Confidence Archives - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Pete Mockaitis

Lisa, welcome.

Lisa Sun

Thank you so much for having me, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I’m excited to dig into the wisdom you’ve captured and put together in your book, Gravitas: The 8 Strengths That Redefine Confidence, because confidence is something our listeners often say, “Yeah, I want more of that,” and I can dig it. So, in your fashion business, you are on a mission to catalyze confidence. I did look that up in the dictionary, it meant what I thought it meant, to, like, accelerate like with a catalyst.

So, just if anyone else was wondering, but could you give us a tale from your own career story in which you had catalyzed some confidence, what went down, and what did you do?

Lisa Sun
So, I was at McKinsey and Co., the management consulting firm for 11 years, and after a year of being there, I had my first annual performance review.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, boy.

Lisa Sun

And the opening line was, “Lisa comes across as young and overly enthusiastic at times. She should seek to have more gravitas.” I think we have all been told at some point in our career to be more confident, essentially, they were saying that. And when I asked my boss, “How do you get gravitas?” she said, “Go buy a new dress, wear big jewelry, and great shoes.”

That is the most offensive piece of feedback you can give to a 23-year-old, making $43,000 a year, size 18-20 to go buy new clothes. And when I asked her why, she said, “Okay, really, it’s not about clothes. Every morning you wake up and you’re the first person you have to look at in the mirror, and you have to like yourself, I can teach you how to be good at this job but I can’t teach you how to like yourself.” So, I put on a dress, it reminds me I can do this job. So, she said, “Dumbo did not need a feather to fly. It reminded him that he could.”

And so, what we have done, and why our mission is to catalyze confidence, is, “How do we, as adults, create reminders every day of our talents and gifts?” And so, that’s really the origin story of my company, of the book, and I know we’re going to dive deeper into what we’ve learned, but I do think that we’ve got to reframe confidence, gravitas, not as a behavior but as a choice and a mindset.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, already you’re dropping actual wisdom on us. Thank you, Lisa. We had a really cool chat with Dr. Srini Pillay back in the day. We’ve got a link in the show notes. And he used a cool term, psychological Halloweenism to mean just that, like, there are ways you can dress up, like in a Halloween costume that impact you psychologically.

And so, for her, it was the dress. Sometimes I put on a blazer jacket, it’s in my office corner, just like, “No, Pete, you’ve got to get serious and be Mr. Executive right now. Let’s put that on.” And it makes an impact. And so, it’s not about the clothes itself but it can be prop that helps get in the right mindset, like Dumbo and his feather.

Lisa Sun

And I think the reason is, and this is really what we dive deep into, is if you look up the word confident in the dictionary, it has nothing to do with bravado, swagger, or performance. If someone tells you be more confident, you’re like, “Oh, I’m going to speak up, I’m going to be assertive, I’m going to stand on the stage.” It’s very behavioral.

If you look it up in the dictionary, it’s an understanding of, appreciation of, and trust in your own talents and abilities. And so, that actually shifts the entire way you think about it. And the reason we, as adults, need reminders is we are born fully self-confident. Ask any five-year-old what they’re the best at in the world, and they’ll tell you right away. You don’t have to have kids but you know this feeling, “I’m the best at soccer,” “I’m the best at hugs,” “I’m the best at everything.” They’ll run off a long list of their accomplishments at five.

But what we found is in your adolescence, between the ages of 8 and 12, there are six forces that hold you back. They actually appear on the ages of 8 and 12, it’s chapter 2 of my book. And so, it’s not our fault that we have an inner critic. Think about your adolescence, it’s all about starting to be doubting yourself, self-consciousness. And when those forces appear, to break out of them, we actually, as adults, have to make a conscious choice, and we have to channel a different mindset.

And reminders, like a dress or a blazer, they remind us to believe in ourselves again. And it’s really, if you were five years old, you don’t need the blazer, but as an adult, because you’ve had setback, disappointment, you’ve experienced fear, insecurity, self-doubt, that’s why we need these little tokens in our life to break ourselves out of it.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, I want to hear about the six forces soon but, first, let’s just make sure we conclude the thread. So, you had the conversation, it’s not about the clothes, but the clothes can help be a reminder. And what, ultimately, did you do in your McKinsey days to boost that confidence and get superior reviews?

Lisa Sun

Well, to be clear, I wish I could go back in time to give myself this book. I feel like you write the book you most need to read yourself. I wish I could get in the DeLorean and go back to that 23-year-old person. What I did is not what I would tell people to do today. Like, I wish I could go back and tell my 23-year-old-self something quite differently.

Well, parts of it. The one part I would still do is I always say the mentor chooses you; you don’t choose the mentor. Make yourself mentor-able. So, one thing I was really good about was saying, “Hey, what’s one thing I could do differently?” I really think people are bad at giving feedback, and also asking for it. It’s like browsing in a store, “Can I help you? Do you have any feedback for me?” “No, I’m just browsing,” “Oh, no, keep doing what you’re doing. You’re doing well.”

So, one thing I do is I took ownership of it, and I said, “Okay, what’s one thing I could do differently? What’s one thing I could do differently?” And over time, I enlisted a lot of people that have fingerprints on my journey, everyone from McKinsey offered me a speech coach. So, I was one of the few associates that, every Friday, was in front of Judy Marcus, saying, “Let’s practice my presentation.”

But I think what we did over the course of 11 years is we corrected the behavior but I don’t know if I ever fully corrected the mindset. So, to give you an example, someone at a book reading in DC said to me, “I’m going to call BS on this whole thing. I always thought of you as a very confident 20-year-old or 30-year-old.” And I said, “I was faking it. I was performing. I was actually still deeply insecure, overachieving, beating myself up, tons of self-loathing, but I learned how to play the game. I learned how to pretend to be assertive, and outspoken, extroversion, charisma.”

And so, I think that I was able to do it because I played into what the mold asked me to, but it wasn’t enjoyable. I don’t think I really liked myself during the process.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And so then, how did you get to the place where you authentically had that internal deep wellspring of true confidence?

Lisa Sun

Well, I left McKinsey in 2011, I took a full year off, and went around the world by myself with my BlackBerry. I don’t know if any of your listeners still miss their BlackBerry. I miss my BlackBerry. That thing never died or cracked. And one of the things that I realized was the fundamental difference between our society and Asian cultures, or even other cultures, is our culture really celebrates extroversion and charisma.

Pete Mockaitis

We’re talking about US business culture?

Lisa Sun

US Western. I would just say Western culture, North American culture. And, for example, Kelly Shue at Yale, she’s a professor, she studied 30,000 employee records, and she found that men were consistently rated highest on promotability but lowest on actual performance and results, and women were the opposite. Women were very good at delivering results and performance but not promotion potential.

And when she double-clicked on promotion potential, it was extroversion, charisma, and outgoingness, like being outgoing. And so, she said, “This explains a huge part of the gender pay gap related to promotion,” which is we’re scoring things that you can see but not actual results. It’s like why Janet Yellen was told in 2013 she didn’t have the gravitas to lead the Federal Reserve.

And Ezra Klein at The Washington Post said, “It’s because the pervasive view of gravitas is not stretched to include her. She’s self-spoken, collaborative. By the way, the most qualified person for the job. Why is it we only label confident people as extroverted?” And so, that was the first unlock, as in my travels, as I was reflecting on this after leaving McKinsey, it really started to make me think that, “Are we talking about confidence in the right way? Are we really helping people be their strongest versions of themselves?”

And so, when I started my own company over a decade ago, I said, “Look, this is not about asking people to fake it to make it. This is about creating products, services, and content that really help people turn the mirror on the inside and see how valuable and strong they are.” Things don’t get easier, we get stronger, and I don’t think we, as adults, acknowledge those strengths actively. We can tell you what we’re working on, our opportunities, our deficits, things that aren’t going well.

But when I ask you and put you on the spot, Pete, and say, “What are you the best at in the world? Tell it to me like a five-year-old,” you’re going to sit down and go, “Huh, I need to think about that question a little bit.”

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, it’s funny, and when you say that, I do need to think about it, and it’s like, “I guess I’d have to combine. If I’m number one in the world, I have to combine like six things that I’m top 1% at so as, probabilistically multiplying them that makes me top dog out of eight billion.” That’s how I’m thinking about it.

Lisa Sun

You can’t benchmark yourself. No, Pete, that’s my whole point. Like, you automatically went to benchmarking it. It’s not measurable. It’s how you feel about yourself. It’s the iceberg model of consciousness. Ten percent of the iceberg is visible. It’s the behavior we can see. Ninety percent is below the water line, and it’s thoughts, values, feelings, wants, needs about ourselves.

So, I can tell you pretty confidently, because I’ve written a book about it, I can tell you now what I’m the best at in the world because, guess what, you’ll never be able to measure it. It’s in my own head, it’s what I think I’m the best at in the world.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, tell us, what is that thing, Lisa?

Lisa Sun

So, I always share two. I’m the world’s best plus one. Please invite me to a party. I will fetch your drinks. I won’t hover.And I’m the world’s best positivity mirror. So, when we spend time together, I will see something in you that you may not even see in yourself, and I will take a moment and I will reflect it back onto you so that you know that I saw you, and I value you, and I heard you.

Pete Mockaitis

And as you’re thinking about this world’s best piece, the focus is not so much that that it is factually, demonstratively, empirically, provably, truthfully correct in, like, a scientific or journalistic sense of the word, but rather that your innermost depths of being are vibing with that as true. Is that accurate?

Lisa Sun

Yup, because mindset drives behavior. Carol Dweck, at Stanford, wrote this great book called Mindset, and she’s proven over and over again that if you can reset your mindset, you can change your behavior. I’ll give you a very clear example that I think some of your listeners will appreciate. I own a women’s wear company. We make $100 to $300 dollar workwear, and I still dress hundreds of women a year, and you can book a 30-minute appointment with me. And, Pete, I’m about to give all your male listeners an insight into what every woman feels. You’re welcome.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. We’ll take it.

Lisa Sun

Every woman comes into a dressing room with the worst self-loathing, the most negative mindset she sets herself up to fail, even before all those six forces that we’re going to dive into, she brings all six forces of her inner critic into that dressing room. She tells me, “I hate my arms. I hate my thighs. I’m going to lose 10 pounds.” Like a mirror inside a dressing room, as soon as she undresses, she doesn’t feel like trying on clothes.

And for 10 minutes out of those 30 minutes, I don’t let her talk about her body or her clothes. I ask her three questions, “What are you most proud of in the last year of your life? If your best friend was standing here, what would they tell me about you? What are you the best at in the world?” And, by the way, no woman wants to answer these questions but I always say, “If we can’t reset the chemistry of this room to a place of positivity, we are going to fail today.”

And so, as she starts answering the questions, I’m like a velvet knife, you don’t feel like it’s happening, I’m starting to dress her, and we start laughing and smiling, and she comes out of the dressing room, all of our mirrors on the outside so you only get to see yourself when you’re fully dress, and she’ll say, “This is a skinny mirror.” I’m like, “Nope, it’s from Bed, Bath & Beyond. Rest in peace, Bed, Bath & Beyond. It’s 1995, I can’t trick you.”

She goes, “What did you do?” I said, “We made a choice that this was going to work. We changed your mindset from a place of negativity to a positive place where you start to tell me all the things you love about your life, and then you let me do the work. I’m a dress whisperer. I get it right on the first time.” And so, I use the dressing room as an analogy of how most of us wake up. Most of us wake up in a deficit mindset, focused on what’s missing in our life, or what the weaknesses are, versus focusing on the abundance we have, the talents we bring, our superpowers.

And if you reset that for yourself every day, by the way, I still, I woke up with all six forces in my head today. I still have to reset it. But if you can do that, that drives the behaviors and outcomes you want in life.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Yeah, I really dig that. It’s associated with needing to do a reset in the morning. And I’ll tell you, what’s been most effective for me is straight up dunking into cold water. It’s like my brain is not capable of having many other thoughts, but they’re like, “Oh, oh, oh, that’s cold.” And then I’m kind of rejuvenated, I was like, “All right.” And so, it’s almost like I wash away that stuff. Now, that is…

Lisa Sun
And maybe that’s your little black dress. That’s your little black dress, right? You don’t need a blazer this morning. You’re just going to dunk yourself in cold water. The thing is as I’m putting on my clothes for the day, and I have to wear gravitas every day, we literally have the word gravitas sewn into the back of the clothing, it’s the clothing label.

