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Apr 10
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855: Turning Anxiety into Your Source of Strength with Morra Aarons-Mele

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Morra Aarons-Mele says: "Don’t run away from [anxiety]. Don’t even try to control it. Just try to understand and learn from it."

Morra Aarons-Mele shares powerful tactics for channeling anxiety into a productive force.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why it’s powerful to admit you’re anxious
  2. The common thought traps that hold achievers back
  3. Three powerful solutions to stop negative self-talk

About Morra

Morra Aarons-Mele is the host of The Anxious Achiever, a top-10 management podcast that helps people rethink the relationship between their mental health and their leadership. Morra founded Women Online and The Mission List, an award-winning digital-consulting firm and influencer marketing company dedicated to social change, in 2010, and sold her business in 2021. She helped Hillary Clinton log on for her first internet chat and has launched digital campaigns for President Obama, Malala Yousafzai, the United Nations, the CDC, and many other leading figures and organizations. She lives outside Boston with her family and menagerie.

Resources Mentioned

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Morra Aarons-Mele Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Morra, welcome back to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Morra Aarons-Mele
Pete, it’s awesome to be back.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I am so delighted to be chatting with you. And you mentioned you had some laryngitis, but you are summoning the power to chat with us, so I’m really touched. Thank you.

Morra Aarons-Mele
The podcast gods are speaking to me, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. That’s good. Well, hey, it has been 600-ish episodes since our last conversation. So, I’d love to hear if there have been any particularly extra-fascinating discoveries you’ve made about life, business, mental health, anxiety, or any or all of the above since we last chatted?

Morra Aarons-Mele
The reason why I’m talking to you today and why I wrote my new book, The Anxious Achiever is because last time I talked to you, I had a book called Hiding in the Bathroom, how to get out there when you’d rather stay home, and it was a guide for introverts or people with social anxiety who have big ambitions and big career dreams on really how to build that professional network, really ignore the phrases we all grow up with, like, “Never eat lunch alone,” and, “Crush it,” and all the things that people like me who are introverted and anxious don’t like to do, and really tap into our true selves and how we can sell and execute and start a business as well as any extroverted person out there.

And what I found, as I was talking about that book, I would talk about my own anxiety, I would talk about my decades-long struggle to manage not just my anxiety but also clinical depression, and people would instantly tune in. It was like a valve had opened. And this was before the pandemic even, but people wanted to talk about it.

They wanted a place to feel seen and heard, and talk about how their anxiety impacted their career, their leadership, their success, their dreams, their ambitions. And I pitched a podcast to the Harvard Business Review, I called it Anxious Ambition, and it really meant to get at that interplay, the tension, between those of us who feel almost powered by anxiety. Anxiety is our oxygen, as my friend, Jose, says.

And we only know how to drive ourselves through anxiety. We credit our anxiety with much of our success but it also takes such a toll on our mental health. We think, “I’m only going to get promoted if I work night and day, or if this is perfect, or if I just assume the worst is going to happen, and maybe the best will happen.” And we forget that anxiety becomes a habit and, along the way, we’re doing a lot of things that don’t work for us.

And I launched the show with Harvard Business Review in 2019, and it’s just been an incredible experience to touch base with so many people, including some famous people, who are anxious achievers, or who manage really serious mental health challenges, like bipolar, like obsessive compulsive disorder, or who are neurodivergent and have to work differently, and hear about their journeys and how they manage.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s powerful. Thank you for sharing that backdrop with us. And so, one takeaway right there, it seems, that by opening up, you didn’t have people shun you, or say, “Oh, I guess Morra can’t handle this opportunity because she’s broken,” but, no, just the opposite. Folks have opened up, and said, “Yes, I, too, am working through some things,” and they feel a sense of connection and are drawn to you and tune into you, and more doors have, in fact, opened up by you being vulnerable and sharing what’s going on there.

Morra Aarons-Mele
I have never, in my hundreds of interviews, met someone who said bad things happened when they opened up. Never.

Pete Mockaitis
There you go.

Morra Aarons-Mele
I interviewed a senior executive at Google, a VP at Google, who ran a huge piece of the tech organization, and he was an early, early voice on workplace mental health, and he said, “I actually think it helped me in my career.” He became sort of a leadership guru, and taught classes on leadership for all of Google. Like, he became a beacon in the organization.

I’ve heard other leaders credit their sort of accepting and managing and living through their mental health challenges as making them not just more successful but just more compassionate, more empathetic, more self-aware, all these qualities that we know people want from their leaders.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s powerful stuff, yes. All right. Well, Morra, that’s encouraging, exciting stuff to hear about that. And within your book, you had a fantastic endorsement by Andy Dunn, a Bonobos cofounder, who said, “Astonishing. Not just for anxious achievers. This book is for any human being who wants to transform their mental health.” I was like, “Ooh, that sounds like me and lots of us.”

Morra Aarons-Mele
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
So, can you share with us, maybe, a really cool story of someone who had some fears, some anxieties, or another mental health challenge, and then they found some transformation to that as well as their career?

Morra Aarons-Mele
Absolutely. I just interviewed a guy who, he’s not in the book, unfortunately, but I’m going to tell you his because it’s powerful. His name is Jimmy Horowitz, and to say he’s one of the most powerful man in Hollywood is not an overstatement. He is Vice Chairman for Business Affairs at NBC Universal, so it has about $150 billion market cap, very large company.

And not only that, Jimmy is really the business guy behind a lot of the movies we watch and the shows we watch, and the news we watch. He’s a negotiator. He makes deals. He makes things happen. And I talked to Jimmy about his own transformation as a very, very senior leader, acknowledging that he was depressed. And one of the things that he talked about, because he kept it secret for a long time, like a lot of people do when they’re going through mental health stuff. A lot of us keep secrets of many things at work. Sometimes it’s appropriate to keep that secret. We can talk about that later.

And Jimmy said that when he came clean, when he went public about his depression, he found that he conducted his business with a new more compassionate lens that created better outcomes. He’s a negotiator, like his job is to sit down with the Ari Emanuels of this world, like tough, tough Hollywood people and get deals done. But what he learned through his own really tough journey with clinical depression tuned him in to what his counterparties needed across the table, the outcome that was good for both of them. And that was something he had always tried to do but it was almost like his ears were reopened.

And with this staff, too. He said, “Before, I grew up in a culture where you never left before your boss left.” And doing a lot of work on his own mental health, and also being the executive sponsor of a broader mental health program at NBC Universal, showed him that’s not productive, that’s unhealthy. It’s not good for anybody, and there’s sort of a cascade of change.

And I just love that story because I think that we can all become more resilient, more powerful, when we go through something hard and learn from it, but it has such a powerful upstream and downstream effect on the people we work with, because when we’re anxious, depressed, struggling, we often act out on those around us unconsciously. We don’t even know we do it. And so, when you’re more aware, when you get a handle on this stuff, everyone benefits.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that’s powerful. Well, so then it sounds like maybe we’ve covered this, but how would you articulate the big idea or main thesis of The Anxious Achiever: Turn Your Biggest Fears into Your Leadership Superpower?

Morra Aarons-Mele
The big idea is that anxiety is a normal human emotion, we all experience it from time to time. It’s part of leadership. In many ways, I joke leaders are paid to be anxious. Leaders are paid to look towards the future and plan for worst-case scenarios and sort of be vigilant. And that if you understand what your anxiety is trying to tell you, don’t run away from it. Don’t even try to control it. Just try to understand and learn from it. You can emerge more resilient, stronger, better at communicating, more self-aware, and also learn to channel your anxiety for when you really need it.

I think many of the people I have interviewed, and myself included, I’m not talking about hugely clinical anxiety where you can’t get out of bed and life is a day-to-day extreme challenge. I’ve been there. I have been there. I have been that person who, literally, cannot leave her bed because she’s so anxious. That’s not the kind of anxiety I’m talking about in the book. I’m talking about the anxiety in the middle of the spectrum that so many of us are experiencing right now because life is really uncertain and things feel scary, and we don’t feel like we have any control. That’s present for us.

When you really take the time to understand how it shows up for you, why, what’s triggering you at work, and how you react, you go through that work and it’s hard work and it takes practice. You then can understand when anxiety is showing up and you should go with it. Like, before a big event, before a speech, before a talk, you want to feel anxious, we need some anxiety, and when to basically tell your anxiety to buzz off because it’s not a good time.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that sounds super powerful. And I’m intrigued, the ‘buzz off.’ Sometimes I tell my emotions to do that and they don’t respond. How does this work, Morra?

Morra Aarons-Mele
I know, emotions are tricky. As told by a wonderful psychologist, Christine Runyan, in my book, anxiety is connected to our lizard brain. It is an ancient, ancient emotion because it helped keep us alive. Anxiety is basically a threat appraisal, a sense of something dangerous, and back in the cave days, that really could keep us alive because if we had a sense that something was rustling in the bushes, and we needed to run, that was good.

Nowadays, our bodies still get that sense that something dangerous is rustling in the bushes but that could be our 4:00 p.m. with Bill that we’re really dreading. We don’t have the ability at the base level to judge what’s a real threat and what’s not. And so, that’s why anxiety is really tricky because sometimes we feel it and we don’t even know why.

But it is through the process of noticing, naming your anxiety, and really tuning into it that you get to understand, “Wow, I’m really anxious right now. Why? Why did that name in that email inbox make me feel nauseous?” Did you ever have that happen? Like, you see someone’s name and you’re just like, “Oh, my God, no.” You feel nauseous and anxious, and you have to shut your laptop.

“Why do I get a migraine and feel very, very, very anxious before my Thursday p.m. staff meetings? What’s that trying to tell me? Why is this negotiation so hard? Why am I feeling like an impostor, like I don’t deserve it? Why do I instantly assume that this one piece of bad news means I’m going to get fired?”

Really interrogating why anxiety shows up for you, and it shows up for us all in different ways, and we all have different triggers of anxiety, begins the process of sort of unlocking it and gaining the ability to eventually be able to tell it, “You know what, it’s just a feeling. You can go away.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Morra, I’d love to get your take on that, that curiosity, that interrogation, that why. I think sometimes I might be too curious for my own good in this department, and as I dig into some of my emotions, I just amplify it more. I’m thinking about, often if I’m, like, really irritated by something, it’s like, “Oh, why am I so angry about that? Well, because it’s bull crap for all of these reasons.” And then I kind of get more worked up.

And then I think it’s also perhaps a tendency to try to solve rather than feel the feelings, as former consultant, guilty as charged, trying to do that.

Morra Aarons-Mele
Where’s your PowerPoint?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, get some spreadsheets and segment that bad boy. So, yeah, I’d love your take on that. For those of us who are wired in this fashion, how do we navigate this curiosity most effectively?

Morra Aarons-Mele
Oh, my God. I found myself, just today, I really had sort of minor anxiety panic attack at about 11:00 and I couldn’t even figure out why. I just, all of a sudden, started shaking, and it was hard to breathe, and I couldn’t focus, and my hands were jittery. It was a lot of big emotion, and I was like, “What’s happening? You were just working on a spreadsheet.”

And I realized that I had gotten triggered by a bunch of the names on the spreadsheet who made me feel like I was an impostor and they were going to shame me if I reached out to them, that I was going to found out. That’s the thing, is that emotions happen mostly for a reason, and our challenge is that we want to instantly tamp down the uncomfortable ones, so you would instantly try to solve something because it’s uncomfortable for you.

And the work is not instantly doing whatever coping mechanism you want to do, whether it’s solving something, whether it’s getting at that Excel spreadsheet. My husband does that. He models everything out when he’s really uncomfortable. And to sit with it. If you’ve ever done therapy or meditation, what do they say? They say you have to ride the wave. The goal is not for the waves of life and its difficulty to stop coming. They’re going to keep coming. You’ve got learn how to surf the waves.

Pete Mockaitis
So, you mentioned the work, and understanding, and noticing, and naming, and tuning in. That’s cool. You also highlight a number of anxiety profiles in your book. Can you share some of those so that we can maybe get a jumpstart on some of this noticing?

Morra Aarons-Mele
Well, it’s really, really important to start noticing your thoughts when you get anxious. And we all have a tendency to get stuck in what are called thought traps. These are sometimes called cognitive distortions or automatic negative thoughts, and different people have their different sort of go-to thought traps. You may be someone who, when you feel anxious, you are a catastrophizer, you instantly assume the worst.

And what do you do when you assume the worst? You dive into action and drive your team crazy because you’re micromanaging them because you’re anxious about the worst thing happening. Or, do you avoid? You convince the worst is going come so you stick your head in the sand. Are you someone who gets perfectionistic when you’re anxious? Perfectionism and anxiety go together like peanut butter and jelly. We think perfectionism often is something that should be admired. It’s what the best people do.

And one of the things that I have learned in my study and research along the way is perfectionism is really often about anxiety. It’s that sense of, “If I’m not perfect, if I’m not the best, I’m not worth it. I’m a failure, and so I better become the best,” however that means to you, whether it’s overworking, or never stopping, or, again, micromanaging your team and driving them crazy. You may be someone who has impostor feelings, and it’s really common. I should say all of these are very, very common signs of anxiety and they become habits over time.

So, you may be someone who, when you’re anxious, you’re showing up at a new job for the first day, you feel like a fraud, you feel like you don’t belong. You may be someone who has a lot of social anxiety and, therefore, when you come into an arena where you feel uncomfortable or different, your mind goes to a place of, again, “I don’t belong. I’m not worth it. These people think I’m dumb,” whatever your greatest hits of negative thoughts and thought traps are.

And so, anxiety shows up for us in many, many different ways. It’s informed by our childhoods. It’s informed by the family systems we grew up in. One of the things that I talk about in the book is I think a really powerful thing for many of us anxious achievers, it’s the idea that you may be an over-functioner, that you may have grown up in a family where you were expected to do a lot, or you may have grown up too quickly, or had too much asked of you at a young age, and you’re used to just outperforming.

You’re used to just trying your best and making sure bad things don’t happen, and that can show up in your life and your career as someone who always takes control, who work super hard to make sure those bad things don’t happen. And that has a huge effect, again, on your colleagues, on your leadership. And so, we really, in the book, go in and look at things that inform what’s made you anxious, and also how it’s showing up for you.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then can you share, when it comes to if you have some unhealthy coping mechanisms that pop up, I’m particularly interested on how one tackles negative self-talk?

Morra Aarons-Mele
I would say that negative self-talk underlies all of this stuff. And so, again, your negative self-talk probably is personal to you. Like, we all have our negative self-talk. Mine is, “I’m lazy. I’m lazy and I don’t deserve this.” And part of what you have to do is you have to practice new self-talk.

And before you can do that, you need to make sure of a couple things. The first is sometimes we’re so anxious, we can’t even hear ourselves think, like any strategy that we would have that would involve using our cognition, like telling ourselves something, “It’s just not going to work,” because we’re super anxious, we’re worked up.

And that’s when breathing is really important. And I know we’ve all heard this a million times, that if you send your breath into your belly, and you exhale, it will make you less anxious and calm you down, but it’s really true. So, if you’re at a level of, like, “I’m so anxious, I really don’t even know if I can have a conversation with myself right now,” some breathing will help, physical things can help.

And then one of the things that I found really powerful for dealing with a negative self-talk is asking the self-talk, “Are you true?” And, again, anxiety can make us a little bit unreliable, so it’s good when you want to interrogate that self-talk to have facts or more neutral statements at the ready. That’s why it’s really great to have someone you can call, and say, “This 9:00 a.m. meeting means I’m going to get fired tomorrow because I never belonged in this job, and my boss has had it out for me, and I just haven’t worked hard enough, and I know that’s what this 9:00 a.m. meeting means.”

It’s really great to have someone you can call, and they’ll say, “Well, is that really true?” “I flobbed the slide in the huge presentation, and so that means my boss is never going to promote me.” “Is that really true? You’ve worked here for three years, and you’ve never made a mistake like that before. Do you really think that one wrong number in a slide means you’re going to get fired?” Our minds go to big places.

And so, trying to get a little distance, trying to get a little evidence against what you’re thinking, trying to have what psychologists would call a more balanced thought, these are all skills that you can use to slowly, slowly start to numb that really loud self-talk.

Pete Mockaitis
Ooh, Morra, you’ve got so many good things, and so many directions I want to go all at once, at least my favorite podcast or problem to have. When you mentioned having facts at the ready, that really resonated because, boy, I think I got it from a Tony Robbins book when I was a teenager. There’s a diagram with like a table with different legs for facts to support a belief. And I found it super useful.

I remember, in college, I had a bit of a rough patch because, in high school, I was winning, winning, winning so many things, Homecoming King, valedictorian, yadda, yadda, yadda. And then, in college, I just got a string of rejections, I was like, “What is going on?” And I remember, navigation has never been my strong suit, and I remember this so clearly, I was looking at a map, I’m getting old, I’m looking at map on paper while someone was driving, and I guess I gave some wrong answer as to when and where we should turn.

And then someone just snatched the map out of my hand, and I felt, “Ugh,” like I failed. And I guess that’s probably my thing, is that maybe it’s like perfectionist-ish in terms of like I’ve heard it called the idol of performance, like, “I want to do a great job. It doesn’t have to be perfect but it has to be excellent. And if I’m not doing an excellent job, it feels like my value is somehow diminished or I’m a loser.” And I know this is malarky, I know it’s foolishness, but sometimes it feels like it’s true, and that’s not pleasant. So, I guess that’s my mental health thing.

Morra Aarons-Mele
I’m sorry, I was going to say the famous trope is feelings are not facts but feelings often feel like facts.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, well said. Yeah, that’s true. Maybe it sounds much of a trope for me. It might be the first time I’ve heard it but I like that. And so, having your facts at the ready, I remember I wrote down just a list of accomplishments, like, “Okay, I know I feel like I’m screwing up right now, like I’m not doing so well, but, foundationally, it is a belief, based on real evidence, that I have achieved many things, and I am capable and competent.”

