Podcasts

Pete Mockaitis
Kelli, welcome!

Kelli Thompson
Good to see you again.

Pete Mockaitis
You, too. You, too. Well, you’ve been up to a lot of fun, including a TEDx Talk that has a very impressive like ratio. I’m such a dork, I notice these things, “How idolizing coworkers can hold you back.” Tell us, how did this even come up as a thing to talk about?

Kelli Thompson
You know, it’s interesting, this and it has a fun fact for all of you wanting to do TEDx Talks. They renamed it that, okay? But we’ll come full circle. So, here’s how it came up, is I was writing my book Closing the Confidence Gap, and so I was just thinking about times in my life that stood out to me in corporate where I just really lacked confidence.

And so I went kind of back to this scene when I had worked at this company for 10 years. I had been kind of promoted. I was a middle-level leader. I was a director level. And I remember sitting in one of these, like, all-day strategy meetings you get stuck in, and it was after lunch and, like, the conversation was going round and round. I was so annoyed. We were hearing from the same voices over and over again.

And I just remember, you know, getting a bathroom break and thinking to myself, I’m like, “Ugh, why am I so annoyed?” And thinking to myself, “Oh, it’s because we’re just literally hearing from the same people over and over again.” And their male voices, because I worked in the male-dominated field of financial services.

So I remember thinking to myself, I’m like, “Well, these women should speak up, you know,” because the room was split 50-50. And it’s almost as if I heard this voice that’s like, “Well, you could be the one to speak up,” because I hadn’t said anything all day.

And it just occurred to me, I was like, “Well, I can’t speak up because what if I speak up and I sound silly? I can’t speak up because what if I don’t have enough experience? I can’t speak up because I need to go back and make sure that I know exactly what I’m talking about,” you know, but first, but first, but first.

And what I realized was, is the reason I wasn’t speaking up is because I was really intimidated by some of the more senior leaders in the room. I called them the hippos, the highest paid person’s opinion. And looking back now, I didn’t have a name for it then, but I had these folks on a pedestal, thinking that because they had a higher title than me, or more charisma than me, or maybe more experience than me, then they must know best.

And so, all these things that they’re saying, they must be right. There’s no room for my expertise or opinion. That example got maybe, like, a paragraph in my book. But as I would go out and people would read my book, or we would talk about this concept, people were like, “Oh, my gosh. Me, too.”

And so then, over the course of the years, when I thought about what would my TED Talk be on, that’s how this pedestal problem came to life. It’s just was this recurring problem that I didn’t think a lot of because it was just an example of my life that ended up being, “Oh, wow, I shared this problem, too, where I’m giving and defaulting to other people instead of trusting my own ideas, my own instincts, my own intuition.”

And now I see people even do it with ChatGPT. They’re trusting AI over their own ideas, own insights, or their own insights, and so think there’s no room for them. So that’s how this whole idea came full circle. I call it the pedestal problem. TEDx said, “Idolizing your coworkers.” It’s all kind of the same thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s funny because, I mean, ChatGPT is far worse than someone you admire in terms of the quality of its opinions in most domains, I mean, yeah.

Kelli Thompson
In most domains, but, you know what? It sounds so right, though. It sounds so sure of itself.

Pete Mockaitis
It sounds very convincing. But I don’t know how many times it’s told me the direct opposite of the truth. My favorite story here is, I remember I was Google-searching, you know, because our kids were at school and I was wondering, “Oh, do we have school today on…?” Oh, was it Veterans Day or President’s Day? It was one of those Monday holidays.

And it was ambiguous, and I don’t know where the heck our calendar went. It fell off the fridge. A three-year-old probably has it under the fridge at this point, so I just Googled it. And I thought, “Okay, well, surely…” and it gave me the Google AI summary.

And I thought, “Okay, well, you’re just scraping the top results anyway so I could probably trust this.” And it said, “Yeah, school is canceled today for the holidays.” I was like, “Okay, that’s kind of what I was thinking.” And it was dead wrong.

And I was like, “Oh, this isn’t even a difficult one.” Like, the answer is I could have clicked the first result. And there have been many little instances of being told the direct wrong thing by AI, and just like manufacturing nonsense, like, “Oh, yeah, that restaurant has been closed since June 2024.” It’s like, “No, it never existed in the first place, dude. Come on. And you’re Gemini, according to El Marina, you’re supposed to be the best right now.”

