Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Say More with Jen Psaki

Episode Date: May 13, 2024

In a world of social media fights, keyboard warriors, and misinformation, it’s easy to feel disconnected, even among close friends and family. What if we rethink how we’re communicating to build better relationships and maintain connection? Former White House Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, joins us to share lessons she’s learned about how to be an effective communicator with any audience, and growing through giving and receiving feedback. Join us for a peek behind the scenes, and practice listening to learn from one another – mistakes and all.  Special thanks to our guest, Jen Psaki, for joining us today. Host: Sharon McMahon Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder Production Assistant: Andrea Champoux Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Here's where it gets interesting is now available ad-free. Head to SharonMcMahon.com slash ad-free to subscribe today. Hey, friends, welcome. Thanks so much for joining me today. My guest is Jen Psaki, and you probably remember her as President Biden's former press secretary. She now has a show on MSNBC. And we are discussing her new book, Say More. Now, this is not just a memoir of her time in the White House. She has learned so many important skills when it comes to communicating, how to be an effective communicator, that no matter your position on the Biden presidency,

this is going to be a conversation that you can take something away from. So let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. So I'm very curious. First of all, people in this community love to hear behind the scenes stories. They want to know how did somebody even get to do that? What is it even like to do that job? So you talk about this in your book, which is really kind of, you know, it's part memoir of your job communicating on behalf of the government, but it is also contains a lot of

translatable lessons. But I would love to start by discussing how does one even become a press secretary? How does one even get to the point of like, it's my job to speak on behalf of the president? Is there a special school that you go to? No, I didn't go to that special school. I had never been in the White House, never visited it before. And really, I've never had a five-year plan. Never. I still don't today. I never did. I did not wake up as an eight-year-old and look in the mirror and say, I would like to be the White House press secretary. I found that to be, and this is counter to what many people might say, limiting in some ways because the world is big and vast and there are many opportunities out there I never

would have even envisioned for myself. But I did realize, you know, I and I talked about this a bit in the book, but I had been working at an art school of all things doing college doing admissions. And I was volunteering for the Arlington County Democratic Party. It's come full circle, because now that's where I live. And a guy who I thought was very old at the time, who was probably 30, I think he was literally 30, said to me, old, he said to me, you might like politics and a campaign. And you don't know until you know. I mean, but I went and I loved it. And I loved just working toward a goal, trying to be a part of a greater good. There's lots of ways to do that. But politics, especially when you're working for someone you believe in, certainly is a part of that. And then it just kind of proceeded from there, I shall say. Isn't it crazy how one statement by a single person can change the trajectory of your life. What if no one had ever suggested politics to you?

I don't know. It's such a good question. And I think, and I talk about a lot of these people in the book too, is it's people who have given you advice sometimes when you don't suspect or expect they will. It's often the people you don't expect. I didn't grow up door knocking. I grew up in a family that read the newspaper and talked about the news. My mother always growing up always voted for every Democrat. My father always voted for Republicans, although now he considers himself a Democrat. Probably my earliest political memory is in 1984. My mother voted for Mondale. My dad, of course, My mother voted for Mondale. My dad, of course, voted for Reagan. Like the one person in your city that voted for Mondale.

Literally. And I remember I was probably five at the time. My dad said to my mom, you were the only person in the country who voted for Mondale. But anyway, we grew up with a value for news and a value for what was happening around you and for people who were not as fortunate as we were, but not a politically active family. Now that you've had that experience where you have had, you know, maybe unanticipated moments in your life where somebody has dropped an idea into your mind. Does that weigh on you now as a person who is in the position to mentor others or to give others a chance? Sure. Yeah, of course. It's a big responsibility. It's a responsibility. I mean, something kind of magical happens when I turned 40,