And so, I wrote it in this notebook, which I still have, and I don’t remember when I felt good enough to stop, but I think I have, like, 130 plus examples of achievements and things showing, like, “Okay,” and I referenced it numerous times, like, “Oh, man, I feel like a loser. I keep screwing up everything.” It’s like, “Everything, Pete? Let’s take a look. Let’s take a look. Hmm, I see 130 plus things that went quite well. So, all right.”

It really did help reframe things in terms of, “All right, this is a bummer, that these couple things haven’t worked out but the overall trend is pretty solid here.”

Morra Aarons-Mele
Oh, my gosh, that is like an A+ in cognitive reframing. That is amazing. I encourage people to do it. I call it a brag file or a clips file. You know how journalists will keep clips that they’ve written. It is so powerful. And, again, when you know where your sort of soft underbelly is and what’s going to set you off, you can have something at the ready that’s really going to help.

So, one of my real anxiety triggers is money, and when I ran a business for 11 years, I would get bad money news sometimes. It was either bad macroeconomic news, like banks failing, or it was, “We’re not going to make our numbers,” whatever. And I would instantly go from zero to a hundred in terms of catastrophe.

And I learned that I had to have my business partner, who’s great with numbers and not emotional around them, back me up and give me the more balanced and likely scenario. I needed to see those numbers on the page so I could stop thinking we were going bankrupt tomorrow.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s cool. I also love what you had to say about thought patterns and cognitive distortions. I’m thinking of Dr. David Burns, Feeling Good, Feeling Great.

Morra Aarons-Mele
Greatest.

Pete Mockaitis
Fantastic books. I recommend them. I’ve tried to get the good doctor on the show. I have to prompt this.

Morra Aarons-Mele
Me, too. I have, too.

Pete Mockaitis
Have you got him?

Morra Aarons-Mele
I have not.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, he’s a little elusive but anyone knows the guy, anyone who knows him, we’re after him. So, I think that’s one, I’ll just say look him up. He’s so good. But some of those cognitive distortions could be categorized, like catastrophizing or all-or-nothing thinking, and it’s amazing how they pop up so much. And I think, for me, one is called emotional reasoning in terms of, “Oh, because I’m angry or irritated, some bull crap must be afoot somewhere and I’m going to find it.” And now I’m looking for it so that I’m slanted and looking in that direction.

So, that is some eye-opening stuff. I’d love to hear, you said, “Is this true?” any other pro tips when your mind is acting a fool, how you kind of get closer to clarity and truth?

Morra Aarons-Mele
So, another tactic that I absolutely love, Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett at Kent State calls this the so-what chorus. And this is another sort of exercise you might get if you took cognitive behavioral therapy, “So, okay, I’m really, really, really upset because I got that negative comment in my 360, and, oh, my God, I’m just so mad at myself. Like, if I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have gotten that comment,” and that’s both emotional reasoning, it’s mental filtering. The rest of the 360 could’ve been great, and you’re fixated on that one negative comment, and you’re ruminating, you’re dwelling on it even though there’s nothing productive you can do about it now.

Something you can do, again, get distance, take the teeth out of the anxiety, is to say, “Okay, so the worst happens from this. I get that negative comment from the 360. It’s all my fault and my boss knocks me out of the running for promotion. So what? I’m not going to get promoted. So what? It’s going to be horrible. I’m going to be ashamed, everyone is going to look at me, like, ‘Why didn’t he get promoted?’ I’m going to earn less money. It’s just going to be awful. So what? I’m going to feel bad.”

And you play it out. And a lot of times, certainly in what we’re talking about now, the world is not ending. The so-what is manageable. And, again, it’s that process of building a muscle that lets you sit with discomfort, yeah, maybe you did screw up, maybe that comment on your 360 really hurts, but it’s there. And the more distance we can get from all the uncomfortable feelings around that the better.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. So, we look at the so-what, or the whys, or the implications repeatedly, and I suppose the bottom of all of them will probably be an emotion. Is that fair to say, like, “Oh, and then I’ll feel a certain way. Okay, that’s where the end of this chain goes. All right”?

Morra Aarons-Mele
It could be. Or, even if you play out, “So what? I’m going to get not promoted, and then I’m going to get layered, and then they’re going to want me to leave, and I’m not going to have a job.” You sort of play it out until you realize, “Okay, these are very unlikely but even if, God forbid, I lose my job, I could probably get another one.”

And so, it’s not saying that the bad feeling isn’t correct at some level. Life is hard and we’re messy and we make mistakes all the time. We’re human. I’m not telling you to pretend like everything is fine. But I want you to give it the proper weight and consideration because, often, when we’re anxious, things get very, very intense when they don’t need to be, to your point.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, Morra, I’d love it, before we shift gears and hear about your favorite things, if you have any other super favorite practices or tactics that make a world of difference in this stuff.

Morra Aarons-Mele
I think that one of the things that I have learned and has been powerful for me is really, really important if you’re working from home, and if you’re on a lot of Zoom. And if you’re not working from home, and you’re out and about, or going into an office every day, you probably have your corolla but research shows that anxiety shows up in our body. Anxiety is a 360 reaction.

And, often, one of the ways to start tuning into your anxiety is to pay attention to your body and notice how it feels throughout the day, and notice how it feels before you’re standing Thursday meeting with your boss. When does your heart start beating? When do your hands start shaking? Are you clenching your muscles? So many of us clench, we clench down, we make our bellies really, really hard, and we clench our wrists, and we clench our jaws because we’re anxious and we’re stressed.

Your body is an amazing way to start tapping into this stuff, and you’ll probably feel better, too, because a lot of us take out our feelings on our bodies, and that makes it even harder.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And any thoughts associated with indicators that might be great to seek therapy?

Morra Aarons-Mele
I believe everyone should be in therapy.

Pete Mockaitis
Ah, yes, no indicators to see. Just do it.

Morra Aarons-Mele
I know that there are too many access issues to count, and cost issues. I know that. We are in a crisis of shortage, but if you can, therapy unlocks so much. Self-awareness is, I just saw a survey, it’s the most-prized quality in leaders because self-aware leaders are better people to work with. And therapy is just like the quickest way to unlock a lot of self-awareness I know.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now, could you share with me a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Morra Aarons-Mele
My quote is a little bit basic but it’s “The perfect is enemy of the good.” It’s something that I tell myself every single day and that I sort of hold up as an ideal as I try to manage my own perfectionism, and just take a lot of the investment and emotion out of every single thing I do because it’s just not worth it.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Morra Aarons-Mele
Well, I was going to say Feeling Good, the Feeling Good handbook by Dr. David Burns. Another book I really love is the The Anxiety Toolkit by Dr. Alice Boyes. I love really, really practical approaches to managing anxiety. Again, not anxiety that is crippling and totally disabling, but anxiety that you’re noticing and that you want to try to get a handle on.

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

Morra Aarons-Mele
Something that I use to be awesome at my job is breathing. I have found, over the past year, when I was in a very dark place, that keeping an eye on my breathing throughout the day is one of the biggest indicators towards keeping me energized, keeping my body pain-free after sitting on all those Zooms, and really helping with my mood and my anxiety level. I really clench my belly and don’t breathe deep. I just keep it all in my chest and that sets up a world of problems for me. And so, to be awesome at my job, I have to pay attention to my breathing.

Pete Mockaitis
So, is there a favorite breath-work practice or ratio or style that you love?

Morra Aarons-Mele
I’m a 4-7-8 girl.

Pete Mockaitis
Is that for going to sleep?

Morra Aarons-Mele
No, some people use it for going to sleep, but, for me, it helps me relax because it’s a little bit longer. So, you can do four breaths in, hold it for seven, and then try to exhale slowly, ideally, through your nose, for eight beats.

Pete Mockaitis
Four seconds in, seven seconds hold, eight seconds out. All right. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Morra Aarons-Mele
I think that the title of my podcast and my book is something that people smile at and feel really seen by Anxious Achiever. Again, it sort of takes the teeth out of something that is hard for a lot of people to talk about. And I find that it gives people a smile and opens up doors.

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

Morra Aarons-Mele
Well, I would love them to buy my book wherever they like to buy books. I’d love you to check out my podcast. There are over a hundred episodes full of amazing leaders, experts, psychologists, cutting-edge thinking, stories, all about work and mental health. And if you want to send me a message on LinkedIn, I’ll always write back.

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

Morra Aarons-Mele
My final action is to really, really practice tuning in. So much of what we do at work is from habit, it’s reflexive behaviors that we’ve been doing for years, and they’re not behaviors that are suiting us or the people that we work with. The way to become more awesome at your job is to become aware, and it starts with tuning in to what you’re feeling and when, and how your body is feeling, and how you’re reacting.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Morra, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you all the best.

Morra Aarons-Mele
Thanks so much, Pete.

Apr 06
0

854: Mastering Your Surprise Career Super Power: Notetaking with Anh Dao Pham

By | Podcasts | 3 Comments

 

Anh Dao Pham shares pro tips on developing the most underrated skill that makes a world of difference: note-taking.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why note-taking is a powerful differentiator
  2. The four-hour investment that ends up saving hundreds of hours
  3. How to synthesize your notes for maximum impact

About Anh

Anh Dao Pham, VP of Product & Program Management at Edmunds.com, has successfully led technical projects for two decades at start-ups and major corporations. In her book Glue: How Project Leaders Create Cohesive, Engaged, High-Performing Teams, Anh vividly brings compassionate, positive, nimble leadership to life, demonstrating with actionable guidance, the power of caring and connection to inspire outstanding results.

Anh lives with her husband and two children in Los Angeles, California.

Resources Mentioned

Anh Dao Pham Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Anh, welcome back to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Anh Dao Pham
Thank you so much for having me back, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to chat, and I think this may be the shortest follow-up interview we’ve ever had with a guest because you teased note-taking. I asked, listeners said, “Yes, yes, yes” numerous times, so we’re back, we’re talking note-taking, and I’m excited.

Anh Dao Pham
I’m excited, too. I’m always thrilled when people tell me they’re excited about note-taking because I always feel like I’m such a geek when I talk about it, but it is such an important skill so I’m so delighted that some of your listeners were interested in this topic, and I’m hoping that we give them what they want.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, me, too. And I thought we might start with, I know you use jingles to celebrate and commemorate things, any recent jingles that have tickled you and/or your teammates?

Anh Dao Pham
I haven’t written a jingle recently but I did write a very short “Roses are red, violets are blue” for you here.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, boy.

Anh Dao Pham
Just two, just so that…a couple here. First,

“Roses are red, violets are blue
Hello there, Pete,
I’m happy to see you.”

I thought it was nice for us to be together again, so thank you for that. And then the second for your note-taking crew,

“Roses are red, violets are blue
note-taking is awesome
And so are you.”

So, hopefully, everybody gets excited at this point about note-taking.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right. And heartwarming. All right. Okay, Anh, you mentioned in the last conversation that note-taking is your superpower. Can you tell us what’s super about it and why should professionals spend time working on this skill?

Anh Dao Pham
Well, note-taking has a ton of advantages. I feel like it’s one of the most underrated skills that we just don’t ever think about investing in. And, for me, it’s been so important to my career that I’d call it the cornerstone of my career. It’s like that one skill that, whenever I talk to people, I say, “You really have to think about note-taking,” and they’re always like, “Yeah, yeah, Anh, that sounds great but I may be not that interested.” But, to me, there’s really a few different benefits.

The first is people’s perception of you, and this is something that I don’t think people think about, but if you’ve, in particular, been in any sort of leadership position where you’re facilitating a meeting or having a discussion with people, and they see you taking notes and you’re typing, and you type slowly, their perception of you is not that you’re necessarily the smartest person.

And this is something that I feel like goes unspoken, but if you watch somebody typing, and they’re like pecking at the keyboard, you might perceive that they’re not as intelligent as they actually are. And that’s, I don’t think, an accurate representation in any way but it does affect people’s perception, in particular, if you’re facilitating a meeting and you’re taking notes slowly, and you’re slowing down the entire meeting.

Their perception of you is not that great. And so, I think mastering good note-taking is important just to make sure that people have a certain amount of respect for you when you’re doing your job if you’re taking notes.

The second is, at least for me, note-taking has been something that’s really made my learning process efficient. So, one of the things that I do, I do religiously in all of my meetings, is take notes. Whether or not I’m going to publish them or not, I take notes. And, for me, it just crystallizes my learning on things so it’s a part of my learning process.

And I started taking notes when I was in college. I was a math major and I was pretty lazy in summary cards. You don’t think of mathematicians as lazy but we kind of are. We’re looking for the most efficient way to do things, or maybe we’re advocates of efficiency is a better way to put it. But I was also a very slow reader. I just couldn’t go through textbooks. And anytime I was studying for a course and you had to read multiple chapters in the textbook, I just couldn’t get through that material.

And I had stumbled upon an article about note-taking, and they said, basically, if you take notes in some sort of structured format, then it improves your recall ability dramatically. And so, what I did was I just started taking notes in outline format, which is like a really traditional way to do it, in all of my lectures, and it was so effective when I was in college that I actually stopped buying the textbooks, like I didn’t read them.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, there you go.

Anh Dao Pham
Yeah, I went to lectures, I took good notes, and then I reviewed the notes, and most of the time, the professors would cover the material that was needed from the textbook in their lectures. And so, if I took good notes, I didn’t actually need to purchase the textbook anymore. So, after a couple of quarters, I just stopped altogether, so it saved me a ton of money, and I did well in those courses. I did pretty well.

I was at UCLA, and I got a pretty decent GPA coming out of college. So, it was really, really effective for me and has, to this day, been one of the reasons why people often compliment me on my memory. They’re always like, “You have such a great memory.” It’s like, “No, actually, I just spend a lot of time processing the information through note-taking, and that crystallizes my learning in a way that I feel like other people who were not participating as much, will have that as an advantage.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. And in your book Glue, on the chapter about note-taking, you mentioned that when you are consistently taking notes and sending them out, you’re really effectively cementing the impression of being a subject matter expert to those that you’re sending the notes to. Can you tell us about that?

Anh Dao Pham
That’s right. Absolutely. I see note-taking as a way to actually get informal power, and so I tell people that information is power. And when you capture information and you send it out and distribute it, you start to become seen as a subject matter expert on the information that you’re putting out there. There’s a misconception that you capture information and some people will capture information and hoard it as a source of power, but to me it’s actually the opposite.

If you think about, let’s say, reputable newspapers or content sites, the reason that people see them as an expert is because they put their content out there. And then when people think of a topic or a question, they know where to go for that information, and note-taking happens in the same way. So, if you’re the person who consistently is taking notes and then sending them out, and they’re good notes, then the people will start to see you as that person who knew this information, publishes information, and a place that they can go to get the information.

And that shifts the dynamic from somebody who’s just sort of a bystander in a meeting to somebody who actually holds information and is somebody who has a certain amount of power and influence in the situation.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now my brain is going to Bob Cialdini who endorsed your book. Kudos.

Anh Dao Pham
He’s amazing.

Pete Mockaitis
He’s one of my favorites. We were delighted to have him on the show when we finally got him. So, anyways, I’m thinking about the tools or principles of influence – reciprocity. I’m just thinking about how many times folks have been able to miss meetings either because they just want to save some time, or they really had some other obligations going on, and they were able to look to your notes to really save the day.

And so, I’m thinking, over your career, you’ve done that for many people many times, and I would hope that that gives you a little bit of sway when it’s time for you to ask for some help or some favors or some assistance.

Anh Dao Pham
Yeah, I would agree with that a hundred percent. The principle of reciprocity, I cannot even say that word, reciprocity is another thing that I talk about in the book, and also think a lot about in my career. And the interesting thing about that principle is that it’s not about giving something to get in that specific moment. It’s about establishing a pattern of giving and giving that benefit to other people so that at the time that you go to them at a later date, they actually are able to reciprocate and to provide something back to you because they’ve had that good feeling from you if you’re giving them something.

And I get this all the time, “Oh, I miss the meeting. Thank you so much for the recap. I was able to catch up.” In fact, oftentimes, the notes are way more efficient than being in the meeting. In particular, if you don’t need to be an active participant in the meeting to have the discussion but you need to understand what the outcome is, the notes are tremendously helpful.

I’ve had times before where, as an example most recently, one of our legal team members was asked a question, and he was searching through all of his documentation for anything about a particular discussion, and he said, “The most helpful information I found was actually from this recap that Anh took.” And I went back and looked at the notes, I was like, “I don’t remember this discussion at all. I’m so glad that we wrote it all down.”

And office settings often, in particular when you’re moving very fast, there isn’t a lot of things, there aren’t a lot of people who actually document things. And so, when you start doing that, it becomes often the system of record for whatever the discussion was that happened, and it helps all the people thereafter, either in the moment because they missed it, in some sort of a reminder capacity, like, “I can’t remember exactly what we talked about. I remember we covered this at some point.” Or, even very much later, like through this legal inquiry, some indicator of what was actually discussed and why we did it.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s beautiful. Well, shifting gears now into the how, you mentioned that in some ways, just your sheer typing speed is foundational. Can you speak to that?

Anh Dao Pham
Yes, typing speed is extremely important. Actually, out there, there are studies that talk about note-taking and how taking notes with a pen and pencil is actually more effective in terms of your ability to remember things. I actually believe that that’s kind of bunk but there are studies about that. I think the active, actually, taking information and then participating in it, that actually crystallizes things.

If you’re in an office setting, I would argue that typing is the equivalent of doing that pen and paper activity as long as you’re actually participating. But in order to be able to participate, you can’t be slowed down by your own skill to capture the information, so typing speed is extremely important. And I always tell people, if I notice them not typing as fast as I think that they can, to spend some time investing in themselves in that typing speed.

We always have people complain about how they don’t have enough time in their day, and if you spend a lot of time actually responding to emails or reading things or writing memos, this is a place where you can actually improve your efficiency significantly, and it doesn’t actually take that much investment. When I actually started typing, I was in high school, actually my transition from high school to college, and I attempted to go and get a job at a temp agency.

And at the time, I think I was around 18 or so. I got tested for my typing speed, and I came in at something like 40 words per minute. I’d never actually put in a concerted effort to improve my typing speed. And the people who were helping with the hiring said frankly to me, “Hey, this is just not going to cut it. Nobody is going to hire you for a temp position if you don’t get this typing speed up.”