And so, that’s literally a ritual for me of I woke up with all six forces focused on the weaknesses in my life, and as I’m dressing, I’m like, “Okay, I’m the gravitas woman. All right.” I validate myself. I tell myself what I’m proud of from the previous day. I really go through this ritual. And I think that’s what we’re trying to help people do is reset their minds before they take on the day.

Pete Mockaitis

Yes, let’s hear about the array of rituals that you’ve seen in your work and discovered are effective for people. So, I mentioned cold water, you’re talking about a great dress, some validation. Show us, what does this look like in practice? And what are some different flavors of it?

Lisa Sun

And maybe I take away from rituals and more about the approach we built, but I always say confidence is not a state of being; it’s a total approach because every single day you’re going to face setback, disappointment, fear, insecurity. And so, it’s really about creating an approach in your life. The three parts of the approach is, one, identify which of the six forces you’re feeling.

And I know we’re going to go into them but I think it’s really important, before you diagnose insecurity or fear, to know what’s driving it. It’s like why you don’t ask kids if they’re sad. You say, “What happened?” You double-click on it. So, I feel like we need to do a better work in having conversations with our inner critic, like, “What is driving me feeling this way?”

The second part is I always say you’ve got to be able to take a self-affirming inventory of your strengths and talents. And in our work, we identified eight superpowers, most of us have two or three. My mom who is my guru has all eight, she’s like, “I take your quiz. I have all eight of them.” So, you can take a free quiz from us and discover what your superpowers are.

But then the third part, and I think this is the really important one, is really believing in those superpowers, connecting them to real-life events, starting to really understand and advocate for your talents, but also decide where you have gaps. A lot of people take our quiz and they’ll say, “Okay, I have three of them but there’s ones I don’t have.” I’m like, “Well, first of all, love the three you have. It’s not like Pokemon. You don’t need to catch them all.”

But of the five you don’t have, what do you want in life, and which of those five do you want to cultivate? So, you take real ownership. As people progress and climb the ladder, they go from having two superpowers to four or more. And we found that in our longitudinal quantitative data over the course of five years.

So, if I step back from it, it’s like diagnose what’s driving insecurity and fear in your life, be able to create a self-affirming inventory of your strengths and talents. And then the third thing is, take ownership of what capabilities you want to grow and advocate for and own over time.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, let’s dig into it, these three pieces of approach in some depth. What are these six forces? And how do we identify them?

Lisa Sun

So, the six forces, the first is called the deficit mindset. This is where you view weakness or what’s missing over your potential and your strengths. The easiest way to diagnose this one is when you look in the mirror, “Do you look for the wrinkles or your beautiful eyes?”

The second one is called shrinking effect. This is where you shortchange yourself or underestimate your own abilities versus others or a standard. The example I use here is this is why people say sorry all the time without actually being sorry because they just think they must be in the wrong. Or, this is why women will only apply for a job if they’re 100% qualified, whereas men will often apply if they’re only 60% qualified, “Ah, that’s good enough.” But if you have shrinking effect, you’re like, “I have to be perfect to sit in that seat.” You shortchange what you’re offering to the world.

The third force is called satisfaction conundrum. This is where you tie your self-worth or happiness to an external marker of success, “I’ll be happy when I lose 10 pounds,” “I’ll be happy when I get that promotion,” “I’ll be happy when I get that car.” The problem is, when you tie your self-worth, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have goals and ambitions, but when you tie all of your self-worth to a single marker, if you get it, you just chase the next one, “Oh, I lost 10 pounds. I think I could lose five more.” It’s a treadmill.

Or, if you don’t get it, you beat yourself up for not getting it. And so, every time I didn’t make partner at McKinsey, I literally took it out on myself. I had this brass ring that I tied all of my happiness to when I should’ve stepped back and said, “You know what, I’m really creating value, I have a lot going on in my life. This one thing didn’t happen for me. Okay, I need to figure out all the other gifts I bring to the table.”

The fourth we call superhero façade. This is where you go, “Ahh, I got this. Every part of my life is perfect.” Then you try tell the world that you’re a superhero. The problem with that approach is the most successful people in life will say, “You know what, whenever you see me succeeding over here, I promise you I’m failing somewhere else.” And when you can talk about where you’re failing, you invite people to have fingerprints on the journey, and to help you, and make you even more successful. So, the most confident people in the world do not tell you they’re perfect or they’re superheroes. They’ll, in fact, tell you the reverse.

The fifth force is we call setback spiral. This is where a negative moment of criticism, a disappointment, spirals to expound all parts of your life, “So, this person gave me a piece of criticism. That must mean I’m a terrible sister, daughter, friend.” You start to say, “Okay, all parts of my life are off even though this is squarely just in one part of it.”

And the sixth force is systemic bias. This is where there are asymmetrical structures of power at work, where the rules were not created by you or for you. So, it took me twice as long to get to the same markers of leadership as my male colleagues. Well, reflecting back on that, I would say when I joined McKinsey in September of 2000, only 13% of the global partnership were women. There weren’t that many people that looked like me. So, maybe part of this wasn’t me. This was the system wasn’t built to see someone like me yet.

And my favorite article from Harvard Business Review the last four years, written by my two friends, Ruchika Tulshyan and Jodi-Ann Burey, is, “Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome,” because it implies we’re criminals or unwell, when, in fact, a lot of it was driven by systemic bias, that the roles just weren’t created by us or for us.

But, in total, these six forces allow you to have a vocabulary to say, “Okay, right now, the way I’m feeling, oh, it’s satisfaction conundrum. I’m tying so much of my happiness to this one marker. Okay, Lisa, how do I go fix that now?” But I think it’s really important to diagnose which one you’re feeling. Maybe all six.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, yes, that is handy for sure because when you, like a good consultant knows, when you properly segment the problem, you’ll see there are very different solutions, whether it’s a factor one versus factor four. So, tell us, once we zero in on that, what do we do about it?

Lisa Sun

Well, then what you do is, I always say, “Okay, now you’ve had a conversation with your inner critic. You’ve explored why you’re feeling this way, what the worst-case scenario could be, and now you can drown it out with the megaphone of your superpowers,” because when you know your strengths and talents, it changes the solution space. You can focus on what you do have and what you can bring to the table. You have gas in the tank to keep going.

And so, for us, we did launch a quantitative study, and you can take the quiz at MyConfidenceLanguage.com for free, and you can discover, of the eight superpowers you’ve identified, which ones you have, and lean into those. So, I’m happy to walk through those eight and then give you an example of how that changed my life, if that helps, Pete. Do you want to go there?

Pete Mockaitis

Let’s do it. Yes, please, let’s hear it.

Lisa Sun

Okay, so let’s do it. So, the eight superpowers. Leading, “I set direction, I’m in charge, I inspire followership.” Performing, that’s what you and I are doing together right now. We’re on center stage, extroversion, charisma, the exchange of energy between two people. Those two superpowers are the most written about and talked about. Less than 20% of people in America have them.

So, the six that cover 80%, and, by the way, if we let them perform all day, nothing would get done. The other ones are achieving and knowing, “I get things done with a winner’s mindset. I love goals and I love meeting, exceeding them.” It’s being an athlete. Knowing? “I’m the smartest, the most well-researched, most process-oriented person in the room.” You want to build IKEA furniture with someone who has knowing as their superpower.

The best example of this is the three black women from the movie “Hidden Figures.” How do three black women have the gravitas to send a man into space at NASA? They weren’t the leaders. They weren’t the performers. They were the achievers and the knowers. The next two are giving and believing, “I support others. I’m empathetic.” Believing, “I’m optimistic. I see the best in everyone.” The best example of these forms of confidence, Ted Lasso.

Ted Lasso actually says, “I was underestimated my whole life because I’m not a commander, I’m not a leader. I’m here to help everyone become the best versions of themselves. I’m not here to win or lose. I’m here to believe.” And so, that’s a unique form of confidence that is undervalued and underestimated in the workplace.

The last two are creating and self-sustaining. Creating is my number one, “I can believe in things before I see them. I love the future ideas. I create something from nothing.” And self-sustaining, this is the hardest one for most people to get, “I like myself. I don’t need to impress you. I don’t need external validation.” It’s the quality most needed to ask for a raise, a favor, or overcome criticism.

But together, all eight of them, start to create a different inventory for your life. So, for example, my confidence language is creating. I’m the daughter of immigrants, I know what it takes to create something from nothing. Immigrants believe in things before they can see them. Performing, that’s what we’re doing now. Leading, being in charge. And giving.

And so, I know that those are the four I have. By the way, my team has opposite languages because my language doesn’t get anything done. Most of my team is achieving, giving, knowing, believing. They get things done. They stay organized. They keep everyone motivated. And so, you’ve got to have that language.

And the reason why that’s so important, I make women’s workwear, in March of 2020, when the pandemic started, our sales were not zero. They were negative. We had to refund people because we have a 30-day return policy. If you just bought a dress to go to the office from us, you send it back to us. And so, what we did is we did not let those six forces hold us. We didn’t focus on what we didn’t have.

I could’ve spiraled. I could’ve had deficit mindset. What I did is I said, “Team, what are superpowers? What do we have right now that no one else has?” I put on LinkedIn, and this is my performing and creating superpower at work, I said, “The sales of my company were negative.” No superhero façade. “If you need hospital gowns or face masks, we can get them to you. DM me.”

And Uwe Voss, the CEO of HelloFresh, DM’d me and said, “We need 2500 face masks in Newark right away. How can we help?” And so, we pivoted our business for 72 days during the pandemic to making personal protective equipment. And that was only possible because we focused on our superpowers and our strengths, not our deficits and our weaknesses.

My team’s confidence language, they got it done, they organized the spreadsheets, they got people to come in and work. It’s really about focusing on your strengths and having that growth-based mindset instead of deficit mindset.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s really cool. Really cool. And so now, I’m thinking here. So, we identify the forces that aren’t working for us so much, as well as identifying our superpower. How does that knowledge then translate into the feeling of, “Alright, in my innermost depths, I’m confident and ready to rock”? How do I make that leap from the knowing to the feeling?

Lisa Sun

Well, so once you’ve discovered your superpowers, I always say you’ve made the unconscious conscious. So, the good news is you now have words attached to your talents. And the quiz is not wrong. A lot of people take our quiz, and they go, “Whoa, I have five out of the eight.” I’m like, “Are you surprised?” They’re like, “Yes.” I said, “You’ve been underestimating or underleveraging yourself your whole life. You’ve got a lot.”

Or, “These are the ones, I don’t have them.” I’m like, “Don’t focus on those. Focus on the ones you have.” To own it though, I always tell people, take a moment you’re really proud of in life, and deconstruct it through the lens of your superpowers. Why did your superpowers drive that outcome? Connect it to a specific memory.

It’s like that movie “Inside Out” from Pixar. Your brain can only remember core memories. I can’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday but it has these little core memories that form the basis of your character. So, take one of those core memories and say, “Huh, I have five superpowers. What is it about me that made that happen?” because we’re so focused on looking at the summit that we don’t turn back around to see how much we’ve accomplished.

By doing that, you start to believe in it. It’s one thing to take a quiz, it’s another thing to actually believe in the results. After that, then you can start to say, “Okay, how am I going to advocate for that? How can I show up? How can I make sure I get credit for my talents? And where are the places I want to add to my superpower portfolio?”

So, the example I just shared with you of pivoting my company to making personal protective equipment for 72 days, I can connect that to my four superpowers. I can say, “This is why I got us here. By the way, these are my team’s superpowers and how they contributed.” So, I really believe in my confidence language.

If I tie it back to what I’m the best at in the world, I’m really high on performing. So, that doesn’t surprise you when I tell you I’m the world’s best plus one. When I tell you I’m the world’s best positivity mirror, that’s giving. You can actually start to see all these things come together.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, lovely. Could you share with us another story of someone else who had things come together in terms of they worked through these approaches, and where did they start, what did they discover, and where did they land?