So, rant complete. Don’t put AI on a pedestal, for sure. And even putting human beings on a pedestal has its problems. Point taken. So, tell us, is it so wrong to admire and appreciate and elevate the opinions of those who are excellent in their fields, Kelli?

Kelli Thompson
Yeah, that is the underlying question, right? I think it’s, “When is it okay to admire people, to take their advice, to follow their advice? And at what point should you notice, ‘Am I overrotating on listening to everything Pete says, right, and following all of his advice and I’ve stopped trusting myself?’”

And I think that there’s some really good questions you can ask yourself to help you discern, “Am I just blindly following someone? Or am I a novice in something and I should be taking helpful advice?” And I think that that is actually the first question that you can ask yourself is, “How much do I know about this topic? You know, I’m listening to someone, I’m learning, this person has advice for me.”

So when we think about when we’re young in our careers, let’s just talk about being in our early 20s. It’s not uncommon to take a lot of advice about your career. I know I did. And sometimes that advice was good. Sometimes that advice was, you know, “I should talk to this person this way,” or, “Maybe I should try this career,” or, “I should try this job.”

When I was early in my career and I was new, I think it was helpful at some point to take their advice. Did I do some things that maybe I shouldn’t have done because I admired the person? Yeah, I did. And also, isn’t that part of being 26 years old and being brand new in your career? Sometimes you just have to try some things, right?

But at some point, I think that there’s a turning point where you start to realize, “Oh, you know what? They’re just guessing, too. They’re just figuring it out, too. And even though they might be in the corner office with a nice title and probably a pretty nice salary, it doesn’t always mean they know what’s right for me.”

And so, some of the things that I had to learn early on was to ask more discerning questions, like, “Is the career advice they’re giving me aligned with my values? Is this advice going to move me closer to the person that I want to become, right? Or does it just have like some sort of shiny title on it? Does their recommendations, does it give me energy? Is it aligned with my best skills and talents?”

And so, those are some of those discerning questions you can start to ask yourself to say, “Hey, I know they have an opinion, but is that right for me?” And then we can turn and say, “What do I want to do? What’s aligned with my skills? What gets me excited? What aligns with my values? What do I want to learn?” And it’s not about right or wrong, or their advice and my advice. There’s no magic ratio.

I think it’s all about, “Am I just slowing down enough to check in with myself, and ask me, ‘Is this what I want to do? And what do I think I should do?’” Maybe it’s a blend of the two, maybe it’s one or the other, but slowing down and checking in first, I think, becomes really important before we just, you know, “My leader said I should do this, and that’s where I should go.”

Pete Mockaitis
And I think it’s an interesting natural tendency, or at least I’m guilty of it, is that I assume, because someone has produced an impressive result, has a great title, or has achieved tremendous success in any domain, I think, “Well, they must be a genius,” or, “They must have all the answers. Clearly, they know what they’re doing.”

And so often, the particulars of how they got somewhere, they involve a healthy bit of luck. And I think, specifically, in entrepreneurial spaces, it seems like the magic of product market fit is just so huge. And so, if you happen to have the thing that it turns, “Hey, it turns out everybody wanted this thing, and we didn’t know it till I made it. Lucky me.”

It’s often not a super repeatable process by which you create any tremendous result in terms of, “Hey, a couple of things lined up, and I was right there.” And yet we can say, “Okay, well, whatever they say about this matter must be gospel truth, and I should internalize it because what do I know?”

Kelli Thompson
Yeah, that’s actually a really wonderful example. I often joke that entrepreneurs giving advice about helping other entrepreneurs build their business is like sharing my winning lottery numbers, “It worked for me, so you should all play these numbers.”

And I think we see that a lot. It’s like, “Hey, I built this six-figure community. You should, too.” “I built this podcast system. You should, too.” “I built this business. Here’s how you should do it.” And I think that there’s nuggets of wisdom in there that I have followed, I’m like, “Ooh, that’s an interesting idea. That’s an interesting approach. I never would have thought about that. Oh, that’s how you do that,” right?