And at the time I went home, and I happen to find a really old spiral-bound typing speed book that my mom had used when she was younger. And I picked it up, and I did a handful of drills, and I think I spent maybe three or four hours or so just doing a handful of drills. And then a couple days later, I went back and took the test again, and my typing speed was up to 60 words per minute.

So, it wasn’t actually that big of an investment. And if you think, if you currently type 45 words per minute and you can increase your typing speed to 60 words per minute, that’s like a pretty significant improvement in your efficiency, and it doesn’t take that much to invest in yourself to get that typing speed up. So, I feel like everybody should take a moment to do that if they haven’t already.

It’s funny, because when I say this or when people read the book, they’re like, “I went and tested myself, like right after I read that chapter.” And they’re always reporting their typing speed to me, I was like, “Great. Great. Do that.”

Pete Mockaitis
“Thank you.” You’ve seen a lot of these unsolicited reports. Well, you’re bringing some fond memories back. I remember I found a transcriptionist and he was so gung-ho. I think it was in one of those contractor platforms, like Fiverr or Upwork or something, and he said, “I’ve already started on it, and you can see.” And then he showed the Google Document which he was transcribing quickly, I was like, “Okay, there you go. That’s impressive.”

As well as he had a video in his portfolio, he was like, “Look at me on TypeRacer.com,” which is a website I’ve been to, to see, “Sure enough, you can type very fast.” And that’s impressive, and not just when you’re hiring a transcriptionist but for any number of roles. And I think there was an episode of “The Apprentice” back in the day.

I think maybe Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, why I remember this, maybe because it left an impression. He was typing so slowly, I was shocked.

Anh Dao Pham
And didn’t it affect your perception of him?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it did, and I already knew, like he’s a fraudster criminal, and it made it worse, and he can’t type fast. So, it makes an impression. I just want to mention, so right now, AI is so hot right now, and the ability for automated transcription to occur. What are your thoughts on that? Does that make it less important to be able to type quickly?

Anh Dao Pham
No, I think that, at the end of the day, typing is a way of processing information, so it depends on what you’re trying to use it for. Like, as an example, if you’re going to transcribe a podcast and you’re putting it out there because you want the content out there, then I think there’s absolutely no harm in doing some sort of automated transcription. You’re not actually trying to learn the material or do something with it. You’re just trying to make it available.

But, for me, the main reason I like to do note-taking or that I practice it religiously is because it does help me learn. And so, if you’re taking advantage of a tool to do that work for you, you actually lose out on the benefit of processing the information. When I think about typing and taking notes, the reason that it helps improve your memory is that you’re processing information multiple ways.

So, let’s say you’re in a meeting and you’re taking good notes, you’re listening to the information that’s coming in, and then you’re participating in the meeting, so, obviously, you’re likely there because you have some role to play. So, you’re participating in having some discussion, that’s like two ways, “I’m listening. I’m talking.” That’s another way to process the information.

And then if I actually write it down, I’m processing it a third way. So, all in the span of a one-hour meeting, I’ve now triple-processed the information. And it’s not just about writing the information down, but if you actually take the time to reorganize the information or write it in your own words, then you’re processing it another time. So, you’re like taking in the information and then outputting it in a way that is in your own words so that you can confirm that understanding.

So, all in that span of time, if you’re using your fast note-taking abilities and processing all this information, that information is going to get crystallized in your brain in a way that other people who are just listening or just speaking and not taking in all those different activities at the same time are not going to have to their advantage. So, that’s why you’ll come out of the meeting and learn this information so much more quickly.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, let’s say we have invested just a few hours in our typing speed, and it’s gone way up. Cool. Tremendous return on investment there. So, then let’s zoom in. We’re in an actual meeting, we’ve got our laptop, and our fast typing skills. I’m wondering if folks, right from the get-go, are thinking, “Is this even appropriate for me to whip out the laptop and be clanking away? Is this something that’s going to be distracting, annoying? Is this just more for junior people?” Can you talk to us about any resistance folks might have in the moment?

Anh Dao Pham
It’s really funny because I used to work in a startup called Opower, and at the time, I was the first person there who was a program manager. I was director of program management, and I was in charge of hiring other people for my team. And when I put out the job description, we put out an exercise. And in the exercise, it was just a handful of questions that the job applicants had to answer in advance. And one of the questions I’d put on there was, “How fast do you type?”

And the funniest thing about that question was it was the most controversial and telling question on the pre-application. Some people would write back, and the answers were so funny.

Pete Mockaitis
“It shouldn’t matter how fast I type.”

Anh Dao Pham
Exactly. Like, we did. We actually got responses like that, like, “This is not an admin job” was one of the responses, or, “I’m a hunt and pecker,” which was so funny to respond that way, but people were actually offended about this question, that they felt like it was beneath them. And, to me, that’s really telling when it’s like you should have the humility to do this work if it needs to be done on your project. So, if you’re thinking you’re above that, in any job, in anything that makes you better at your job, you should be willing and want to do.

And so, I feel like if there’s an ego there about it, you’re just shooting yourself on the foot by not taking advantage of this particular skill or this opportunity to do that. But I do see resistance because there is a certain amount of ego with it. Now, I would say, though, that most of the time the ego is coupled with a lack of skill. So, it’s like, “Why would you push back on it if you could do it?” It just seems like an odd combination. So, we do see some of that resistance.

Now, in the scope of actual meetings, and I come from a project management background but now I also do product management work, and I’m on the executive team, and I still go into meetings and take notes. And you would think, like, “Hey, as Anh moves up in her career, she’s going to do this less.” It’s like, no, actually, I’m not because, again, I think it becomes a very valuable resource, it’s important for my learning process, and people really appreciate it. So, why wouldn’t I continue to do that?

And people have come to know that I do this. They will rely on this skill, sometimes maybe too much, but they’ll rely on this skill, and this is something they can count on with me if they’re not able to attend a meeting, it’s like, “Hey, are you attending? Could you share your notes with me?” That’s like a huge benefit for them and it’s something that I think I’m always going to do.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s good. And no one has ever said, “Hey, cut it out,” or looked annoyed, like, “Ugh, your keyboard noise is such a distraction and annoying us, Anh.”

Anh Dao Pham
No, actually. And I do have long nails so I do clank a little bit on the keyboard. Now, if I’m in a meeting or on a Zoom or something, and you can hear the clanking, then I’ll mute myself so that it doesn’t happen. The only thing I would say is if you’re maybe on a one-on-one situation, and you’re sitting there, staring at your computer while you’re taking notes, or you’re concentrating so much on that, that’s not a great situation.

Some of those smaller form meetings, you might want to pay more attention to the conversation, or you might at least give a prerequisite or preamble before you actually start taking notes, like, “Hey, I’m going to be taking notes, but the reason I’m taking notes is because I’m listening to you so intently, and I want to make sure that I’m capturing this information.”

So, you can give that up front so that people know that that’s important to you for the purposes of this meeting. I’ve actually participated in interviews with companies before where the interviewer, it was just me and him, and he said, “Hey, this is a part of my process, so just know when I’m staring intently into the camera, I’m taking notes and it’s not you. It’s because I’m really trying to listen and make sure that I captured everything.”

So, I think you can phrase it in such a way, with whoever you’re meeting with, to let them know that this is an important part of the process, and that’s why you’re doing it, and that should cut out any hesitation for you taking on that task.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we got the typing speed up, hesitations are behind us, we’re in the moment, what do we actually do?

Anh Dao Pham
So, there’s a couple phases in the book I break this down on note-taking. In the very beginning of a project, oftentimes, you’ll start a project and not actually know what’s going on. And so, if you’re in a meeting and you’re trying to facilitate and you’re trying to take notes, sometimes that’s very difficult. And so, I call this phase the fake-it-till-you-make-it phase.

And the idea here is you’re listening intently, you’re asking questions when you don’t understand things, but you’re trying not to slow down the discussion or the meeting. And so, one thing you can do is if there are things that you really need clarification on, you can sort of jot them down. Sometimes I’ll create my own private note section, like, “Note to myself: Ask about this later because I don’t want to slow this down.”

But in the span of the meeting, what you want to do is try to capture the most salient points, the most important things, and there’s really only a couple of categories. One is, “What are the key decisions that are being made?” And then, two is, “Are there any sort of follow-up items or action items? And who’s going to be responsible for those?”

And in a meeting where you don’t exactly know what’s going on, and sometimes maybe they’re even using jargon that you don’t fully understand, the most important thing is to write down accurately what is being stated. And if you’re unsure, you can always prompt somebody, like, “Hey, I heard this word. It sounds like a decision was made. Is that true? If so, can somebody just restate the decision for clarity?”

And when you do that, it actually helps the meeting because, oftentimes, people will say, “Okay, great.” They’ll have a discussion and they’ll seem to have come to some sort of consensus, and then they’ll move on, but nobody actually stated the decision at the very end. And sometimes when you do that, and prompt, like, “Hey, I heard a decision or I think we made a decision. Can somebody state that?” It will actually clarify that maybe something was missed or maybe somebody had a slightly different understanding of the decision, so you’re actually helping the process by asking that question.

And then once it gets stated in a clear enough way, you can say, “Okay, so I heard this is the decision,” state the decision, and then write it down. So, you’re sort of capturing the most important things. And that, to me, is sort of the fake-it-till-you-make-it stage. And if there is jargon that is being used in that state where you don’t fully understand what they’re saying, you just make sure to repeat back, “This is what I heard you say. Is that right?” And then write that down in the way that they said it.

It’s not as important in this phase that you understand the notes as it is that the people who are in the meeting understand the notes and what’s next. And so, there you just want to capture exactly what they said, and a note to yourself to learn and understand it later. And then you can follow up with the person, ask those questions to make sure that you fully understand what you’re sending out. Don’t send out things that you don’t understand. Capture them and then make sure you understand them before you send it out because that’s how you’re going to get the benefit, ultimately.

So, that, to me, is like really the first phase. And then, over time, what you want to do is sort of graduate to a more, I’d say, mature note-taking phase where you’re then sort of going through the process, participating in the meeting, and then taking notes but organizing the information as you’re going along. And when we talk about note-taking, people ask me all the time, like, “Well, what’s the secret?” I was like, “Well, I don’t just take notes. I’m actually participating and then I’m summarizing the information in my own words.” And there’s a lot of benefits to that.

The first is really that when people speak, it doesn’t always make for good notes. If you capture everything verbatim, there’s uhms and ahhs, there’s pauses, there’s twists and turns, they might repeat themselves five times. It doesn’t make sense for you to write everything that everybody is saying. What you want to do is capture what the point of that discussion was. So, take a moment to sort of rephrase it for yourself in the most concise way, and then type that down.

And then, as you’re going through the meeting, you’re participating. And if you have read my book Glue, there’s actually two chapters next to each other. It’s the note-taking chapter, and then the next chapter is about synthesis. And I think, when you’re doing really successful note-taking or good note-taking, you’re actually practicing both skills at the same time. And so, note-taking is sort of the act of writing down the information and organizing it, but how do you actually organize the information? And there’s a few different ways to do it, through different techniques of synthesis.

And the simplest way of synthesis is to actually just try to sequence things. So, if somebody’s describing a process or a plan to do something, you’re kind of like sitting there and trying to write these things down in order. So, as people are talking through it, it’s like, “Okay, we needed to do step one.” “Okay, great. I captured that.” Then, suddenly, they’re talking about step two, and then it’s like, “Oh, well, actually, there’s something that needs to happen before that.” So, then you sort of reorganize that information and sequence it in a way.

Think of it as like I talk to my mom about recipes that she cooks for Vietnamese food, and sometimes she gives those steps in all different orders. Like, she doesn’t have anything written down because a lot of Asian cooks don’t. They don’t have recipes. They just kind of feel their way through. And when she conveys the information to me for how to cook something, I step back and go, “Okay, I heard you said this, this, and this,” and I’m like writing those down as if they were instructions that I could follow later. And that is a way to sort of synthesize the information.

So, when you’re taking good notes, you’re doing that. You’re not sort of just capturing anything as it comes along because then your steps may not be all out of order. You’re actually synthesizing them into something that’s useful and structured. And that, to me, is sometimes hard to do, but if you practice it over time, you get really good at it.

And when you’re doing it as well, it also helps you identify if there are gaps. So, in the book, I give an example about cooking chicken pho. It’s a recipe, and my mom’s giving me these instructions, and she says, like, “Hey, you’ve got these vegetables, you need to chop them up. And then you need to do X, Y, and Z.” And at the end, after I write it all down, I realize, “I didn’t do anything with these vegetables that I chopped up. What do I do with them?”

But if I didn’t sequence the information out, I wouldn’t necessarily realize that the vegetables didn’t go anywhere. And so then, it’s like, “Hey, mom, I missed the vegetables. Where do they go?” It’s like, “Okay, well, you add them at this point in time.” It’s like, “Okay, let me slot that in where it needs to happen.” And so, that active synthesis really helps you make sure that you fully understand the information.

So, when you’re capturing the information and then, ultimately, sending out, that it’s like 100% accurate, and you’ve helped identify potentially gaps in the information that you’ve plugged in as a part of that discussion.

Pete Mockaitis
So, sequence is fantastic in terms of, “How do I do this thing?” and in the course of a meeting, we say, “Oh, we should do this.” “Oh, but first I guess we got to do that.” “Oh, but that’s really going be contingent on this.” And so then, that really is super value added in terms of we had a jumble of discussion, and then what’s coming out the other side is, “Oh, here are the six steps. One, two, three, four, five, six. You made it look easy, Anh. Cool.”

So, that’s one style or approach of synthesis is sequence, chronology. Are there any other key frameworks or schemas that are handy when it comes to synthesizing?

Anh Dao Pham
Yeah, another active synthesis that I describe in the book is I call it inference. And so, this is like a really simple technique where you try to collect multiple pieces of information, and then you try to extrapolate another piece of information out of that. So, one of the mistakes that you’ll make maybe early on when you’re even participating in meetings, regardless of whether or not you’re taking notes, is you just take statements at face value.

So, it’s like, “Anh’s going to go on vacation this week. Pete has Anh scheduled for a podcast this week.” Those are two pieces of information. Now, if you’re not thinking about them, you just write those two pieces of information down, but if you’re thinking about them, you realize, “Anh’s on vacation this week, and Pete’s got a podcast. Well, Anh’s not going to make that podcast and we need to reschedule it.” There’s an extrapolation that happens.

And sometime those seems super obvious but, when you’re in a meeting, and when you’re in a lot of meetings throughout the day, oftentimes people are only participating and thinking about their one piece of it. So, I might only think about my thing, you might only think about your thing, and nobody’s connecting the two dots together.

And so, the act of inferences take those pieces of information, and then if you dare extrapolate and make another statement, a conclusion based off of that, just to make sure that you understand what the result is. So, maybe in this specific example, we say, “Oh, Anh is not going to be there for the podcast so we’ve got to reschedule it.” And I might say, “Oh, no, no, no, Pete is so special that I’m going to come out of my vacation and I’m going to take this call with him so that I can be on this podcast.” And you’re like, “Okay,” and all worked out.

So, the extrapolation was incorrect in that statement, but we clarified something that was really important that everybody missed and nobody said it out loud.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s fun.

Anh Dao Pham
And so, to me, that’s a great skill and it’s really simple. The one thing on that skill that you have to be okay with is getting things wrong. And I think in note-taking, in general, or any sort of synthesis, you have to be okay with getting things wrong and having people correct you, and it’s not until people have corrected you enough and you got it right in the way that you’ve written it down, that you know that you understand the material, so you have to get pass that, but I think the benefits are huge.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And I think that can, over time, expose some themes and patterns in terms of, “Oh, okay, this person will make vacation exceptions for super important things,” or, “Does not ever want to be interrupted on their vacation.” And so, that’s a very narrow extrapolation or theme or pattern recognition.

And then, in a way, it’s even helpful for the individuals in terms of, “Oh, here’s how I’m communicating, and here’s what’s often missed. Okay.” And you mentioned that when you are taking your notes, what you want to record, the most critical things such as the decisions made and the action items, who will do what by when. To what extent do we want to share the key considerations of those decisions?

Because sometimes those conversations are quite meandering, and then they landed on a decision. And sometimes they’re quite clear, “Oh, this critically hinges upon four key inputs.” So, how do you think about note-taking in these environments?

Anh Dao Pham
Yeah, I’d say it’s kind of an elevation of note-taking. So, if you’re in the beginning, and you’re still just trying to keep up with the Joneses in your note-taking, then it’s fine to capture just the most salient points, meaning the key decisions and the action items. I think that’s like the minimum that you really want to capture in order for your notes to be useful to others.

But once you progress to being able to extrapolate and organize information in your note-taking, and, ideally, doing that in real time because you’re participating, then you do want to be capturing the why. And I think that is one of the biggest things that helps you actually remember the material, is understanding the why.

It’s very difficult to just understand or remember words verbatim unless they’re maybe in a song, or the alphabet, or you have some sort of moniker for them. But when you actually understand the underlying reason, you don’t actually have to necessarily understand or remember the outcome. You can kind of reason your way there, if that makes sense.

A similar example from memory was when I was in high school, I took the Calc BC test to see if I could get credit for my Calculus course. And our teacher had covered this concept called the trapezoid rule, which is a way to calculate the area of a particular shape through an integration, or through an integral, and he explained how it was actually put together.

So, when you actually do the trapezoid rule, basically what you do is you take a line of the curve, and then you split it into trapezoids, and then you add all the trapezoids together, and that’s how you actually come up with the total are below the curve. This is like me super geeking out on the math side of things. But when I got to the AP test for this calculus exam, the first thing on the test was this trapezoid rule, and I remembered coming out of it, and everybody was, like, “Oh, my gosh, does anybody here remember the trapezoid rule? Like, how could you possibly remember that?”