Lisa Sun

So, I’ll give you an example. In chapter one of my book, I talk about a woman named Suzanne, and she is in finance, and she came to me, and she said, “Ugh, my boss just told me I didn’t have gravitas.” And this is one of the funny things I always think, when you tell people to be more confident, it’s anxiety-inducing, it’s ambiguous. I kind of want to say, “Which of these eight superpowers do you want me to embody?”

And I said, “Okay, I know he can’t take the quiz, but which of these eight superpowers is your boss, is your CEO?” And she said, “Okay, he came up through sales. He’s probably performing, he’s leading, and he’s achieving.” “Okay, got it.” I said, “Let’s have you take the quiz,” and she goes, “Oh, my gosh, I’m knowing, achieving, and giving. We overlap on the achievement, like I always had a number, but I’m not extroverted so I don’t have performing. I don’t have leading.”

And she goes, “Huh, so when he says I don’t have gravitas, it means I’m not leading/performing.” And I said, “Okay, but are you getting credit for being giving and knowing?” She goes, “You know what, that’s not in his style.” And I said, “But you take care of everyone, you’re the smartest person driving the process, you’re VP of finance.”

And I said, “It’s actually a double-edged sword. Number one, when you do your weekly check-ins, make sure you’re taking credit for the things that he’s not seeing, the way in which you build relationships, take care of others on the team, the way you built up process, the way you think about numbers. You need to make sure you get credit for being achieving, knowing, and giving.”

“At the same time, you can say to him, ‘Hey, to get to the next level of leadership, I think what you’re saying is I need to work my leading and performing skills.’” And she did that, and she goes, “He said yes. He said, ‘That’s what I mean by gravitas. I need you to speak up more in meetings. I need you to be seen as setting direction more actively, but you’re right, I have not acknowledged that you are the most collaborative and empathetic person in the team.’”

And it’s funny, McKinsey did a report that said women are the reason why companies made it through the pandemic but the ideas of collaboration, empathy, care, they’re not on the traditional HR scorecard because women didn’t write the scorecard to begin with, so how do we give them credit for those things?

And, ultimately, what happened is she got promoted to CFO after two years because she got recognition for the qualities that she brought to the table, but she added superpowers. She actually retook the quiz, and she said, “I have four and a half superpowers now. That is so different than two years ago when I only had three. Thank you so much. I feel stronger that I can advocate for myself in this environment.” But she was promoted to the C-suite in less than two years.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, lovely. Well, Lisa, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Lisa Sun

Thank you, Pete. No, I love that this is How to be Awesome at Your Job, and I think being awesome starts with recognizing how powerful you really are.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Lisa Sun

My favorite one is my best friend Jane Park, who is the founder of Tokki. She always says, “Life doesn’t get easier. We get stronger.” And what I love about that is it focuses on the fact that there are no regrets, only learnings in life, and that the more we view every single moment of our life as an opportunity to get stronger, the stronger we get.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Lisa Sun

I really think Kelly Shue at Yale did a phenomenal job with her study. I’m going to give her a shoutout. It was awesome.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite book?

Lisa Sun

My favorite book is Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends & Influence Others. And it’s ironic because he focuses mostly on extroversion and charisma: smile, shake hands, be engaged. And a hundred years ago, that book was formative in terms of changing the way in which we relate to each other.

But the real reason it’s my favorite book, because I think what we’ve done is we’ve expanded it. I hope Dale Carnegie, if he were still alive today, would love the expansion we’ve done on his work about adding more qualities and superpowers to the equation. But when I was 12 years old, I was a freshman in high school, and my parents realized they could not afford the education that I wanted, or they wanted for me.

Let’s be clear. I went to a fancy college. It was $28,000 to go to an Ivy League college in 1996. And so, my dad went around town, and he asked, “How can I help my kid make $28,000 a year to send her to college?” And this is before endowments were releasing financial aid left and right. And the local Toastmasters chapter said, “Hey, the Rotary Club, the Lion’s Club, they have these student-speaking competitions. Your kid could win $5,000, $10,000, $15,000. We will train her to become a public speaker.”

And so, I got to join Toastmasters at the age of 12. And when you join, the founder of the chapter that I joined in California gave me a copy of Dale Carnegie’s book. I still have it. It says 99 cents, and he said, “This is the first book you’re going to read,” because, think about it, a Taiwanese immigrant’s daughter had to learn how to operate in Western culture. And the Toastmasters and Dale Carnegie taught me how to show up that way.

So, I ended up winning $20,000 in speaking money to pay for my first year of college, and then had another scholarship for year two. But that book, I still love that book mostly because of the memory and the way it changed my life so early on.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, that’s beautiful. We had Joe Hart, who’s the CEO of Dale Carnegie Organization currently, on the show, and we stay in touch. So, I will let him know.

Lisa Sun

Will you tell him? I’m obsessed with the book and him. I have a personal connection to Dale Carnegie’s teachings.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Lisa Sun

So, my favorite tool, I still own a Levenger.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, yeah.

Lisa Sun

Old-school Levenger. I still write out every day my priorities, and I block out time on my calendar to think. So, I still use a Levenger. I’m old school.

Pete Mockaitis

And those who are not in the know, these are those handy notebooks with the disk so that you can remove pages then put them back in, right?

Lisa Sun

Yes

Pete Mockaitis

And a favorite habit, something you do that helps you be awesome at your job?

Lisa Sun

So, I do two things. One is I am a hip-hop dancer, so I dance in a dance class five days a week at Anna Kaiser Studios, and I really love the power of dance. So, that’s one thing that I do. The second thing is once a week, I turn off my phone for eight hours, and it’s usually on a Saturday. And of those eight hours, I will go to a museum. I’m lucky I live in New York City, so I recognize that’s not for everyone, and I will just let my brain turn off for an hour or two just looking at beautiful art or something that I want to learn about.

But I find that, because we’re always in response mode, that we don’t give our brainwaves the chance to amplify and lengthen. And I actually turn off. It’s not like “Do not disturb” because you can still see if text messages are coming in. I literally turn it off for eight hours.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Lisa Sun

Oh, the one that I get quoted most often is self-confidence is a choice and a mindset before it becomes a behavior.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Lisa Sun

Well, I would say, first, make sure you take the quiz at MyConfidenceLanguage.com. It’s really fun. @lisalsun at Gravitas New York on all social media platforms. And if it’s LinkedIn, I really am responsive on LinkedIn messenger more so than email.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Lisa Sun

How to be awesome at your job, I think, starts at recognizing how awesome you are first.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Cool. We got it. All right. Lisa, this has been a lot of fun, and I wish you all the best and much gravitas and confidence in your adventures.

Lisa Sun

Thank you so much, Pete. Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis

Tim, welcome back to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Tim Elmore

Thank you, Pete. Great to be with you.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I’m excited to dig into the wisdom of your book A New Kind of Diversity: Making the Different Generations on Your Team a Competitive Advantage. But first, you have survived a plane crash and, somehow, we never talked about that last time. What’s the deal here?

Tim Elmore

Yeah, yeah. Well, I don’t just go around starting conversations with, “Hey, did you know I survived a plane crash?”

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah. Well, we should have.

Tim Elmore

Well, maybe.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, we’re going to start this one that way, Tim.

Tim Elmore

Yeah. Well, the crazy thing was that was years and years ago, but I was in New Zealand, it was a private plane, I was being flown with a buddy of mine, by a pilot that was not instrument rated, and he was trying to land on a field. I was going to speak at a big youth camp back then 30 years ago, and he wasn’t able to land the plane. He started to come down. The trees or the forest are right here. He realizes he can’t touch down in time before the trees began, so he takes the plane, shoots it straight up in the air.

He says, “Tighten your seatbelts. I got to try this landing again.” But as he’s shooting up into the air, we get about 120 feet in the air, and the engine stalls, and we drop to the ground. So, about 12 feet, or, excuse me, 12 stories we dropped. And Grant, the pilot, went right through the windshield. It was awful.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, my goodness.

Tim Elmore

And the other three of us were beat up and thrown around, our seatbelts broke too, but we all survived. So, it was quite the deal, yeah. But, as you can imagine, I was in New Zealand. I had to get on a plane to fly back home. So, I had to jump back on the proverbial horse and ride again.

Pete Mockaitis

Wow! So, I don’t have a great deal of knowledge of aviation but how common is it to survive that fall that distance? This sounds more or less miraculous, Tim.

Tim Elmore
Yeah, it was. This sounds so cliché but I really do believe in miracles. I don’t spiritualize everything but I think, “My gosh, I’m still around for a reason. I got to make the most of my time.” I think my sense of urgency that I currently experience probably came from knowing at any moment I could be gone, and I want to make the very most of it.

So, I’m loving my family better, I’m about the business of what I do much better and less lackadaisical perhaps than before that time. But I think that’s the good that can come from the not so good along the way.

Pete Mockaitis

Wow! Okay. Well, I am grateful that you are alive and here, and we are speaking again. The last conversation I think was really rich with some juicy stories I thought about numerous times since. This book A New Kind of Diversity: Making the Different Generations on Your Team a Competitive Advantage I’ll tell you, I’ll be candid with you, Tim.

I usually shy away from the different generations generalizations content but I was like, “Tim is so darn good. If I could trust somebody to handle this decently, it’s going to be Tim.” So, let’s get some of the tough stuff out of the way. Like, Tim, isn’t this just wild over-generalization? And how is this even helpful?

Tim Elmore

Yeah, I do get that question, so please know you’re not alone at all. And, yet, I think there’s another part of our brain that would say, “But we do realize we’re a little different.” Twenty-somethings are a little different than 60-somethings. But ageism and chronocentrism almost always come up at this point.

Pete Mockaitis

Chronocentrism, I don’t think I’ve ever heard that word before.

Tim Elmore
Okay, so let me give you both, real quick, working definitions. Ageism is “Isn’t it true 60-somethings tend to think are like 20-somethings, regardless of the time and history where we are?” You’re more conservative when you’re older, you’re more progressive when you’re younger, blah, blah, blah, and that is true. There is an element of truth in that.

And chronocentrism is the tendency we have, at whatever life station we’re in, to think “We’re right and they’re wrong. The older, the younger. Kids are just fragile snowflakes today,” or, “Those old folks are just dinosaurs.”

Pete Mockaitis

Like ethnocentrism but chrono, time.

Tim Elmore

Exactly. Chronology, that’s right. You picked it up. You get an A on that test.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, thank you. I was a Latin student, back in the day. It really expands the vocabulary.

Tim Elmore
It does. I’m sure it does, yeah. So, anyway, all that to say, my goal in this book is not to stereotype but to understand, so I’m trying to help readers. It’s not scientific. In fact, this is a social science, not a science, it’s soft science but it is, I think, a very helpful thing to have a bit of an encyclopedia. If you’re 58, let’s say, and you’re managing a company, and you’ve got these Gen Zers coming in, and you go, “Oh, my God, I don’t understand these kids today.”

To say, “Well, let me help you step into their brain just a little bit. Here’s the narrative that they’ve grown up in. Here’s the wet cement that they were shaped in,” and then to know a little bit. You’re a little bit more informed as you do that interview, or do that onboarding, or do the performance review.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, could you start by sharing with us maybe some differing survey results or researcher studies that say convincingly, “Yup, people in different generations do, in fact, tend to, on aggregate, on the whole, more often than not, think, operate differently in these kinds of ways”?

Tim Elmore

Yeah. Well, let me just share some really recent data that might be a fun fodder for discussion. When I talk to managers, for instance, at a workplace, and they’re asking, “Well, what should I expect from an interview with a 22-year-old recently out of college?” One of the things that Generation Z brings is a very paradoxical high sense of agency and high sense of anxiety at the same time.

So, the agency they feel, you know what that means, it’s like, “I got this. I can do this,” I think was fostered by the smartphone, “I’ve been looking at things since I was four years old on a tablet, I think I know all that I need to know to do this,” and so a Gen Zer comes in with a high sense of agency. At the same time, however, we all know, I think, that mental health issues are a thing right now for high school students, college students, young professionals; panic attacks, anxiety, depression.