And so, I think that there’s a both/and here. I think it is good to follow people that went before you. And also, I will tell you, Pete, that I have made some not-so-great business decisions by doing things that other entrepreneurial coaches say I should do.

Like, for instance, like, “Oh, you should offer this type of product,” or, “You should offer this type of service because it was making that person money.” And I’m like, “Okay, well, I think it could be okay. It could be fun. I’ll try it.” And you know what, it didn’t work.

And I think that that’s also part of being an entrepreneur and even a leader is you try things. But I think I was also quick enough to say, “You know what, that might have worked for them, but this doesn’t work for me. I’m glad I tried it. I’m glad I went out into the world. I’m glad I did it.”

But that’s why it’s also so discerning to say, “I see.” In fact, let me give you a really clear cut example. I coach a lot of leaders in corporate, and a lot of leaders are working up the ranks and they might get promoted into a new position. And it can be really tempting for them to almost kind of copy the style of the leader before them, especially if that leader was successful, likable.

In fact, a lot of times on our first conversation, they’re like, “Well, I feel like I need to develop X, Y, and Z skill because the leader before me did that and they were really likable.” And so, it can be tempting to just go in and kind of do what the previous leader did, but that can also cause a real crisis of confidence because you never show up authentically you.

And so instead, one of the things that we’re working on in the beginning is, “No, what are your values? What are your unique leadership tendencies and approaches and skills? And how can you use that so you can show up and feel more aligned with yourself every day instead of constantly thinking to yourself, ‘Well, what would Pete have done here? Or what do I need to do here? How to be more like that other person?’”

And so, it can be really sneaky how, sometimes, you know, we can kind of just tend to copy what went before us instead of asking ourselves, “What am I meant to do? How am I meant to think about this? What still small voice do I have that I need to listen to? What ideas do I need to bring forth that the world needs?”

Pete Mockaitis
And, oftentimes, in a leadership situation, the predecessor had a different context, business maturity situation, and something new is absolutely needed. It’s like, “Well, hey, back in the day, we were growing like crazy and we had to do X, Y, Z. Well, now we are in a steady state situation and we would actually do well to iron out some details associated with systems and processes and compliance and very grownup-y organizational matters, which were kind of superfluous in the early days when there wasn’t a whole lot to systematize or operationalize in those ways.”

Kelli Thompson
Absolutely. Yeah, I often say that the pedestal problem leaves status quo unchanged. They leave products undeveloped. They leave ideas unshared because lots of times we just go along to get along and think the people above us know best. And so, we silence all these little innovative things that can make our work and our world a better place.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, and I think, you know, your book is called Closing the Confidence Gap, and we love talking about confidence and boosting confidence here is a common thing folks want more of. And I think what’s interesting in terms of, I’ve made a mistake a number of times.

If someone says something really confidently and it goes against my own intuitions, I go, “Well, I mean, I don’t really know, but, wow, that guy seems utterly convicted that this is going to be the case.” So, maybe, I almost feel like confidence alone makes me believe I should not totally discount what they’re saying. But sometimes it is the right answer.

Kelli Thompson
It is.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s to totally ignore that thing. I’m thinking about, what comes to mind for me, I don’t know why, is Mark Zuckerberg, back in the day, when they renamed Facebook to Meta, and he said that we’re all going to be living and interacting in the metaverse, and having these headsets strapped. And I was like, “Boy, that sounds so wrong to me.”

“I mean, Second Life has been around for a while. That’s kind of sort of died out. People don’t find big old headsets comfortable to have strapped on them. There’s already been a backlash associated with social media and its problems. But, I mean, hey, man, you’re Mark Zuckerberg and you would know the industry and you probably have some insight.”

But, no, sure enough, the metaverse did not come to pass as he predicted. And you could say the same for humanoid robots, self-driving cars, AI. People are so darn confident about how the future is going to unfold, it’s like, “Well, I guess you would know.” But I think I’m finally starting to wise up and say, “You don’t know and really can’t predict the future. You’ve got a guess and you’ve got a lot of money riding on that guess working out the way you say it will.”

Kelli Thompson
Yeah, there was actually research, and I can’t find the source, but the person who shared it was Adam Grant. So you can backtrack it that way for our listeners. But they said that there was a study done that people actually believe people who appear to be confident, even though they are not competent.