And it’s like, “Well, I remembered how he explained it to me. I remember that you had to actually create trapezoids, and I know how to calculate the area of a trapezoid so I just kind of was able to derive the formula as I was going through.” And I know that was such a geek example but it stuck with me so much because I remember, like, “Well, because he explained the why, and I understood how it worked, I didn’t actually have to remember the formula at the very end.”

And so, to your point, if you’re going through and you’re having these conversations, if you can capture the why, participate in the why, then you may not even need to remember the outcome because if somebody is asking, you can say, “Oh, well, I remember we talked about this and that, and this was good. And so, the conclusion must’ve been this.” And I think that that’s very powerful as well to have that information so that you can reason through those things.

Pete Mockaitis
That is really good. And I find that when I don’t have an understanding of a why, or the why is just nonsense to me, I have a hard time remembering anything associated with the conversation or anything there. So, that’s really insightful.

Anh Dao Pham
It’s like your brain almost discards the information. It’s like a superfluous piece of information, you’re like, “That didn’t make sense. It didn’t fit into the puzzle pieces of my brain, so I’m just going to kind toss it out.” And then once you truly understand that, whether or not you agree with it is a different question, but if you at least understand the reason that got you there, then, typically, you’re going to remember the answer.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then any tips when it comes to shorthand, organization, or sending them out, or platforms?

Anh Dao Pham
I mostly advise people to use the tools that are most easy for them to use. You want to use what’s most comfortable for you. So, this is like a really simple example but at my office, we used to have computers in the room, in the conference rooms, for our meetings, and then you could also bring your laptop and plug it in.

And one of the things that I would do pretty regularly is I would bring up the conference room with a computer, and then put my notes documents up on the screen so that people could see it, but then I would actually take notes from my laptop. So, it was just projecting the information through one mechanism and taking notes from my laptop.

One time a person asked me, “Why do you do that?” I was like, “Well, I type much faster on my laptop because the keyboard is the keyboard that I practice on. The keys are a certain height. I’m just more comfortable there.” And it’s such a small tip but if you are much faster on your laptop, then go ahead and use that as advice.

And, similarly, if you’re very familiar with a particular word processing program, if you much prefer Word or Google Docs or something like that, use the mechanism that you think is going to be the fastest and easiest for you to use. Then if you send them out, you might want to translate them or post them somewhere in a shared document, depending on what your company uses, but I’d say when you’re at least capturing the information, use the device and tools that are most comfortable for you.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And when you mentioned your book, when you send them out, you want to do so as promptly as possible.

Anh Dao Pham
Yes, you do because, honestly, things move so fast that the information may be invalid or have changed over time. So, if I sit too long sometimes on a recap, sometimes people have completed the action items and they’ve already come to slightly different conclusions. So, you want the information to go out as timely as possible, and you want it to be timely and accurate and concise if possible, and to get them to the broadest population that you can that’s relevant to them.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Anh, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about more of your favorite things?

Anh Dao Pham
I’d say the only thing that I wanted to reiterate is I think that, again, note-taking is a very learnable skill, and it’s one of the things that people don’t pay attention to, they don’t think about investing in, and I think that there are so many different benefits if you just invest a little bit more in yourself, that you’ll have. This is in your arsenal for the rest of your career, and reap those benefits.

And I feel like the only thing you need to get over is, if you don’t type very fast, and don’t practice this skill often, just to let your ego get out of the way, and spend a little bit of time, and know that it’s going to benefit you over the course of your career.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Anh, we spoke pretty recently but you mentioned that you did prepare some additional favorite things. So, lay it on us, how about another favorite quote?

Anh Dao Pham
So, recently, I was reading a book called Be Water, My Friend by Shannon Lee. It’s a book about the philosophies of Bruce Lee. And my favorite quote from the book is “The usefulness of a cup is in its emptiness.” And maybe this goes along with that sort of theme of getting out of your own way. One of the things that they talk about in the book is there’s a proverb about a person who is meeting a Zen master, and he’s talking about something, and his Zen master is trying to give him feedback but he’s not listening to anything.

And so, the Zen master takes tea and starts pouring it into a cup, and then the cup starts overflowing, and the person says, “The cup is overflowing. It can’t hold any more tea.” He’s like, “Well, how can you learn anything if your mind is already full.” And I love that quote because it reminds me, if I’m sort of struggling with something, maybe it’s because I have a preconceived notion or something, my mind is too full that it can’t receive the information to understand the truth.

And I feel like when I get stuck, I’ll often think about that, like, “Is there a way that I, again, could be looking at this differently or sort of letting go of some particular assumption or reservation that I have in order to get out of my own way?”

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

Anh Dao Pham
Have you seen the TED Talk by Derek Sivers: How to start a movement?

Pete Mockaitis
You know, I think I have long ago.

Anh Dao Pham
It’s one of my favorites. I think it’s a two-minute TED Talk, really, really short. And what I love about it is it’s entertaining as well as it packs a punch of a message. And, basically, he shows a video of a person who’s sort of like dancing like a crazy person on a hill. It’s a hill with a bunch of people who were sort of sitting, maybe it’s like a picnic or a show or something.

And there’s one person who gets up, and he starts dancing. And then after he’s dancing for a period of time, then one second person gets up and starts dancing. And then just a few minutes later, all of a sudden, people swarm together and start dancing together. And he says, “Hey, we’ve started a movement.”

And the interesting thing about this is he says people think about leadership as the first person who actually started the movement, but, actually, it was the first follower who was the most impactful because the first follower joins that leader, and the quote is, “Without the first follower, the leader is just a lone nut.”

And I love that because it stresses the importance of being not necessarily the person who’s typically designated as leader, but a leader in a different capacity. And, in a way, I think note-taking is kind of similar to that. Sometimes you’re offering support in your role, and when you offer support, it offers a different kind of leadership. And the first follower is actually the person who helps create the movement. Without the second person, there never would’ve been a swarm of other people.

So, if you haven’t seen the TED Talk, I highly recommend it. It’s not exactly a study but the message packs a powerful punch.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Anh Dao Pham
I was thinking about different books. I read books in all different genres. And kind of in the note-taking theme, I actually have two favorite books on the topics of writing, and these were books that I read when I was writing Glue. The first is On Writing Well by William Zinsser, and it’s a book about writing nonfiction. He actually talks, too, about if you’re writing in business but you’re not a person who’s aspiring to be an author, how important it is to be able to express your words concisely. And I found that it was just such an impactful book, not long at all, but just packed a great message.

The second book on writing is Stephen King, an author that I’m sure everybody is familiar with, called On Writing. It’s more about writing fiction, but I think both of them just teach you that there are so much more to learn in the craft of writing. And while note-taking isn’t the same as writing a book, I think it just reminds you that there are ways that you can always improve on what you’re doing, and something that you’re doing every day on a daily basis in your jobs.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool?

Anh Dao Pham
It’s funny because I’ve been saying, “I really like typing so I like to do everything electronically,” but my favorite tool is actually Post-Its, Post-it notes. I love Post-it notes. When I have lots of tasks that I needed to do, I’ve got lots of Post-it notes all over my desk. In fact, you can see when I’m really busy because I’ll  have lots of Post-it notes everywhere.

But I use them for facilitating meetings. If you’re doing sort of any in-person discussion, or any sort of brainstorming, or clustering exercises. I love all of that. If you’re doing timelines, it’s easy to plot things out in a timeline. Or, in a case where you maybe don’t want to take notes or you have the luxury of having people in person, and you want to sequence information. This is great. You can write a Post-it, you can move them around. It’s wonderful. I love them so much that people will joke sometimes that I must’ve invested in 3M.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Anh Dao Pham
I read a lot. And I feel like people forget that they can read to get information. Probably not your listeners. I think maybe they do like to read, and you have a lot of guests who are authors, but one of the things I find so beautiful about today is that you can learn about almost anything you want to learn about because there are so many resources out there through videos, through blogs, etc. But I love reading books. I feel people gravitate now to online content for a lot of things, or short-term content, but I feel there’s nothing better than a really well-put together book.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you’re known for?

Anh Dao Pham
Outside of being a lover of note-taking and a lover of Post-its, in the book and the other things that we had talked about in the last podcast I did, people do talk to me a lot about this idea of not having to have a project plan when you’re a project manager. The other thing that I often get asked about is this methodology I introduced in the book about project management called CALM. And it means closely aligned, loosely managed.

And it’s a way of managing projects without managing them as hands-on, as typical project managers might. Through alignment and setting clear goals, and then giving people ownership over their respective tasks rather than trying to dictate and control everything. So, I get asked about that a lot.

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

Anh Dao Pham
I’d love it if folks could contact me through my website. It’s www.GlueLeaders.com. In there, you can find, again, all the links to any information about my book, this podcast when it’s available, as well as the last podcast that you had me on, Pete. So, thank you so much for the opportunity. And, yeah, if you’d like to reach out or have any other questions about note-taking or anything else in the book, I’d love to hear from you.

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

Anh Dao Pham
I’d say, at least with respect to note-taking, just try it. Just try it and, again, practice. It takes a lot of practice, and practice doesn’t actually make perfect. I feel like, as a person in my career, I’m almost looking for a way to progress, and I never have finished progressing. And so, I’d say practice and continue to strive to make yourself better because I think everybody has the capacity to do more and better as long as they put their minds to it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Anh, this has been a treat. I wish you much luck and many good notes.

Anh Dao Pham
Thank you. I hope your listeners really enjoy this note-taking, and I’d love to hear from them. Thank you again for the opportunity, Pete.

Apr 03
0

853: The Four Workarounds that Help Solve Nearly any Problem with Paulo Savaget

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

Paulo Savaget says: "The idea of working around requires adaptation, flexibility, and it is imperfection learning as well."

Paulo Savaget reveals unconventional tactics to solve just about any problem.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The four workarounds–and how to use them.
  2. How to maximize incentives to start change.
  3. Why you shouldn’t let limited resources stop you.

About Paulo

Paulo Savaget is associate professor at Oxford University’s Engineering Sciences Department and the Saïd Business School. He holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge as a Gates Scholar and has a background working as a lecturer, consultant, entrepreneur, and researcher finding innovative solutions for a more inclusive world. As a consultant, he worked on projects for large companies, non-profits, government agencies in Latin America, and the OECD. He currently resides in Oxford.

Resources Mentioned

Paulo Savaget Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Paulo, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Paulo Savaget
Thank you very much for inviting me, Pete. It’s a pleasure to be here with you.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes. Well, I’m excited to be chatting about your wisdom. And I’d love to hear, you’ve seen a lot of creative solutions to a lot of interesting problems. Could you point to any particularly intriguing and creative solutions that have really stuck with you over time?

Paulo Savaget
I think I have to start with an example before defining the concept that I introduced in this book of workarounds. I work with these organizations in Zambia that address lack of access to diarrhea treatment. It’s an organization composed only by two staffs, so very small organization but feisty and creative in the ways they address the problem.

If you think of why medicines and many, including lifesaving medicines, that are cheap over the counter, that even populations living in extreme poverty could possibly afford, and if you try to understand the bottlenecks preventing these medicines from being found, you’re going to identify things like very poor infrastructure, or logistics, or governance issues, things that are very difficult to tackle.

And many organizations worldwide have been trying to address these bottlenecks but they might be very costly, there are many failures that arise throughout the process, failures that you may not be able to conceive from the outset.

So, what did this organization do? They realized that you don’t find these lifesaving medicines in remote regions, but you find things like Coca-Cola everywhere, even in the remotest places on earth, you find Coca-Cola and other fast moving consumer goods, like sugar, coffee, cooking oil. So, they started, literally, taking a free ride with Coca-Cola bottles to make medicines available in remote regions.

That’s what I call a workaround. It’s this idea that you don’t have to necessarily tackle an obstacle to get things done. There are many creative ways of addressing problems. And, in this case, as you can see, Pete, they bridge across silos, they addressed a problem in healthcare by piggybacking on the success of fast moving consumer goods.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, when we talk about a free ride in the Coca-Cola bottles, the medicines are literally placed inside the bottles of Coke?

Paulo Savaget
In the beginning, they started fitting medicines between bottles in a Coca-Cola crate. When I went to Zambia, I saw how the distribution of Coca-Cola happens, and it’s very decentralized. So, Coca-Cola doesn’t necessarily know where the bottles travel to. Let’s say that Coca-Cola produces Coca-Cola, and then there’s a local bottler that is outsourced, then many wholesalers, retailers, supermarkets, and people transporting Coca-Cola ranging from vans of hospitals, so even bicycles when they’re reaching the last mile.

I’ve seen, for example, someone riding a bike with a crate of Coca-Cola and, like, a goat strapped around the bike. So, it’s a very decentralized value chain that Coca-Cola doesn’t even know where the bottles end up going to sometimes. And it’s fascinating how robust and resilient the value chain is because these glass bottles, they return. They go and they return to the origin.

So, the idea that was initially fitting medicines between the bottles in Coca-Cola crates, so the medicine can take a free ride. And as they started this intervention, they realized that they could build and piggyback on the entire distribution chain that makes fast moving consumer goods so successful. It’s not simply fitting medicines between bottles to take a free ride, you can actually use the same actors that distribute and sell Coca-Cola to do that for diarrhea treatments, which is over the counter.

There’s no prescription and it doesn’t require refrigeration. People who live in even extreme poverty could afford this medicine. So, that’s how they evolve the intervention. And the uptake of the medicine, in a very short period of time, we’re talking about six, seven years, increased the intervention districts from less than 1% to more than 50%, saving thousands of lives.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Okay. So, there’s one right there, the piggyback, and so there, it’s quite literally distribution of something on top of something else. That’s really cool and beautiful to see the impact when that’s implemented.

Paulo Savaget
Pete, it doesn’t necessarily have to be distribution. You might piggyback, for example, in a marketing budget from another organization. For example, let me give an example that is not distribution-related. Airbnb, when it was very small, it started with this value proposition of matching people who had lodging to offer with people who needed lodging.

At that time, most people who didn’t want to stay at hotels and wanted these sorts of arrangements, would go to Craigslist, but Craigslist didn’t have a very good user experience because it had, literally, everything bad. It was sort of the yellow pages on the internet. So, when Airbnb started, they had a better platform with better user experience and offered a more customized service, including professional photography of the houses that would be listed.

The problem was that people didn’t know about Airbnb. So, what did they do, which was genius, this workaround that they pursued? They started piggybacking on their rival, on Craigslist, to increase the visibility for their listings. And how did they do that? Let’s say that I’m Airbnb and you are someone who want to list your house on Airbnb, and you are a first mover, you identified Airbnb pretty early and you post your listing to your own Airbnb. And then I would send you a message saying, “Hey, Pete, you listed your house here with us. And if we cross-post your listing on Craigslist, it’s going to increase your visibility because a lot of people use Craigslist, and it’s free, and we’re going to do that for you.”

And, of course, you would say, “Yes, go ahead,” because you have nothing to lose, not going to take any of your time or money, and it would increase your chances of getting your house rented. So, they did that, they cross-posted on Craigslist. And let’s say that someone else who’s going on Craigslist who did not know about the existence of Airbnb, and then they tried to find accommodation, then they see your listing that was much better, it looked better, it had professional photographs, once they click on it, they are redirected to Airbnb’s website.

So, what would happen to these people? They started going directly to Airbnb the next time they were searching for lodging. And that happened to a lot of people and it had an exponential impact as well because of word of mouth, they started talking about Airbnb. That was a way of scaling and increasing massively the user base of Airbnb without having to draw up diamond ads. They simply piggybacked on their rival. And when Craigslist realized that Airbnb was trying to poach their users, it was already late. Many users were already using Airbnb, and Airbnb took off.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. So, we got a piggyback there in the marketing domain, so beautiful. All right. Well, so we’ve got a couple fun examples of piggybacking, which is one of the four workarounds. Can we zoom out a bit and tell me what’s sort of the big idea or main thesis behind the book The Four Workarounds?

Paulo Savaget
The main idea is that we often find ourselves in complex situations, problems that you may not necessarily be able to solve, or that make you feel paralyzed, and workarounds can help you with that. They allow you to get things done in a very effective way but also in a resourceful way, getting quick results, and sometimes allowing you to make outsized impact as well.

So, workarounds are very accessible imperfection-loving methods that allow you to get things done in very different contexts. And I try to show that based on the knowledge and this research that I’ve done starting with computer hackers to see how they hack systems to make change so resourcefully, and sometimes with meager resources. They make these huge impacts in computer systems. And then with very scrappy organizations worldwide that were being hacky as they approached their own problems.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that makes sense as I imagine being in a computer situation, like, “Huh, how do we get this thing to go everywhere fast? Well, piggyback off something that’s already going everywhere fast. Okay, there’s a resourceful thing we just did there without a lot of developer time, without a lot of money. We made that happen.”

So, we talked about the piggyback. I understand there’s three other categories of workarounds in the book: the loophole, the roundabout, and the next best. Could you define and then give an example of each of these? For example, with the loophole, I was intrigued by the Brazilian ventilator case study. Can you lay it on us?

Paulo Savaget
Sure. The loophole consists of these approaches that reinterpret rules and that leverage ambiguity, and sometimes tap into different systems of rules that are not necessarily the most obvious but are applicable to your circumstance as well. In this case that came from Brazil was from a governor of the poorest state in Brazil, called Flavio Dino.

At the time, well, he’s a former judge, and he had a very good understanding of what the rules allow but also what they don’t, and he was an enemy of the then president Jair Bolsonaro, and he saw himself, as many other politicians at the time, struggling to get ventilators for the hospitals in the time that COVID hit in the very beginning. And it’s a state that is particularly challenged to offer healthcare because it’s one of the poorest ones.

So, he got some funds from local partners, many partners that were in the private sector, to buy ventilators but the problem was that every time they tried to purchase these ventilators something happened. So, once, for example, they tried to purchase ventilators, and because the ventilators were coming from China, and they had to stop somewhere to refuel because there’s no direct flight from China to Brazil, they first went to the United States, and because there was a shortage of ventilators, the ventilators were confiscated.

Then the second time they did that in Germany, and the same thing happened. The ventilators were confiscated in Germany. Then they thought, “We have to work around this,” and they worked around a series of obstacles to get these ventilators into his state, and they had to stack workaround after workaround.

