Something You Should Know - Surprising Ways We Influence Each Other & How to Handle Emotions at Work

Episode Date: March 4, 2019

Ever have the feeling someone is watching you? Almost everyone has had the experience but do humans actually have the ability to sense that? I begin this episode by explaining the science behind the sense of being watched. http://www.popsci.com/why-do-i-feel-like-someones-watching-me People influence you and you influence other people. It happens all the time all day long. What is so interesting is that it often happens in ways you are unaware of. Matthew Jackson is a professor of Economics at Stanford University and author of a new book called The Human Network: How Your Social Position Determines Your Power, Beliefs and Behaviors https://amzn.to/2EvVfJY joins me to offer some fascinating insight into how you influence others and they – you.   If you have been told anything about emotions in the workplace it was probably that you shouldn’t have any or don’t cry at work. “Check your emotions at the door” is common company policy in many organizations. Liz Fosslien, author of the book No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Embracing Emotions at Work https://amzn.to/2BY8zFn says the problem is that emotions are in the workplace and they can cause big problems. Listen as she offers solutions to deal with your emotions and those of the people you work with.   Why do we still have the U.S. penny? Other countries have eliminated their smallest value coin - but not here. Why? Listen and I’ll explain why we still mint millions of pennies every year. https://www.kiplinger.com/article/business/T043-C000-S001-why-the-humble-penny-refuses-to-die.html This Week's Sponsors -ADT. Go to www.ADT.com/smart to learn how ADT can design and install a smart home system for you. -Select Quote. Get your free insurance quote at www.SelectQuote.com/something -Trip Actions. Go towww.TripActions.com/somethingto complete a 30 minute demo and receive a $100Amazon gift card. -Geico. Go to www.Geico.com to see how Geico can save you money on your car insurance Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on Something You Should Know, can you really tell if someone is staring at you, even if you can't see them? Then, how influence works. It's amazing who influences who and how. You look at kids in school, the kids with the most friends try drugs earlier, they smoke more, they tend to go to more parties. The fact that they're acting differently or more extremely means that the rest of the kids perceive that as the norm, even if it's not the norm.

Plus, the U.S. penny. It seems pretty pointless, so why is it still here? And emotions at work. We're not supposed to have them, but they're there and they are powerful. The researchers have actually found that emotions can spread across offices. So say that I sit next to the complainer at my work. I come home and I'm just really down and grumpy towards my partner. And the next day, he goes to work really grumpy and then that spreads to his office.

All this today on Something You Should Know. As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know was all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks. Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED Talk

every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu. She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future. Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Something you should know. Fascinating intel.

The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome. Here's a question for you, although I think I already know the answer. But the question is, have you ever had that sense that you're being watched, that someone you can't see is watching you? Maybe someone behind you is staring at you, or someone somewhere is looking at you, but you can't see them. Well, scientists have looked at this, and it appears that that feeling of being watched is all in your head. Here's what appears to be going on.

There's something called confirmation bias. So you remember those moments when you turned around and saw someone staring at you, but you've forgotten all the times when you turned around and no one was staring at you. Or someone might have been watching, just not with the intention that you think. For example, a sudden movement by you could have triggered an unintended glance from a stranger. There's also something called the spotlight effect. An example of this is when a person goes to the gym for the very first time, they feel like everyone is staring at them, but they're not.

Usually they think you are watching them. And then there's just an overactive imagination. When your imagination thinks someone is watching you, your brain constructs a story to explain it. But in any event, no one has ever shown that humans have the ability to sense when someone is looking at them. And that is something you should know. Obviously, you're aware that other people influence you and your behaviors. But it goes on a lot more and a lot deeper than you probably think. You're part of networks, different social networks.

Not just online networks, but in real life too. And all these people and all these networks are influencing you and you're influencing them in subtle and often not so subtle ways. Matthew Jackson is a professor of economics at Stanford and he's author of a new book called The Human Network, How Your Social Position Determines Your Power, Beliefs, and Behaviors. And he joins me to give a peek behind the curtain and reveal how all this influencing works and your part in it. Hi, Matthew. Welcome.

Thanks, Mike. It's wonderful to be here. So in broad strokes here, explain how this works. We're sort of embedded in networks, and we always think of networks like Facebook and Pinterest and Instagram, but we're in constant contact with other people, everyone around us, and they are the people that influence us in terms of they get us jobs, they help form our opinions about whether to vote. And all this is sort of going on constantly. And, you know, we're not necessarily aware of it. And we're very social animals. We naturally imitate and are in constant contact with other people. But doesn't it seem that since

people tend to like people who are like them, that we're already with people in social circles who are like us. So how much more influencing can there be because we're attracted to people like us? A lot of it is just that we tend to imitate other individuals. Let me give you one example. There's a program called Teach for America, and it's a program that basically hires people that are fresh out of college. And what they do is they try and get people to go into low-income neighborhoods and teach. And so these are places where it's hard to get teachers. It's hard to get good qualified teachers. And so they, you know, go through this

elaborate interview process and try and find the best candidates. And those candidates, you know, spend a lot of time thinking about whether they should join or not. So they did an experiment. And what they did is they just, in the acceptance letter to people, they added one sentence. And the one sentence was, last year, more than 84% of admitted applicants joined the Corps. I sincerely hope you'll join them. And just that one sentence gave them an extra 8% of people who joined. And, you know, it's a two-year commitment. So people are spending two years of their lives just because they heard that most people do this. So what's the principle at work there?