Pete Mockaitis
Guilty.

Kelli Thompson
And so then, we end up blindly following everybody from people on the political stage to friends in our lives who are very convincing to tell us to do things, to even the people at work. And so I think that’s where a shift really has to happen in corporate America.

Because one of the things I talk about in the TEDx Talk is that there are leaders who appear very confident. And so, what we do is we blindly follow them, and sometimes we put them in that pedestal. But what can happen is those leaders can turn into brilliant jerks who never get good feedback. People are too scared to share ideas or feedback or insights with them, so those leaders are going along thinking everything’s working when it’s not.

And lots of times that is the recipe for the corporate scandals that we see that shatter organizations. Uber is a great example of their first leader, Travis. People were too scared to share feedback with him because he was so confident, and people just went along, right? But it caused a lot of problems in the system.

And so, the pedestal problem isn’t just bad for our own confidence, right, because we’re silencing our own ideas and intuitions to go along to get along. But it’s bad for leaders, too, who are pedestal because they don’t get the feedback that they need to make changes, to humble themselves, to make sure that they’re staying curious and connected to the teams that they lead.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, and I think this gets to just a fundamental tension associated with, “How do we properly evaluate our opinion relative to other people’s opinions?” And this brings me back to, what a weirdly stressful time for me was we had to get a roof repair situation.

And so, I knew that it was hard to get ahold of folks to do anything on my house, from experience. And so, I said, “I’m just going to call 12 roofing companies and see how many people show up.” Sure enough, we had about five, so not a bad ratio in my experience. But then they’re all conflicting information. Some people said they got to tear off the whole roof. It’s like, “No, you can just put another layer on. It’s just fine.”

And it was so tricky for me, it’s like, “Man, I was hoping to get the expert opinion on my roof, but you’re the experts and you’re contradicting each other. And somehow, I, who is not a roof expert, need to make the call, ‘You are the correct roof expert. You are the incorrect roof expert.’ What an uncomfortable spot to be in.”

And I think, really, in terms of senior leaders of all stripes, if they have healthy teams where they aired disagreeing viewpoints, I mean, this is their daily existence. So how do we play that game, thinking about who’s right, who’s wrong, and me versus them, and them versus the other party? It could be a pretty tricky, exhausting mental process of sorting through that.

Kelli Thompson
And it can cause a lot of anxiety, too. So let’s just look at it from both sides. Let’s look at it from the individual’s point of view. Maybe you’re trying to make a decision. And if you’re anything like me, sometimes you have a habit of reading the entire internet, pulling all of your friends, putting it all in a pros/cons, Excel spreadsheet, right, and you have all of this data.

And I think, at some point, and we’ve gone through that roofing issue, too, so I giggled a little bit. At some point, it’s like, “I have all the data points. And now, based on all the data points that I have, what do I believe is the right decision to go with?” Because at some point, you’re going to have enough data. If you keep trying to gather data, well, then you’re an analysis paralysis and you’re just spinning your wheels.

And so, as you know, an individual, even myself running a business or choosing a roof, it was, “What are all the data points we’ve collected? Where do things seem to err? And then also, what do I know about this issue? What do my values say about this issue? Is there a decision that moves forward in alignment with where I want to go, and that honors my skills and talents, etc. at work?”

And so, I think from the individual’s perspective, there has to be an enough point of, like, “This is the data. Now I got to go check in with myself. What aligns? Okay, I move forward.” When it comes to the leadership point of view, in terms of them getting a lot of feedback about all the things that they should do, I think it’s helpful, especially, it was helpful for me as a leader to actually get in on the ground with people because it helps you actually see things from their eyes, participate and see what they’re seeing.

But I think the same rules apply is, “I’m going to get a lot of data from my teams. How can I get in on the ground and verify that data and not just take all of that at face value, but then make the leadership decision that I think moves us forward in the direction that we’re meant to go?”

Pete Mockaitis
I like that a lot, getting on the ground and verifying. So we’re going a layer deeper in terms of, so, one, let’s stay with the roof thing, still. One person says, “Oh, another layer is fine.” Another person says, “Oh, you got to tear it all off and do…” It’s sort of just asking those questions that gets the confidence as well, it’s like, “Who am I to defy or question the great roof master?”