So, the first one was that, because of the accountability and the bureaucracy from the state, it would take a lot of time to be able to procure directly these ventilators from the manufacturer in China. So, instead of getting the funds from the companies and purchasing through the government, the companies themselves were purchasing the ventilators and then donating to the state. So, that was a first way of speeding things up.

Then, because one of them was a supermarket, and the other one was a mining company, and both had operations in China and many suppliers in China, they had local connections, and these local connections went to these manufacturers, procured, and also waited until they actually got the ventilators.

Then they took a flight that wasn’t a commercial flight, as in the previous times that they failed. So, they got a plane to do this flight, and instead of going through more conventional routes, they stopped in Ethiopia to refuel because the chances of getting the ventilators confiscated in Ethiopia, or even monitored by local authorities, was not as high.

After refueling, they had to go to São Paulo. They couldn’t go directly to that state, so when they went there, the challenge was that all ventilators, at the time, were being controlled by the federal government, and redistributed by the federal government to the states. But these were being procured by a single state, the state of Maranhão. So, what did they do?

They went to São Paulo at the time in which they already had a second flight arranged in a way that they wouldn’t have to go through customs in São Paulo. They could do that in Maranhão because there was also custom services at the airport in Maranhão. But when they landed in Maranhão and everything was planned, it was a time that people who worked at customs were no longer working because it was after their work hours.

So, when it landed in Maranhão, the team of the governor took the ventilators to the hospital and signed the documents saying, “We’re going to come back here later to do the customs procedures, the necessary customs procedures that are our responsibility from the federal government.” So, they took the ventilators to the hospitals, they started being used immediately, and next day, they went there to file the paperwork for the federal government to do the customs procedure.

When the federal government realized, they were not happy because these ventilators were supposed to be taken by the federal government and redistributed, but they couldn’t go to the hospitals and take these ventilators that were already being used and already saving lives of people. They would never be able to do that. And when they tried to bring this case to court, they didn’t really have a strong case because the process was technically right, and it was a state of emergency as well, so they didn’t necessarily violate any rule.

They did the technical administrative procedure to get these ventilators through and to the hospitals in Maranhão but they found these ingenious ways of circumventing all these obstacles in the way.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. Well, keep them coming. Let’s hear about the roundabout.

Paulo Savaget
So, the first one, the piggyback, was about leveraging these different relationships, cross silos, finding unconventional pairings, like addressing lack of access in medicines with Coca-Cola’s value chain. And the second one, as I said, it’s about rules, reinterpreting or leveraging ambiguity, different sets of rules. The third one is about self-reinforcing behaviors.

Self-reinforcing behaviors, when I teach systems change here at Oxford, we describe them as positive feedback loops. It’s another terminology for that. That means that there are some behaviors that spiral out of control, and that normally they become…they’re seen as if they were inevitable. So, let me give a few examples, a very trivial one.

When I was a child and I have an older brother, I would fight against my brother very often, and I would flick him, he would slap me, I would punch him, and then, suddenly, like he was trying to choke me, and we were trying to kill each other. So, things spiral out of control. The same with a snowball, for example, that’s what we call self-reinforcing behavior.

And the workaround that I call roundabout offers the possibility of disturbing or disrupting a self-reinforcing behavior. A very critical example that I like to share is one that I noticed when I was in India. I was in Delhi, and I realized that some walls were drenched in urine because public urination is a very normalized behavior, and it’s a very gendered issue because women do not necessarily urinate in public spaces but men do.

And every time you talk to someone, and say, like, “Why is this issue still such a big problem here?” people would say, “Ah, it’s inevitable. It’s culture. It has existed for so long.” So, it’s this kind of self-reinforcing behavior that is very difficult to change, to tackle. Even the efforts, for example, to provide public toilet facilities have not necessarily generated the results that the policymakers expected.

So, this roundabout workaround that is so small but so genius was that some wall owners, who had their walls drenched in urine, started putting tiles of Hindu gods on the walls.

Pete Mockaitis
Tiles of what?

Paulo Savaget
Hindu gods, like Shiva.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Hindu gods. Okay.

Paulo Savaget
Yeah, because a man, regardless of their religion, in a country where the majority of the population is Hindu, they would not dare to urinate on a god. So, by putting these tiles of Hindu gods, they disturbed these self-reinforcing behaviors, and the walls that were once drenched in urine became cleaner, and cleaner, and cleaner, and they diverted the stream of urine to other places, not to their walls.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Paulo, this is fresh. We haven’t had a good urine example across 840 plus episodes, so I dig this. When I was reading through your book a bit, I don’t know if this example fits neatly into this categorization, but it kind of reminded me, like the reinforcing, the roundabout, when we invert it, we’d get a different result.

I remember one time I did some speeding. Naughty Pete. Drive safely, everybody. But I did some speeding, I was young and foolish, and I didn’t know that the speed limit changed quickly from a state route to, like, we’re inside a village. So, anyway, I got a ticket for big speeding, and they said, “Hey, if you go to this driver safety class, then we can reduce the fine and prevent it from being on your record and causing problems and insurance, whatever.” I was like, “Okay, yeah, let’s do that.”

And I thought I was so brilliant; this state police officer was teaching this class on safe driving that nobody wanted to be at. All of us just wanted to just, like, tuned out but that doesn’t make for a great educational environment in which you can really learn and retain things. So, he did what I think – Paulo, you tell me, this might be a roundabout. He ingeniously said, “Okay, every time you answer a question, or you contribute, I want to make a tally mark on this chalkboard, and that represents one minute that you get to leave earlier.”

So, the class was maybe four hours, I don’t know. And so then, suddenly the incentives were turned around, like, “Oh, well, we would like to leave sooner, and even though this is boring, we can achieve the objective of leaving sooner by participating.” And, sure enough, it made for a pretty engaging class on safe driving that none of us wanted to be at because he inverted our incentives on us.

Paulo Savaget
Exactly. That’s a great example that I hadn’t heard before, and it reminded me of an example that I didn’t include in the book but it’s kind of similar to what you said, also about speeding in Sweden, that they created this policy that they took the fines from people who were speeding, and created a lottery for people who did not speed.

So, let’s say that you didn’t get a fine that month, you would be joining the lottery, like you might make some money out of this. But, of course, we like the gamification aspect of this. We like lottery. We like the thrill. So, a lot of people stopped speeding, not because they didn’t want to pay the fine but because they wanted to be part of the lottery.

And that’s similar to what you’re saying, you change the incentive. You turn something negative into something positive. Or, the language of many economists, it would be turning the sticks into carrots, the idea of carrots and sticks.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Well, let’s hear about the fourth workaround here, the next best. You got a cool drone example. Could you share that?

Paulo Savaget
Of course, yeah. So, the next best is about repurposing resources or recombining them in ways that are unconventional and beyond the original design of these resources. And resources can be tangible or intangible. The drone example is from an organization called Zipline. As you know, there’s a lot of expectations about drones as technologies.

Perhaps the company Amazon will soon be delivering your products, Amazon Prime, Next Day with drones in New York, like going in San Francisco, but the reality is that it’s not viable yet. So, the many organizations that are interested in investing in drone delivery in places, where at places that are not as busy, and in a way that they can build capabilities, they can develop themselves, they can patent, and then later have this competitive advantage when a drone becomes viable in many places.

So, these organizations, I thought it was genius how they used drones to forge a hand in this game, and they used drones in Rwanda. Also, a case about the last mile, these very remote regions where healthcare is very difficult to get, and they deliver to remote regions, blood for blood transfusions, because blood is very challenging to deliver or to store in remote regions with very poor electricity and healthcare facilities but they are needed urgently, like you don’t have a lot of time, it cannot wait much if you need a blood transfusion.

So, they started shipping from a central facility in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, blood to these many rural regions that are so hard to reach via roads or normal more conventional transportation methods. And this has been extremely successful and has scaled to other places as well. And as they did this, they created patents, they understood better how to operate drones, to make deliveries with drones, and they built all these skill and knowledge while saving lives and contributing a lot to healthcare in Rwanda.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, beautiful, Paulo. So, we got a nice little rundown of these four workarounds. I’m curious, is there a type or category of problem or trigger that gets you thinking, since you know this stuff really well, “Ah, there’s probably one of the four workarounds I can use here.” What are some of those triggers or signals?

Paulo Savaget
They boil down to the core attributes. If there’s something that you think is paralyzing you because it’s a very normalized behavior, go with the roundabout. If there’s a rule, for example, that is constraining you, a legislation, a customary rule, something that is habit, for example, or something that is in the constitution but you think is unfair, go with the loophole.

If you have these possibilities of crossing boundaries and these lines that managers often draw, but they might be arbitrary. We don’t have to address healthcare problems only with the methods from healthcare. We can use fast moving consumer goods to deliver medicines to remote regions. That’s a good way of thinking of a piggyback, how you benefit or leverage the success of orders for your benefit as well.

And if you have resources at your disposal, and that you can repurpose or combine them in different ways beyond the original functions or the most conventional ways of using them, then go with the next best.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. All right. Well, let me just put you on the spot and throw some problems on you that I hear from listeners frequently. One, “I’m overwhelmed by too many projects, responsibilities, action items, emails, meetings.” How can we work around some of that?

Paulo Savaget
That’s great. I also face similar challenges and I try to constantly work around some of them. The idea of working around requires adaptation, flexibility, and it is imperfection learning as well. Like, you do something that is good enough. So, when you start with pursuing workarounds, it conduces to planning less and being more adaptive. It’s more pragmatic. It’s more practical. It’s less about long-term changes and behaviors.

Let me give an example of something that I’ve done that was related to sending emails that I think might resonate with some of our listeners. A long time ago, before I started studying workarounds, I was an intern and I had a boss who, very erratically, answered emails. And, of course, I was frustrated because I wanted my emails to be answered. Then I started talking to other people who worked with him, and I realized that he had a certain pattern of email answering that he normally started from the top of his emails, and he started answering emails very early in the morning because he was an early bird.

So, let’s say he woke up at, like, 5:00 a.m., and then he would answer emails for, like, two hours starting from the top. I infer that based on conversations and from the many emails I had sent him that were answered or not. So, what I started doing, I programmed my emails to be sent in the wee hours of the morning.

So, let’s say that I wrote the email at 6:00 p.m., I would program that email to be sent at, like, 3:47 a.m. because then it would go to the top of his pile of emails. And that increased a lot the rate of response for all these emails that I wanted to get answered. That was a workaround in our workplace that might…I still haven’t told that former boss what I’ve done.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, he’s not listening. And just to reinforce the learning, I guess we might call that a piggyback, in that you are piggybacking your way into the golden timeframe via simple software a bit. Or, what category would you put on that?

Paulo Savaget
I would actually consider that a next best because the next best is about resources and repurposing resources. I thought of emails and use them in different ways to communicate and identify the times that work best for my emails to be sent. We don’t normally think of the times that your email will be sent, and that’s how I repurposed, yeah, the ways I communicated. So, I would call it a next best.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, let’s hear another one. This might be tricky when it’s about interpersonal relations. Like, let’s say someone says, “My boss, or my key colleague, I got to work with is just a jerk. They’re engaged in some toxic and narcissistic behaviors, and it is just tough being around them.” Any clever workarounds that can be put to this thorny interpersonal stuff?

Paulo Savaget
Definitely. One of the chapters in my book describes how you can pursue workarounds in your organization. And I try to challenge a little bit this idea that collaboration is necessarily beneficial or better in every circumstance. Sometimes you will face people that are toxic, that you don’t want to work with, or that might be too slow or not contributing much to your projects.

So, many of the cases and the ways that I describe workarounds is not about pleasing people. It’s about getting things done, and things that will benefit you or whichever goals you have in mind. Let me give an example that I covered. It’s a roundabout workaround.

In many organizations, the bosses will not necessarily allow employees to pursue their own innovative projects because it might not be the priority for the organization, it might not align with the goals or priorities of the organization. So, what do many employees do? It’s what is called boot lagging by innovation management scholars and has resulted into some of our most beloved projects, like the aspirin, or blue LED lights, or large screens by HP.

And the idea is that instead of getting the support or endorsement from bosses, they work around these direct orders, sometimes simply ignoring rules, sometimes actually ignoring what bosses said, so they can develop the innovative projects when the idea is still very rough in the beginning of innovations. It’s what we call sometimes hopeful monstrosities. They are hopeful but they are monstrous. They might not align. You don’t really know necessarily how it’s going to turn out to look like.

And then by working around direct orders, people can invest in these ideas, going underground, and develop the projects until the moment is right to communicate to others in the company. So, you pretty much buy time while developing your solution, your product, or technology. And once that becomes more viable and more attractive, then you make it public and you go to your bosses, and that will be a much better time for presenting that idea instead of in the early stages when the idea is still very crude.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. Well, Paulo, tell me, anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Paulo Savaget
No, I think we’re good to shift.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Let’s hear about a favorite quote, something you find inspiring.

Paulo Savaget
That’s very difficult for a nerd like myself who works with so many quotes. But one that I use a lot is from this organization called Alight in Zambia and they describe how they embrace complexity, and instead of building riverbeds if there’s water flowing, you go with the water. You try to embrace those flows and make use of what is already there instead of trying to create things that might not be viable.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Paulo Savaget
Wow, that’s also a very difficult for a nerd like myself. The many books that I really enjoy in business, for example, some of the most recent ones that I’ve read includes Originals by Adam Grant that is very nicely written. I really enjoy the books by Malcolm Gladwell, for example.

And there’s a book by Caroline Criado-Perez called Invisible Women that is fascinating as well, describing how gender inequality impacts data, and how this data that we pretty much collect only from men impact the products we use and the services we have available to us as well.

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

Paulo Savaget
Well, l would say that my favorite tool or technology is a coffee machine because I need a lot of coffee. As a Brazilian, I’m constantly caffeinated. And in order to also get things done, I need to get a lot of coffee.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit, something you do to be awesome at your job?

Paulo Savaget
I’m a bit hyperactive so I need to exercise very often, and it also helps me focus. So, I try to exercise every day. I swim, cycle, play tennis, do many different kinds of sports.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share, something that really seems to connect and resonate with folks when they’re talking about your stuff, they quote back to you often? Or, do you have any quotable Paulo original gems that folks, they’re Kindle book highlighting, they’re retweeting, they’re saying, “Man, when you said this, that really stuck with me.”

Paulo Savaget
One of the quotes that I have in the book that a lot of people enjoy, and I’ve heard many comments about, that was about deviants, that I said that deviants are frowned upon but I think we don’t deviate enough. And then I try to bake a case about how deviants is important as means of challenging the status quo, and how it’s different from disobedience.

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

Paulo Savaget
I would say reach out. I’m always very happy to talk and exchange. I really enjoy learning about workarounds that people have pursued after being exposed to my work or before as well, that they hadn’t really given much thought about. And, of course, my website and the profile that I have available on the Oxford website.

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

Paulo Savaget
I would say working with others can be much better and much more fruitful but sometimes we got to be adaptive and make sure that we don’t necessarily go for the people-pleasing solutions, that we can think of different ways of addressing our problems, and that workarounds might help you with that.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Paulo, this has been a treat. I wish much fun and many good workarounds.

Paulo Savaget
Thank you very much. I hope you’re going to also face with many workarounds.

Mar 30
0

852: Dale Carnegie’s Timeless Wisdom on Building Mental Resilience and Strong Relationships with Joe Hart

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Joe Hart shares powerful wisdom on how to create the life you want based on the timeless principles of Dale Carnegie.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The questions that make your mind unshakeable
  2. The powerful habit that sets you up for daily success
  3. The secret to getting along with even the most difficult people 

About Joe

Joe Hart began his career as a practicing attorney. After taking a Dale Carnegie Course, Joe reassessed his career path and future, ultimately leaving the practice of law to start and sell a company then Joe become the president of Asset Health—all before becoming the President and CEO of Dale Carnegie in 2015.

In 2019, the CEO Forum Group named Joe as one of twelve transformative leaders, giving him the Transformative CEO Leadership Award in the category of the People. He is the host of a top global podcast, “Take Command: A Dale Carnegie Podcast”, and he speaks around the world on topics such as leadership, resilience, and innovation, among other things. Joe and his wife, Katie, have six children, three dogs, and one cat. He is an active marathoner, having run many races, including Boston, New York, Chicago, Berlin, Detroit, and Toronto.

Resources Mentioned

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Joe Hart Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Joe, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Joe Hart
Thank you, Pete. Great to be with you today.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into your wisdom, talking about your book Take Command: Find Your Inner Strength, Build Enduring Relationships, and Live the Life You Want. But, first, I want to hear, so you have an interesting role in the whole universe of training, learning, and development, my world. You’re the CEO of Dale Carnegie. It’s the world’s oldest training company. What’s that like?

Joe Hart
It’s an incredible company and it’s a company that I came to because it really aligns to just my personal mission, and, frankly, it’s the company that had had a huge impact on me. So, I’ll at least give you maybe 60 seconds of context before I talk about the company. I took a Dale Carnegie course as a young lawyer when I was about 27. And my dad had always talked about Dale Carnegie and How to Win Friends and Influence People, and I’d heard this and I decided to take a class.

And prior to that point, my aspiration in life was to be a lawyer in a large firm, and to make a lot of money, and become a partner, and do that for 40 years. And when I took this course, it really challenged me around my vision and what did I want for my career, and, also, frankly, how I was interacting with people because, as a young lawyer, I wasn’t particularly empathetic. I was prickly with people.

So, the two things that came out of that course were it really unlocked in me a desire to really look at my future, and, I, ultimately, left the practice of law, and went in and started my own business. And it also sparked in me just really a passion for improving my people skills and getting along with people more effectively, and really caring and listening and respecting people in a way that I hadn’t before.

So, the long and short of it is I, ultimately, left. I started a new learning company in 2000. Dale Carnegie became my first client. We did new learning programs to reinforce Dale Carnegie’s principles. We had other clients. Built and sold that company. I was the president of another company for 10 years before I became the CEO of Dale Carnegie in 2015.

