shoes, and sometimes people become the they, and they realize, “You know, if only management…” I’m like, “You are management. You are the they, like this is you.”

But wherever you sit on your career trajectory and on some org chart, recognizing that you have the power to be a leader at every level. And so, rescripting it about how you see yourself in your own power, like, “I am a leader. I have the ability to influence change here. And, sure, I mightn’t have as much as the person at the top, but I have the ability to lead change in the sphere of influence in my workplace every day.” So, that’s one re-script.

Another key one I hear people talking about is other people and saying things like, “Ugh, they’re so intimidating. They don’t care,” and they create negative narratives, and maybe there’s some evidence to support them. But when it comes to saying someone is intimidating or something, “That person is an a-hole,” or something like that, ask yourself instead, “What is it that’s going on in me that needs me to judge them? That person’s going to be how that person’s going to be, but how do I choose to show up?”

So, I choose to show up as someone who is empowered and is focused on bringing value regardless of how the behavior of others around me, and by reclaiming kind of the power that I get to choose how I show up, regardless of what other people are doing. And that often when we call other people intimidating, actually they’re not intimidating. It’s the story you’re telling yourself about them that’s making you feel intimidated. It’s got nothing to do with them. It’s got everything to do with you. So, yeah, there’s a couple of examples right there. I hope that’s of value.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, well, thank you. Well, tell me, Margie, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about your favorite things?

Margie Warrell
Well, I would simply say if there’s something that’s causing you stress right now, that just keeps coming up again and again, maybe in different clothes, but it’s just a recurring issue, in there, lays your greatest growth. In there is an un-face fear, there is fear in some form that’s kept you from addressing it more effectively.

Maybe taking ownership for something that you’re doing that’s contributing to it, that you’d rather blame it on everyone else. But recognizing that those things that test you the most, also teach you the most and can be the catalyst for your highest growth and transformation.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. And now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Margie Warrell
Anais, Nin, “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Margie Warrell
My favorite study is the work of Amy Edmondson out of Harvard on psychological safety, and that it’s the teams that report the most mistakes that are actually the highest performing because they feel safe enough to be able to share the truth.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Margie Warrell
My favorite book would be The Road Less Traveled by Scott Peck.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool you use to be awesome at your job?

Margie Warrell
My daily planner.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Margie Warrell
Reading wisdom literature first thing in the morning over my cup of tea in the early hours to set my intention for the day.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a Margie original sound bite or nugget that people quote back to you often?

Margie Warrell
Yes, and that’s “Living bravely is indispensable for living well.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Margie Warrell
They can head over to my website, MargieWarrell.com, or just connect with me on LinkedIn or anywhere that you hang out on social media, or my Live Brave Podcast.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Margie Warrell
Thank you. I invite people to take my courage quiz. If you head over to my website, to “The Courage Gap” page, you’ll see The Courage Quiz, and I invite you to take it because it’ll help you identify where the courage gaps are in your life and how you can close them.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Margie, thank you.

Margie Warrell
Thank you.

Apr 07
0

1047: How to Reignite Purpose, Happiness, and Motivation at Work with Jennifer Moss

By | Podcasts | One Comment

Jennifer Moss gets to the heart of why so many are dissatisfied at work—and what we can do about it.

You’ll Learn

  1. The driving force behind our unhappiness at work
  2. 20-minute practices that rebuild hope and morale
  3. Why remote work isn’t the culprit for loneliness—and what is

About Jennifer

Jennifer Moss specializes in future-focused leadership development, expertly balancing employee well-being with performance. As an award-winning writer and internationally acclaimed keynote speaker, she specializes in transforming workplace culture using data-driven leadership strategies. She writes for Harvard Business Review, sat on the United Nations’ Global Happiness Council, was named to the Thinkers50 radar, and has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, CNN, Marketplace, TIME, Fortune, Fast Company, and more. Her book The Burnout Epidemic tackled employee burnout and was among Thinkers50’s “10 Best New Management Books for 2022.”

Resources Mentioned

Thank You, Sponsors!

Jennifer Moss Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Jen, welcome back.

Jennifer Moss
I’m so glad to be back. It’s been a while.

Pete Mockaitis
It sure has. Eight whole years. Boy, a lot could happen in that timeframe. Can you share with us something transformational you’ve learned over the last eight years?

Jennifer Moss
As I’ve gotten older and I think become a little bit more, aware that change takes a really long time to happen, and you sometimes move sideways, and you move backwards.

And yet there has been, when I look back to when I first wrote Unlocking Happiness at Work, and now Why Are We Here, there has been some real advancement in the discussion around happiness and well-being at work and that’s a positive thing that I think has been really impactful on me and my level of hope for the future.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Hope is good. We like hope. More of that, please. So, tell us, in your book, Why Are We Here?: Creating a Work Culture Everyone Wants, any particularly fascinating discoveries you’ve made along the way?

Jennifer Moss
There is just such brilliant research going on out there that’s been untapped and we need to spend more time, I think, with our academic partners in workplaces because it’s just so necessary to learn that there are ways that we can actually improve the workforce.

And I broke the book out into these three parts, the foundations, which is really hope, purpose, and community, and then I go into the second part, which is all of these unbelievable shifts that have happened at work in the last five years that feel like we’re in the multiverse of work. This isn’t the future of work. It’s the multiverse of work. And it really is dealing with AI and the rapid evolution of technology and generational bias and how that’s polarized the workforce. And then also just flexibility now, a right not a perk.

And so, I talk about that from a sense of compassionate leadership and leaders having a sense of openness as a leader, and really around understanding freedom. And then the third part is how we’re going to get there as a collective, and that’s belonging and recognition. And so, this, for me, across the board, every single chapter was this real understanding of the psychological barriers that we’re all facing as human beings that keep us from feeling and behaving with those kinds of traits. And so, it was a lot of learning and a lot of self-discovery too, as a leader myself.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, there’s a lot of rich stuff to dig into here. Thank you. Can you tell us, in terms of the academic community, sort of researchers doing studies and publishing them in journals, is there a particular discovery or thing that is well understood amongst academics looking at this stuff, that is generally not at all, or not frequently, implemented in the real world?

Jennifer Moss
Yes, and, one, is I would say it’s the first chapter, which is really interesting because today Gallup just put a note, basically, that hope is what every single organization needs to be fostering to be able to build out a future-ready organization, and it is the first chapter of my book. And, actually, John Clifton was interviewed, and he’s the CEO of Gallup, and talked about kind of the book and the importance of the book, and I think it’s because he had been seeing this hope need and this loss of hope inside of organizations.

And the thing is we constantly say in leadership, “Hope isn’t a strategy, and we can’t make hope a strategy.” And the thing is that leaders are getting that completely wrong. When I interviewed senior leaders in the military, they said hope is their only strategy. They always make hope foundational to the mission because how is anyone going to put their life on the line if they don’t have hope that they’re going to be able to achieve the end goal?

And so, in the book, I talk about how practical it is to build hope. It’s easier than building empathy and almost any other trait because it’s really, it’s tactical and you build it through these small incremental settings of goals, having the agency and the support to get to those goals, and then creating plan Bs and plan Cs so that if one plan to your goal fails, you have another plan as a backup.

And so, I talk about how we can do this, like 20 minutes every single week can build cognitive hope in an organization. It’s not hard, and I think that it’s been easy to put it off as something that’s simple and too simple to be valuable, and instead, it’s actually so needed right now.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so hope, we need it, got to have it, are missing it. Can you define, specifically, what do we mean by hope?

Jennifer Moss
Hope right now is this kind of key trait that we need to get people to feel like they can see themselves inside of society, writ large, but also inside of our organizations. If you don’t have hope, you feel disconnected from the mission because you don’t see yourself as part of the future. You also have anxiety around things that are new. AI, for example, if you see yourself as becoming obsolete, and you don’t have hope that you are part of that picture of an organization, you disengage, you’re less productive.

Hopelessness makes you have to be in a survivor state every day and you’re not thriving so you’re not actually thinking about the future, which is what we need right now. We’re just moving so quickly that if we don’t have a future perspective in our organizations, and people are in just survivor mode every day, we’re going to see attrition or we’re going to see what Gallup calls the Great Detachment, which people are at work, but they’re extremely unhappy, they’re actively disengaged, and they’re actually spending time trying to get other people to be as unhappy as they are, which creates a social contagion and it’s really unhealthy.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. So, hope, very important. And so, what exactly is hope?