when I was just like, F it, whatever. It's like, you know, you still kind of care about what people think, but less so. You got a little bit more freedom in your life in some ways. And it took me though, until that age to really aggressively seek feedback. And that is something I always tell people who are in their 20s. I also think about how a responsibility as you're mentoring people is not just telling them everything you're doing is amazing and magical and great. It is helping them grow, which means giving constructive feedback. It also means giving them roots and groundedness in your team, but also encouraging them to grow and push themselves out of the nest when there's nowhere else for them to grow, which I think is part of what I think you have a responsibility to

do as a, you know, a leader, a mentor, a boss, or any of those things. Generally growth is not comfortable. Yes. And just being like, Oh my gosh, you're so cute. You're so perfect. You do everything so well. I love your hair. I love your outfits. I love your eyeballs. Everything about you is amazing. Well, that person's never going to improve. They're going to stay exactly like they are now. And so finding how to give them that kind of constructive feedback without like dampening their spirit without making them feel like I hate this woman. That's a challenge, especially as a female leader, you know, like that Hillary Clinton effect, which is like trying to find the balance between being assertive, but not being perceived as being too domineering and can be seen as these negative traits in a

woman. Yes, so true. I often get asked, as I'm sure you do, do you feel sexism still exists? And I'm like, yes, but I at least, and I always tell people this, didn't experience it in the same way when I was 22 or 23, because you're in more of a level playing field in some ways in the working world. I experienced it more as you progress in the working world and you become, and this is changing for good, one of the only women in the room or at the table. I know many people have experienced this. I've never experienced like some executive slapping me in the ass, but I have experienced biases or not being included in a conversation or a meeting. And because I'm not playing basketball or on the golf course, and that

is a form of sexism too. You say in your book, I'll warn you, much of the advice in this book runs counter to the ways we tend to interact in the present moment. You say, after two decades of social media, a few years of a pandemic, and an ex-president seemingly determined to start rather than end conflicts, our communication skills have deteriorated and we find it hard to believe we might have something in common

with people outside our inner circle. This is a topic that people ask me about all of the time, and I would really love to hear you address, which is how do I navigate conversations with people I care about, people I work with, and they are dead set on creating conflict with you, or they are dead set on saying things that you know for sure are not true. How do you navigate the drunk uncle at Thanksgiving? Doesn't everyone have a drunk uncle at Thanksgiving that has the wrong ideas about things? Yes, that's right.

It's always like the moon is made of green cheese. And you're like, but it's not. Like, how do I navigate these kinds of conversations? When do we need to say something? Because you address this in your book too. Even when you don't want to talk about something, you still have to say something. When do we need to say something and how do we go about saying it? What is the advice that runs counter to the ways we tend to interact? This is such a good topic and question, which I also get asked about a fair amount.

This is such a good topic and question, which I also get asked about a fair amount. And in the section you read there, what I was referring to is, you know, I'm a believer that face to face conversations often they don't always melt all the ice, but they do a great deal more in melting the ice than a conversation over certainly Twitter, but sometimes even text or email, honestly, which I think is just a lesson for home, for the workplace, for anything really. But I often have found that far too many people who are in that age group who I consider friends, I interact with, are less capable of having in-person engagements, like looking in your eyes, having an interactive listening conversation, dealing when it's a conversation that's harder and tougher, older people than that too. But I do think what I was trying to convey there is the age of social media has undoubtedly hasn't had an impact on the ability of people to communicate in person. And sometimes that means communicating with people you disagree.

I do have an Uncle Bob. Well, he passed away. We loved him very much, who undoubtedly, my mother and I talk about this all the time, would have been a staunch Trump supporter. I'm clearly not. Neither is my mother. He was a retired New York City cop. He would come to a holiday get together and he would say things that were outrageous and offensive, right? My mother would say, Bob, that's not correct. It was her older brother by eight years. My mother is a pixie, five foot two, and he was like six, four, which just made it funnier. That's a family member. I'm also a believer that sometimes each circumstance is different, that it may not be constructive to have the debate about abortion