But to ask those questions, like, “How do you make that determination? Like, can you show me what you’re seeing that leads you to say this?” And that can tell you something right there in terms of like, “Look, we know roofs, we’ve been doing this for 30 years.” Like, “Okay, that’s not actually an answer.”

As opposed to, “Well, take a look at this. According to Chicago building codes, the depth is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And just measure this right now.” Okay, that’s something real.

Kelli Thompson
Yeah, I love the phrase, “Can you show me what you’re seeing?” Because one of the things that I think really makes good leaders, and a lot of people are like, “Well, what’s the difference between confidence and cockiness?”

Well, I think that cockiness is confidence without any curiosity. And so when you’re saying, “Can you show me what you’re seeing?” like, that in itself is just using curiosity, right? It’s getting up there with the roofer, and saying, “Here, see, look at your layers. Look how this is parsing apart.”

In my own personal example, I remember going through a merger, and I was leading training teams in a bank, and the banks had merged together, and so was leading the combined training team. And I was maybe putting myself on a pedestal a little bit, and saying, “Well, since we are the acquiring bank, certainly our ways are probably the ways we should do things.”

And I had one of the recently acquired teams trying to give me some feedback and some ideas. And, finally, bless her heart, she goes, “You know what, why don’t you come out to our location and just observe some of these things in action?” And I was like, “Okay, that sounds good. Well, can I see what you’re seeing?”

When I got my feet on the ground, I was like, “Oh, they do that better than us. Oh, that went better than how we do it,” right? And so, it’s like by humbling yourself and getting curious as a leader, not only do you pull yourself off the pedestal, but it really invokes that curiosity that builds genuine confidence.

And, like you said, “When I see what you’re seeing, now I have better data. Now I can get in and make the right decisions for everyone.”

Pete Mockaitis
I like that a lot in terms of humble yourself, not in a way like, “Oh, I’m just a lowly whatever. I don’t know anything,” but rather humble yourself in a position of, “Yes, I do have something to learn here. And so, let’s go ahead and see what can be learned.”

Kelli Thompson
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
Okie-dokie. Well, so I would love it if, are there any particular questions you suggest we dig into as we navigate this stuff?

Kelli Thompson
Yes. So if you listen to the talk, my talk might be a little different than other talks out there in that some talks give you advice. But I joke in my TED Talk that my talk, I don’t want to give you advice because I didn’t want you to take the advice I would give you and put it on a pedestal thinking that I know better than you do about how to be a clearer, confident leader. So instead, I leave the watcher or the listener with three questions.

And we’ve kind of gone through these questions already. So let’s just say you are getting some well-meaning advice. Let’s just say there is somebody that’s saying, “This is the way that we should do things.” Like, question number one is it’s all about reconnection. All of these questions are about reconnection. So question number one is to reconnect with yourself, “Does this advice, do these values, does this thing align with my values and who I am meant to become? Like, does it align with these things that I’m working towards?”

Question number two is really about, okay, you know, the pedestal problem is not like I’m one up or you’re one up. It’s like, “How are we coming together to the table as equals?” That’s the big thing. How are we coming together to the table as equals? And so, when I can own the unique talents that only I can bring to a situation, it helps me come together to the table as an equal because I can see the talents in someone else without compare and despair.

And so, that is the second question to kind of come back and reconnect as equals is, “What is the unique perspective that only I can bring to this situation? Yeah, the leaders might be really confident about knowing about this strategy thing, but you know what, maybe I’m the only person that talks to the customer. So how can I bring that perspective?”

And then the last question I really encourage folks to think about is, like, “What am I meant to create in the world? So, like, when I’m 80 and in my dream retirement, like what is this thing that I’ve created? And how can I use my skills and my talents to contribute to what I am meant to create in the world?”

So, just to recap three questions for reconnection at a more helpful level is, “Does this align with my best skills and talents? What is that unique perspective that only I can bring to this conversation so I can come to the table as an equal? And then what am I meant to create in the world?”