Jennifer Moss
Hope is a sense of feeling that you are encouraged by the future, that you see that yourself in the future, that you feel like you have a legacy, that you have a sense of mattering and meaning in the world, that the world itself cares about you, that the world itself is safe, and you feel psychologically safe in it. Hope comes a lot with a sense of community. So, you believe that there are people there for you in a time of need.

Whether it’s actually tested or not, it’s a perception that you have social support, and that’s a big part of a sense of hopefulness inside of your community, inside of society, and your place inside the world.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, I’m hearing that hope is a belief, and it seems to encompass a lot of things. Could you tell me in one sentence, how are we defining hope in this context?

Jennifer Moss
I think I just described it, but, yeah, hope is…

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I guess it’s like a lot of things, but like what is the umbrella that is encompassing all of those things?

Jennifer Moss
Hope is a sense that everything is going to be all right.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. A sense that everything’s going to be all right. And so, then we’ve sort of already gotten a sneak peek at some of those segments there. And so, within everything being all rightness, there’s a component associated with the future, like what will unfold. There’s a component associated with community and people and relationships, like I feel a sense of comfort and belonging in their midst. And I guess, are those the key pillars? Or, what would be the subcomponents of this belief?

Jennifer Moss
I mean, you just listed really all of what those subcomponents are to hope. But I think the important part right now to, I think, for us to focus on is the fact that we have a high rate of hopelessness inside of our world right now.

Globally, the sense of hope is significantly reduced. And that’s because we have moved from a state of the pandemic being a crisis, but we’re in poly-crisis right now, which is a cluster of crises that have all come together to make each crisis actually worse than if it was individually on its own. And so, that poly-crisis, that sense of always feeling uncertain, that fluidity of our lives and never feeling on solid ground, that is creating a lot of questioning.

This is why I wrote the book Why Are We Here? because people are feeling like a lot of “what’s the point-ism?” And you feel that if you don’t have a sense of hope that you are doing something that actually is going to make a difference, that the belief systems that you had and the infrastructure that you trusted is going to stay a trustworthy institution. And our hope is being eroded by a lot of the issues around the world and poly-crisis and this political instability, and that is eroding our connection to each other and our sense of who we are as human beings.

I mean, progress and cooperation are a big part of what make humans, humans, and successful. And we’re not going to feel cooperative if we haven’t felt hopeful that there’s a reason for it. And hope gives you a reason for being, and without that, we lose progress, we lose innovation, we lose a sense of societal congruency, which is, I think, one of the biggest problems that we’re seeing right now is this real separation and disconnectedness amongst people today.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it’s a cluster all right, Jen. Poly-crisis, that’s a good turn of a phrase. I hear you in that when there’s multiple things, it does really feel greater than the sum of its parts, like, “Let’s worry about one thing, and take your pick, politics, climate change, my economic footing, AI is going to take away my job, like, fill in the blank.”

And then if you have multiple, you can just leap from crisis to crisis and really dwell in it. And once one gets boring for your brain, oh, not to worry, we can anxiously stew and ruminate on another one. I served up right for you. So, a cluster, indeed. And so, the “What’s the point?” I think that really hits it for me.

And I was grilling you a few times on the precise definition of hope, it’s like I think the “what’s the point-ness” really does feel, at an emotional gut level, like the vibe, the experiential definition of hopelessness. And then I guess if we take the opposite of that, it’s like, “Well, what’s the point?” I mean, like, “Hey, we’re making a cool thing happen with people we care about to make things better for all of us and a group of folks that we’re serving. That’s the point. So, we’re going to get after that, and that feels pretty good to our just basic human longings for progress and cooperation.”

Jennifer Moss
Yeah, and if people feel like everything they’re working on is some sort of pipe dream that’s not going to be realized, you can imagine inside of organizations that want to build new things and get people excited about new innovations. productizations of cool stuff that it just will, you know, it just makes people feel like, “Why bother? If I’m going to see this thing through and at the end, it’s just not going to actually matter or it’s not going to affect any change.”

And when you look at the data around people that have a sense of purpose and their goals being realized, it’s such a different type of mentality and level of performance in an employee. If you feel like, “Okay, I have leadership that’s going to see my project through, they support me, they give me the resources, and then they’re going to amplify it or use it,” you’re much more eager to try new things and experiment and put yourself at risk.

You’re not going to see that if people feel like they’re constantly in this rotation of projects that never actually end up going anywhere, or that the organization is only building something that isn’t going to improve the world. You see so many Gen Z’s attracted to organizations with purpose, they feel tied to the end goals, and they’re rejecting organizations that don’t foster that.

And so, we need to be able to recognize that when there’s hopelessness, people are seeking hope, so they’re going to be more even more inclined to be attracted to companies and work that support that sense of purpose.

Pete Mockaitis
And you said there’s a 20-minute practice that builds hope. What is it?

Jennifer Moss
Well, and I keep saying, like, culture can be built in 20 minutes or less, and middle managers play a huge role in that, and hope can be built just through this idea of setting a goal and having a manager and the organization support you getting to that goal without micromanaging you or making it about hours worked, not the goal itself. Like, the productivity measure shouldn’t even be relevant here. And then having people come up with different pathways to getting there.

This is Snyder’s theory of hope and it’s really applicable in the workforce. You see Google with their OKRs they’re really looking at, and the way that they do goal setting within the organization. It really is peer supported. They co-create their goals. They talk about it transparently with the organization so people can support. There’s a lot of support for continuing development to hit those goals. Those goals are challenging enough, but not so challenging that you can never actually achieve them, so you’re always building hope.

And it’s also that you have milestones, so you’re celebrating along the way, instead of it being like, “Oh, we sold a million-dollar, you know, whatever product,” or, “Landed a client,” and/or, “The project is finally done after three years and then we finally celebrate.” It’s about incrementally reminding people that they’re hitting milestones, which builds cognitive hope. So again, it’s just weekly and then incrementally, and then over time it really does change the atmosphere of innovation inside of these organizations that obviously are known for their innovative thinking.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, this is resonating. And it just sounds like we’ve had previous guests talk about the intrinsic motivators of play, like it is fun to solve problems. You feel like you’re actually getting to use your brain. And some people pay good money for the pleasure of solving problems with video games or whatever, they’re at kind of escape rooms, activities that they’re into.

So, could you tell us a story about a team that had a cool shift in terms of they were doing things the hopeless way, and they made some changes, they started doing some things hopefully, and cool results unfolded?

Jennifer Moss
Well, I go back to Atlassian, who’s a great example of distributed workforce, and they just do things really well. They were finding that people were not using the space, and they were dealing with a sense of loneliness, and they started to test, “How do we make it so that people feel excited and that they’re inspired by the organization?”

And they started their hackathons as one, where everyone comes to the table once a quarter, and they just play and do cool things, and everyone’s so excited about it, and that really has led to some incredible innovations, but, plus, it also created this other part of the hope strategy is that they were bringing people together. And there was another part of, again, that these satellite offices were, now they’re 91% occupied in an, interestingly, fully remote workforce.

They have all this in-person time, and they realized, “Okay. Well, at this point, we’re not necessarily giving people a sense of their product or their work being seen.” So, they started this togetherness focus and started to have people go and work in other offices, and really championed and supported people actually going and spending a week with a peer in another market. So, at any one time in New York, 50% of the office is occupied by people from around the entire organization.

And in these environments, they also are bringing CEOs and C-level executives to come into these spaces, so there’s an opportunity for everyone’s ideas to be seen, which makes you feel like, “I’m not just doing things in a vacuum. I actually am being evaluated and supported by some of the senior people around the organization.”

And so, they’ve done a really great job of pushing back on this idea that you can’t have remote workers be cohesive or have friendships or it’s just always loneliness for those people working remotely. They totally bucked that myth. And they do that by building up their workforce to still feel like when you’re together, it’s not about distraction, it’s about getting what they call “getting s**t done,” that’s their motto. And you go in the office to still get s**t done, but you are also focusing on building a sense of pride in the work that you do, and for others to see what you’re working on.