rights at the Thanksgiving table. And there might be other things to discuss. That doesn't mean you don't believe in abortion rights. It just means maybe for the Thanksgiving dinner, you can discuss your shared love of the Chicago Cubs or whatever it may be. That is absolutely okay too. That's not putting your values aside, in my view. People can be Twitter bullies or social media bullies where they get courage of the keyboard. I've had, and granted, I've chosen in a weird path to be a public-ish figure. People will attack me viscerally on Twitter. If I run into them in person and I say, hey, Frank, I'm making up a name. They're much more awkward and less inclined to attack me. In fact, they don't. My general rule of thumb, and this is

such a good question, so I'm sort of circling around lots of things here, is that if somebody attacks me personally, I realize and I hope everybody isn't the victim of this, but people are, even who are like in middle school and high school. If you respect them and their point of view, then you should have a conversation with them. If they don't know you, you don't know them, or you don't, you got to be able to move on from it. There is a separation in my view. But overall, I think every scenario kind of calls for a different approach. And I talk about this a fair amount in the book, but it is to me about determining what's most constructive in the moment. If somebody's yelling at me at an airport, which doesn't really happen that often, but if somebody's trying to yell at me about a policy issue in an airport,

I'm not going to debate them. They don't want to hear my point of view. They just want to yell at me. Does that mean I don't believe in my point of view? It doesn't. It just means I don't want to be late for my flight. You know? Yeah. I think it's important. It's that you made an important point that it cannot be your job. This is a recipe for misery. It cannot be your job to be a debater with your haters 24 hours a day. You'd do nothing else. I would do nothing else. No, you would do nothing else. No one is going to get to year 99 of their life lying on their deathbed being like,

man, I wish I would have gotten in some more sick burns in the comments. Right? Like that's not the regret you're going to have. On your deathbed. It's so true. I mean, what's also true, and I learned a lot of this from working for Barack Obama for 10 years, is we all make assumptions. This person, this group of people is going to hate me, or we're not going to find anything we agree on. And that's not healthy either. You know, I mean, he, I mean, he's obviously a very good speaker, as everyone knows, but I worked for him for his whole campaign. He won in part because he recognized that a person named Barack Hussein

Obama, who was a like constitutional law professor in Chicago might not be a natural dinner date for somebody in kind of rural Iowa. And that as an entry point, he needed to lower the barrier of entry for people and he needed to convey to them, I'm here to listen. I want to hear what you think too. I'm not to try to make you believe in everything I believe as a progressive on many things constitutional law professor. I'm here to listen. And I'm going to look for moments of commonality. You have kids, I have kids. You worry about healthcare costs, I worry about that too. And sometimes we also make assumptions about what people think and where they're coming at things from. And we don't leave

space for finding commonality either. That's such a good point that we think that listening to understand where somebody is coming from obligates you to agree with them. Right. Does not. It does not. But there is still value in listening to understand where they're coming from. You can definitely, even if you don't agree at the end, you can still learn something from them. Just like you were talking about, Obama is not the most natural fit for perhaps, again, this is an assumption, which may end up not being the case, but perhaps not the most natural fit for a farmer in rural Iowa. But yet, there is so much common ground to be found. And the current American political discourse does not allow for that. It does not allow for us to find our common ground. We quickly want to categorize people into bad, good, evil, hero, you know, like you're one or

the other. If you think X, we can never be friends. If you think Y, we can't even share a cup of coffee. So what advice would you have for somebody who is struggling with this mentality or who is wondering how to find common ground with somebody whose opinions or beliefs are so antithetical to their own that they have trouble even having a conversation with them. What would you say to that person? I would say to that person, when you have to determine if there's value to you, I think there is value in hearing and understanding other people's opinions.

It doesn't mean that you have to spend every day doing that, right? But there is value in that. If there's a person that you think is worth better understanding, I would say to them, I know we are in different places on this issue. And here's why I feel the way I feel. But I want to better understand why you feel the way you feel. Somebody conveying to you their point of view does not change your, maybe it does, but I guess if it does, then that says something about it. But I do think there's place for conversation and that conversation is not over social media

platforms. It's not a forum that is constructed to converse. It's a forum that's constructed to like, dislike, share. like share. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends. And together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind the scenes stories, hilarious guests, and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me?