But here’s the irony. I think anxiety was brought on by the same smartphone. So, the high sense of, “I’m in control,” and the high sense of, “I’m out of control,” come from the smart device that, I think, ambushed us and we did not know what it would do, particularly to the younger generations. So, I know it does not fully answer your question but that’s something I think we that are in midlife need to know. It’s going to be a thing.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, yeah, certainly there’s no doubt that our upbringings are different. I just turned 40 recently.

Tim Elmore

Yeah. Okay. Congratulations and happy birthday.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. I remember our home was kind of cutting edge when we had dial-up internet in my youth but I certainly had several years on this planet, which I was able to read, and we didn’t have the internet, so that was a thing that was going on and I could see certainly how that can shape things. But I guess, yes, what I’m really driving at is in terms of maybe incidences of anxiety, depression, or the proportion of people who strongly agree with this kind of statement is wildly different between folks who are 62 versus 22. Can you lay some of those sharp distinctions down for us?

Tim Elmore

Okay, sure. Yeah. Well, let me tell two quick stories that I think will vividly illustrate what you’re asking about. In the book, I talk about Tony, true story. Tony, two years ago, was a senior in college at Ohio University, took a part-time job during his senior year at a paint store, and loved his job, part-time. During that senior year, he also happened to get on TikTok. Of course, he did.

So, he’s on TikTok and he’s now posting videos of himself mixing paints together. He’s very clever, he’s very creative. His account goes viral. Pete, by the time he gets 1.8 million followers, and 37 million views, he realizes, “I should share this with the executives here. We could monetize this.” So, he puts a little slide deck together to make a presentation to the executive team, and he doesn’t get one person interested in hearing from him. He doesn’t get one set of eyeballs to look at his slide deck. Tony did get something, however, that he didn’t expect. He got fired.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay.

Tim Elmore

Yup. So, these older executives were just sure this young kid didn’t know a thing, was probably stealing the paint, probably distracting to the customers, probably doing this on company time, and so they let him go. Well, Tony graduates, moves from Ohio to Florida, now has over 2 million followers, and has started his own paint store.

Pete Mockaitis

There you go.

Tim Elmore

Now, I’m sure there’s parts in the story we don’t understand but here’s one thing I do understand. It was a picture of the wide gap between the older generations that were in charge that had been doing the same for 30, 40 years, and were pretty sure they know what they’re doing. But here’s a young buck coming up, saying, “There’s a new platform that I’m on. Maybe you don’t have intuition on how we could use this. I think I do.”

So, I think, just to answer your question specifically, I don’t think, very often, people over 40 years old realize that the age of authority is dropping in the workplace. The age of authority is dropping. Think about a century ago. The age of authority was very high. In fact, grandma, grandpa, you listened to them because they’ve been around 70 years, whatever they say, man, they collected a lot of wisdom.

Well, today, rapid change happens. In fact, change happens so rapidly that young people are getting things faster than old people, and so they may have…well, first of all, they may be starting a company when they’re 21 years old, but I think we don’t realize that we need both timeless wisdom or timeless insight, and timely intuition.

So, I talk about this in the book. Timeless insight, people that have been around the block a few times can share the stuff they know how to succeed at this company. But the timely intuition very often comes from the young. They can see where culture is going. And like Tony, they may figure out very creative ways to do things differently and capture another million and a half people that the older folks would not have found.

So, I’ll just stop there but that would just be one picture of what I’m talking about.

Pete Mockaitis

That is an intriguing picture. And so, the age of authority, that’s intriguing. Is it, in fact, true that the average age of person promoted to CEO of a Fortune 500 company is lower now than it was 10, 20, 40 years ago?

Tim Elmore

Yes, it is.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. All right.

Tim Elmore

Yeah, so it’s dropping slowly not rapidly because we still celebrate whatever, that stage. And, by the way, you should know, I think you should know, 72% of high school students, public high school students in America, want to be an entrepreneur, seven out of ten. Now, are they all going to succeed? Probably not. But the fact that seven out of ten want to start something more than join something, that tells me something.

It tells me when they look at the current set of jobs or corporations to join, they go, “I want to start my own. I don’t know if I want to join that antiquated, stuffy, 9:00-to-5:00, check in, clock in, deal there.” Now, they may need to learn but I just believe I’ve got to do more listening as I age, not just telling. So, I argue in the book, we need fluid intelligence, that’s our first 40 years, we need crystallized intelligence, that’s our second 40 years.

And right now, we’re colliding more than collaborating in many workplaces. Age discrimination lawsuits are up at Fortune 500 companies, like IBM, Marriott, WeWork. It’s ridiculous.

Pete Mockaitis
Is it the older generation suing or the younger generation suing?

Tim Elmore

It’s both. Think about it. The old are suing the company because they feel like, “You didn’t promote me because you think I’m too old.” But the young are saying the same, “You didn’t promote me because you think I’m not wise enough or old enough. You think I’m too young.” So, I feel for CEOs that are having to call upon their legal counsel to just solve a feud at the workplace when if we were really learning to value the strengths that each generation brought to the table, we could really, really gain from this.

The book was designed really to be an encyclopedia where you don’t have to read the whole thing but you might want to read chapter seven and eight because you need help with Gen Zers and Millennials or whatever, that sort of thing. That’s really what I wanted. Too often, we were not. Well, here’s what I really, really argue for, Pete, all the time.

We’ve got to turn our frustration into fascination with each other. And I believe there’s something I can be fascinated with all four generations at my nonprofit, and the five generations that many people listening right now might have at their organization, but we’re having a difficult time because we speak different languages, we have different values oftentimes.

When you think about the marches that took place in 2020, the protests, Black Lives Matter and so forth, I’m sure there’s exceptions to this rule, but it was mostly the Millennials and the Gen Zers who were marching, mostly, and most of the Gen Xers and Boomers are going, “What? What are you doing? Stop wrecking that retail outlet there,” whatever, whatever. And I just feel like it was a picture of young and old not understanding each other’s mindsets.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. So, Tim, give us the overview. So, we are almost in 2024 now. Let’s name the generations, roughly how old are they today?

Tim Elmore

Yeah, okay. Good question.

Pete Mockaitis

Just to orient us for starters.

Tim Elmore

Yeah. First of all, we say to our listeners, this is an art, not a science, as I mentioned before. This is not psychology. Everybody has a unique personality. This is sociology. We talk about the narratives of generations. So, the oldest generation, Pete, that might still be in the workplace are past retirement age, typical retirement age, but people are living longer, working longer, so the Builder generation would’ve been born 1929 and 1945.

Many of our people in Washington, D.C. running our country right now are Builder generation folks, okay? President Biden, 81 years old right now. And, by the way, I’ll just share, this is not a partisan statement, but they should be paving the way for the next gen coming up rather than holding on to their office, but that’s the Builder generation. They were called Builders because they built so much out of so little. Think about the years they were born, 1929 to 1945. Great Depression. World War II.

The Baby Boomers come along next, 1946 to 1964, and they were called Boomers because, well, frankly, nine months after World War II was over, the maternity wards filled up. So, 76.4 million people were born in 18 years. That never happened before at all in America. They were called Boomers, or we, I’m a Boomer, we were called Baby Boomers because there was a boom of babies for 18 years.

After the Baby Boomers come the Baby Busters, or Generation X, 1965 to 1982. So, you might be the tail end of that generation. Are you kind of a Xlennial where you’re kind of a Gen X Millennial?

Pete Mockaitis

That’s a hard word to say.

Tim Elmore

Yes, it is, especially for me.

Pete Mockaitis

I’m not going to even try, Tim. You’re bold. Yes, I was born in 1983. And it’s funny, I don’t resonate a lot with either generational description because I’m right on the border.

Tim Elmore

Yeah. Well, social scientists would call you a Tweener. After you’re five years at the tail end of one generation, or five years at the beginning of another, you’re probably going to adopt characteristics of both and neither. And that’s me with Boomers and Xers.

Pete Mockaitis

I’m not a Tweaker but a Tweener?

Tim Elmore

That’s right. Not a Tweaker; a Tweener. That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis

Set the record straight.

Tim Elmore

Let it be known. Let it be known. That’s right. All right. So, Gen X was first called Baby Busters because their generation started with the public introduction of the birth control pill, so instead of a boom, it was a bust. If you add the contraceptive, you add on top Roe v. Wade in 1973, you have a shrinking population not a booming population. So, it’s two hills and two valleys. It’s a boom of babies and then it drops to a valley with the Xers.

Another boom with the Millennials who are the next generation coming, so ’83 to 2000, basically the ‘80s and ‘90s kids, and the Millennials are the largest generation in American history, 80 million strong. They’re the number one population in the workforce right now.

Pete Mockaitis

I’m sorry, didn’t you say never before since have you seen such a fertility rate but that’s because we started from a smaller base back in the day?

Tim Elmore

Yes.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. I’m with you. So, it’s a larger growth number but it’s a smaller rate.

Tim Elmore

Correct. Yeah, that’s exactly right.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m with you.

Tim Elmore

Yeah, yeah. So, Boomers were 76 million, Millennials are 80 million. But then Gen Z follows Gen Y, or the Millennials, and they are really the kids that had been born at the turn of the century, and they have had a very, very different experience. Think about their generation, even though they were just babies, first of all, the century started with the dotcom era bubble bursting.

Y2K, we thought the world was going to explode, and then it didn’t. September 11, 2001 where all parents everywhere got scared to death for their children. Then you had, oh, my gosh, the smartphone being released and growing into a normalized thing.

So, Gen Z would follow the Millennials, the Millennials follows Gen X, Gen X follows Baby Boomers, and Baby Boomers follow the Builders, so there you have it.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. So, you make a point, so we want to turn frustration into fascination. And my buddy, Steve, has strong opinions about Boomers. He’s a listener and he cracks me up, he said, “Hey, so one of your guests said he put himself through grad school with juggling. I thought, ‘Okay, this guy is a Boomer.’” And he’s like, “Boomers, man, they lived their life on tutorial mode. It’s not even easy mode in the video game. It’s tutorial mode where they tell which buttons to push. You can go through grad school and pay for it by juggling? Like, good luck, you’re going to have at least a decade of student loan debt if you tried to pull off an after-school job to fund your stuff.” So, he has some strong views on the Boomer population.

And so, talk to us then about that core, the frustration versus fascination, the conflict instead of collaboration. So, lay it on us, Tim.

Tim Elmore

Okay. Well, first of all, the stereotyping, and, by the way, Steve is probably a great guy, I would call that a stereotype. He may know a case or two or three but I think we lump all older people as they’re all talking about how they walked to school uphill both ways in the snow, that sort of thing. So, Boomers are stereotyped as this dinosaur that has a very, very reconstructed memory of the past that’s getting bigger and bigger every year.

But I tell you what, a Baby Boomer has a stereotype about Millennials and Gen Z, “All the Millennials are narcissistic, and all those Gen Zers are fragile snowflakes,” so we’ve all heard these terms. But here’s what I know about the human brain. I talk about this in the book. Two things. Number one, people develop a little bit like wet cement.

So, when cement is laid, let’s say a new sidewalk is laid in the neighborhood. On day one, you can press your handprint into that sidewalk very easily because it’s wet. In the same way, during the first 20 plus years of our life, the neuropathways in our brain are very plastic. The plasticity is very, very soft and you can learn quick and adapt quick, and it’s just like wet cement.

As we grow older, I don’t want to say it hardens, but a little bit like wet cement, it’s going to take a jackhammer by the time you’re 40 to change that brain, to change your mind over something. And so, in the book, I put a two-page spread that’s a generation chart where I talk about interviews and both qualitative and quantitative data I gathered on each generation, and I gave a life paradigm, a mantra for each one, their view of authority, their view of education, their view of the future, their sense of identity is very different.

The sense of identity for the Builder generation is, “I am humble. My mom and dad grew up in the Great Depression. You were just all humble back then. It was wrong to be anything but humble.” For Gen Z, their identity is very fluid. They may change their gender identity, and it’s fluid.