Because at the end of the day, somebody is waiting on that unique thing that only you can bring to the world, so how are you going to put it into the world?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I’d love some more stories and examples of putting this into practice. So, we’ve heard about roofs and mergers and Mark Zuckerberg. Can you tell us about some clients who were doing some of this idolizing, some of this pedestalizing, and what they were doing and how they made a shift and what resulted on the other side?

Kelli Thompson
Yeah. Okay, so just at a basic level, here’s something I hear a lot with my clients, and I’ll use a very personal example of me well, because I don’t want people to think that I have got this figured out. Like, I talk about it because I have the problem.

So, a lot of my clients, when they come to coaching, they will say, “Kelli, I’m struggling with this project, this, that and the other thing. And here’s what really needs to be fixed.” And I’m like, “Okay.” Well, I’m like, “Well, so what happened when you told your leaders that this is actually the root cause and it needs to be fixed?” “Well, I haven’t told them because, you know what, I mean, they are just so certain that this is what we have to do or this is the deadline that we have to meet.” And so it’s kind of like putting that leader on a pedestal.

And so then, my client is withholding really valuable information, either about the system or a root cause or a client that they feel scared. And so, one of the things then we’re working on in coaching is, “How do you go in and advocate to your leader respectfully, saying, ‘Hey, I know that this is what you want to do and this is the deadline you’re on, but I have really valuable information after I’ve gotten in and I’ve worked with the thing. And I think we actually need to zig instead of zag.’”

And so, I see that happen a lot, where it’s like, “Hey, you need to pull your leader and all of their confidence off a pedestal because you have real information.” The other way I see it, too, is, you know, when people are accelerating their career and they get a lot of well-meaning advice about what next career step they should take.

So I have a client who would have a leader come to her and say, “Hey, we want to put you in this role. I think you’d be great in this role.” And while that feels really flattering, my client was just like, “I don’t think I want that. I I think that they want to put me there.” And maybe the title would be really cool and the salary, but they’re like, “I think I would hate the work, but I don’t know if I can say no, because this is the CFO or blah, blah, blah, blah.”

And so then, we’re working then a lot on, “Well, what do you want in your career? What do you want your next step to be?” Instead of just defaulting to their advice, like, “What skills and talents do you think you need to bring?” And so then, we’re working on, “How do I craft that conversation with my leader about what I want to bring to the workplace and where I think I might be a good fit?”

And I will just say that the last thing, and going back, let’s circle this back around with AI is, I’ll use my own personal example, is earlier in the year, I was working on a book. I, obviously, run my own leadership coaching and speaking practice. It mostly focuses on helping women advance to the rooms where decisions are made. And with the ushering in of the new administration, DEI is not as popular as it used to be.

And while I don’t specifically work on DEI, a lot of women’s leadership budgets are just in that DEI lump of money, okay? And a lot of companies removed that section of money, so that impacted my business. So, I did what a lot of people did and I went out to ChatGPT, and said, “Hey, here’s what I’m doing. Here’s what’s my mission. Here’s what I’m focusing on. Here’s the current political and sociocultural environment, blah, blah, blah. What ideas do you have?”

And you know what, Pete, it gave me some really good ideas. And I’m like, “Well, that’s genius. Of course. Why didn’t I think of that, right? I could tweak this here, tweak this here.” And so I started to do that. I started to really focus on a section of my content called “Advanced from Doer to Leader.” It was a chapter of my book, my Closing the Confidence Gap, lead more by doing less.

I had fun. It was a little more gender agnostic, but you know what? I started to get kind of burnt out. And one of the things I realized was I took ChatGPT’s advice without stopping and checking in, and saying, “Wait, do I even want this?” I never even thought to ask it, “Well, what would happen if I just stayed the course?”

And through a lot of burnout, I started to realize that I had put AI on a pedestal. And I then made the shift at the end of last year to just say, “You know what, yes, that stuff is fun and cool, and I’ll still do it, but I’ve lost focus of what my core mission is, and I need to go back and reinvigorate that.”

And so, at the end of last year, I created a brand new program for women, leaders in corporate America called the “Clarity and Confidence Collective.” And ever since I’ve kind of re-shifted just one degree, I feel so much better because I’m following what I am meant to create in the world and not what AI said I should do in response to a trend that happened, so.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s super. And I think that that is a bit of context that tends to be missing, as you mentioned earlier, in just about every piece of advice, is we’re hearing not so much, “This would be perfect for you,” so much as, “Well, this is a thing that worked for me.” And so, it was like, “Well, okay, that’s good input, maybe, but it’s certainly not the end of the story.”