This is, in my mind, one of the most amazing companies on the planet. Founded by Dale Carnegie 111 years ago, we’ve got 200 operations in 86 countries, and so much of what we do is we believe in the inner greatness of people. We work with people, individuals, and companies, really to drive self-confidence and interpersonal skills, communication, leadership, stress and worry.

You could Google, say, Warren Buffett and Dale Carnegie, and it’ll talk about just the life-changing impact that our program had on him early in his career. We worked with some of the biggest and most successful companies in the world, and it’s an honor to be able to do that. But it’s really about performance, how do we help people perform at the highest levels, how do we help them interact with each other in more successful and positive ways, how do we help them achieve things that they never would be able to achieve in their careers.

And so much of what your podcast is about is, “How do I get to that next level of my career? How do I interact with people?” And, frankly, this is a course, that when I took it, it turbocharged my entire career. Just, really, I’ve never been the same since.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, thank you for sharing. And it’s funny, I think I read How to Win Friends & Influence People in high school, and I think I also listened to it. So, I have that, whoever that narrator was, that voice in my ear, talk about, “Smile. Use people’s names. It’s the sweetest thing that they’ve heard.” Is this a direct quote that’s in my head, “Be hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise”? I don’t know what approbation meant at the time.

Joe Hart
Good job. You got it. You got it.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, I think those are good principles, and I think folks who have heard Dale Carnegie, they’re thinking of the book, or they’re thinking, “Oh, yeah, I’ve heard of the Dale Carnegie course. I want to take that someday.” Is there anything that you’ve learned about Dale Carnegie or his legacy that most of us don’t know, like fun facts behind the scenes?

Joe Hart
Yeah. So, many people know about Dale Carnegie’s success. He was brilliant. I mean, “How to Win Friends…” has been the bestselling book for 87 consecutive years, so people know him for that. But he started life, he was very poor growing up. He really found his way through public speaking. He realized he’s really very good at it. He’s good at interacting with people, went into sales and became a tremendously successful person.

And then, ultimately, went to New York City and just went in the acting field and realized he wasn’t very good at that. So, that’s when he started a public-speaking class, actually, in the YMCA in 1912. And what he discovered at that time was just people have certain apprehensions about speaking. But the process of getting up and speaking, it’s also about confidence and overcoming fear, and developing human relations skills.

So, people have one idea maybe of Dale Carnegie purely as this successful person. He certainly had lots of bumps along the road and learned a lot and shared that wisdom in How to Win Friends & Influence People and How to Stop Worrying and Start Living and other types of books as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so tell us, your latest book Take Command, what is a particularly surprising, counterintuitive, fascinating discovery you’ve made about some of this stuff during the course of your career and putting together this book in particular?

Joe Hart
Yeah, the single most important thing that I’d say I took away from Dale Carnegie, and it also is the framework for the entire first part of the book, so just the book Take Command is about being intentional. So, take command of your thoughts and your emotions is the whole first part. We deal with worry and stress and anxiety, and all kinds of other things, and, “Why is it that some people are strong and courageous and bold and resilient?”

And this, ultimately, comes down to your question, which is the most important thing I’ve taken away from Dale Carnegie, is the importance of our thoughts. He quotes in How to Stop Worrying and Start Living the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who said, “Our life is what our thoughts make it.” And that explains so much because you could have two people in the exact same situation, and one person is thriving and finding opportunity, and at some point, somebody else, in the exact same situation is fearful and, “I can’t do it,” and so forth.

And what does it come down to? It comes down to our thoughts. So, to me, that kind of epiphany, if you will, is the foundation for the critical thing that you and I and all us need to do if we want to live happy fulfilled lives, if we want to be successful in our careers, in our families, in our relationships, and in our visions, that’s the second and third of the book, take command of your relationship, take command of your future, but you have to take command first of yourself. You can’t lead anyone else if you can’t lead yourself. And that starts with our thoughts.

And when people can learn how to frame their thoughts in the right way, and how to condition their minds for success, and how you can, I’d even say, Pete, befriend your emotions, which is one of the things that we talk about in chapter three, to learn how to use your emotions as kind of rocket fuel instead of something that’s just going to drag you down, going in this kind of spiral negativity, particularly all of us are coming out of COVID. That’s a necessary thing for our success.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that’s really tantalizing in terms of our thoughts have great importance, and two people could be in the same situation and take drastically different paths based on what’s happening between their ears. Could you give us a cool illustrative story, example, case of that?

Joe Hart
Yeah. Well, I’ll give you one of my own and kind of one direction that I was going in, and this kind of opens up the book, and I can give you others. And, by the way, the book has just dozens and dozens of stories of people all over the world who have applied these kinds of principles. But I think about my COVID experience.

And, Pete, I don’t know what your COVID experience was, but there’s a point in mine when I was leading this global company in March of 2020 when I was waking up every night at 3:00 in the morning with just the most negative thoughts and fearful thoughts. It’s like, “Oh, my gosh, our entire business around the world is shutting down.” We were all in-person training at that time, “What are we going to do?”

And that’s the thing. Sometimes it’s not the initial thought. We might have a fact, like I had the fact that, “Oh, our China operation is now shut down, our Asia operation.” But then we extrapolate those facts, and that’s what I was doing, and I was going to the worst possible places. And, frankly, it was that quote that you asked about, that I read in How to Stop Worrying… one night in March of 2020.

I wake up in the middle of the night and I picked up this book, and I’m flipping through it, and I should’ve known these things, Pete. I had studied them for 20 years, but I think in the challenge of that situation, I had forgotten them. And it was kind of like just Dale Carnegie saying to me, he’s like, “Hey, as bad as this situation is, where is the opportunity? What do you need to do? How do you lead?”

And I started to shift my thoughts to not just focus on, “Okay, well, these are horrible facts, but where is the opportunity here?” And in the months that followed, and we’ve got an amazing team, franchise owners, and team members, all over the world working together. We completely flipped the business model of our company. And today, we are stronger, we’re more competitive, we’re more agile, we’re working with more companies. It’s been a really exciting transformation over the past three years.

But I think about kind of two paths for myself at that time, which was you look at something and you can be fearful, or you look at something and you can say, “You know, this is hard but I’m going to find a way through it.” And another thought I had at that time was I remembered when I was a lawyer, and, Pete, when you go through law school, okay, and we’ve got limiting mindsets sometimes.

You go through college, you go through law school, you pass the bar exam. The bar exam was the single scariest experience I’ve had till that point in my life. If you don’t pass the bar exam, it doesn’t matter if you have graduated from law school, it doesn’t matter if you’re at the top of your class, you’re not practicing law unless you pass that exam.

So, you pass the exam, you become a lawyer, and then you say, “Well, could I possibly do anything else other than practice law? Who’s going to want me to do that?” It’s a limiting mindset but I remember talking to someone, and as I made the decision to leave law and to go to this real estate company, and I was afraid. And I talked to a mentor of mine, a guy named Chuck Taunt, a great man, and he said, “It’s not the smooth seas that make a great sailor. It’s the rough seas.”

And so, that got me thinking about just my leadership, and, “You know what, there’s opportunities. How do I look at this? If I leave the practice of law and it doesn’t work out, is that a failure? Well, not if I learned something, and not if I become a better leader.” And I was in my 20s at that time. So, a lot of this, it all comes back, the results that we get start and end so much with our mindset.

And when we can learn to develop our mindsets so that it serves us, and develop our emotional strength so that we are resilient and courageous, then we can do and achieve the things that are really important to us.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Beautiful. Well, can you share with us, Joe, what are some of the first steps to get that going in terms of having a great mindset that’s of service?

Joe Hart
Yeah, the first thing is even to pay attention to our thoughts. I think it’s so easy in our lives just to be very automatic. Say, you’re sitting at your desk, you’re doing your work, you get an email, and there’s a reaction to it, “I don’t like this. This person, I don’t like the way they said this. This is more work for me, whatever.”

But to time out and to say, “Wait a second. Am I paying attention? How often do I even think about what I think? Am I paying attention to the thoughts that are in my head? Are my assumptions correct? could there be a different way to see this?” So, that first step is to pay attention, to observe it, almost like as a third-party observer, say, “What is the thought I got here? And what’s the basis for that?”

The second part of that is really just saying, “Is this serving me? In what ways could I reframe this?” And you were talking about stories, and there’s a man, his name is Artis Stevens, who is the President and CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters. And he had a mindset, which was he wanted to play football for the University of Georgia, and he was injured catastrophically, and he couldn’t play football. He’s really down.

And he had equated, he said, “Success in life means success in football. And if I’m not successful in football, I’m not successful in life.” But he realized, and his family and his friends came around him, and said, “No, success in life can come from so many other things.” So, he broadened and reframed his thoughts, and, ultimately, got into the University of Georgia, academically, and has been extraordinarily successful since that time.

But to the second point, so you pay attention to your thoughts, you reframe your thoughts, and that’s great, but then you also need to condition your mind for success. And that means, “What are the things that I’m going to do every single day?” If you and I went into the gym, and we went and we’re doing biceps, and we grab some dumbbells, and we do them a bunch, ten reps, and we put them down and leave, it’s good that we were there, it’s good that we did that, but that’s not going to be sustainable, so we need to build that muscle. And that’s what conditioning our mind for success is.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so let’s say we’re paying attention to some thoughts, and let’s just say I zoom into an example. I get an email and I feel angry. Like, so and so, they said something in which they don’t think I’ve got the right stuff, or my show is worth their time, or whatever. So, there’s a stimulus and then we’ve got an emotional response, we trigger some guilt, some fears, some anger, some anxiety, some sadness, some stress. What do we do next?

Joe Hart
Yes. So, it’s a little bit different when we talk about emotions versus thoughts, and we’ve got kind of a process for dealing with emotions but it’s similar. And let me just back up because sometimes people will say, “Hey, I like the good emotions but I don’t want to have those bad emotions, so I don’t want to have anger, regret, guilt, or these kinds of things.”

The reality is that we may have some of those things automatically, so how do those things serve us? So, let’s just pretend that you read an email and you feel threatened and angry. Okay, so you could almost say to yourself, “All right. Well, time out. So, what’s happening here?” because, again, we’re going to focus on what can we control and what can we do, what can we impact.

So, I get an email and I am angry because someone had said something to me. And the question is, “All right, have I misinterpreted what they’ve said? Is that possible? Do I have all the facts? If I do have all the facts, and they have insulted me, what do I want to do with it?” The emotion could actually prompt the action. So, what’s the emotion? What’s the emotion telling me? What do I want to feel? And what do I need to do?

So, in that particular case, I have found that quite often, I had assumed wrongly that someone might have meant something or have been out to get me in a situation, and, really, they weren’t. So, would it make sense to let that emotion be a trigger that says, “You know what, I’m going to go talk to Pete, and I’m going to have a conversation with Pete.” And say, “Pete, I got this email from you, and I want to make sure I didn’t misunderstand it. Can we talk about it? Would that be okay with you? I like to have a good relationship with you.”

But the opposite can also happen, which is you go right down that anger funnel, you go right down the depression funnel. And next thing you know, if you don’t break that, we talk in the book about negative thoughts, if you will, negative emotions being an early warning system. If you feel those things, don’t deny them. Just address them and think about, “What is this telling me? What do I need to do as a result?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then how do we do the conditioning for long-term success?

Joe Hart
Well, part of it is do you have a routine? And we know that whether you have a routine or you don’t have a routine, you probably have a routine. It may be an unintentional routine. If you get up and the first thing you do is you pick up your phone, and you start doing email, or whatever you do, that’s part of the habit of the day.

You can develop routines that set you up for success. One thing that I do, and many people do, is to create a space in the morning. Other people do it in the afternoon or the evening, to reflect. But to have time to think about, “What worked well yesterday? What can I learn from yesterday? What didn’t go well? What do I need to change? What are the main things I need to do today to be successful? Do I give myself time to center, to meditate, to pray?” to whatever it is for people that works for them, but to be intentional about the kind of things that they want to do.

So, having that time to focus and to think is important. And, sometimes, frankly, we don’t get it. We are so engrossed in social media, email, day to day, and all of a sudden, the day has gone by. So, one thing is certainly to have time. The second thing is to flip those thoughts and to do them consistently. Affirmations are something that have been around for a long time. They really do work. So, being able to have some of those.

Those are some ideas, and, again, there are many that we talk about in the book. But what I can tell you is when you are intentional and you focus on these kinds of things, and the life that you want to have, and being in touch with your values, it’s incredible how quickly you can create a mindset, a growth mindset, a mindset that’s looking for possibility, but it’s not going to happen on its own.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, can you share with us, Joe, some of your favorite affirmations?

Joe Hart
I’ll give you one which is from running. Over the years, I have, well, I’d say it’s become a love relationship with running, but in the beginning, it was super hard. I don’t know, Pete, if you’ve ran or is this something you’ve done before where you’re a runner?

Pete Mockaitis
I’ve had some seasons of life where I did a lot of it, and did a half marathon and some triathlons, and I’ve done relatively little lately.

Joe Hart
Yeah, so you and me both. It’s something I need to do more of. But there was a period of time when I started to run, and the voice in my head kept on saying, “Stop. You can’t do this.” It was really hurting and it was painful. But the affirmation that I used was, it was, “Dig deep. You got this. Dig deep. You got this. Dig deep. You got this.” And I did, and I’ve used that as something else that has guided me through other tough times, “Dig deep. You got this.” And there are others as well but that’s one that stands out.

My wife and I have used the term ‘all in’ when I became the CEO of Dale Carnegie, when we relocated our family from Michigan to New York, with six kids. It was a really big deal, and it’s like, “We’re all in. We’re all in.” It’s like, “We’re going to look forward. We’re not going to look back.” So, those are a couple of things that I’ve used.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so then we talked about the thoughts and emotions. Now, how do you recommend we take command of relationships?

Joe Hart
Well, the first thing is, and it’s similar to thoughts and emotions, we need to be intentional about relationships. A lot of times, if we’re focused only on ourselves and not necessarily on how we’re connecting with other people, those relationships might not be particularly good.

Dale Carnegie’s principles that come from How to Win Friends & Influence People kind of provide a framework for, “How do we connect with people? Do we appreciate? Do we respect people? Do we listen to people? Or do we feel it’s more important to talk about ourselves all the time? Do we try, honestly, to see things from another person’s point of view?”

So, the first thing is, “What’s to find? How important are relationships in our lives? Is it important to you as a partner, or a spouse, or an employee, or a leader, or a CEO? Do you have strong relationships with people? What happens if you don’t? What happens to your marriage, or friendship, or parenthood, or leadership in a company if you don’t care about the people you’re working with?” So, the first thing is be intentional.

Second thing, though, is then to think about, and we have a chapter on this, it is what I think is Dale Carnegie’s probably most valuable principle to me, at least it has been, which is to try, honestly, to see things from another person’s point of view. It is to be empathetic, to listen, to assume positive intent. So, if we do some of those things, we’re far more likely to be able to develop better relationships.

Dale Carnegie said you can make more friends, and I may be paraphrasing it the wrong way here, but you can make more friends in a month by talking about other people and listening to them than you can by talking about you, about just yourself. So, if you are at an event, and you’re talking to someone, are you interested in them? So, those are all things you can do to build good relationships.

We also have the reality that there’s difficult people in our lives. How do you deal with difficult people? How do you deal with people who are critical? How do you deal with people who are triggering in some way, if you will? So, I can talk about that if you’d like, but I also want to be sensitive about my own advice and not be like talking nonstop.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, certainly. Well, yeah, let’s hear about it. So, we’re intentional, we listen, we’re curious, we ask questions, we show interest. And, yeah, let’s hear about it. On the difficult people side of things, what do we do there?

Joe Hart
Yeah, I think part of this is sometimes we look at a person who’s difficult, and we would get ourselves in the mindset that that person is the problem. When, in reality, I could be the problem; A, I could be the difficult person, or, B, “Am I thinking about my responsibility with the person who I perceive to be difficult?”

Sometimes, if I don’t assume positive intent, I perceive someone as being difficult. If someone, like using the example that you and I were talking about earlier, you get an email, and, “Gosh, there’s that Pete again, always sending these emails, always being critical.” So, I perceive you to be difficult, but are you? Do you even realize that I have those thoughts?

So, the first thing is, “What can I do? What’s my responsibility?” And it might be, “I’m going to go talk to Pete. I‘m going to communicate with Pete. And, in the case where Pete is, in fact, difficult, if you will, I might want to communicate boundaries to Pete.” A common example, so let’s just say that your boss says, “Pete, I need you to get this project done right now. You got two days to get it done, and that’s that.”

So, the boss walks away or gets off of Zoom, and you think to yourself, “Gosh, that person again, keeps saying. That person doesn’t care about me. That person doesn’t listen to me. He doesn’t realize I’ve got all these other projects. I’m never going to be able to hit the deadline.” “Yeah, Pete, but did you tell the boss? Did you say, ‘Hey, boss, I’ve got these three other projects I’m working on right now, and I’m not going to be able to hit all three of them. Can you help me prioritize them?’”

Or, can you say, “Boss, I’ve been working on a certain number of hours, and what are your boundaries?” Pete, you might say, “Gosh, I have to spend some time with my family. I need to communicate that.” So, the first thing is set boundaries. And the second this is, communicate those boundaries because if you don’t talk about them, then how will someone even know necessarily that they’re violating your boundaries?

So, those are a couple of things, but I think there’s also a situation where, if you find that someone is violating your values, or is just ignoring your boundaries, that might be a situation where there are some relationships that need to end. And sometimes we need to be away from people who are toxic people. And as difficult as that might be, that could be in a workplace, that could be in a relationship, that could be in a community interaction, but if someone is toxic or violating your values, then you may need to cut that relationship.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, we talked a little bit about the thoughts and emotions, the relationships. And now how about the third part, the living of the life you want? What are your top perspectives here?

Joe Hart
Yeah, so it’s kind of neat because you really don’t even get to this third part, I don’t think, unless you have focused on the first two. You got to focus on your own thoughts and emotions, and develop the inner strength. You’ve got to work on relationships, you’ve got this community of people around you, and then you say to yourself, “What’s my vision for myself? What kind of life do I want to lead?”