Pete Mockaitis
That is so cool and fun, and that just lights me up in terms of whenever there’s just a beautiful win-win in terms of people experience, as well as organizational functioning and profitability. And, like, building the remote offices, I’m sure like, from one frame of reference, I imagine there is a finance employee somewhere at the spreadsheet, saying, “No, no, no, no, this is not net present value positive for these funds into this purpose.” Because it can be hard to see a measure. Well, what is the value of people feeling like they’re seen, and like they belong, and like they have friends, and the engagement and reduced attrition that comes with it? It’s hard to quantify.

But I recall, and I just sort of thought Bain was really nice to us with regard to some of the investments they made. Like, you could just transfer to another office in the world for six months, and I was like, “Oh, that’s kind of cool of them. How generous.” And maybe there’s a part of that, but, really, it was a deliberate move to facilitate best practice sharing across the worldwide network.

Jennifer Moss
I love what you’re saying because I’ve been, for many years, an advocate of spending money on making sure that people get to see each other and investing in that travel spend. I mean, right now, we’re supposed to be saving money on our commercial real estate, hopefully, the people that have downsized. Why aren’t we moving people around so that we can get them to see each other?

Because one of the things in the book that I learned is that we have this real shift in the last five years where people used to see other people in their organization. They used to make friends with people because you talked about your kids’ baseball team, or you were friends because you like the same type of movies. And it would create these ad hoc kind of outside of work relationships so we move from these simplex relationships, which are just transactional to multiplex relationships, which include knowing about each other.

And since the pandemic, we are really much more focused on simplex relationships, it’s much more transactional, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that we’re only seeing our team. And I’ve heard this across the board in my interviews, “I just feel like I only know my team. I don’t know anyone else in the organization. We’re so siloed.” And that was already problematic, but there were ways that we fixed that by just creating opportunities to meet and connect.

And so, it doesn’t need to be five days in the office. Lots of data shows that’s actually counter to cohesion, but it is concentrated focus on getting real time with each other, that has more meaning and develops these multiplex relationships. And we’re not doing that very well, so we just blame it on it being remote work that’s created loneliness. But it’s actually so much more complex than that, but the solutions are much easier than people think. And it isn’t just like, “Yeah, that strategy of forcing everyone back through return to office mandates.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, a couple follow-ups there. Five days in the office is counter to cohesion. What is optimal for cohesion?

Jennifer Moss
Well, Gallup says one to two days in the office per week and then you have others that say, I mean, hybrid is optimal if hybrid is done right. I mean, Mark Ma, from University of Pittsburgh, and Nick Bloom from Stanford, they’ve done lots of lots of research and found that, from a purely capitalist standpoint, the most financially viable is hybrid. People feel like that’s an okay meet in the middle.

And that five days a week, it ends up, actually, making people feel less connected, they’re more resentful to the organization and feeling less loyal, so they don’t invest in relationships in the same way. We also see organizations that have been focused on return to office mandates tend to also, as part of their kind of work personas, they’re overworking and there’s a lot of burn out there. And when you’re burned out, you also don’t really want to hang out after work or spend a lot of time chit-chatting. You feel like that 20 minutes of just having lunch every week could mean an extra hour in your pajamas at 11 o’clock at night so you avoid it.

And so, we’re seeing a lot of data that shows that that’s not great.

And fully remote is not great either in many ways. Some organizations, like Atlassian and others do it well, but from a purely capitalist standpoint, it is kind of that Goldilocks zone where there’s a little bit of both. But ones that are most successful are like the ones like Microsoft where it’s 50% of your time, not Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. It’s sort of fluid, and managers get to say, “Hey, let’s talk about what makes sense.”

They have moments that matter, which is like, you know, an onboarding or a project that they really want to work on, or some specific reason why you’re in it together, but that can be fluid from week to week. And so, that kind of autonomy but a little bit of time together that’s used in a better way is where we see higher cohesion and happier workers.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, we talked about hope a lot, but you actually mentioned eight areas for folks to address. Could you give us the quick one sentence, what do you mean by this area, and then maybe one quick tip for giving that a boost?

Jennifer Moss
So, purpose is the second chapter. I was able to talk with Adam Grant. He and I are really aligned on this idea of that leaders get this purpose wrong. It’s like part of the mission statement, your values and your purpose, and it’s always tied to this big grand mission statement. But no one really cares about that unless you’re in this executive group. There’s about 20% at the highest level that really feel connected to the purpose. Most people just want to tie their daily values to work.

So, one of the things that we recommend is that leaders of their teams have this one meeting every single week. And I know we’re meeting fatigued, but it’s 20 minutes, again 20 minutes to fix culture, and it’s a non-work-related check-in. You ask, “What lit you up this week? What stressed you out?” and everyone goes around and talks about that. And then, “What can we do to make next week easier?”

Because purpose really is about, “Does the thing I do every day, even the tedious and boring things that I do every day, do they matter? Does anyone care about it?” And if that’s connected to who you are and you feel good about it, you feel like you have purpose. And so, “What lights you up?” that’s like pure magic for managers to motivate. You know, “Okay, now I know you like this. Now that makes you excited. Oh, let’s try to create some of that thinking and fuel your work with that.”

And then, “What stresses you out?” that’s how you prevent burnout. That’s how you make sure that someone saying they haven’t slept every single time you ask them this question or they’re not sleeping, you can dig into it. Then you have managers as mental health conduits, not professionals, and they’re just able to get to it.

And then, “What can we do for each other to make next week easier?” builds that sense of shared goal-setting and helping each other and quick wins, which also builds cognitive hope. And it really, from the interventions where we’ve tried this, it’s really done incredible shifts in morale. And so, I think, like, that’s purpose and why I really feel like that’s a key critical thing that we should be working on.

Pete Mockaitis
And community?

Jennifer Moss
Community is just we’re all lonely. We need to have friends again. And the way that we’re seeking out friendships right now are based on accountability and conscientiousness. It’s a huge switch from pre-pandemic, where we were looking at shared interests, likeability, someone made you laugh, but now it’s like, “Can you get your job done because that’s all I care about?” And so, we need to bring rituals back.

We used to have what is called, I think, before it was called forced fun. And we don’t want forced fun, but we want rituals because that’s how you build social contagions, and people feel like going to work isn’t just like going to school without our gym or recess. It’s super boring right now. So, building friendships through rituals.

And then when we look at solving the big problems, compassion is how we, as leaders, address AI anxiety. We have to understand that there’s a lot of people, especially our younger cohort, one in two are feeling AI anxiety, which Gallup calls FOBO, fear of becoming obsolete. And so, compassion is how we do that because empathy is listening, compassion is taking that listening and putting it into action.

And then when it comes to really looking at openness, if we create openness, this is going to solve that generational divide that we have right now. A lot of mature workers say, “I don’t fit into this workforce. Like, this is not at all my philosophy, and I don’t really want to worry about obsolescence in my final years of work.” So, we’re seeing them, a lot of mature workers leave early, and I think that’s actually going to be a major labor force catastrophe if we’re not careful with that group.

And young people are just opting out. So, we need to stop this hyperbolic, “Boomers can’t Google, and they’re micromanaging,” or, “Gen Z’s are lazy and entitled, and they’d afford a home if they just stop buying avocado toast.” That, to me, is just like, people think it’s funny, and, actually, it’s creating a real sense of ageism at work.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, so you’re saying, in both directions.

Jennifer Moss
In both directions.

Pete Mockaitis
So, the Millennials think that the Boomer is an idiot who can’t Google, and the Boomer thinks that the youngsters are irresponsibly burning their cash. Whereas, like, there are realities associated with, like, affordability is harder now. And then on the other side, it’s like, “Hey, technology is changing much more rapidly now.” Like, that’s also true, and that is also hard, and it needs to be acknowledged.

Jennifer Moss
It is. And you know what? I keep saying, like, stop using terms like “reverse mentoring.” We use that all the time. And it assumes that an older worker knows less about technology or something than a younger one, and we talk about Boomers know this and Gen Z knows this. We see this always when we talk about technology, and it’s just assumed that one generation knows something more than the other, which is not accurate.

Like, look at Dr. Hinton, he was the founder of AI, probably knows a lot about AI, and he’s in his late 60s. And so, this idea that we have to learn in this reverse way, instead of peer mentorship is a way better approach to talking about it. And, really, in the book, I just go through all the language that we don’t realize we’re using, the narratives that we use a lot, and that it just creates this continued labeling of an entire generation as being a very specific thing. And instead of just taking those assumptions away and looking at it, I think, with an openness, that’s what leaders need to do.