Steve! It's my girl in the studio. Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from the office and our friendship with brand new guests. And we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office Ladies 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits

before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. you talk in your book there's a chapter called what the heck is a non-filer at this at this chapter the premise of it made me laugh what the heck is a non-filer jen what does that even mean well a non-filer is someone who doesn't make enough money to pay taxes. And there's a small percentage of people in the country. And I learned a lot about this from Joe Biden, of all people. You don't have to learn this lesson from a president, by the way.

But I learned a lot from him about it, is that sometimes in order to sound smarter or more informed, people speak with fancier language, more complicated words. It does not make you sound smarter. It sometimes makes you inaccessible. And so the non-filer example was, I was sitting in the state, oh, not the State Department, I was sitting in the state dining room in the White House. President Biden was about to give a speech, and he was practicing the speech, and he took a break from the speech. And this was all when we were trying to distribute benefits from the COVID relief package to help give businesses money and people relief during the early years of COVID. And he was very concerned about how people who didn't make enough money

to be able to get an automatic check from the IRS. We're going to find out about it. And he said, how are you talking about it? And I said, well, first I say, for anyone who's a non-filer, and he was like, whoa, whoa, nobody talks like that. And he's right. And this is the thing that's so important to remember when you're communicating. Your goal is to engage people, prompt them to want to listen, not because they agree, but because they want to learn more. They're intrigued and not to talk over people, right? It doesn't mean dumbing it down. It means not using vernacular that you would need a PhD in order to understand, because you're eliminating people in your audience who you may want to reach.

And I learned a lot from him on that front. Yeah. You're not intentionally excluding people. Correct. That's what that language is intended to do. It's intended to like, you're either in the in-group that understands what that means. You're a PhD economist, or you're in the out group of stupid people who don't understand what that means. And that is what that super high level language has the effect of doing on a normal person. It doesn't make them feel smarter to be around people who are talking that way. It actually makes them feel dumb and excluded. Exactly.

And I think there's often a misunderstanding of that. And people who are far smarter than me and have done academic research on this have found that as well, that you kind of exclude people and you therefore sometimes fail at communicating because you're trying to make your language sound like it's from a Shakespearean play when nobody speaks that way. And this is true, certainly in my current job too on television, you try to speak on television the way people speak, right? I mean, sometimes, you know, there's complicated things you have to explain, but it means it doesn't mean it's always grammatically correct. Because guess what, everybody doesn't always speak in a grammatically correct way. It's not always perfectly formed sentences, because that's

not how people talk. And you have to be mindful about how people are digesting what you're saying. That's part of being a communicator, an effective communicator, is whether people are going to want to hear more. And I talk in the book about this, but I tell people this all the time. My mother-in-law, who is a retired teacher, she's extremely smart, well-read. She doesn't live here in Washington. And if I start, she pays attention to things. But if she asked me a question like,

hey, what's going to happen with funding of the government? Or what's going to happen with this healthcare bill? If I start talking about committee work and reconciliation and the squad and the blue dogs, she'll be like, what are you talking about? You know, I just want to know if I can go to my national park. That's what I want to know. So I think that's important to remember. And sometimes it's lost. Yeah. Once you start getting into the unanimous consent bills, you start getting deep in the weeds. The thing about making people feel stupid and excluded is that it doesn't often encourage curiosity. It doesn't encourage them

to learn more. It makes them feel like, nevermind, I'm not even going to pay attention because I already know I don't. Yeah. I don't want to know. And this feels kind of snobby to me, or this feels, I don't, I'm not, I can't, I have a headache. Everybody's experts in different things. It's about knowing you can't speak like you're the expert on things at all times and only speak in that language. Well, apparently you are an expert. You say that the three questions that you are asked most often, the first one is what is Joe Biden like? What's Joe Biden like? Do people expect you to be like, here's the tea. Let me in the evening, he puts on his slippers and like, are they expecting you to like, dish up like a bunch of dirt? Like, what are they expecting by asking you that question?