I think one of the biggest tragedies of life, Pete, is that many times people get to the end of their lives, and certainly we know this through so many of these deathbed surveys where they ask people, “If you’d live your life over, what would you have done differently?” And they say, “Gosh, I regret that I didn’t take chances. I wasn’t bold. I was always afraid. I worried too much about what people thought,” and so forth.

So, part three of this book is about not letting us get to that point. It is about saying, right now, today, we’re going to begin thinking about the values that are important to us, the vision that we want to have for ourselves, whether it’s short term or longer term, what do we perceive our purpose to be as we define it for ourselves. But you go through this process of really getting clear about what it is that you want.

Writing that down or putting it in an electronic journal, or whatever it is, and repeatedly going back to that, and what we find, and there’s lots of stories of people who’ve done that, and have had huge impact, and it’s something that, once we are clear. Let me just give you one story from the book, which I think is a really amazing person.

Daniella Fernandez is someone who is a 19-year-old student at Georgetown University, really became familiar with the crisis facing the ocean. And she went to a conference at the UN and she heard all these people talking about it, and she came to the conclusion that people are not doing enough to protect the ocean.

So, she created what is today the largest sustainable ocean alliance in the world of its kind, and I take it’s in the 130 countries, and they’re taking specific concrete actions to improve the ocean quality. And that’s someone who got really clear about her values, about where she wanted to have impact, but we also have examples just of people who are living their lives and having a positive impact on other people.

I tell the story about my father who was a recovering alcoholic. He went 51 years without a drink. And part of his purpose in life was to help other people find sobriety. In the local AA chapter, he was kind of a local hero, 51 years, that’s a long time for someone who’s been an alcoholic to go without a drink. So, he was committed to helping sponsor people and helping support people. And at his funeral, person after person came up to me, and they said, “What an impact your dad had on me.”

So, this last part is about asking what is really important to you. So, Pete, what’s important to you? What’s important to whoever is reading the book? And then helping guide them through a process to begin to make that happen. Our hope is that people who follow these things, and it’s all rooted in Dale Carnegie’s wisdom, from decades-old wisdom, we’ve proven things today and stories today, that if you do these things, you’re going to live the life you want, you’re going to have great relationships, you’re going to feel more courage, and be able to overcome adversity. So, that’s the third part.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Joe, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Joe Hart
Only that one of the reasons people will often ask, “Why did you write this book?” and I co-wrote it with Michael Crom, who’s Dale Carnegie’s grandson, is I think he and I both feel that we owe a great deal of debt for all that we’ve been given and learned in the wisdom of Dale Carnegie. So, we wrote this book really to give it to other people in the younger audience. So, I hope that it will mean something to people, and it will help really impact people’s lives.

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

Joe Hart
So, I guess I probably let the cat out of the bag earlier because the quote that I like, that I think about a lot, is the Marcus Aurelius quote about “Our lives are what our thoughts make it.” So, if you push me for a second one, this is one, when you were asking about the difficult people, I think about this quote a lot. It’s from Ralph Waldo Emerson, and it is, “Every person I meet is my superior in some way, in that I learn from him or her.”

So, when I am meeting with someone, and if it’s a difficult conversation, and particularly I think to myself, “What can I learn from this person?” And I remember one time, I was in a cab, I was in Italy, and I was going to the airport, and I’m talking to this taxi driver, and the taxi driver is asking me what I do, and I’m telling him about Dale Carnegie. And he says, “Don’t you ever get tired of talking to people who are, you come across in your travels, and they’re just idiots?”

And I said this quote to him, I said, “You know, I think every person I meet is my superior in some ways. So, when I meet them, I’m trying to figure out what can I learn from them.” And when you think about life that way, that every single person has got something to teach, it kind of shifts how you see other people, and that’s been very valuable for me.

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

Joe Hart
One thing we quote in the book, the Harvard happiness study. And this is a study that looked at, I don’t know remember how many, hundreds of people, I think, over a lifetime to determine what really makes people happy and unhappy. And the main finding was that relationships and good high-quality relationships, caring relationships, are life-giving, and loneliness kills.

So, I think sometimes it could be easy to be insular, to be thinking about what’s important to me or whatnot. But if I really want happiness, I need to invest in other people and be connected to other people.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Joe Hart
It’s hard to narrow down to a favorite book. I guess it’d be easy for me to say How to Win Friends & Influence People is certainly one of the most influential, if not the most influential book, I’ve ever read. Certainly, the Bible and How to Win Friends & Influence People. Well, I will tell you, I read a great book recently, I’ve been reading a lot of books and listening to a lot of books on Audible.

So, a couple books that I’ve read recently that I’ve enjoyed are The Earned Life by Marshall Goldsmith, which has been really, I think, insightful.

I also read a couple books by Cal Newport, Deep Work and Digital Minimalism, which really got me thinking about my relationship with, say, social media and other kinds of things. And David Goggins’ “Can’t Hurt Me,” which is a story about this just unbelievable Navy Seal, and just what he went through in his life and his career. So, those are a few good ones.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool?

Joe Hart
Well, I guess I don’t know if I can call this a tool. I like paper clips.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Joe Hart
If I find a paper clip in the ground, I typically pick it up. I don’t know, I like paper clips. Little pins, that type of thing. But I guess if it’s a tool-tool, I guess I’d probably say it’s gooseneck pliers.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Joe Hart
My morning routine, I guess I’d say, is my favorite habit. Starting the day, every day, if I can, by making a hot green tea, and going and sitting for 30 to 60 minutes, and really preparing for my day, and reflecting on the prior day, and just really kind of setting myself in the right place.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Joe Hart
I get asked often for kind of a piece of advice, and often it’s for young people, “What would you tell yourself?” What would I tell a younger Joe? And maybe the most valuable thing for me is not to worry so much about what people think. As I’ve gotten older, I have cared less. I still care about what people think. I don’t want to say I dismiss it.

But I had this conversation with one of my daughters the other day about if you go to a party, you’re thinking about yourself, you’re thinking about, “How do I look? How do I sound? What am I wearing?” all these different things. And what are other people thinking about? They’re thinking the same thing. They’re worried about themselves. So, we create a lot of energy worrying about what other people think, and the reality is, in most cases, people don’t care. They’re focused on themselves. So, don’t worry so much about what people think, and you got to stay true to yourself and your values.

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

Joe Hart
So, DaleCarnegie.com is a great place to find lots of Dale Carnegie resources. If people want to take a Dale Carnegie program, they can go to that website. TakeCommand.com has got information about the book and buying the book. It’s available on Audible, in Kindle, and also hard copy. I’m pretty active on Twitter and LinkedIn, it’s @josephkhart, so either of those places, and I’m sharing information and research and studies, and those kinds of things constantly.

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

Joe Hart
Yeah, I would say ask yourself whether you are, in fact, taking command. Are you intentional right now in the important aspects of your life? And if you’re not, I challenge you to be that way. Be intentional. Take command. Make it happen now.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you, Joe. This has been a treat. I wish you much luck and fun and command.

Joe Hart
All right. Thank you, Pete. It’s been great talking to you.

Mar 27
0

851: How to Reclaim Your Confidence with Nicole Kalil

By | Podcasts | One Comment

 

Confidence sherpa Nicole Kalil busts the myth about confidence and validation and shows you how to develop true confidence.

You’ll Learn:

  1. What confidence really means
  2. The four questions to ask when you have low confidence
  3. How to build trust within yourself 

About Nicole

Nicole’s passion for eliminating gender expectations and redefining “Woman’s Work” is both what keeps her up at night, and what gets her up in the morning. Well that, and an abundant amount of coffee. 

An in-demand speaker, author of Validation is For Parking, leadership strategist, respected coach, and host of the “This Is Woman’s Work” Podcast, her stalker-like obsession with confidence sets her apart from the constant stream of experts telling us to BE confident. She actually shares HOW you build it, and gives actionable tools you can implement immediately. 

A fugitive of the C-suite at a Fortune 100 company, she has coached hundreds of women in business, which has given her insight as to what – structurally, systemically and socially – is and isn’t serving both women and leaders within an organization. 

Maintaining some semblance of sanity in her different roles of wife, mother, and business owner successfully is an ongoing challenge… in whatever free time she has, she enjoys reading and wine guzzling, is an avid cheese enthusiast, a hotel snob, and a reluctant peloton rider. 

Resources Mentioned

Nicole Kalil Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis

Nicole, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Nicole Kalil

Thank you so much for having me, Pete. I am thrilled to be here.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I’m thrilled to be chatting. And I want to understand what’s up with you and blue ink?

Nicole Kalil

That’s so funny. I don’t know why it makes me nauseous. Any time I have to write in blue ink, I get this sinking feeling. I don’t know if I was traumatized by a pen in my past, or what happened, but it just is not my thing. It must be black ink at all times.

Pete Mockaitis

So, that’s when if you write in blue ink, you get nauseous.

Nicole Kalil

Yes.

Pete Mockaitis

Now, if you read blue ink on a screen or that someone else has written it, is it fine?

Nicole Kalil

It’s fine. It doesn’t bother me. It’s just when it’s like coming out of the pen that’s in my hand.

Pete Mockaitis
Interesting.

Nicole Kalil
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
What if you’re, like, not looking at the paper while you write with the blue ink?

Nicole Kalil

You know, I haven’t tried it that hard to overcome this particular challenge or to test it out. I just know, I mean, I have drawers full of black pens, so it doesn’t happen that often. I haven’t tested out if I closed my eyes, or didn’t look, or if it’s a certain type of blue, or any of that stuff.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, fascinating. Well, sometimes I think some documents I think I’ve had to sign them in blue ink. Every once in a while, that comes up.

Nicole Kalil

Yes, it does come up. Typically, like when you go sign lawyers’ documents or things like that, and I just take a deep breath, and work my way through it, and keep my eyes on the prize. I do not like it.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, I’m glad we established that, and I will not ask you to write anything in blue ink. But I will ask you lots of questions about confidence, one of our favorite topics here. So, you have the title confidence sherpa. Is that accurate?

Nicole Kalil

Yes.

Pete Mockaitis

I love it.

Nicole Kalil

Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis

I could see you in a large coat as I visualize.

Nicole Kalil

Exactly, with the fur. It’s more interesting than founder or the more traditional titles. And I think it’s a little bit more telling, about what I’m passionate about and also how I see my work, climbing the mountain along with you, as opposed to somebody standing at the mountain top telling you what to do or how to do it.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Now, when it comes to confidence, I’d love to hear, is there any particularly fascinating, surprising, counterintuitive discovery you’ve made about confidence in your years of working in this space?

Nicole Kalil

Definitely, yes, but I’m going to start with probably the most surprising thing, is I think most of us don’t have enough confidence because we, literally, have no idea of what confidence is. It’s one of those words that’s been thrown around left and right, and leveraged, and utilized in so many different ways that I think it’s, somewhere along the line, lost its meaning.

So, I went back to the etymology, the root of the word confidence to try to really understand what is it that we’re talking about, what does this ever elusive confidence that we’re all trying to buy, produce, seek, create. And, ultimately, the most surprising thing to me about confidence is that it wasn’t what I thought it was.

I thought confidence was a little bit more associated with arrogance, or ego, or courage, or feeling good, or being attractive. Ultimately, confidence is firm and bold trust in self. The root of the word confidence is trust, faith, belief. Any translation to any language, if you look at it where confidence comes from, even if you look at the iterations of the word, like a confidante, it’s a close trusted friend, confidential, a confidence con, or a con artist. It’s all about, the root of it is all about trust.

So, at least for the purposes of my conversations when I talk about confidence, I’m talking about firm and bold trust in self.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, I think I could just sit and meditate upon that for a few minutes.

Nicole Kalil

It’s a big one.

Pete Mockaitis
Because that, in and of itself, is juicy, because some academic definitions is like, “Okay, tactically, you’ve distinguished that from other constructs. Great job, professor so-and-so.” But this is weighty.

Nicole Kalil

No, it’s big. It felt really big to me. And even today, I find myself using the word wrong or thinking something is going to bring me confidence that doesn’t because my whole life I’ve been socialized to believe at something else. And as a woman, I think there’s a little bit of a nuance that tells me that my confidence is wrapped up in how I look and how other people perceive me. And that flies completely in the face of this definition of firm and bold trust in self.

Pete Mockaitis

And as I chew on this definition, as I think about trust, it’s almost like, “Well, to what end?” I trust that I’m not going to burn down my office. I am 100% confident that will not happen today.

Nicole Kalil

At least not today.

Pete Mockaitis

I have a Jetboil, I tell my landlord, “I only use it outside.” So, tell us more about that. Trust in self to do what or just for everything?

Nicole Kalil

I would argue just about everything but I think sometimes trust and competence get confused. And, also, one of the other surprising things I learned about what builds confidence is failure builds confidence. Why? Because it’s easy to trust ourselves when things are going according to plan, when we’re winning, when we’re achieving, when we are checking all the boxes.

Trusting ourselves is easy during those moments. It’s when fear and doubt, or when you make mistakes, it’s the trust that’s required to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, get back into action. It’s the “I’m still okay. I trust that I’ll be okay on the other side of this, trust that I will learn, I’ll grow, I’ll come out better, that it served a purpose.”

I think choosing to trust ourselves during the harder times is where this skill, this muscle gets developed at a much deeper sustainable longer-lasting way. So, that was another surprising thing, is that failure actually builds confidence, if you choose it, if you let it, because, again, trust isn’t necessarily “I have all the answers. I know what I’m doing. I have it all figured out.” It’s trusting that “I’ll be okay no matter what, and that I can come out better on the other side.”

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, can you tell us an inspiring story of a professional who was able to develop extraordinary confidence?

Nicole Kalil

What I would argue that we’re all doing it all the time, and I think any one of us who have taken big risks, chased any dreams, had difficult conversations, raised their hand for something they wanted, put one foot in front of the other towards what matters, is exercising and building confidence. And I don’t know that any human feels a hundred percent confident a hundred percent of the time. But I would just argue that the skill is required to both get what we want and, also, gets developed in the action that it takes to move toward what we want. It feeds off itself.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, could you maybe give us an example of that playing out?

Nicole Kalil

Yeah. So, I’ll use myself. I don’t know that I’m the most successful person or the best example but it’s the one I know inside and out. I was an executive at a Fortune 100 financial services company, very male-dominated industry. I was the first female in my role in the company’s 160-year history. And I was doing well from the outside looking in, looked the part of the independent successful woman on the rise with my “Who needs a man” attitude.

But the way that it was on the inside did not match at all the way that it looked on the outside. I was living for the validation of others. I was chasing the next promotion, the next achievement, and I had this false equation in my mind that if X happened, and fill in the blank of X with whatever you want. If I fit into a certain size, if I bought the right car, if I lived in the right house, if I got a certain level of income, whatever it was, when X happened, then I would feel confident.

That never worked. I would get the thing, or achieve, or accomplish, and I would feel temporarily satisfied until all the feelings of fear and doubt, and whether or not I could do the job, whether or not somebody saw me a certain way, came rushing back in, and I began to realize that my confidence was tied to everything and everyone outside of me. I had my confidence living out there.

And in doing the work that I talk about in my book, and really focusing on this true definition of confidence, and all the things that build confidence, all the things that were chipping away at it, in doing this work, I uncovered that the role that I was in, at the company that I was at, was, ultimately, not where I wanted to be anymore. There wasn’t anything wrong with it. I could’ve been retired there and been successful and all that, but I wasn’t living my true purpose. I wasn’t doing what I felt I was really put here to do.

And so, with a lot of courage and a lot of confidence, I stepped down from this very big, multiple six-figure role to start my own business, and that took a ton of confidence, and then building that business, and pivoting during COVID, and entering this year without any business goals for the first time in my professional life, and still doing more, chasing more, risking more. I think all of those, hopefully, are demonstrations of confidence in action.

And that’s not to say that I feel confident a hundred percent of the time. I’ve messed up. I made mistakes. I’ve learned. I’ve grown. I’ve been afraid. I have doubts. I have days where I’m not at my absolute best, and yet I still get to choose how to interpret those events. I get to choose to see them in a more productive, more empowered way, and come out better on the other side.

Pete Mockaitis

Beautiful. Okay. Well, let’s hear a bit about your book Validation Is For Parking: How Women Can Beat the Confidence Con. What is the confidence con?

Nicole Kalil

So, the confidence con is this idea that our confidence is built externally, it’s built through validation, or compliments, or achievements, or successes. By the way, I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with any of those things. I’m just saying that those are not, in fact, what bring you confidence. Your confidence isn’t out there. No one or nothing is walking around with your confidence waiting for you to find it and get them to give it to you.

Your confidence is an inside job, it’s an internal thing and skill that you can develop and grow any time you want, which is contrary to the messages, I think, we receive very often out there. So, I call that false messaging the con, and the book is really focused on the things that actually build confidence, build trust.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, tell us, what are the things that actually build confidence and trust? How do we pull it off?

Nicole Kalil

Okay. So, there are five confidence builders that I identify in the book. I also identified five confidence derailers because there are things that are chipping away at doing damage to our confidence. If we’re not mindful of those things, we can do all of the building work we want, but we end up feeling like we’re on a hamster wheel. We’re doing a lot of work but not moving very much forward.

So, I’ll identify the five confidence builders quickly. Action. Action builds confidence. I can’t find a single expert or research or article on the topic of confidence that doesn’t agree with that. You don’t think or hope or fingers and toes crossed your way into confidence. You get into action towards it. So, action, failure, we talked about that a little bit already.

Giving yourself grace. The way you talk to yourself matters. So, this can be mindset work, this can be speaking to yourself the way you would, somebody else that you love, respect and admire. The fourth confidence builder is choosing confidence, which I know sounds a little obvious, but I think a lot of us think confidence is a feeling that we either have or we don’t, as opposed to a choice we can make anytime that we want.

And then, finally, the fifth confidence builder is building internal trust. It’s the things that we can do to establish, grow, develop, build trust in ourselves.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Lovely. So, those are the builders. And then what are the derailers?