And then I think my favorite chapter was freedom because this whole idea of the reason why workers don’t want to have these RTO mandates, or don’t want to go back to work is that we’re missing the psychological barriers that people are feeling right now, which is, “I had my freedom in this certain area of work,” and it goes across the board, not just with return to office, but across the board.

There was more investment in well-being, DEI, you know, all of these commitments, and promises that were made to people. And when they started getting those clawed back, it felt like, “Wow, now my freedom, my sense of freedom is being taken away.” I talk about this from a neuroscience standpoint, and our sense of freedom is deeply baked in our neural wiring. It’s something we would go to great peril to stand up for, and a lot of this resistance is subconscious.

It’s conscious and subconscious because we’re fighting for something that we feel like is ours now. And so, that trust is a big factor, and so organizations that are making these choices really quickly and just sort of throwing it at employees is why I believe that this whole issue has continued to be so polarizing. Instead of understanding that people shot up when it comes to the rates of social anxiety from 4% to 36% of people explain that they had social anxiety through the pandemic.

So, you’re not just saying, “People, go back to work. Deal with it,” and if they’re resistant, it’s because they’re lazy. It’s because they have generalized and high levels of social anxiety. So, I think this, for me, was a big aha, recognizing why the pushback and why the resistance is so, so difficult for leaders and employees to get on the same page.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’m curious, could you share, if folks are in the individual contributor role of things, and they’re vibing with what you’re saying, like, “Yes, Jen, this sounds right and true and good, and I wish my organization would do some of this enlightened stuff,” what do you recommend they do?

Jennifer Moss
Well, as an individual contributor, your life is still—you’re still in charge of it, and although happiness at work, it really needs to have societal and policy change. You need to have leadership and high-level executive managers and individuals all play a role to make it the kind of culture that everyone wants. We have a lot of responsibility too of our own choices. It’s a privilege to just quit so I don’t just say, “Oh, everyone can quit.”

Not everyone can quit. It’s not that easy to do. But I do say that there are a lot of things that have happened, habits that have been imposed on us and self-inflicted habits. Like, I just wrote this article for HBR that was really, I think, well-received and it was titled “Let’s End Toxic Productivity.” And we’ve become toxically productive. We’re waking up in the morning and checking, we’re sitting in our pajamas, we’re calling it fun work. We have our glass of wine while we’re doing admin, and it’s like, “Oh, this is fun work because I’m drinking and I’m doing my admin work.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s one way to do it.

Jennifer Moss
Yeah. It’s like, “No, this is still not healthy.” And you see this increase specifically in women that are just completely burning out, and they’re hitting that wall. So, we do feel a sense of pressure that, again, it’s like institutional stress, but it’s also us feeling like we need to perform at these high levels. And a lot of that is because we’re still in this sense of urgency mode. We’re still in surge capacity mode, and we haven’t stopped that, reset that habit and replace those with more boundaries.

We can’t always make those choices because there’s a lot of reasons for it, but in the book, the first chapter was me interviewing Kara, who was on track to be the first female black partner in her law firm, and she lost three members of her family. And when I met her, she was driving an Uber, and I said, “Wow, that’s intense. And what made you choose to do that?” And she said, “Life is short. I’m working on my nonprofit in Costa Rica, giving microloans to women, and, yeah, I’m making less money, but I just feel like I needed to do this. Like, I’m compelled to do this.”

And you’re seeing more women, why we have the thinnest executive pipeline in history right now. And for the first time in a decade, we see the global CEOs of females decline, and a lot of it is just a purpose shifting, and we’re going to lose a lot of talent because people are just, overwhelmed. But we do have the choice, and I have had so many interviews.

I interviewed over a hundred Uber drivers for the book, and every single one of them said, “I feel better.” And it’s shocking because we would think, “Really?” Our perception is, “No way. You had this opportunity to be the first black female partner, like, how could you be happier?” And she said, “I am. It’s extraordinary how much healthier I am and happier I am in this role.”

And I think, when you face your mortality, you realize that. And a lot of us have collectively faced our mortality over the last five years or have a sense of it potentially being uncertain, and that changes you. And this is what we need to look at, it’s like, “What are our deathbed regrets?” And if that doesn’t fit into the schematic of, “Okay, is answering an email at 11 o’clock at night drunk, is that going to be our deathbed regret? Probably. Or, is missing time with my family, or is being healthy, or is actually setting boundaries?” And that is where I see a lot more people making those choices for their own happiness and healthiness.

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s zoom on this, you interviewed a hundred Uber drivers, and all of them said they were happier driving Uber than doing another job.

Jennifer Moss
Well, I would say maybe 80 to 85 percent of them did, 15% were just like, “I’ve been always driving this car and it’s good for me because I…” That 15% and I found were really proud of making a paycheck to be able to put their kids through school or giving them a better life, and so there was still a sense of pride. They hadn’t left another job, but the majority of them had.

And there was three people I interviewed that had left Wall Street. They were making lots of money and, fortunately, they had some money to be able to support that. I saw a lot of retirees that took early retirement but didn’t want to return to corporate, so they were driving an Uber just to continue making money, but they had no desire to actually go back. And a lot of them had very solid positions within their company. They made good money, but they didn’t want to be in that environment.

This is where they would say things like, “I just don’t fit. Like, this is good for me, this pace.” And I also found, too, what was a really interesting data point is that 20% of American grandparents are primary caregivers. And so, we never think of that, and now we’re seeing more organizations have grandternity benefits, which I think are fantastic.

But we think only older Gen Z’s and Millennials need that help with the kind of paternity and maternity leave, but grandparents are taking on primary care, so flexibility has become extremely important for them. And so, so organizations that didn’t offer that, that was leading them to go into places where there was flexibility. And I would say across the board, that was one of the main factors, was just “The flexibility to be able to do what I needed to do as a parent, as a grandparent, or even just for my own passion pursuits.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I mean, I think that is so stark in terms of many workplaces are failing their workers so profoundly, in terms of flexibility, purpose, belonging, that folks would prefer to receive a fourth or less the compensation in order to just drive a car and not have to deal with all that crap.

Jennifer Moss
Yes. And, really, again, it’s the focal point of the book because people described what they were missing, and the data shows that the big Gallup whirlpool that goes into the happiness report found that people would take 37% less pay if it meant higher work-life balance and flexibility. I mean, we can solve these problems and yet now we’re seeing more people double and triple down on less flexibility, which just erodes that trust, and I think the data is there.

There’s so much evidence to show that if you provide autonomy and trust in your workers that you hired, that you spent a lot of money to recruit and retain, they’re adults, you hired adults, so why are you treating them like children when you bring them into the organization? And so, to me, the freedom chapter of flexibility, specifically, it’s like, it’s just such a no-brainer, and organizations are just making this real play to have control, and it’s turning people off.

And they are willing, at this point, to take much less pay to have a life that feels like that there’s a sense of freedom in it. And that’s why you’re seeing this high level of disengagement, this constant turnover. People, even if you’re in the organization, are just not feeling like they care about work. Quiet quitting, and disengagement is so high, that you’re not even getting the most out of your people. You’re actually getting a fraction of what you could be getting from your people if you just let go of the power and looked at this as a mutual respect of transferring skills and just working together.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. Well, Jen, tell me, anything else you want to mention before we hear about your favorite things?

Jennifer Moss
I just really hope that people just start caring more about each other, and putting five percent more of their effort into just being kind and altruistic. And, you know, it really is 20 minutes, 20 minutes of eating lunch with each other, Cornell found, actually improves well-being and happiness at work. It’s just one lunch every single week together.

If I can tell people to just take 20 minutes of thinking of some sort of tactical strategy that you could do to make someone in your organization’s life better, you will feel better for it. And if we could create a bit of a social network or contagion around that, I think it would spill over into something really, really transformational.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Jennifer Moss
“You can have anything, not everything.”