I mean, it's funny. It's like, what's so and so like, it's like, what do you mean? I do think that there are things you see. And this is one of the things that I loved about working in government. And when I transitioned over to media, I said is a piece I hopefully could contribute on is people don't see the real human beings who are in elected office and stuff. And it's like, you know, Joe Biden, it's like, yes, he's the President of the United States. There's all sorts of, you know, back and forth about him. He is 81 years old. I also found him to be, he can be funny. He can be gruff. He can be, I remember sitting with him a couple of weeks into his presidency and saying,

so sir, how are you doing? There's a lot on your shoulder. Sometimes, you know, you just check in as a human. He's like, I don't know where my socks are. They unpack my stuff. So there are very human moments. And so when people ask me that, I often tell stories like that because it's like, I obviously agree with him on the vast majority of policies. Everybody doesn't and that's okay. But what people don't see about him or other people I've worked for is like

the human side. Right. And, you know, he kind of has this, he's very close with his grandkids. And I remember one time being in the Oval Office prepping for something and one of his grandchildren walked in and he did the thing grandpas do, which is he was like, hey, there's a $20 bill on the floor, someone dropped for you. But I feel like working for him, I kind of, there's a discomfort. And I now worked for two presidents. There's a discomfort, at least for the two I worked for in the, now poor them, they travel on Air Force One, they live in the White House. I'm not trying to suggest that. It's a privilege. They ran for office. It's very contained, right? And they don't have interaction with normal people a lot. And there

can be a discomfort with that and a seeking and a desire to have that and that normal interaction. And I think maybe longer than several months into his presidency, I think Barack Obama thought he could just still maybe wander into a bookstore and no one would notice. And he could just like walk around. It's like, no, my friend, that will never happen again. And again, poor them. But it's it's a disconnection from normalcy in a morning of that, that I saw with both of them in some ways. Yeah, I saw Obama on some nighttime talk show, where he thought after he left the presidency that he was going to be golden. Like no one would know he was or something. Yeah. Yeah. Like he was going to be able to go for a walk in Central Park. And he tells this story about how he tried to go for a walk in Central

Park and he got 10 feet. And the Secret Service was like, abort mission. You cannot, no walking in the park for you. So I can fully, listen, I live on a dirt road. Okay. I can't see my neighbors. Sometimes I want to live on a dirt road. Oh, let me tell you, I cannot see a single neighbor. I can walk outside in my robe. You can't even see my house from the street. I love it. So consequently, I cannot imagine the amount of scrutiny and pressure. Again, this is any president. The amount of scrutiny and pressure there is involved in literally never being able to go somewhere alone again. Never again will you go somewhere alone.

Never again will you dip into a bookstore and grab some ice cream and nobody will notice who you are. Never again. And you can't know what that is until you do it. That's very true. And, you know, again, it's like I recognize their president. But, you know, I worked for Barack Obama for 10 years and there are hard days during those 10 years, including the day he visited Hawaii, knowing it was the last time he was going to see his grandmother who raised him before the election. And I remember

him just wanting to take a walk and he couldn't because the press pool has to follow him. You know why? Because presidents have been assassinated. So they want to be there for the moment. And then they do their jobs. This is not a questioning of that, but they ask, did he have any snacks with his grandma? How long was he there? There is a public interest in your life when you're a president. That's a healthy thing. We live in a democracy currently, at least. That's a good thing. But there is a privacy that you give up.

And I think they don't always, at least the two I've worked for, they're not always thinking about that. Right. And the digestion of what the impact of that is, you see firsthand. I want to get to the chapter in your book about making mistakes. You have a whole chapter in Say More called A Punchline China Would Find Funny on Making Mistakes, Issuing Clarifications, Correcting Yourself yourself, and apologizing. And listen, like correcting yourself, that has become almost a dirty phrase now. Like I need to issue a correction. People are like, what kind of idiot are you that you got it wrong that one time?