Nicole Kalil

So, the five derailers, the first is perfectionism, this idea that we’re supposed to have it all, do it all, be it all, and look good while doing it. Perfectionism is the enemy of confidence because it’s not an achievable goal. Head trash is the second confidence derailer. This is the voice inside of our own minds that says things to us about us that are never kind, and very rarely based in fact or in truth. So, head trash, that internal negative voice.

The third confidence derailer is judgment and comparison, this thing that we do where we compare ourselves to other people, and we either fall short or think we’re better than. Confidence is not comparing yourself to somebody else and feeling superior. Confidence does not even mean compare yourself to anyone at all.

The fourth confidence derailer is overthinking. Thinking is not a problem. We should all be doing it. Overthinking is problematic because overthinking leads to inaction. Inaction creates regret. And then, finally, the fifth confidence derailer is seeking it externally. It’s hoping that the person of your dreams is going to give you confidence, or the weight loss, or the certain level of income, or certain amount of followers on social media. This idea that something external, something outside of us is going to infuse us with confidence.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. So, that’s a nice lay of the land there in terms of the builders and the derailers. Can you share with us perhaps some of the best practices in terms of bang-for-the-buck, what are the practices we should take on that makes a world of difference in terms of having more confidence?

Nicole Kalil

Absolutely. So, I’m going to walk through an exercise. In my book, I think have ten different exercises that are all designed to help because I’m more of a tactical-oriented person. I don’t want somebody to just tell me to be confident. I want them to give me action steps, tactical steps, so there’s a lot of that in the book, but I’ll give one as an example.

And it’s the process that we can go through inside of our own minds of either overcoming or rethinking about failure. So, if you made a mistake, or you’ve experienced failure, or you’re worried about it, ask yourself, first and foremost, “What are the facts?” So, let’s say, and, Pete, this is actually true, “I feel like I’m having a little bit of an off day. I, hopefully, am not blowing it but I don’t know that this is the best podcast I’ve ever done in the history of ever.”

So, my brain is starting to go into head trash, and I’m screwing up, and, “Oh, my gosh, all these people are hearing me mess up. And what if…? This is a top podcast and Pete is awesome, and he thinks I’m an idiot,” so my brain is going crazy. So, here’s an exercise in action. First, I ask myself, “What are the facts?” The facts are it’s 24 minutes into a recording with Pete on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

The facts are it’s a top 1% podcast. The facts are I got invited to be on the show. The facts are that I’m speaking about confidence. What are the facts and only the facts? This is important because we often interact with our interpretations or our perspectives as if they’re facts. We don’t want to do that. So, step number one is, “What are the facts and only the facts?”

Step number two, “What am I making up about the facts? I’m making up that I’m having an off day. I’m making up that I forgot to mention this. I’m making up that I spent a little bit too much time explaining that. I’m making up that I’m the worst guest you ever had. I’m making up, I’m making up, I’m making up.”

And for a lot of us, what we’re making up is a negative, disempowered, unproductive version or interpretation of the facts. It doesn’t support us. It doesn’t help us in moving toward what we want, what matters, the risks we want to take, the dreams we want to chase. Okay, so that’s step number two, “What am I making up about the facts?”

Step number three, “Is there a different, more empowered, more productive way to see it? Is there a different interpretation of the facts other than the one I made up?” And a little pro tip here. While any of us can do this for ourselves, sometimes it’s helpful to engage a trusted friend, or a colleague, or a coach, or a mentor. It’s sometimes hard to see things clearly from the inside. There’s an expression that says, “You can’t read the label from the inside of the bottle.” And that’s what I think of here.

Sometimes that different, more productive, more empowered version of the facts can come to you from somebody outside, telling you how they see it. Now, it is still your responsibility because nobody gives you confidence to go from there, and you get to decide which interpretation you choose, or which one you believe, but another interpretation of the facts is, “What an honor it is for me to be here. Whether it was perfect or not, I took the risk, I was excited about the opportunity.”

“I am sure that there is at least one person listening who’s going to be impacted in some way. Somebody is going to be thinking about confidence in a new way, in a different way that maybe is more supportive. Somebody might take a risk on the other side of this. I’m going to learn. I’m going to get better as a guest.”

So, which of those two interpretations of the facts is more true, is more factual or more correct? The answer is neither. I’m making up both interpretations, but one of those is more productive, one of those is more empowered, one of those is going to support me in moving towards what matters, is going to support me in doing bigger and better things.

Which leads to step number four, which is, “What action do I take from here?” So, now with us more productive, more empowered, interpretation of the facts, “What action do I take from here?” Maybe the action is sharing this episode on social media in my platforms. Maybe this action is asking if there’s another podcast that I really want to be on that maybe you would make an introduction. Maybe the action is listening to this episode and really thinking about, “What are the learning opportunities? What could I do better? What skill can I develop from here?”

There are so many actions I can take, but action builds confidence, and so the problem with mistakes, or failures, or head trash, or all, is often, it puts us in a spin and we end up physically or mentally in the fetal position doing nothing. And so, this four-step process, hopefully, helps to get outside of our heads and towards what really matters.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Yeah, that’s cool. Thank you. I dig it. And then the facts and only the facts, and then what are you making up, and then what is a different interpretation. That’s cool. I’m curious, are there also some practices that are handy outside the heat of battle but just, as a general thing to do, maybe daily, weekly, quarterly, in terms of, “Huh, this is wise and will keep that confidence boosted over the course of the year”?

Nicole Kalil

Yeah, so the example I just gave and a few others, I would say, are more reactive or more, like, “Hey, I’m struggling. I need something to get me back on track.” I think there are some things that you can do that are more proactive, or even preventative, or that help you from getting into that place. So, there are a few things.

The first I’ll mention is something called “The things I know to be true about me at this point in my life.” I know that’s a ridiculously long title for an exercise but, ultimately, in order to trust yourself, I believe you need to know yourself. This is an exercise in self-awareness and self-appreciation. So, you spend some time thinking about, “What do I know to be true about me at this point in my life? What are my superpowers? What are my unique abilities? What makes me different? What comes more naturally? What do I count on about myself? What do other people count on about me? What might be my unique purpose?”

[24:19]

Any of those questions, you just start laundry-listing them out. I’ve done this exercise more with women than any other gender, but I’ve found that the average number of things people can come up with is six. Six things they know to be true about themselves, which is mind-blasting to me because with all of our life experience, with all of our complex things that make us us, it is just an indication of how little time we are spending building our own self-awareness, getting to know and appreciate, and respect, and admire ourselves.

Pete Mockaitis

And could you give some examples of some of these things?

Nicole Kalil

Yeah, absolutely. So, I’m a good decision-maker. I mean what I say, I say what I mean. I love my family. Full stop. No negotiations. I have a sarcastic personality. So, those are some examples. My list is much longer now but those are some examples of things that are on my list, things that I know and can count on about myself. These aren’t wish lists. This isn’t who I want to be. And nobody is anything one hundred percent of the time.

So, let’s take that I’m a good decision-maker. It doesn’t mean I’ve only ever made 100% good decisions. It just means that that is a skill that I rely on regularly, that other people have admired about me, that often gets leveraged or utilized in my work.

Pete Mockaitis

And so, these things, I’m just thinking, in terms of, like, the filter or the relevancy is, like, I could name dozens of things I know to be true about myself that are somewhat inconsequential, “I like drinking LaCroix.” Like, okay. And so, that’s true, I know that with confidence, Nicole, I could tell you that. I don’t know if that’s getting me anywhere though. Can you help me out with that?

Nicole Kalil

Yeah, sure. I would say, as an initial starting point, put anything that comes to mind with no judgment. This list is between you and you. You don’t have to necessarily go out and share it with anybody. I would, as a starting point, lock yourself in a room, or go outside with a beautiful view and fresh air, or wherever your mental juices get flowing, and just allow yourself to ask the question, “What do I know to be true about me at this point in my life?”

And if “I love LaCroix” ends up on the list, let’s leave it there for now. At least as a starting point, try not to judge, try not to kneecap, try not to find evidence for what comes out. So, I’ll give another example. I’ve had people say “I’m honest to a fault.” Just cross out the “to a fault.” Just “I’m honest.” If somebody takes fault with that, that might be a ‘them’ problem, not a ‘you’ problem. But we have a tendency to say something about ourselves and then kneecap that sentence, or soften, or add disclaimers, “I’m pretty smart.” It’s okay to just be smart. Cross out the pretty.

So, Pete, I don’t know if that answered your question but I would start with putting everything on. And then, at some point in time, you’re going to edit the list and refine it to maybe what matters most. But back to your earlier question, this is something you can read at the start of each day. This is a more personal, more customized mantra, or something that you can tape on your mirror, or something that you read right before you’re about to do something big or take a big risk, so you’re really grounded in who you are and what makes you unique, what makes you special, what are the unique abilities you’re bringing to the table.

And my hope is that it encourages you to trust yourself because you’re grounded in what you can count on, but it also encourages the risks, it’s also a good thing to go, “Oh, I want that. What do I know about me supports me doing that?” So, for example, I launched my own podcast. That was really scary for me, but my ‘things I know to be true’ list encouraged me, it aligned with this thing that I wanted to do, so it made it clear for me that I knew I was going to be able to make it happen.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s just really cool, Nicole. And I’m reminded of a conversation I had with Hal Elrod with The Miracle Morning, talking about six morning habits, about affirmations. And so, he really emphasized making truthful affirmations as opposed to “I am a money magnet, and money flows to me effortlessly.” You’re like, “No, no, it didn’t. I really had to hustle to get that money.”

And so, if you start not so much from a “How could I affirm myself?” but rather “Oh, what do I know to be true?” I’m imagining, as you edit that, you get to a pretty powerful rundown that, as you look at and you say, it’s sort of like an affirmation, but the way we got there was starting with foundations that are true about you as opposed to, like, wishes and desires.

Nicole Kalil

Yeah, I find it harder to trust a wish or a desire. I don’t have much evidence. And, of course, trust implies a little bit of not having all of the evidence. But I want to ground myself in what I trust, what I feel confident about, what I know to be true first. And, I don’t know, I think affirmations and mantras have a wonderful place. The more aspirational ones, or the ones that, as you mentioned, just hasn’t resonated with me personally. I am not suggesting that people shouldn’t do it or that it doesn’t work. I’m just saying it didn’t work for me. So, this is my sort of tweak on it.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s cool. Okay. Well, tell me, Nicole, any other favorite practices that really pack a wallop?

Nicole Kalil

I start with a list of ten things that build internal trust, and it’s not, by any means, limited to ten, and I won’t go through ten today, but when we think about confidence as firm and bold trust in self, and we understand that it’s not going to come to us from the outside, and it’s built from the inside-out, then it begs the question, “How do I do that? How do I build trust with myself?”

And so, first, I would encourage you to think about how you build trust with others, and how others build trust with you. That will give you some insight into what’s most important to you. But there are a few things that I think are fairly universal. For example, keep your commitments. We trust people more who do what they say they’re going to do. We trust people more who follow through on their commitment. We tend to trust people who flake or don’t show up when they’re going to less. This is not a hundred percent true across the board but I’d say pretty general.

So, if you think about that, then, “How do I build trust with myself?” You take those things and you take it internal. Well, first and foremost, keeping the commitments you make to yourself, at least as much as, if not more, than the commitments you make to others. I think so many of us follow through on the commitments to our colleagues, to our bosses, to our children, at a much greater level than the commitments we make to ourselves. And, unfortunately, that’s doing damage and chipping away at our own trust.

We also have the tendency to overcommit, and that can be problematic as it relates to building trust. Now, again, perfectionism is the enemy of confidence, so this isn’t about keeping 100% of your commitments 100% of the time, but it is about doing it more often than not. That’s how we build and grow trust within ourselves.

Some other examples. Standing up for yourself builds self-trust. Speaking your truth. Saying what you mean, meaning what you say. Communicating boundaries can be a big trust builder. Being your own hype person. There are so many examples but it’s really thinking about, “What matters most to me as it relates to trust?” and then turning it inward and thinking about, “How do I do this with and for myself, for my own confidence?”

Pete Mockaitis

Well, now I’m intrigued, Nicole, about any number of situations. We had on the show Carol Kauffman who had a great question, “Who do I want to be now?” in terms of different circumstances, and there’s repeat thoughts connecting. It’s funny. I’m thinking right now, if someone provides you with service that is not quite acceptable, usually, I’m like, “You know, I don’t want to make a big issue of it. It’s not that big a deal. I don’t want to hurt their feelings.”

I got a little bit of people-pleaser in me, “I don’t want to hurt their feelings or put them on the spot. And, really, I’m so blessed in so many ways. Am I really going to make an issue over this carpet isn’t cut quite right or they forgot something with my restaurant order.” And so, usually, I kind of say nothing. But what you described makes me think, “Huh, there may be a whole lot of value in kindly, lovingly, diplomatically, saying, oh, speaking up for myself in those environments.” What are your thoughts here?

Nicole Kalil

I’m right there with you. I’m also a recovering people-pleaser, and I have to check in with myself. If I don’t say anything, how will I feel on the other side of this? Will I feel frustrated? Will I feel disappointed? Will I feel like I let myself or someone else down? Will I be pissed off? And if the answer to any of those questions is yes, then I probably should say something.

But, Pete, you hit the nail on the head. How I say it is a big differentiator and how I feel about myself. So, like you said, maybe it’s not that big of a deal, maybe it’s just, I had this recently with a contractor, “Hey, you’ve done phenomenal work. I could not be more pleased. I would recommend you to people. But can I give you one piece of feedback, one thing that I didn’t particularly enjoy in my relationship, and that would prevent me from referring you in certain situations or to certain types of people? Are you open? Would that feedback be valuable?”

So, I got to speak from what was true for me. I got to share something that was on my mind, and that was really bothering me. But I got to do it in a productive way for both of us and, by the way, I also have had the moments where I’ve gotten so pissed off that I over-rotated and the guys standing up for myself just ended up being a big jerk.

And I had to check in with myself on that I think the judgments and the things that we say, always tell us more about us than the other person. And the only thing I have any control over anyway is how I show up.

Pete Mockaitis

And what’s interesting as I imagine this conversation with contractor, whomever, felt like the worst-case scenario play out like wildly unrealistic, they start screaming at you, like, “Well, Nicole, it is absolutely outrageous that you would expect such a thing given the timeline and the budget, and it’s, frankly, extremely rude of you to throw this minor foible in our faces when we’ve bent over backwards to over deliver and be awesome for you.” Okay, so that’s, like, over-the-top negative reaction to a piece of feedback.

And that, in and of itself, could be a confidence builder in terms of, “Hey, you know what, I just survived the worst-case scenario, and it didn’t damage me,” assuming, hopefully, that you’re not going to then prosecute yourself, like, “Oh, I shouldn’t have said that. That was so bad of me.” Hopefully, you’re not at risk for going down that pathway. But, yeah, tell us about that.

Nicole Kalil

You hit the nail on the head. First of all, the worst case very rarely happens. We always make up the worst case in our minds, and it’s almost never that. And the other thing that you said that’s so important, it’s a confidence builder either way. I get to be proud of myself that I spoke my truth. I am not responsible for how they respond, or how they react, or what they choose to do with it.

He was lovely. He was like, “I so appreciate the feedback.” He could’ve walked out of here, and was like, “She’s full of crap. I’m not taking any of that.” I don’t know. All I know is I was willing to get uncomfortable to share something that was important for me to share. I trusted that my voice mattered. I trusted that my opinion mattered. And I trusted that this feeling that was existing within me was worth putting words on.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s cool. Well, Nicole, tell me, any other key things you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Nicole Kalil

There’s an expression that we hear a lot in professional environments, the “Fake it till you make it.” This is going to sound like semantics because it’s just a different word choice, but I prefer “Choose it until you become it.” Faking it sends the message of inauthenticity, and I think when we separate from our authentic selves, we create tears in our trust.

When we try to show up as someone or something that we’re not or be another person, fake it, I think we actually inadvertently do some damage to our trust and to our confidence. And so, my spin on it is “Choose it until you become it.” Choose to trust yourself moment by moment, day by day, until the feeling catches up. Choose confidence until you become it.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, now, Nicole, could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Nicole Kalil

Yes, so I have this in my office that says, “You’ll be too much for some people. Those aren’t your people.”

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

Nicole Kalil

So, I am not an avid researcher. I rely on other researchers to find the information. So, Adam Grant, I’m just a huge fan and I follow all of his stuff, and his book Think Again was really impactful for me.

Pete Mockaitis

I was about to ask for a favorite book. Is that it or is there another?

Nicole Kalil

I could use that but I read 80% of the time for pleasure, and maybe 20% of the time for self-development or work-related things. So, on the personal side, Louise Penny mystery books are favorites.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Nicole Kalil

Airtable, the app. I would literally would be lost without it, so that’s my go-to.

Pete Mockaitis

Nicole, you are an entry in one of our Airtable’s guest CRM.

Nicole Kalil

Oh, I love that.

Pete Mockaitis

It’s just magic.

Nicole Kalil

You are on mine. That’s how I prepped.

Pete Mockaitis

And a favorite habit?

Nicole Kalil

I’m an avid reader, that’s probably my favorite thing I do. I read 50 or more books every single year, but what is a unique take on it is I read during my working hours because I consider it professional and personal development. It helps me be better at my job.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Nicole Kalil

So, the “Don’t fake it till you make it. Choose it until you become it.” But also, the expression “You can’t learn to park in a parked car.” Just a reminder that action is how we learn and grow and do just about anything.

Pete Mockaitis

And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Nicole Kalil

My website is probably the best place, NicoleKalil.com. It has all the things.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Nicole Kalil

My call to action is to trust yourself, to choose confidence on the road to competence. The reality is you can’t be competent at anything when you’re trying it for the first time, or when you’re doing something new, or when you’re taking on a new challenge. Competence is something that’s gained and earned over time. And so, since you can’t be competent day one, the option is to use confidence because you can do that any time you want. So, confidence on the road to competence.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Nicole, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you much fun and confidence.

Nicole Kalil

Thanks, Pete. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me.