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Jennifer Moss
I love Dr. William’s study that he did for the Oxford Wellbeing Institute this year, and he said, basically, well-being programs aren’t working, wellness is not working, but the one thing that does work is volunteering and altruism. So, just being nice to other people is the one well-being program that we should be focusing on this year.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Jennifer Moss
I love A Little Life. It’s so painful but it is the most beautiful book I’ve ever read.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool?

Jennifer Moss
One of my favorite tools right now is ResearchGate. Being able to have the ability to go through there and be able to use it for really incredible research that you can, as a journalist and as an author, be using so that we aren’t spreading misinformation, so that we really are getting it from peer-reviewed sources.

That makes me feel so much better about the content I’m putting out, and that people are reading something that I know has been backed through evidence. And I think every single writer and journalist, and anyone communicating to the public, should be using that source instead of some of the AI sources that might be not as accurate.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Jennifer Moss
I do practice gratitude. And I know that sounds hokey but it’s something that I really try to do. We do it around the dinner table but, lately, just for me, it’s like, “What went well this week? What can I work with that I have versus what I don’t have?” and it does work. It gets me out of my habit.

And just taking a moment to take a breath, and realize that there’s still a lot of good things in the world that I appreciate. It does ground me in this time of poly-crisis.

Pete Mockaitis
And, if I may, when it comes to practicing gratitude, I think that there’s some nuance in doing this excellently, because sometimes I can list a thing that is objectively a blessing or, “This is a good thing, and I am noting it, I am listing it, I am acknowledging it.” But sometimes when I’m doing gratitude, I actually feel gratitude for the thing that is objectively good, and other times, I don’t have the feelings. And since you’re a good researcher, can you tell me, does that matter in terms of doing a gratitude practice? Or how should I do it optimally?

Jennifer Moss
Dr. Robert Emmons in his book Thanks, and a lot of his research, are so useful on this concept of gratitude and how it impacts. And sometimes it is tail that wags the dog, you know, like that idea that you think about these things, it is a narrative that your brain is using. So, anytime that you refocus on something that maybe you’re not feeling, but you know is valuable, like, “Oh, be thankful for having clean water.” And at the moment, I’m just not like, “Oh, I’m so grateful for clean water,” but I’ll mention it.

And it does help you have perspective-taking because from a neuroscience standpoint, it does take out the things that you could be focusing on that are not positive. You have only so much you can attend to at any one time. It’s like 40 things that you can attend to in the moment while you’re processing tens of billions of pieces of information. But if you’re attending to something, even if you don’t feel those, you know, necessarily those chemical reactions to it, it is creating a desire path in the brain.

So, the more that you put that focus, that neural wiring, and you go over it and over and over again, you create what is called gratitude fluency. So, you go from practicing gratitude to being grateful, and that happens over time. It’s like a language that you learn and you become fluent in gratitude, and so then it’s an automatic response to feel gratitude towards something versus having to practice it. But it is something, as it works through your life, it does change the chemistry as well. It just takes time.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that is helpful. And if nothing else, the fact that I have oriented my thoughts towards a thing worthy of gratitude means that I wasn’t like whining about “This water doesn’t taste very good. And a key nugget, something that you share that seems to connect and resonate with folks?

Jennifer Moss
One of the things I would say is that we have more agency sometimes than we think if we’re really stressed and burned out. And one of the best things that we can do is really do a values assessment. What do you care about? What do you love? And then make your priorities for the year. Focus on that.

And if you’re saying yes to something, like a project that maybe you’re excited to participate in but it’s going to take that extra 20% of your time, put it on that scale of “Is this FOMO? Is this something I have to do? Or, is this another thing where I’m going to regret saying yes in the future?” And take some time to rest.

Rest is not a four-letter word. Look at what you can be doing with that time for work, and instead refocus it on making sure that you’re well and healthy and prioritize your own well-being and the well-being of the people around you first. And then, hopefully, you’ll start to see the benefits of that.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more get in touch, where would you point them?

Jennifer Moss
Jennifer-Moss.com.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Jennifer Moss
I would love for all of you to spend the next month and every day say something nice about another person behind their back. Spreading positive gossip inside of an organization actually improves psychological safety for those people coming into the space. And when it gets around to someone that you said some awesome thing about them, it really does make them feel incredibly special. So, just for the next month, just talk nicely about all your co-workers and see how that spreads a positivity contagion.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Jen, thank you. This is fun.

Jennifer Moss
Thank you so much, Pete. It was great. Too many years in between, but maybe it’ll be less next time.

Apr 03
0

1046: Boosting Your Drive to Enjoy Sustainable Success with Molly Fletcher

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Molly Fletcher reveals the key to building a career that’s sustainable and fulfilling.

You’ll Learn

  1. How to stop the negative self-talk and shift your mindset
  2. Why burnout happens–and how to avoid it
  3. Practical steps to build lasting resilience

About Molly

Hailed as the “female Jerry Maguire” by CNN, Molly Fletcher made a name for herself as one of the first female sports agents. During her almost two-decade career, Molly negotiated over $500 million in contracts and represented over 300 of sports’ biggest names.

Now as a World’s Top 50 Keynote Speaker, she delivers her inspiring message to audiences around the world. She is the author of multiple books, and her latest book, Dynamic Drive, became an instant USA Today #1 Non-Fiction Bestseller.

Resources Mentioned

Thank You, Sponsors!

Molly Fletcher Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Molly, welcome back!

Molly Fletcher
It’s awesome to be back with you, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so we’re talking about your book, Dynamic Drive, which sounds like something I’d sure love to have more of. Could you kick us off with maybe a super inspiring story of someone who was struggling but then made the switch and saw that sustainable success on the other side?

Molly Fletcher
Yeah, Pete, that’s awesome. Well, I think, fundamentally, I’d frame it with the fact that, as an agent for you know, almost 20 years as a sports agent, what’s so fascinating is that the fans see, with sports, all these moments of achievement. Like the fans see the trophies and the accolades and the big contracts, and these pivotal peak moments of achievement.

But, for me, what I saw every day, all day, day in and day out, for, literally, decades is everything in between the moment of achievement, everything that got them there, who they became in that pursuit, and what happened after the achievement, and who did it again and again, and why, and how. And so, they operated differently, and that is in part what Dynamic Drive is, is this pursuit of better every single day, and I unpack seven principles that are critical to living that way, and, in many ways, parking complacency to the side forever.

And so, it’s this focus not on a moment in time or on achievement, which is really the traditional definition of drive, this linear pursuit of an outcome, and dynamic drive is this continuous pursuit of better in a way that’s sustainable and anchored in purpose.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, that sounds like it could fire me up, sure.

Molly Fletcher
Are you fired up?

Pete Mockaitis
So, can we hear about someone who kind of lost the path, but then got back in the groove?

Molly Fletcher
Well, absolutely, I mean, I think that is, in part, my mission, is to help people recognize when they could be sliding into complacency and don’t really recognize it. You know, I talk about that there’s a big difference between contentment, which is totally a great thing to have your toes in the sand with a book in your hand on a beach and be content, and there’s a totally different thing when we think about complacency, which, to me, is this unintentional parking of something in your life that potentially actually matters to you a lot.

And so, I tell a story, actually, in the book about a gentleman that I really walked through something that I think is probably really helpful for your listeners, which is an alignment audit, which is an opportunity to pull back and say, “What are the things in my life that really, really matter to me? What are my most important people, things, behaviors, beliefs that matter to me deeply, you know, physically, mentally, emotionally, relationally, spiritually?”

Write all those down, and then rate yourself on a scale of one to ten on the amount of time, attention, and energy you’re giving those things that you’ve identified matter to you a ton. And so, I unpack a story in the book, to your question, of a gentleman by the name of Dave. And what he realized in doing that was, “Gosh, I got a gap. I mean, I say that my son is A1 and just such an important part of my life but I miss every one of his games and I go hunting every weekend.” And I say that it matters but he rated himself a five, and so that was a gap.

And I think we can all recognize the roles that we play in our life – wife, mother, sister, daughter, neighbor, parishioner, community member, leader. There’s a myriad of roles we play in our life, and I think we’ve got to recognize, “How do I show up as the best version of myself in those roles and be remarkably intentional about living into that in service of really leading the life and leaving the legacy that we want to leave in alignment with the things that really matter to us?”