So, I just think it’s helpful for a colleague or a boss to know, “I just need to know this information to know, not to gasp, when I’m talking to someone from a different generation.” And here’s the other thing I know about our brains. When we see differences, we tend to distress, we tend to avoid. Think about it, Pete, let’s just take you and me.

If you and I didn’t enjoy each other, and you saw me talking with a bunch of Boomers with gray hair and no hair, and we’re all just good old boys talking at the watercooler, you might go, “Hmm, not my people. I don’t think I want to join that kind,” because we know it’s going to take work to really identify with that group of people, and we don’t want to do that work so we find our own people who talk like us, act like us, vote like us. That’s just a natural thing. We don’t want to work. We will find our own people where it’s less work.

And I argue in this book, you get better if you’re willing to do the work to connect with somebody from a different generation. So, let me stop there, let you volley back.

Pete Mockaitis

I think that’s a strong thesis and I think that’s true of so many domains. I guess diversity in every variety, first of all, and then just our general tendency to want to not to work and be comfortable, but also the downside of too much time and comfort results in atrophy and not growing and straightening and sharpening things.

So, with it being said that this is sociology and that these are broad generalizations and exceptions abound there, why don’t you go ahead and share with us some of those tidbits from this table to give us a feel for these pieces?

Tim Elmore

So, I had so much fun going to retirement villages and talking to the Builder generation folks and then collecting some quantitative data and sorting it. But the mantra for the Builder generation, remember, 1929 and 1945, their mantra when they entered the workforce was “Be grateful you have a job,” and that’s understandable, isn’t it?

My dad is a perfect example. My dad was born in 1930, so the first decade of his life was the Great Depression, the next five years, World War II, that’s what shaped him. He just passed away in 2020 at 90 years old. He’s frugal, he’s conservative, he’s grateful. And we save the wrapping paper at Christmas, we save every rubber band and plastic bag known to man. We have it up in the attic. You might need it next year. That was what they were conditioned to do. And I love the spirit of that generation, “I am humble. I am grateful.”

The Baby Boomers come along, and I gave the Boomers the life paradigm, as they entered the workplace, “I want better,” because Boomers grew up in a time not of depression but of expansion. Shopping malls were popping up everywhere, McDonald’s was franchising, we had just won, or help to win, a World War. So, America was feeling really great about ourselves between 1946 and 1964.

The Xers come along. I gave the Xers the life paradigm “Keep it real. Keep it real.” So, that was a phrase that actually became a thing back then, mid ‘60s all the way through the ‘70s. But think about, just for a minute, let me teach some history here. Think about the years that that group of children were being formed and shaped before they moved into adulthood.

By the late 1960s, not only was the Vietnam War going on, it was on TV. We could watch it at the 6 o’clock news with Walter Cronkite. And even though LBJ in the White House kept saying everything was fine over there in Vietnam, we started seeing footage that said it’s not fine over there. And then you had the Watergate scandal.

Now we had a Democrat and a Republican both lying from the White House. There was a very real wall that went up in the hearts and minds of American adults that said, “I’m not going to blindly trust a leader.” And even though Gen X was just children back then, they saw a bunch of adults leading them, teaching them, coaching and parenting them, they grew up a little more cynical themselves, “Keep it real. Don’t tell me life is wonderful. Keep it real.”

Millennials come along. Okay, this your generation now even though you don’t claim them, Pete. Millennials come along, and I gave the Millennials the life paradigm “Life is a cafeteria.” Now, let me explain why. This is not throwing them under the bus. My two kids are both Millennials in their 30s. Just like you go to a cafeteria, you grab your tray and your plate, and you make up your meal, a little bit of broccoli, a little bit of roast beef, a little bit of Jello, and you tailor it for your tastebuds.

These young professionals are making almost every major decision of their life as if it were a buffet. Here are some examples. Years ago, my two kids stopped buying compact discs to get their music. Why would they buy a CD? “There might be five songs I don’t even like on that CD. I get one song at a time for my own playlist on Spotify, Apple Music. It’s a buffet. I make educational decisions this way. I graduate high school and go to two or three different colleges for one degree. One of them is overseas.”

And you see this because Millennials grew up in a time of digital customization. As Millennials grew up, the cellphone grew up. As Millennials grew up, the computer grew up, so they were very used to mixing and matching. So, I would say to an employer right now, “Just get ready for a bit of a free agent mindset. You could find loyalty in the Builder generation. Maybe you got to earn it with the Millennial generation.”

Okay, one last one. Gen Zers, oh, my gosh, I love these guys. So, I interviewed middle school kids, high school kids, college students, and young professionals. And as I listened to them, they were all very respectful. Some listeners may not believe that but they really were. They were very respectful but they were very candid. They were raw. And the mantra I gave them, as they moved into adulthood, was “I’m coping and hoping.”

So, think about that. They’re hopeful because they’re young, but right now they may feel like they’re just coping. They’re struggling perhaps with mental health issues. It’s been normalized to have anxiety disorders or maybe just wrestle with anxiety. It’s been normalized to say, “I’m seeing a therapist,” and I’m not putting that down. I’m just saying mental health problems are now a thing.

And if we just laugh at them, and say, “You bunch of fragile snowflakes. Get with it. Just suck it up and do your job,” I don’t think that lack of empathy is going to get us where we want to get to when we want to build some discipline and grit in this staff. So, let me stop. I’m sure you’re thinking something, Pete. I want to hear what you’re thinking.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. I think that’s nice in terms of, all right, so we’ve got five generations, and a little bit of a vibe, and a little bit of a backstory. So, now let’s all crash them together in the workplace. Tell us, what are some of the top do’s and don’ts, maybe universally, and then specifically? I suppose we can have a very long conversation with a matrix, in this context, with this generation and that. So, we can’t do all that but maybe give us some universal do’s and don’ts, and then maybe a couple particular watchouts for areas of collision that are causing a lot of friction at work right now?

Tim Elmore

Yeah. Well, let me do the areas of friction right now because, listeners, if you’re in a workplace, you’re going to go, “Uh-huh, uh-huh, I’ve seen that.” So, number one, communication styles and mediums are different. You got to bring them together. In fact, I would say in the onboarding process, just say, “We use Slack,” or, “We don’t text,” or, “We do text,” whatever. But everybody’s going to come in based on a familiar source of way of communicating and I think we need to say, “To be together, let’s do this at work.” So, communication.

I think expectations. I have found in my dataset every generation comes in with slightly different expectations. So, I tell interviewers or HR hiring managers, “You need to talk over in the job interview preferences, expectations, and demands because those are going to tell you a lot about whether you can take this person on or not as a team member, and say, ‘You’re going to fit perfectly here,’ or stop the interview right now, and say, ‘I can just tell you right now, that’s not going to happen here. So, let me show you the door, and help you find another job.’”

So, real quick, I’ll make this fast. Preferences. All of us have different preferences. Sometimes there are some generations that will handle preferences as if they’re demands. They’re just something they wish were true but they’ll come in, and say, “I got to have this.” And I would say hiring managers need to say, “Is that really true? Do you have to have this because it’s not happening now? And if you just say, ‘I got to have it’ we can stop the interview right now.” Preferences, however, are only wishes, “I would prefer this to be the case.”

Expectations are stronger. When I began to talk about the expectation of a new potential team member, now they’re saying, “This is what I expect to be happening here. I expect a lot of autonomy. I expect to work from home,” or hybrid, or that sort of thing. But you want to find out, “What are you expecting here? Are you expecting unlimited PTO? Oh, wow, we should talk about that.”

And then, finally, demands. This is absolutely huge. Believe it or not, this is a huge issue that, far too often, we hire, get a year into it, and then we find them out, and it’s not a pretty picture. Demands are what perhaps either a boss or a new team member will say, “I must have this. Like, I want to talk about politics at work.”

Well, I think the wise boss will say, “You know what, we’re not going to stop working to see where we disagree on politics.” It’s my opinion but as I look at the dataset on companies that are thriving, you want to have some liberty but I’m telling you sometimes workers divide over a political issue, and now we’re not even good teammates.

So, that would be one, those three I just mentioned, communication styles. I think feedback, think for just a minute, Pete. How people prefer feedback might be extremely different and it might be good to establish the norms at this organization. For instance, Baby Boomers might still be fine with an annual review with full documentation. Well, Gen Z goes, “Seriously, I’m telling today no. I want multiple check-ins with my boss, and if I don’t get them, I think something is wrong.” And bosses are becoming exhausted because they go, “I can’t do that. I can’t watch over you and say good job, good job, good job,” or whatever, that sort of thing.

So, I feel like just talking about feedback. So, I have an entire chapter I bring up these issues that are seen differently primarily by the majority of each of these demographics and how we might approach them to kind of lubricate the friction.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, it sounds like perhaps universal principle with these is to just upfront, in advance, discuss, “Hey, these are sort of our norms and practices, and how we roll, how we do things, what we value, just so you’re aware. You can expect this from us and you probably can expect that from us.” Just short-circuiting the surprises in advance.

Tim Elmore

Yes, exactly. That’s exactly it. In fact, one of the statements that you heard a million times, I say in the book, “Conflict expands based on the distance between expectations and reality.” Conflict expands based on the distance between the expectations of what I expect in this reality. So, real quick, if I tell my wife I’m going to be home at 7:00 o’clock for dinner, and I get home at 7:05, no big deal. I get home at 9:30, it’s a big deal. We have a conversation.

And it’s not because she can’t live without me for two and a half hours. It’s because I created a different expectation that causes friction inside. So, that’s just good behavioral science that I think leaders ought to know, teammates ought to know, and you’re right, talk about it upfront, get it out in the open.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And so, what are some don’ts, like, “Don’t do this”?

Tim Elmore

Yeah. Well, I have found that my generation, I’m a Baby Boomer, we tend to just want to tell those younger generations what to do. And so, let me tell you what I’m doing, I’m going to get very personal now, Pete. As a Baby Boomer who’s 63 years old, will be 64 next month, you know how we use that phrase “forever and ever and ever,” “this is a leg you got to stand on”? So, I take the letters A, L, E, G. It’s a simple acronym but I follow it to a tee as I interact with perhaps younger teammates that just do something that I go, “I do not understand what you just did or said or why you did it.”

So, the letter A in ALEG, I want to start by asking not telling. Instead of barking out “What the *toot* were you thinking when you did that?” I want to say, “Tell me what your thinking was. Tell me why you made that decision.” And I need to be genuine about it. Ask instead of tell. When I ask questions instead of tell, they suddenly feel valued rather than condescended to.

The letter L is listen. It does very little good to ask questions if we’re not willing to really listen to them. So, when I ask, they feel valued. When I listen, they feel heard. I believe the statement “Being heard is so close to being loved that, for the average person, it’s indistinguishable.” So, this is an appropriate way just to say “I care about you. I love you. I’m listening.”

The letter E is empathize. So, when I empathize, they feel understood. I want to just say, “Let’s get to the bottom line.” But empathizing means I say things, like, “Oh, my gosh, I had no idea you went through that,” or, “Wow, I bet that made you feel terrible when that happened.” Something like that where I’m not just listening but I’m sharing with them, “I’m really getting you.”

I’m telling you, Pete, if I’m asking, they feel valued; listening they feel heard; empathize they feel understood, now I’ve earned my right to practice the letter G, which is to guide them. As their boss, I might have some guidance but they’re so ready to reciprocate, respect, and listening, and so forth because I’ve taken the time to really listen. Think about a workplace that everybody was standing on that leg, I can’t help but think we just have better workplaces.

Pete Mockaitis

Yes, thank you. You also have a fun turn-of-a-phrase, reverse mentoring.

Tim Elmore

Yes.

Pete Mockaitis

What is that? And how do we do it?

Tim Elmore

Oh, my gosh. It’s my favorite activity that I do and we recommend it to different people. So, listeners, I challenge you with this homework assignment. Reverse mentoring is what it sounds like. So, you get two people from different generations, older and younger, doesn’t matter which two but make sure there’s an older and a younger one definitively, and maybe you go to coffee, or maybe you have lunch together, but you swap stories first. You’re going to almost always find common ground when you swap stories.