Lovely. Well, I’d also love your perspective when it comes to, I think sometimes when we are putting others on a pedestal or we’re idolizing them, we’re kind of undervaluing our own strengths. And that’s the funny thing about strengths is, well, they’re strengths, so we do a thing and it’s easy. And then it seems like, “Well, it’s no big deal. It was easy.” Well, it’s no big deal. It was easy because it’s a strength for you, but it’s not the case for other people.

So I think this is a trap. It’s easy to fall into. Do you have any pro tips on how to not fall into that trap?

Kelli Thompson
Yeah, in fact, one of the main pieces of things I talk about with my clients is one way to pull someone off the pedestal is to stop overestimating others’ intelligence and underestimating your own. And that is the tricky thing about our unique talents, our genius zone, whatever you want to call it, is it’s easy for us. Like, we can do it in our sleep. We think it’s not a big deal.

And so, that is one of the assignments I usually give my clients is, we have to remember that these things that come easy for us are usually really hard for other people. So, for example, like I kind of grew up in the corporate training route. If somebody says I need to teach somebody something, I can pull together a day-long training course in about a few hours. And other people are like, “Oh, my gosh.”

So I always had to remember exactly, like even in my own corporate leadership, when I was like sitting at the table with executives, and they would be talking about things and half I didn’t know about, or I was pretending like I knew what it was about, or, you know, really intimidated to share, I would always have to come back and remember, “But wait a minute, these folks are not experts on training. They’re not experts on communicating change management to people. They’re not experts on just how people react to certain things, the human behavior side of all of it.”

“And so, if I am the person that leaves those things unsaid at that executive meeting, then other people are going to suffer, other people are not going to enjoy this experience as much as they should.” And so, I think one of the things that helped me was, number one, not only identifying, “What is my genius zone? What is that thing that only I can bring to the conversation? But who else will this benefit?”

And I think, sometimes when we start to recognize that, in our speaking up and advocacy, we’re also doing it on behalf of someone else. At least for me, it makes it feel a little bit easier that, “Hey, this isn’t just about me,” as I’m meant to use some of these skills and talents for the benefit of other people as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. Well, Kelli, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Kelli Thompson
Yeah, go out and check my TED Talk. I’m sure it’ll be in the show notes. The other thing, like I said, I’m really excited about is the “Clarity and Confidence Collective.” It is a community for corporate women leaders who never want to lead alone.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now, could you share your favorite quotes, something you find inspiring?

Kelli Thompson
It’s an RBG quote, it’s, “Fight for the things you care about, but do it in a way that others will join you.”

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

Kelli Thompson
I really love the one that I quoted earlier that came, I know Adam Grant cited it where he just said, “We tend to follow people who just appear to be confident.” And I think that this is really fascinating for me right now because of what’s playing out on the political stages a little bit, and even with some of the technology leaders in the world right now that are leading. You gave Zuck as an example or AI. I mean, I think a lot of people are really listening to the confident voices right now, but they may not always be right.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Kelli Thompson
My favorite book that I have read recently is Know My Name by Chanel Miller.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool?

Kelli Thompson
I’m teaching myself to play the piano. So my favorite tool is free YouTube videos on how to play the piano.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Kelli Thompson
Working out. I work out every morning. I have to. It makes me fit for human consumption.

Pete Mockaitis
And a key nugget you share that folks really dig and quote back often to you?

Kelli Thompson
“Success loves clarity.”

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

Kelli Thompson
You can come to my website, KelliRaeThompson.com. I’m Kelli with an I. Otherwise, I mostly hang out on LinkedIn, and you can find me at /KelliRaeThompson.

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

Kelli Thompson
Yeah, my final call to action for you is I want you to stop this week and notice where you might be pulling someone else for an opinion or data, or maybe Googling, or asking ChatGPT for what you should do. And I want you just to stop, and I want you to ask yourself, “What is mine to do?”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Kelli, thank you.

Kelli Thompson
Thanks for having me.