And there are so many moments in my own life where I was pursuing this thing that I was told, candidly, as a wife and a mother when we had three kids in 12 months, Pete, which is sort of hard, it’s a little crazy, right? I mean, we had one and then we had twins. And everybody was like, “Molly, you can balance all this.” So, the peak of my career, 300 athletes, and coaches, team of agents, like you can balance all this.

And so, that was what I was trying to do, was I was trying to balance all of these things, which was a lot of things. And then I was finding myself completely exhausted and drained and feeling like a total failure and just fried. And, fundamentally, what was happening was I was attempting to take all of these various things and go to bed at night with a teeter-totter perfectly balanced, and I actually don’t even think that’s what we want.

I think what we want is alignment, which means that sometimes we will be out of balance, but it’s on purpose, right? Like, when I wrote my book, I was a little over-indexed from a work perspective. I’d take about a month plus in the summer and go to our cottage in northern Michigan where I’m out of balance with work, but I’m totally in balance, you know, I’m aligned with something that’s deeply valuable to me and my family.

So, I think it’s just critical to say, “What are the things that matter most? How can I live into that?” which isn’t balance, it’s alignment. And I had a guy that I interviewed actually on my podcast, Pete, and he said that when he, and this would be an example, he said that when he was going to play in his very first Super Bowl ever, and this guy was like selling shoes at Foot Locker a year before, so this was just incredible for him.

He, essentially, told his family, like, “Hey, I am fully locked in for the next two weeks, training for the Super Bowl. Like, my phone is going to be, I’m going to be locked in.” So, he was out of balance, but he was aligned with a really remarkably unique window of time and had communicated that to the people in his life who really matter, and then was able to have a really special experience.

So, he was getting ready to have a really incredibly unique and super special experience in the Super Bowl, so he was a little out of balance with his family, but he had communicated that in service of ensuring he could perform at his best in a moment, professionally, that really mattered to him.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. And I think we had a guest, Dan Thurmon, who wrote a book called Off Balance On Purpose, and he’s, like, a yearly cyclist and gymnast.

Molly Fletcher
Cool.

Pete Mockaitis
And I think that’s a good visual, it’s like, yeah, there will be times in which you choose to be off balance, but in so doing, you get some momentum and a direction, and so you kind of handle your stuff appropriately elsewhere with the communication and the heads-up and all that kind of thing. Well, then tell us, when it comes to having a dynamic drive, what’s the big idea or core message that makes it all possible?

Molly Fletcher
Absolutely. Well, purpose is fundamental to dynamic drive in the sense that it’s the red thread that threads through it all. In other words, I think when we know why we do what we do, it changes what we do and it changes the way that we show up in moments that can be hard. And we know that when we’re pursuing a better version of ourself, we can unlock greater joy and greater fulfillment. We can align with the legacy that we want to leave.

And so, purpose is so critical because, you know, I think about athletes and coaches that I worked with, who had injuries and rehabs and trades, but if they were clear on why they were doing what they were doing, it gave them the strength to overcome, at some level, the speed bumps and the hiccups and the challenges, and we’re all going to have them.

But when we know why, and I often tell an analogy, sort of a metaphor of sorts where it’s like you have two high-rise buildings and you say to an individual, “Hey, look, I’m going to ask you to walk across the high-rise building, I mean, on a plank, across these two high-rise buildings. I’ll lay the plank over the top. It’s an inch and a half thick; it’s a foot and a half wide. It’s kind of a sunny day. Eighty percent of the people that walk across this plank to the other side make it. It’s a thousand feet high, five hundred feet apart, let’s say, 80% make it, 20% don’t.”

And I’ll ask a room of 1,000 people in a keynote, “Would you walk across that plank for a million bucks?” And I get five hands. “How about would you walk across for 5 million bucks?” and I get a couple more hands. And then I ask, “If the most important people in your life, the most important people in your life are on the other side, and the only way you could save them is if you walked across the plank?” Everybody’s hand shoots up before I can finish the sentence.

In other words, when we know why we’re doing something, it fundamentally changes our ability to show up in that moment with the kind of mindset that we need to execute. And so, I unpack seven keys, mindset, of course, being one of them, to living this way. But I’m watching you and you have a question, you’re contemplating something. I want to give you a shot here, Sparky. What do you got? Talk to me, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, one, I mean, you’ve crafted quite the visual, that I am imagining, and it is sort of terrifying, you know, thinking about the heights and whatnot. I think it reminds me of skydiving and more here. And so, yeah, it really does, emotionally, experientially, in the gut, crystallize a concept that can be very theoretical.

It crystallized a concept that can be a very theoretical and rational, it’s like, “Oh, yes, my family is important to me. Like, yes, I should have purpose, yes. Yes.” And yet, when you put it that way very sharply, it becomes quite clear, “Millions of dollars would be pretty cool but not worth risking my life for,” versus, “My family, no question.”

So, it’s kind of like, if you’re willing to risk your life for something, and yet not something else, then it’s not too far of a stretch to say, “Well, then how will you spend your life? How will you choose to invest your finite hours before you expire in that which is truly meaningful?”

And it’s quite easy to get sucked into all kinds of things that you’re like, “Well, wait a second, this is cool and helpful, but it’s not my purpose. This is fun and interesting, and I’d like to be helpful to other people. I don’t want to let them down. I want to make good use of my degree in certain reasons, rationales, excuses, any of them,” but it’s a much higher bar and far fewer things are worth risking our life for and, thus, spending our life in pursuit of.

Molly Fletcher
Absolutely. And I think that fundamental question, that is so important to consider, kind of to your point, is, “What are you chasing?” I had a friend who, I mean, she’s got a promotion and raises and all these things, but she was looking at me, saying, “I’m exhausted. I’m traveling constantly. I’m disconnected from my husband, and my daughter and I are sideways. I’m not sleeping. I’m gaining weight. I’m not exercising,” and she was just in a really tough place.

And I remember looking at her, and she had a huge job, and she had gotten this promotion, and I said, “What are you chasing?” And she looked at me, and was like, “What kind of a question is that? What do you mean?” Well, I’m like, “Well, like, it doesn’t sound like you’re having, fundamentally, like, just fun and it sounds like you’re compromising some things that matter. And so, like, I’m just trying to, I mean, what is it?”

And I’m, like, waiting for her to go, “Well, I’m going to do this for six months so that I can do X.” She goes, “What do you mean?” I said, “Well, what is it all for? I mean, your daughter is 16. What is it all for? What are you chasing?” And she didn’t have an answer. And so, I think it is a very difficult question to answer, but it’s a really important one to answer because we want to know that.

Otherwise, I think sometimes we just find ourselves on a treadmill on 10, holding on for dear life, with an incline of 10, and we’re not really sure where we’re going and why we’re going there. And so, I think we just have to take the time and the energy to get aligned in that regard so that we’re connected to the things that do matter to us.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, help us out, if some listeners are having a similar stuck response, “Uh, I don’t know, Molly,” what’s the path or the sequence by which we get some clarity and insight there?

Molly Fletcher
Well, I mean, the alignment audit, I think, is really powerful that we sort of just unpacked, which I think is a really cool way to get aligned with what matters, how much time and attention are you giving to the things that matter. So, that’s really critical and foundational relative to the opportunity to live with balance or alignment, not balance, in fact.

But then I unpack seven principles in Dynamic Drive, and one is mindset, right? So, oftentimes, we have what I call an inner critic that we want to turn into an inner coach. So, we think about in our lives the way that maybe an inner critic might talk to us, which is, “You can’t,” “Why me?” “I’m not good enough,” “I’m not this enough,” and we have these automatic thoughts to the tune of almost 80,000 a day, and some of them are that inner critic.

And so, what we want to do is, first, recognize the things, the scripts, the self-talk that are not taking us where we want to go, that are keeping us a little bit stuck, and then we want to shift that to truly a bit of an inner coach that’s going to take us where we want to go. So, I’ll give you an example.

Let’s say you say that exercise is important to you but the self-talk is, you know, “I just don’t have time. I mean, how in the world am I supposed to take time to exercise or work out when, I mean, I’ve got this job and I’ve got emails, and I’m married, I have kids, and I’ve got dinner, and I got all these things? And, like, I don’t have time. I don’t have time to work out.”

And, fundamentally, pulling back and saying, “Okay, well, what if I shifted that story to, when I take time to work out, I feel better, I sleep better, I make better food choices, I show up better for the people in my life who matter most? I need to take the time every day to ensure that I protect that time and I exercise because I show up better for the people in my life that matter.”