You know, meanwhile, everybody makes mistakes. Of course, it's very easy to lob bombs at somebody else who's doing it. But actually admitting when you're wrong or where I misspoke, I need to correct what I said yesterday. I was mistaken when I used that number instead of this number. That actually gives you more credibility when you can admit when you got it wrong. The worst person in the room is the person who can never admit they're wrong. Everybody secretly hates you if you can never, ever, ever admit that you got something wrong. What tips would you have for the rest of us, no names named, who might have trouble admitting that we got it wrong that one time. I mean, you're so right. And I agree with you a thousand percent that sometimes admitting a mistake does not make you weaker. It makes you stronger because it shows that you have the confidence to admit you were wrong.

And I even know having interactions with people now when somebody said, I said this, but I was wrong, or I thought this about this particular issue, but I was incorrect. I always think, wow, I'm kind of immediately impressed with the person. I think the piece that is often misunderstood, at least in my experience, is that when you make a mistake, the answer is not to stop communicating. It's to continue communicating. Now, when you're a public communicator, this is especially true because when it comes to credibility, if you go out there and you give the wrong number on something, or you say something completely inaccurate, or you're flippant about something and you regret it for good reason, saying nothing means people think you're just settled in the wrong number, your flippant response and whatever it may be.

And so acknowledging you were wrong, I think one helps your credibility. Often, sometimes it takes the venom out of the interaction, right? Meaning there's so many times when companies, I think particularly, I'm not trying to pick on social media companies, but sometimes they're bad at this stuff. They say, we did nothing wrong. It's like, really? You did nothing wrong? It's not just them. I mean, it's other companies and organizations too. And sometimes acknowledging that takes a little air out of the balloon. It takes a little venom out of it because you're saying we could have handled this better and we're

going to work to make it better. You know what that does? Reporters aren't like, you screwed this up. Like, why did you screw this up? They're like, what steps are you taking to make it better? And you move the conversation forward. So there's a in my career, but it's still applicable now. I mean, we always still have bosses in the world, you know, unless we're running things and I'm not, is like, if you make a mistake, the key is to share with people, I made a mistake so that you can fix it. It is not to bury the mistake and move forward because often mistakes barrel or they don't, but that's the other piece of it. So that's part of continuing to communicate as well. But I told some stories more about moments where I benefited from people's generous reactions and how it taught me how to react in the future about people who made mistakes who work for me too.

Yeah. The worst thing you can do is the aggressive double down on the mistake. Well, you guys misunderstood what I was saying. I didn't say it was 12 trash barrels. I said there were 12 trash bags. I didn't say how many barrels there were. The double down always makes it worse or the silent treatment. Those are the worst things you can do. It's just much better. It disarms somebody to say, you know what? I should have said eight. I was mistaken. And then you move. That allows you to move on far more quickly than going silent and having nothing to say about it. Then nobody has anything to talk about except the mistake.

Exactly. Giving them no new material. And sometimes it projects arrogance. Yes. And it's communicating is about how you make people feel. That's largely what it's about. It's a yes about the number of trash bags and making sure that's accurate. But do people feel you're credible? Do they feel you're humble? Do they feel you're making the effort to provide them with accurate information? That is very important as a communicator. And I mean publicly, sure, but I also mean with friends and family and coworkers and people who work for you and all sorts of things. What advice would you have for a new college grad who is trying to,

you know, they're getting ready to graduate, like maybe they're looking for a job, getting ready to start a new job. Wasn't that long ago that you were that person who was graduating and you were working in the office and somebody told you, you should get into politics. What advice would you have for somebody whose career is in its infancy so they can be better communicators? They can learn from your 20 years of experience. Oh, well, thank you. I can't believe I have 20 years of experience. I know. So weird because you're 29. How is that possible?