Then the older person naturally coaches up the younger in, “Here’s how to succeed at this workplace,” but then you switch hats, and the younger is now mentoring the older perhaps on the latest app they just got and we could use it for marketing. Remember Tony, early in the conversation? So, you’re both doing this.

So, I meet with Andrew on a regular basis. I love Andrew. He’s my VP of content and he’s 30 years younger than me. I meet with Cam. Cam is on that content team, 40 years younger than me, recently minted from the University of Michigan. Brilliant guy. I learn every single time I’m with them. We laugh. We hug.

And I’m not saying this is a cheesy syrupy environment but we have so much fun because we’ve all checked our logos and egos at the door and we’re ready to learn from each other, and both are mentoring and both are learning. So, I just think that’s what we got to be like today in this rapidly changing world we live in.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, lovely. Thank you. Now, could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Tim Elmore

Well, in the beginning of the book, I share a really fun quote. My friend Derrick Johnson from Orlando said this and I just love it. Here’s what he said, “If you think you’re smarter than the previous generation, consider this. Fifty years ago, the owner’s manual of a car told you how to adjust the valves. Today, it warned you not to drink the contents of the battery.” And so, I’m thinking, “Oh, my gosh, we’re definitely evolving right now.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And can you share a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Tim Elmore

Way back in 1968, research was done that proved that young people, I think it’s true about all people but back then the experiment was with students, students performed better under a teacher who has high expectations. That makes sense. In other words, when a control group…well, really, it’s two control groups who went in.

But one teacher was told, “These are average students. You can have average expectations.” But the other group, the teacher was told, “Now, don’t you let these kids talk you out of working hard. These are genius kids. They’re brilliant kids. You expect a lot of them,” you can imagine the results. The teacher that expected a lot had grades that were per student a grade and a half higher. But they were told later, after the experiment, both groups were average IQ students but the performance was so great.

Now, keep going. It was in the ‘70s they began to realize that high expectations alone don’t do the trick because some kids feel like, “Oh, you’re expecting too much of me,” and they spiral downward and they give up. It wasn’t until the ‘90s when research came out that showed this, and this is the piece I want everybody to hear.

When a teacher or a leader has both high expectations and high belief, it’s almost magical. High expectation, “I expect a lot of you,” and high belief, “And I know you, and I know you can do this.” It’s just huge. So, that’d be my favorite research that I’m trying to put to use every day here.

Pete Mockaitis

Can you help distinguish between expectation and belief? Because in some ways, there’s a strong overlap, and so I want to get really clear on how they’re different.

Tim Elmore

Yeah. So, I would say they’re cousins but not twins. So, if I only have high expectations of, let’s say, a person but I don’t have high belief, it feels harsh, “You expect a lot of me but I don’t get the feeling you actually believe I’m going to do it. You just demand, demand, demand.” So, high expectations without high belief feels harsh.

High belief without high expectation feels hollow, “You say you believe in me, mom, but you don’t actually expect me to come through.” You see what I’m saying? So, one is about I’m demanding or holding you to a high standard but belief becomes much more personal. So, let me give you the phrase that Ivy League schools found was that magical I mentioned earlier.

Here’s the phrase, and I quote, “I’m giving you this hard feedback because I have high expectations of you, and I know you can reach them.” Do you see how that kind of gets to, “I expect a lot but I know you, Josh. I know you can do this. I’ve watched you. You have it in you to do this.” The research shows effort went up a minimum of 40% all the way up to 320% in males. I think there are a lot of boys that said, “I’ve never had a dad say something like that to me.” So, that’s what I mean the difference between the personalness of belief and maybe the hardness of high expectation.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a favorite book?

Tim Elmore

It’s a book by Arthur Brooks, the most popular teacher at Harvard University. He wrote a book called From Strength to Strength, and that book just absolutely lit me on fire. But he wrote another book that I want to push, if you don’t mind. He just published a book called Build the Life You Want.

He wrote it with Oprah Winfrey because she found him, and said, “Arthur, you’re amazing.” So, it’s really about the art of really becoming happier but that sounds so cliché.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Tim Elmore

Well, my name is Tim Elmore, so TimElmore.com. I have lots of free stuff on that site but also if you ever wanted me to come and speak that’s where you would do it. But, also, the nonprofit that I started focusing on the emerging generation and where you can find the book A New Kind of Diversity is GrowingLeaders.com. Thank you for asking that, Pete. I appreciate it.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Tim Elmore

Yeah. Well, I would really like you to practice that reverse mentoring I just mentioned because I have found, if I’m willing to do the work, I always come up better. The illustration I want to give you, the challenge is this. If you and I were to hop on a plane and fly, let’s say, to China, we would hop off that plane there in Beijing, knowing we’re going to have to work harder to connect with people here. And we would naturally think that because we’re going, “Oh, my gosh, they speak a different language here. They have different customs here. They have different values here.” Bingo.

Would you interact with somebody from a very different generation, different language, different customs, different values? So, if I’m willing to do the work over there in China, be willing to do the work here at home with that person you’re apt to not spend time with because you think they’re so old they’re worthless, or you think they’re so young they’re worthless, when, in reality, they’re a wealth of wisdom inside, just not the wisdom you have.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, Tim, this has been fun. Thank you. I wish you much luck interacting with different generations.

Tim Elmore

Thank you, Pete. You, too. Good to see you again.

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

Henna Pryor
Thank you for having me, and it’s the greatest podcast name, I think, I have ever heard.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, well, thank you. That’s what we like to hear. We try. Well, I’m excited to hear about the wisdom you’ve got for us in your book Good Awkward: How to Embrace the Embarrassing and Celebrate the Cringe to Become The Bravest You. But first, we need to hear what is the story with you being a genuine bonafide princess?

Henna Pryor
It’s not so much a story, it’s more of a fun fact. So, my parents are both South Asian. My dad was born in India, my mom was born in Pakistan, and so, technically, I am a 32nd generation Pakistani princess, which just means, bloodline, I am from a royal bloodline. Now, that’s said, Pakistan is no longer a monarchy, so my princess status means bopkiss, absolutely nothing. I get no perks whatsoever.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, do your loved ones treat you like a princess?

Henna Pryor
Most days. Most days. I think I get trolled in even measure but, yeah, I get some good treatment.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Nifty. So, nothing happens then, like if you visit Pakistan or you’re…?

Henna Pryor
No. No red carpet, no elephants. My grandfather, my mom’s father, was treated with a little bit of, let’s call it, extra respect due to his family name but, really, as the generations go on, it’s less and less cool. There’s really no measurable perks. I’m still waiting.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. There’s no certificate, no jewels.

Henna Pryor
No.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Henna Pryor
No. I wish but no.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now, I know. I appreciate that. That was fun. Well, now tell us a little bit, when it comes to awkwardness, first of all, I just got to hear, since you’re an authority on awkwardness and I’ve just got to go here, first and foremost, I find it very annoying, and maybe you do this, so sorry.

Henna Pryor
That’ll be even more awkward here.

Pete Mockaitis
This hasn’t happened much since I’ve been a grown up as opposed to maybe like high school/college, when someone just proclaims, “Awkward!” It’s like, “Oh, wow.” That just grates on me so much, it’s like, “This is not helpful and now it’s way more awkward because you’ve just proclaimed it as such.” Since you’re an awkwardness expert, what is your hot take on this phenomenon?

Henna Pryor
Yeah. So, it’s funny, I don’t mind when people claim it. I think what you’re describing is when they claim it so loudly and ostentatiously that it draws even a greater magnified lens to whatever the experience was. And so, ironically, the avoidance of awkwardness increases awkwardness. So, I actually teach people it’s okay to name it in the room.

It’s when we make a really big audacious deal out of it, “Awkward!” kind of the way you did it, that it actually almost has the opposite effect, where it adds to the feeling of attention is on this, embarrassment. When we subtly name it, it actually allows us to relax and move on. But I think when we amplify it that way, it can actually make it linger longer than it needs to, and draw an even brighter spotlight to something that maybe people didn’t even notice that much in the first place.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, certainly. Like, “Hey, I’m sorry, this is sort of awkward but your credit card has been declined.” It’s like, “Yeah, yeah, fair enough. All right. Well, let’s try another one,” and that’s that, versus yelling it loud and proud.

Henna Pryor
Shouting. Right, I agree. Yeah, I think the whole point of navigating our awkwardness has to do with the idea that we are in this tension space between who we believe we are and who we think other people see in that moment, “Oh, my gosh, they think I’m someone who has terrible credit, whose card was declined.” I might feel a bit awkward about it, but the whole problem with the emotion of the thing that we tend to wrestle with is what we think other people see in that moment. So, if we declare it loudly, we’re just putting more eyes on that version, it’s kind of counterproductive.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, tell us, any particularly surprising or fascinating discoveries you’ve made about us humans and awkwardness as you’ve dived into this research?

Henna Pryor
Yeah, several, and I think, especially as it relates to your topic of expertise here about being awesome at your job and being a high-performer at work, there are some very interesting data that came out in the last year or two about how catering and performing actually decreases our workplace performance. So, I’ll explain what I mean by that.

We’ve had a wave of conversations around “be more authentic at work.” Authenticity is the superpower. Be more authentic at work. And people hear that and they agree with it. You see the nods, they’re like, “Yup, yup, that seems like it would be a good idea,” but then, more often than not, I work with clients who tell me, “Yeah, that would be great. How? I don’t know how to be more authentic at work. Can somebody give me the playbook? I don’t understand why I just can’t show up that way. It doesn’t feel quite that simple.”

And so, what I’ve discovered in some of the research is when people feel awkward, or unsure, or embarrassed, or they’re fearing awkwardness at work, what they tend to do instead is something called catering, which is essentially putting on a bit of a performance to meet other people’s expectations, “I have a new boss, they expect me probably to be like this, or show up like that, so I’m behaving in a way that caters to their expectations. I’m performing to meet what I think they expect of me.”

And while first impressions do matter, I don’t want to diminish that, there’s actually now a significant body of research from Francesca Gino and her team at Harvard that says that catering to meet other people’s expectations not only diminishes our performance at work but, frankly, it’s exhausting. We collapse into bed at the end of a night. We don’t do our best work. We don’t save our energy for the things that we genuinely want to do to make an impact at work.

And so, there’s actually a lot of downsides to that catering behavior instead of coming in stumbles, fumbles, and all.

Pete Mockaitis
Can you give us a few examples of typical workplace catering behavior that has the potential to kill our energy and our performance?

Henna Pryor
Sure. I’ll give you, actually, the study that really found this and then I’ll give you just a run-of-the-mill example at work. So, in Francesca Gino’s Harvard research, they actually were studying a team of inventors, kind of entrepreneurs who were pitching their ideas to investors, they were trying to get funding for their ideas.

And what they actually found was those who catered to meet the investors’ expectations, in other words, told them what they thought the investors wanted to hear, were actually three times less likely to get the funding than those who came in, still prepared, but a little bit more authentic, a bit more passionate, a bit more honest, which was inclusive of stumbles, fumbles, and all. That’s one example.

Another example that I see a lot is when we think about awkward conversations, it’s the whole diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging discussion. Most people still struggle to have those conversations in the workplace. They find it very awkward. They’re afraid of saying the wrong thing. They’re afraid of not getting it right. So, instead, a lot of people will cater, “I think this is what my colleague of color wants me to say. I think this is the right thing to say in this meeting.”

And it actually kind of comes across as a performance versus it is actually much more impactful to say, “Hey, I tried to think thoughtfully about this part of the conversation but I don’t know if I’m going to say the right thing right now. There’s a chance I might get it wrong and it might stumble out of my mouth but I’m going to give it an attempt anyway.” That version actually lands better. So, it’s when we perform, it’s when we try to smooth out the bumps of areas where we do feel a bit uncomfortable that it actually has an inverse impact to what we think.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. Well, so I’d love to hear then, in terms of awkwardness becoming our strength instead of our weakness. How do we begin to think about, reframe, and make that true for us?