And then, when the inner critic comes in and that self-talk or that thing that might keep us stuck in this place, we shift to that better script. And I also encourage people to reinforce that new script. Maybe it’s something you write on your whiteboard in your office. Maybe it’s a sticky note on your desk. But we want to keep that new script in front of us so that, when we do slip, and that inner critic starts to find its way in, we can suffocate it with that new script.

So, mindset is a really, really critical place to start. And then, I talk about energy and discipline and curiosity, resilience, connection, you know, confidence, obviously, is critical, but this is a way of life that isn’t linear, in the sense that we might find ourselves in certain moments where we need a little bit more discipline, or we need a little bit more curiosity, or we’ve pushed hard and we need resiliency.

And so, it isn’t like A to B, B to C, C to D, right, and then, “Whoop, we’re there.” It’s the ability to circle back in and touch the things that we need in the moments that matter.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s lovely in terms of the reframe, what it’s for, makes all the difference as opposed to simply, “Well, I should. Well, you know, the government recommends I should have 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous aerobic activity each week.” It’s like, “Okay, that’s not much of a pull.” It’s like, “I should do it.” Or, now that I’m 41 years old and married with children, trying to have a hot bod is not really a motivator the way it was as a youth.

Molly Fletcher
That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, in the dating market with competitors that I had to pass it in the pursuit of the lady. So, yeah, that makes the world of difference, is getting clear on the underlying purpose or benefit, which serves as an antidote, a counter-response to the inner critic and head trash going on.

Molly Fletcher
And I think, oftentimes, people talk about burnout so much today. I actually think burnout is really a result of doing too much of the things that don’t align with what matters most to you, that don’t align with your purpose. I don’t think burnout is a result of working too much. I think it’s working on the things that don’t matter to you.

And so, I also think we can keep burnout at bay because we’re pursuing something that is deeply critical to what matters to us relative to who and how we want to be and do whatever it is that we do in our life.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. So, I’m curious then, if we find ourselves in a spot where, let’s just say with jobs, like, “Hmm, that’s ringing a bell, Molly. I am feeling a touch of burnout, and it’s because I don’t actually, deep down, care much about what I’m doing. It’s a job. It pays bills. That’s handy. It would be cool to do some other things, but I don’t know,” how do we start to work with that?

Molly Fletcher
Yeah, for sure. Well, I think we also have to recognize that, not everybody’s work is going to also be their purpose. Is it ideal and optimal? Absolutely. But the purpose might be that we have to shift our mindset to one that then allows us to make the life for our children a little bit better than ours was, or gives us an opportunity to do X or Y.

So, we want to take the time to, certainly, if we can do the work that we believe is our life’s mission, that is absolutely ideal, no question about it. And I think what I would push somebody that’s in that place to recognize is maybe there’s an opportunity to understand, beyond the paycheck and beyond the check clearing and beyond the money, what, in fact, is underneath all that, that is making an impact in a way that’s deep and real and substantive?

I spoke at an event for a payments company, a financial payments company, and it was interesting. The leader really pushed, you know, you would say, “Well, I didn’t wake up in all my life where I was dying to run payroll for people.” And she really pushed people to understand that, “Look, we execute against the payroll of, I mean, just enormous amounts of individuals in the world. And that then, in turn, creates meals and family dinners and people sitting around a table.”

And so, look, is that a stretch? Maybe, but maybe that’s a way to reframe it in service of saying, “You know what, this isn’t really about payroll. This is about something bigger and deeper than that.” And then I think we have to have the courage to recognize that maybe, that our legacy, the thing we want on our tombstone, isn’t directly aligned with what we do day in and day out, but it feeds the thing that is, in fact, maybe be more deeply threaded relative to our purpose.

I would encourage people to recognize the power of saying, you know, I think, oftentimes, people will say, or will hear, “I don’t have a choice. I don’t have a choice.” I think that we actually have more choices than sometimes we really want to face. And I think we have to have the courage to really go, “Do I not, really? Like, maybe there is something that I could change. Maybe there is something that could pivot, that would allow me to align my purpose more directly to the work that I’m doing and in service of me feeling like I’m living into that more deeply.”

And I think taking the time to explore the fact that we have a fair amount of control on where we put our energy, more so than, I think, sometimes we can admit to, and it’s hard. It doesn’t mean it’s easy, but, I mean, we have to, at some level, have the courage to ask ourselves some difficult questions that could help us create that alignment.

And I think we also have to have people around us that have no agenda, but to help us be the best version of ourselves, that can help us unpack maybe where there’s gaps and opportunities for us to step into our purpose.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s cool. And I’m curious, then, you’ve got seven keys to unlock our dynamic drive: mindset, energy, discipline, curiosity, resilience, connection, confidence. That’s a lot for an interview. But we talk about mindset here, it boils down to a set of beliefs, kind of shaping how we see the world and ourself in it. Are there any just phenomenal core beliefs that just make a world of difference in terms of having that drive?

Molly Fletcher
I think, fundamentally, it’s recognizing that talent alone and our sort of isn’t enough to sustain high performance, to even potentially get to the best version of ourselves. Like, to me, talent is a fantastic thing, and we all have God-given talents. But, for me, I can tell you as an agent, there was a lot of athletes and coaches that had a lot of talent, but they didn’t get there or stay there, because talent isn’t enough. So, we need talent plus curiosity, plus discipline, plus mindset, plus energy.

Molly Fletcher
I think that they, fundamentally, recognize that it isn’t about a finite moment in time, that it’s an inside-out pursuit of better, not an outside-in pursuit. In other words, it’s not about pursuing an outcome, it’s about who we’re becoming from the inside out. And it’s not over indexing on a focus on an outcome or a moment in time, but rather on who we’re becoming in that pursuit of that outcome, of better.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So then, I’m curious then, does that translate into some mantras, some convictions or affirmations or things that we return to if we’re feeling some drift away from these bedrock beliefs?

Molly Fletcher
Absolutely. I mean, I think when we think about that, I appreciate that question, I mean, one is it’s where obstacles, where some people might see an obstacle, if you’re living into dynamic drive, you see opportunity. You see what’s possible. I tell a story in the book about a baseball player I represented who went from a starter in the big leagues to a closer, then back to a starter, All-star Hall of Famer.

Now, in that moment, when the world thought he’s insane, “What is he doing? He’s too old. He can’t do this,” and everybody thought it was a gigantic obstacle, he saw it as an opportunity, so it was a shift. So, we’re walking into a meeting, we’re walking into a conversation, we’re stepping into some change, we’re stepping into a challenge that most people, and, traditionally, we might think is a complete and total obstacle, but when we recognize and shift the story that we tell ourselves to being an opportunity, I think it’s pulling back and saying, “You know what? I’m going to choose where my energy goes before everyone else in the world decides for me.”

And I think that’s so fundamentally important to recognize, is that if we don’t choose where our energy goes, other people will. I think another mantra, to your question, would be that most people overestimate talent and they underestimate discipline. I think about the key curiosity. Curiosity creates chances is often a mantra that I say. Curiosity can create choices, for sure, in our lives if we’re curious.

And I think when we think about resilience, what feels important to recognize is that resilience is about fundamentally recognizing the difference between being good and being terrific, being outstanding at whatever it might be in our lives, personally or professionally. It’s about recovering fast. I think about tough days we have, tough conversations, tough moments, tough meetings, tough phone calls. We have them. We’re all going to have them, and particularly if we choose to live into dynamic drive. We’re going to have hiccups.

What’s critical is that we recover very quickly, and part of that is going to that mindset key and shifting from what potentially is an obstacle into an opportunity. And, for me, through the lens of sports, I saw so many athletes miss shots they should make, putts they should make, spray, you know, their drive off into the rough, but what they do is they don’t let it unravel. They tell themselves the right script for them, and then they reset. So, obstacles being opportunities.

I think the other one, when we think about connection, Pete, that I think is important, that I share a story about a contract I negotiated for a coach who then changed his mind the next morning after signing six contracts and a record-setting contract. And the mistake was being too transactional that I made.