Obviously, I was a prodigy at nine. I'm like Dean Hauser or something. Nobody will get that reference unless they're my age. That's the thing. That's right. I would say I'm going to assume these college graduates I'm speaking to are in a job or they're starting a job in some area. First, I would say the most important thing to do is to

absolutely crush the job you're in, not to think about what you're going to be doing five or 10 years from now. That can be a healthy thing to have goals. I'm not denying that. But crushing the job you're in is going to open doors to the next job you're going to be in. That is more important than telling your boss that you can actually solve the North Korea nuclear crisis, right? You're 22. You can't. But you know what you can do? You can become a great writer in explaining North Korea. You can learn from the people you're working for. You can ask to do more. You can show up to the office. So I mean, crush the thing you're in. It's not more complicated than that. I would say the second thing is aggressively seek feedback. As I noted,

it took me a long time to do this. And part of my reasoning, which I think is pretty common, was that you feel like you're going to be exposed, right? I shouldn't be in a job talking about North Korea policy. I don't know why this is the topic I've chosen to continue this analogy with, but I'm going to keep going. I'm 22. How could I be a person responsible for this? No one is going to catch you. You make mistakes. I still make mistakes.

You will make mistakes through your career. Seek feedback on how you're doing, what you can do better. Aggressively seek feedback on what you can do better, how you can improve your writing, your presentation, your interaction with colleagues. That is what will make you better at what you do. And I wish I had done that earlier. So that's my second piece of feedback. My third piece, I feel like things should come in threes. So now I feel like, okay, here's my third piece. Everything warrants preparation. I'm talking about a meeting with colleagues. I'm talking about obviously a job interview, though I've interviewed a lot of people and you'd be surprised by people who don't know who they're interviewing with or what they're interviewing for. will make a huge difference. I mean, I do have this funny story in the book about like the time I didn't know who Chance the Rapper was. I could have prepared. But what is true is that you can tell. So if you spend 15 minutes, you do a tiny bit of reading, you write a couple of notes about

what you want to say. If you have three minutes left, you practice it out loud. It's going to make a huge difference. I have more advice, but those are three pieces I would give to recent college graduates. I love that. It's so good. Crush the job you I have more advice, but those are three pieces I would give to recent college graduates. I love that. It's so good. Crush the job you're in. How can you ever get a better one if you don't ever get any practice doing this other thing? Yes.

And it's not about looking around and figuring out, I want that job or this is unfair. It's like, just master the thing you're in and ask to do more. And guess what? You will get to do more. And guess what? You'll get a bigger job. So it's just like, focus on the thing you're in. That's a kind of, it's very simple, but, oh, and write handwritten thank you notes. I'm also an advocate for those, which makes me sound like a granny,

but they go a long way. They do. Adam Grant says, asking for feedback, he says, ask people for advice. What advice would you have for me for the next presentation? Love that. That's good. What advice would you have for me about how I can nail the next meeting that we have? What advice would you have? I mean, also read Adam Grant's books. That's probably I just probably steal all of my good advice from Adam Grant's books. Read Think Again. Read Hidden hidden potential, listen to his podcast, and you'll sound smarter, more articulate versions of what I just said. Uh huh. All right. This is my last question, although we could probably chat for a very long time. Who is say more written for you talk a lot about knowing who your audience is? Who are you trying to communicate to? Who are you trying to

communicate to with this book? I am trying to communicate to the version of myself 20 years ago. And 20 years can be plus or minus five years. It is lessons I've learned along the way that I wish I would have known. And now I hope people my age buy the book and I hope people older than me buy the book. But that is really who I was writing to. I love that. Well, Jen, it was great chatting with you. I'm wishing you and all of your book so much success. Really enjoyed it. Thank you. You can buy Jen Psaki's book, Say More, wherever you get your books. And if you want to support independent bookstores, head down the street to your own or go to bookshop.org and order it there. Thanks for being here today. This episode is hosted and

executive produced by me, Sharon McMahon. Our audio producer is Jenny Snyder. Our production assistant is Andrea Champeau. And if you liked this episode, we would love to have you share it to social media or to leave us a rating or review all of those things help podcasters out so much thanks for being here and we'll see you again soon