Henna Pryor
Sure. So, again, just to put a spotlight on a definition that we’re going to operate from for the context of this conversation, awkwardness is an emotion that we feel when the person we believe ourselves to be, or our true self, is momentarily at odds with the person that they see on display. In other words, the person we are, for a moment in time or maybe several moments, feels different than who they see.

So, I’m jumping on a podcast with you today, Pete, and I butcher your last name, I mispronounce it horribly, and I feel awkward and embarrassed about that for a moment, because the person I believe myself to be, someone who is intentional and prepared when it comes to the pronunciation of names, for that moment, feels at odds with the person who I think you see, someone is not thoughtful about names, someone who is not trying. There’s a gap between those two people.

And so, when we think about our professional lives, every time we’re at an inflection point, a growth point, a transition point, we’re going to invite opportunities for awkwardness, we’re going to invite opportunities for embarrassment. And it’s learning how to get comfortable with those that actually leads us continuing to take the chances that contribute to our growth.

When we can’t lean into them, we tend to avoid them and run away from them, which becomes very problematic when we’re trying to advance our careers and our lives.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, with this definition, awkwardness is when there’s a difference between who we believe ourselves to be versus what someone else is perceiving from us in a moment. Now, that’s pretty specific as opposed to generalized discomfort about any number of things, like, I’ll feel awkward when…well, I guess, maybe not your definition of awkward. Like, if I just disagree with somebody, I will experience a sensation of discomfort that I would have previously called awkward, although that’s not exactly in harmony with your definition. Or is it?

Henna Pryor
It is, I think, to a degree. So, maybe let’s peel back the layer one more bit to help unpack that. Awkwardness is also a social emotion, meaning if you read something online by yourself and you didn’t agree with it, you wouldn’t feel awkward about that because no one is there to hear you even if you were to express your disagreement out loud, “That person is an idiot. They don’t know what they’re talking about.” No one is there to hear you so you don’t feel awkward because awkwardness is a social emotion, meaning that others have to exist.

Now, awkwardness also exists as a social emotion when what we think is going to happen isn’t met. So, in our minds, we built some certain expectation of how an interaction is going to go, how a chat is going to go, and our expectation isn’t met. So, in the case of the example that you gave, when you wildly disagree with something that someone said, probably, subconsciously, there was some part of you that expected that conversation to go a bit differently.

So, yeah, there probably are some other uncomfortable feelings and emotions mixed up in that, but part of that may have been a feeling of awkwardness because, suddenly, you are finding yourself feeling a little thrown off balance or a bit unprepared because you didn’t expect the conversation to go that way.

Pete Mockaitis
And it’s also interesting when you experience this, like, I’m just thinking about TV comedies, awkward situations, like The Office. Michael Scott says just some outrageous things and the situation, like you feel uncomfortable watching it but it’s also very engaging, it’s like, “Oh, my gosh. Oh, cringe. What’s going to happen here? And this is hilariously inappropriate, and whoa.” So, there are two, I suppose, I have a different set of expectations as to what would normally unfold in such a scenario.

Henna Pryor
Yeah, I love that you brought that example up because I have a whole section in the book where I talk about this. That’s actually an entire genre of comedy referred to as cringe comedy. So, there’s The Office, 40-Year-Old Virgin, Borat, Curb Your Enthusiasm, America’s Funniest Home Videos. There’s a certain genre of comedy that is called cringe comedy. You watch it almost with that expectation of the things you’re going to watch are going to make you go, “Oh! Ooh! Eeh!”

What’s interesting about this is part of the research that I dove into that was also fascinating is there are some people, you’ve kind of alluded to this already, who can point at cringe comedy and laugh, and go, “Oh, my God, this is so entertaining. This is hilarious.” There are others who cannot deal. They’re underneath the covers, they’re like, “Oh, I feel this fully from head to toe. I feel ‘Diversity Day,’ ‘Scott’s Tots,’ these episodes, like I cannot watch this without having full body embarrassment.”

And so, interestingly, people who that experience on that extreme, actually have something that they feel very strongly called vicarious embarrassment, which is actually a function of empathy. When you’re particularly high on a certain type of empathy, not only do you feel that embarrassment or awkwardness and cringe for someone momentarily, but you actually take it on with them as though it’s your own, and it becomes this full body visceral reaction.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, working with this definition of awkwardness now, tell us, how do we make this so that it really is a jet fuel source of strength and power?

Henna Pryor
Yes. So, two-part process here. Number one is just self-awareness around this emotion in particular. So, as we started to say, it is not the same as just regular discomfort. Awkwardness, as a social emotion, is very tied to approval, “What do other people see? Do they like what they see? Do they approve of who they see?”

So, one of the first things we need to do is just peel back our own layers of self-awareness around the messages we receive around awkwardness and approval growing up. Were you someone who grew in a household where it was, “Hey, don’t speak up and stand out. Just kind of blend in”? It’s going to be more likely that you feel awkward as an adult if you’ve never undone those messages.

Are there stories that you’ve told yourself about what previous awkward interactions have meant? So, I like Dan McAdams’ research out of Northwestern. He refers to two types of stories. Let’s say you have an awkward situation at work where you spoke up in a meeting, and it was a total bomb, embarrassing, did not feel good. Do you tell yourself a contamination story, meaning, “Well, that was a nightmare and I’m never going to raise my hand ever again”? It contaminates the future.

Or, do you look for the redemption story, which is, “Okay, that didn’t feel so great, but I tried it. I raised my hand. I don’t normally do that in that meeting. I got some practice in. Hopefully, it’ll go better the next time”? What are the stories we tell ourselves?

Part two is conditioning, and I’m very passionate about this as it relates to this topic in particular. What we’re talking about when we’re talking about building awkward muscle and using it as a strength is building some strength in our social musculature. Social fitness is a type of muscle building, meaning we have to have interactions with other humans in small-stakes moments so that we can use that feeling as fuel instead of something to be fearful of.

And in this modern climate, we live in a world that’s optimized for smoothness. I don’t technically have to talk to another human being outside of my immediate family today if I don’t really want to. I can order my food online. I can order my groceries on Amazon or the Instacart. We don’t have to talk to folks when we used to.

And, nowadays, increasingly in the grocery store line, we’re looking down on our phones, we’re hammering the elevator door button shut to avoid a two-minute ride with someone. We go to the coffee shop we have in headphones. So, the problem is when we don’t have chances to practice our social muscle in small-stakes situations, when it comes to a big-stakes moment, like negotiating for your higher salary, or trying to advocate for yourself for a promotion, we are increasingly out of practice using these social muscles.

So, if we don’t practice in small-stakes moments to increase that awkward tolerance, the big-stakes moments become nearly unbearable. And so, we really need to create opportunities to condition and put in the repetitions when it comes to these social muscles.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, could you share with us a cool story of someone who put in the reps, where they start from, what did they do, and what cool results did they see on the other side?

Henna Pryor
Absolutely. Yeah, I do some executive coaching, and I worked with a private client named Satya. I talk about her a bit in the book. She was painfully shy. Her parents, very gregarious, extroverted, her sister as well. And not only was she sort of naturally introverted and shy, but she had begun a new job during the pandemic, at which point she really didn’t have any ability to meet her peers in person.

And she would see, for a period of time, her peers continue to get promoted ahead of her because they had had the advantage of things like networking, and she didn’t have natural places to do so having worked from home by herself. So, she realized, “Hey, if I want to get ahead, I got to do this thing that I don’t particularly love, I find very awkward, which is networking.”

So, she practiced in the small-stakes moments. So, first things, once the restrictions started to lift, she’s like, “My first at-bat can’t be the networking event with my entire company and 200 people.” She challenged herself to meet up with an old colleague first who she hadn’t seen in a really long time. That was at her growth edge. She went and tapped on the door of a neighbor who she’d kind of known but not really, and struck up a conversation.

She made an admission that every time she rode the subway, she lived in the city, she was going to leave her headphones out and try to just catch eyes and exchange a smile with someone, low-key, little old lady, nothing aggressive, but she slowly started to recondition these muscles that had kind of gone stagnant. And then, slowly but surely, she put herself in slightly bigger rooms.

A friend invited her out to a wine-tasting event. She said, “Normally, I don’t do that stuff, but it was a small group so I tried it.” Slowly but surely built her way up. So, by the time in two months when her company had their big kind of networking extravaganza company offsite, she felt a bit more prepared, and she had some lines on the ready. She had kind of practiced what this was going to look like.

So, in her case, we actually came up with the strategy that she would find one other person, or at least two other people, that were standing kind of by their lonesome, potentially in the same situation, and she had a line that she had practiced in the mirror about a hundred times. It was this, “My sister told me I needed to talk to at least two new people today, and we have a bet for 20 bucks. I really don’t want to pay her 20 bucks. Will you be one of them?”

And she said it immediately diffused the tension, it created this little icebreaker moment, and this colleague, the one, the first one she actually ended up introducing herself to, they ended up collaborating on a project later that year. A huge win for her. A huge visibility. And none of that would’ve happened had she not kind of put in these reps and created these strategies ahead of time.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s cool. Well, so what do you recommend in terms of the different means by which we put in the reps? Like, if this were an exercise program, what are the best exercises that give us great gains and the suggested frequency and dosage of them?

Henna Pryor
Sure. I’ll give you kind of two buckets. First, from the team perspective. So, if you work on a team or if you’re a leader of a team, I would be so happy if you incorporated some specific and intentional exercises into your team meetings as it relates to this. Again, understand this is not something that happens by accident anymore. We don’t have as many bump-into-each-other-at-the-watercooler moments so we have to create intention.

Some of my favorite ways to do this, I’ll encourage leaders to have five minutes at the top of the meeting, have a bad idea brainstorm, meaning you’re encouraging your teams on purpose, “I want you to share only unrealistic ideas. Realistic ideas not allowed.” And if you’re thinking, “Why? Why would I do that?” Well, believe it or not, often the most unrealistic ideas somewhere in there is one that’s kind of, like, “Hey, that actually could be possible.” Second is even if none of them are, just by starting that way, it lowers people’s guard, and the ideas that follow in the rest of the meeting are more innovative, they’re more creative, they’re more generative, and people are more open.

There’s a similar exercise you can do, I call them cracked-egg stories, where you go around and every single person in a meeting, you can do it either one at a time or you can turn to a partner. Everyone shares one cracked-egg moment from the past week or two, a time where something did not work as planned, or it was kind of a misstep, a fumble, it was embarrassing, it was awkward, it didn’t go the way we hoped, and what did you learn from it.

But, again, by putting these into the room, intentionally creating the space for them to be put into the room, we create a more normalization of this behavior and this emotion that everyone experiences. The thing that’s wild about awkwardness and embarrassment is when you’re experiencing it and feeling it, you feel like it’s just you, “It feels like nobody else is dealing with this emotion the way that I am.” The truth of the matter is everyone is. And so, normalizing it in meetings on purpose is a huge helpful step to creating the types of environments that can take more chances and take more risks in the future.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, that’s the team perspective. And then individually?

Henna Pryor
Individually, again, it sounds simple but I would love to see this actually done. I would like to challenge you, listener of this show, today, next time you’re in the supermarket checkout line, leave your phone in your pocket, leave your phone in your bag. Next time you go to the coffee shop or ride the train or ride the plane, just for a few minutes, leave your headphones out.

The goal is to put yourself in minor social situations where certainty is not guaranteed. I call them strategic micro risks. If you reach out to someone in the coffee shop that’s standing in front of you in line, and say, “Hey, I love your sneakers.” Okay, chance that they could look at you like you’re a moron, chance that they continue to strike up the conversation and you meet someone fascinating and interesting.

I was sitting next to a woman at the train station the other day, a much older woman, and just kind of struck up conversation instead of sitting on my phone. I found out that she went to the same college I did, University of Delaware, but 30 years before me. She kind of knew who my father-in law was, which was wild, but these are just life moments where there are no stakes, this was not a professional conversation, but by practicing in those moments where certainty is not guaranteed, what I need you all to understand is you are creating the needed muscle to have other conversations in your professional life where certainty is not guaranteed.