And so, I think when we think about connection, it’s keeping relational at the center, not transactional. I often say we want to be relational, not transactional. And in all the keynotes that I give, whenever I have a conversation with the leaders or the stakeholders before a keynote, I’ll often ask, “Are relationships important to the work that they do?” And, I mean, literally, I’ve done a thousand keynotes, and nobody says, “No, relationships don’t. This is not really that big of a deal for us.” Everybody’s like, “Oh, totally. I mean, relationships are everything.” So, being relational, not transactional.

I think the other one is that confidence, you know, when we think about the key and the principle of confidence. Confidence doesn’t come from being comfortable. Confidence comes from taking action inside of maybe a little bit of discomfort. That’s how we actually strengthen our confidence. In other words, we can’t sit in a corner and think our way to being and showing up in the world more confidently. We have to take action to do that.

Confidence comes from stepping out of your comfort zone into what I often call the stretch zone. So, those are a couple little mantras that I think are important to lean into.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. Well, thinking about resilience, tell us, you’ve got a cool vantage point, having seen a lot of athletes with a lot of resilience, how do we get there, to have that mental toughness to really keep on stepping up? They say that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And, it’s funny. I found that sometimes that’s true and sometimes it’s not. It’s like, “No, I feel like I was maimed by that. I feel wounded and harmed by that encounter as opposed to strengthened.” So. what makes the difference and how could we indeed get back up stronger?

Molly Fletcher
I would argue that it’s not even about getting back up, back to the watermark of where we potentially were, but actually better because of maybe that hiccup, that moment in which we needed to wipe off our knees. I think what’s important is, number one, as leaders, potentially who are listening, or parents, we often want to catch people before they fall and sort of save them from that.

But we need these moments where everything doesn’t always work out perfectly and we “fail,” but that builds our resilience muscle and gives us the confidence to keep pushing and stepping back into moments that are a little bit of a stretch. And I think we live in a world, particularly as a parent, where we sort of kind of shield our children from the falling and the skinning of the knees, and I think that they need to do that. And, obviously, I mean, if they’re running out in front, you know, there’s obvious moments when we want to stop somebody from something.

But there’s also moments where, “You know what, let’s let that hiccup happen, and let me be right there as a parent beside him to help him navigate out of it.” Or, as a leader, putting, you know, allowing somebody to have a little bit of a hiccup, potentially, in service of helping them strengthen and recover from that moment and show back up better.

I think we have to be intricately aware of the importance of everything not going swimmingly every minute of the day, and allowing ourselves to recognize the power and the confidence that’s created, the strength that’s created when we have to recover. Think about working out, right? It fundamentally is taxing the muscles when we go lift, but that is in service of them building up again and building and coming back stronger.

So, there are so many opportunities in our lives when we can step into that moment, ask that question in the meeting, like, push. You know, people often ask me, because I’ve negotiated so much, like, “How do I get better?” Reps. Like, work the barista at the Starbucks for, like, an extra shot of espresso for fun. Like, I negotiated a buy-two-get-one free kind of orthodontics thing for our daughters when they were getting braces when they were young.

That’s a safe environment to practice asking for what you want, and it might not work and that’s okay. But I think we strengthen that resilience muscle by stepping into the stretch zone. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. We want to try to do it in as many safe moments as we can, but we want to recognize that what happens as a result of that is we strengthen that muscle and we can come back maybe just a little bit stronger the next time, and the next time, and the next time.

But we have to tell ourselves that. I have a thing on my computer, Pete, I call it my smile file, and I just drag and drop like emails and notes and LinkedIn and all that. I mean, it’s just a blessing, and I’ll just drag and drop them from time to time into my little smile file. And after maybe a tough day or a tough moment or a tough meeting or a tough conversation, or anything, you kind of open that up and look at it, and go, “Okay, you know what? I got this.” Right?

And maybe it’s something physical on your desk. As an agent, athletes, they go to film to reset. That’s how athletes often will recover. They’ll go watch their best golf swings. They’ll watch them standing over a putt in a critical moment in training, they go watch their at-bats when they’re just crushing it. And they remind themselves, “Okay, yeah, right. Like, I got this,” and they get that in their head before they step back out to the next moment.

And I think we, as business people, we don’t really go to film, but what can we lean into that can help us reset? Sometimes it’s a smile file or something physical.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s beautiful. And as you talk about it, it’s funny, we had a guest who talked about having a humor first-aid kit, so I just assemble things that I think are funny, and that’s helpful for a mood pick-me-up, for sure.

Molly Fletcher
A hundred percent.

Pete Mockaitis
But the smile file, I like it, in terms of it’s generally me being awesome, crushing it, winning, performing well. Cool. And then I I’m thinking, maybe I’m overthinking it, Molly, but I think it could be quite powerful to have sort of subfolders in your smile file associated with kind of wherever the self-doubt is cropping up. It’s like, “Oh, I’m no good at sales. It seems like I’m always blowing the meeting when I finally get it,” or whatever it is, like, “I’m not good at speaking,” “I’m not creative,” “I’m a bad husband,” sort of fill in the blanks, you know?

Then to have, it’s like, “Well, time out, let’s review some film, or smiles, or let’s review some historical evidence. Yes, I had a disappointing outcome a moment ago, and let’s just put that in the context of, ‘Oh, yeah, there was that one time I closed that massive deal out of nowhere. Oh, there’s that one time I won over that person,’” etc., and it seems like that’s sort of not just a humor first-aid but a first-aid for any emotional mental wound of confidence that’s hitting you.

Molly Fletcher
A hundred percent. I mean, I think that’s great, I mean, I think to have those subcategories. I often will tell salespeople to pull back and think of, “What are the most, your top ten, top five sort of rebuttals, like pushbacks when you’re selling, for example? Go attach a story to that, that aligns with how you’ve actually created a positive outcome for an existing client, relative to what is often maybe a rebuttal or pushback that you get. And build up that story bank of great stories that you can then lean into to help offset what is, an often, common rebuttal.”

To me, that can be really powerful, too, is stories are such a powerful thing that we can use whether even if it’s externally as well, so we can preload those. And so, when you said those subfolders, it made me think of the way that I often think about that from a sales perspective, that can be a powerful thing to do, too.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s good, that handling objections, like handling your own inner critics’ objections to your worth or competence.

Molly Fletcher
Totally. Yes, for sure.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Molly Fletcher
“When you ask for the business, you get advice. When you ask for advice, you get the business.”

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Molly Fletcher
There was a study out of, I talk about this in Dynamic Drive, I want to say it was out of Princeton, but it was a really interesting study about the power of dopamine that it has on our pursuits. And so, essentially, it was recognizing the fact that when we acknowledge our effort along the way, and that we actually drip dopamine that helps us continue to pursue it.

And so, it’s just important that, as we set goals, that we don’t set them in isolation. And it proved it scientifically relative to the power of recognizing that, “Hey, I’m doing a good job. I’m on the right track. Things are tracking. Like, we’re going to do this. We’re going to get here.” It actually drips a little bit of dopamine that helps keep us motivated, because motivation, you know, it wanes, right? So, sometimes we can tap into that natural substance we all have inside of us.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Molly Fletcher
The Alchemist was a book I read when I was young. And, to me, it was just an incredible story, really, of purpose. And that’s probably my favorite along with the Bible.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Molly Fletcher
I would say it is, essentially, my energy audit that I unpacked in the key, but it is a tool that ensures that I protect and create micro-breaks throughout the day and protect the things that really give me energy throughout the day because I think if we don’t carve out micro-breaks and other things that give us energy, it’s not sustainable to go back to back to back all day. We’ve got to make sure that we build in those breaks.

Pete Mockaitis
And a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks, you hear quoted back to you often?

Molly Fletcher
“Be where your feet are,” is something that I often say about being present, and people seem to really connect to that. “Be where your feet are,” that we tell ourselves that when we need to really show up and be present.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Molly Fletcher
My podcast Game Changers with Molly Fletcher is awesome, or a place to start, or MollyFletcher.com.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Molly Fletcher
To me, that would be a final, I would say, that’s a really powerful call to action for people is to do an alignment audit. Identify the things in your life that matter most, rate yourself on how you’re doing in those things, and then, if there’s a gap on a 1 to 10 scale of greater than 2, that’s an opportunity to step into maybe some change, an opportunity to get better.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Molly, thank you.

Molly Fletcher
Thanks so much.