So, it’s about getting comfortable with that uncertainty. If you really want to fast-track this, take an improv class. Take an improv class. If you really want to fast-track your uncertainty tolerance, improv is the fastest way that you can do it because the entire thing is built on this premise of, “I don’t know what’s going to happen next but I’m just going to stay with it. I’m just going to lean in. I’m just going to stick with it. Instead of avoiding it or deflecting it, I’m going to stay with it.” That is the fastest way you can fast-track your awkward tolerance.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that’s fun. Any other recommended exercises?

Henna Pryor
Oh, gosh, so many. I’ve got, like, a dozen improv exercises I take people to. I also recommend to people to strategically use humor. I think some people are, like, “Well, I’m not funny. I’m not a ha-ha.” Strategically using humor in awkward situations is something that benefits everyone. And when I say strategically, it’s typically just rooted in truth.

So, I said at the top, the avoidance of awkwardness increases awkwardness. Sometimes all it takes is that one person to gently name, like, “Okay, I’ll be the first to break that awkward silence. Ooh, that was cringe. Nobody expected that.” But it just takes the one person to bring a little bit of that lightness back into the room for folks to move on.

Humor has to just be used strategically because I think, generally, what we want to do is make sure that we are not punching down. So, if you’re a leader, we don’t want to shame anyone. Like, if a junior person that’s trying to raise their hand and maybe they’ll get it wrong, there’s a silence. A leader should not say, “Hey, that was pretty awkward, buddy.” That’s not necessarily helpful, but there is a general rule of thumb not to kick down but you can punch up.

So, if the leader says something, we can all smile and go, “Oh, awkward,” but in a gentle playful way. So, there are some rules, and, again, we go into it in detail but also just learning how to find your own talk tracks. I think talk tracks are really helpful and important. When something doesn’t feel good, having language that resonates with you that you can use right away.

So, there’s an early example in the book where one of my very first meetings after we started reconvening in person, I met with a sales leader. I was trying to win a very big project, a large-scale project. Hadn’t met folks in person in a while, pandemic had restrictions had just lifted. So, 15 minutes I’m going on and on, I’m pitching, and I’m thinking, “Henna, I’m crushing it.” I did sales for 14 years, I’m like, “I’m crushing it.”

And he puts his hand in front of my face, and I’m like, “Sweet!” so I give him a high five. I’m like, “I’m nailing it. Henna, nailing it.” And then he says, this is the next thing out of his mouth, “Henna, I was putting my hand out because I was trying to tell you to stop.” And I’m like, “Oh, my God, she’s forgotten how to people.” I’m mortified but, luckily, having been in this research and knowing this work, the next line immediately out of my mouth was exactly that, which is, “Wow, okay, I’m mortified, but that was pretty awkward. Hopefully, I can still have a chance to keep going with you.”

And just by owning it, he laughed, I laughed, our shoulders relaxed, and we were able to move on. Had I let the awkwardness overtake me and have a grip on me, I would’ve gotten totally off the rails. The whole conversation would’ve left on a very different note. And so, ironically, it’s not about eliminating it or avoiding it, because, again, that’s trying to eliminate or avoid uncertainty. It’s not going to happen. It’s learning how to lean into it, to own it, to embrace it, and use it as a force for good. You tried something. Relate to folks. Create some connections. Lean into those uncertain moments, and move on.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really cool. And this reminds me a little bit of like rejection therapy when you ask for things that you’ll probably not get, like, “Hey, can I have a discount on…?” whatever, etc. And so, what’s fun about this is it’s easier, the rejection therapy, because your odds are better that you’re not going to hear a no per se, and it’s broader in that you can have conversations about a much bigger range of things than simply requests, like, “Would you please do this for me?” “No.” “Would you please do this for me?” “No.”

As well as having more of an extended exchange as opposed to just a simple no. It’s like, “Okay, I guess that’s even a conversation.” Any thoughts about the parallels there with regards to therapy?

Henna Pryor
Yeah, I think you’re right. It’s a lower-stakes form of exposure therapy or rejection therapy. I think the goal is to recognize that we are increasingly sensitive to social interactions gone awry because we’re out of practice. So, in the case of this gentleman who I high-fived with, and he clearly wasn’t looking for a high five, what was occurring, and the research now actually corroborates this, is that because we’re in isolation in the pandemic, we started to lose our ability to read other people’s social cues.

And this is something that we know is true because there’s been studies done on people whose jobs are more isolated by nature. For example, astronauts or polar explorers, people whose jobs are isolated. They found that when they returned to social settings, those social skills atrophied, meaning they had difficulty properly reading someone’s body language, their gestures, their cues.

The same thing can happen to us. And this is where I’m also very careful to point out that awkwardness is not something limited to introverts. I am 100% an extrovert through and through. I don’t think there’s an introverted bone in my body, but after the pandemic, we all realized that we could get this kind of off balance, “Okay, my social skills aren’t quite what they used to be.”

And, again, in this moment in time where we can order our food online, my 13-year-old and I joked, she doesn’t ring her friends’ doorbells. She’s like, “Mom, just text, ‘Here.’ Text them we’re in the driveway. Text them ‘Here.’” And I’m like, “Ugh, text them ‘Here’?” I used to have to talk to my friends’ parents on the phone for 10 minutes before they got on the line.

But we don’t have these same opportunities for unexpected happenstance social interactions, so we actually have to be more intentional about carving them out to create that desensitization or that exposure therapy. We actually have to go seek it out a bit more.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And I’m thinking if you have had an awkward, embarrassing, cringey moment in the past, maybe the distant past, or the recent past, that continues to pop up and spook us, it haunts us in the here and now, any tips for how do we deal with that?

Henna Pryor
Sure. This is common. I think we can call it by a variety of names. It’s rumination. It’s lingering. Some situation had such a grip on us that it seems to keep rearing its head. I would offer two thoughts here. First, it’s okay if you think about it. I’m not concerned about you thinking about it. Humans are wired for social acceptance. If those thoughts come up every now and then, I don’t mind. The difference is do those thoughts keep you in a cycle of inaction the next time? Does that thought have such a grip strength on you that you don’t take the chance or say the thing the next time?

So, part of what I coach my own clients through is just to slow down the thinking. What are people actually thinking? Often, when we are replaying a situation in our mind, we’re making the assumption that they think we’re a moron, they think we’re inept, they think we’re unqualified, so there’s a few things I remind them of.

First of all, remind yourself of the spotlight effect. The spotlight effect is a phenomenon coined by Tom Gilovich out of Cornell that is essentially pointing the idea that people are not paying nearly as close attention to you as you think they are. They’re more concerned with themselves. They’ve already turned the spotlight back onto themselves. They’ve forgotten about you long ago.

The second thing that I love to remind people of is there’s a phenomenon called the Pratfall Effect, which is if you are generally someone who is smart, competent, capable, skillful, if you are generally someone who is seen that way, and you commit a blunder, or a misstep, or you say the wrong thing, not only will people not hold it against you for the rest of your life like you think, it actually makes you more likable.

There’s a body of research that says when you are generally seen as smart, capable, and have a decent level of aptitude, a blunder makes you human. It knocks you off the pedestal that other people put you on, and it actually makes you more warm and likable so there’s actually an upside to these things. If you are working hard, and if you’re someone who generally is prepared, and these things happen, give yourself some grace. People are not tearing you apart the way that you’re tearing yourself apart.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And you’ve got a fun turn-of-a-phrase I want to hear about – protagonist disease. What is it? And why should we watch out for it?

Henna Pryor
Yeah, it’s similar to the spotlight effect in that, often, when we are concerned about approval and when we are chasing a version of ourselves that we want other people to see, I think the millennial Gen Z population these days refer to it as having main character energy. We think that we’re the star of the show, everyone is paying attention to what we’re doing, to what we’re saying, to how we’re saying it.

In the social media era, this feels even more pronounced. Everyone is dissecting everything. But here’s the truth. Everyone is a protagonist in their own story, but as far as you’re concerned, you’re an extra in their story. You are not the center of their world. And often, when we are so consumed with, “What will other people think about this awkward moment, this misstep, this embarrassing thing?” we become so consumed with this idea that we are the protagonist of everyone’s story.

The truth is we’re not. They are the protagonist of their own story. We are merely an extra. And if we can remind ourselves of that regularly, it helps release some of that grip strength of everyone is watching because they rarely are.

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

Henna Pryor
Last thing I’ll just say on this is when I titled the book Good Awkward, people were like, “Oh, she wrote a book about me.” I can’t tell you how many people have responded with that phrase, “She wrote a book about me.” And what’s funny is that everyone says that, and the research actually proves that awkwardness is for everyone.

The most confident person you know, the person that you look to, and you’re like, “Gosh, they are smooth, flawless, they’ve never had a blunder, they’ve never had a misstep,” guess what, yes, they do. They experience this emotion just as much as you do. They’ve just learned how to lean in, and they’ve learned how to accelerate their comeback rate but they are not exempt from this.

It is for everyone, you included, your favorite celebrity included, and so just knowing that, hopefully, it helps everybody relax a little bit.

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

Henna Pryor
Favorite quote, this is probably silly and funny but it’s one that I say all the time, “Don’t sweat the petty things and don’t pet the sweaty things.”

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

Henna Pryor
The vicarious embarrassment one that I shared earlier, to me, is really fun. I think the one I mentioned, cringe comedy, but the other one that I thought was really exciting was this idea of embarrassment for versus embarrassment with. So, let’s just say, Pete, you walk up the steps to the stage, and you’ve got toilet paper out of the back of your pants, you don’t know it’s there, and so only I feel embarrassed. You don’t even feel it.

And if you knew it was there, then what I’m doing is empathy. But if you don’t know that it’s there, then what I’m doing is judgment. And I think that it’s a really interesting exploration of how our own tendencies to judge actually impacts our own ability to take risks. So, I think all the research around that shared empathy and vicarious embarrassment is my favorite stuff to talk about.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Henna Pryor
Probably The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown on nonfiction. And on fiction, Americanah by Chimamanda Adichie.

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

Henna Pryor
I think that technology can be a gift when used appropriately. I think technology is that namaste from social interaction is tough but, I hate to be cliché in this moment in time, I think that ChatGPT and generative AI is the coolest brainstorming partner for any creative work. So, I’m going to go AI, when used correctly, as a brainstorming partner.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Henna Pryor
Can I cheat and say my favorite habit is habit stacking? I’m not someone who necessarily would just choose one habit, but I find I’m effective at picking up habits when I stack them. So, for example, as I’m washing the dishes, I start a cup of tea because I want to be someone who drinks tea at night. So, it becomes a routine that, as I’m doing the dishes after dinner, I start my water for tea. So, anytime I have it stacked, I like those habits the best because I’m more likely to do them.

Pete Mockaitis
Can you tell me more about the phrase “I want to be someone who drinks tea at night”?

Henna Pryor
I want to be someone who chooses healthy habits that serve me and keep me sharp.

Pete Mockaitis
So, as opposed to boozing?

Henna Pryor
Right, as opposed to boozing or even as opposed to, like, a bowl of ice cream, which is what I want sometimes, but I tend to find that the ritual of tea is very calming for me. And I’m someone who runs hard and talks fast as you’ve noticed in the last half hour. So, this is like a recentering moment for me, is the cup of tea at night.

Pete Mockaitis
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?

Henna Pryor
The one that’s coming up all the time lately is “Do it awkward but do it anyway.”

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

Henna Pryor
LinkedIn is my preferred playground, so there if possible. I’m also on Instagram, hennapryor, and all the places. And information about the book is at GoodAwkward.com.

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

Henna Pryor
I do. I do. If you want to be awesome at your job, and you are not a polar explorer or astronaut, meaning you don’t work completely by yourself, if you work with other people, I want you to challenge yourself this week to do something that strengthens your social muscle. If that’s striking up a conversation in the grocery store line, if that is ringing the doorbell instead of texting “Here,” find one opportunity to put yourself in a social situation that you, otherwise, might have had an inclination to avoid, and just see how it feels, see how it serves you, and message me on LinkedIn. Let me know how it goes.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Henna, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you much luck and fun in your awkward moments.

Henna Pryor
Thank you for having me.