Is that people like to follow the crowd, that we like to do what most people do? You know, if other people are doing it, it must be a good thing. It's sort of like an inference, right? It's actually fascinating. I have a colleague here. This is sort of a tangent, but it's really related. I have a colleague here named Deborah Gordon, and she studies ants. And they've discovered something they call the ant-ternet. And what happens is ants go out and they look for food. And if they find it,

they come back and they're bringing food. And there's other ants sitting there in the nest waiting for the ants to come. And the more ants they see coming in, the more go out, right? So they just imitate each other. If they see somebody coming back with food, then they get stimulated, they go out. And that means that the more food's available, the more ants are going out. But in times when there's not many ants coming back, they don't go out. So it's a system that's sort of self-correcting. It ends up working very, very well.

So I want to ask you, because it's in the subtitle of your book, How Your Social Position Determines Your Power, what do you mean by that and how does that work? So I guess one example is what's known as the friendship paradox, meaning that people you know, people who are really central in networks end up having outsized influence on other individuals. So for instance, if I have, you know, thousands of followers on Twitter, somebody else has five followers on Twitter, then, you know, you end up having thousands of times more reach than somebody else. And so more people are hearing your opinion than the

other person's opinion. You know, I think one example of this I always think of is, you know, my daughters, I have two daughters, when they were young teenagers, they would always come home with ideas, you know, saying things like, everybody at school has a cell phone, or everybody at school gets to stay up and do X, or everybody at school is getting their ears pierced. And, you know, you sort of wonder, is everybody at school really doing this? From their perspective, everybody was, but they're paying attention to a few people, and those few people tend to be the most popular individuals at school. So the friendship paradox is people with the most friends end up being counted as more friends by friends of more people, and that ends up meaning that they end up being counted as more friends by friends of more people. And that ends up meaning

that they end up having a lot more influence. And if those people act differently than the rest of the people in society, they end up changing the perspective. So from my daughter's perspective, everybody did have a cell phone and was getting their ears pierced, or I guess nowadays it's probably getting a tattoo or whatever. But that perception wasn't necessarily true of what the whole population in the school was doing. It's just that the people who are the ones paid attention to by the most people, if they're acting that way, that ends up having a big effect. How did those people who have so many friends and have so much influence, how did they get to the top of the heap

there? You know, I think there's also this sort of a snowball effect of friends beget friends aspect to it. And this is something I've studied in my own research and a bunch of people have looked at it in the sense that, you know, if somebody has a lot of friends, you hear about them more, you want to get to know them more. It's easier to meet them because they have friends that can introduce you to them. So there's sort of a rich get richer aspect of the way that we form friendships. Well, what's so interesting about that is people who have friends and then get more friends become more influential. And just because they're influential doesn't mean they're right. And so their influence could be quite negative.

Yeah, and the more we're aware of that, then we can begin to think, look, these leaders might not be the people that we really want to be paying attention to in terms of what's best for us to do in terms of behaviors. Like, look at kids in school. The kids with the most friends, they tend to try drugs earlier. They smoke more. They're just more active in drinking and so forth. So they have behaviors that are more extreme in a lot of cases. They tend to be more social. They tend to go to more parties. You know, there's a lot of dynamics going on. It's hard to

disentangle all the forces that are there. But the fact that they're acting differently or more extremely means that the rest of the kids perceive that as the norm, even if it's not the norm. So they're not seeing the kids, you know, studying. They're seeing the kids partying. And that's what gets posted on Facebook. You don't post a picture of yourself in a study carol. You post a picture of yourself out having fun. And so our perceptions are biased that way. I'm speaking with Professor Matthew Jackson. He's author of the book, The Human Network,

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Look for the Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. So, Matthew, you were talking a moment ago about how influence works in school, in high school. But what about adults? Are the same things going on, or are we a little more set in our ways and a little less influenceable, if that's a word? So here's an example of, I think it's easy to underestimate how much we're influenced by our friends. But there's a group at Facebook, actually, of a series of former students from Stanford, and they looked at people's decisions

to buy houses, right? So this is a major investment, huge amounts of money you're putting on the table. And what they found was we imitate our friends there, too. So take me in California, look at one of my friends in Boston, a 5% increase in that friend's house value would lead me in terms of, you know, averages to be 3% more likely to buy a house. And I would tend to pay, you know, 3% more, buy a larger house. What's the difficulty? The difficulty is that, you know, my friends in Boston, I'm in California, the Boston market and the California market have almost nothing to do with each other. And so one amazing thing about the study was, you know, the friend who lives down the street from me,

who I should really be paying attention to in terms of, you know, house value, has just the same amount of influence as the friend in Boston or Toledo or Austin, Texas, or Alaska. Um, and I might be paying attention to the friends who are the most popular friends on Facebook and they might not be the normal, you know, individuals or the people that I should really be paying attention to when I'm making decisions to buy a house. But this kind of stuff was always just permeating our, you know, we're just bombarded by this, and it's difficult for us to know why we think it's a great time to buy a house.

You know, this is all going on in our subconscious to some extent. Isn't that interesting that somebody buying a house in Boston would influence you? And even more interesting that you don't really know it. It's subconscious, but it, and 3% is not a huge influence, but it's still an influence. Yeah, I mean, 3% is not that much of an influence, but when you start adding up all my friends, it ends up being, you know, I get bounced around a lot by what's happening to my friends. Yeah, it's a huge effect. I guess one of the other really big example is how we get our jobs, right? Most of our jobs are through referrals, not by applicants.

There's a fascinating interview with a corporate recruiter, and they go into sort of how they find people. They call people who just randomly apply, they call them homers. They call them homer after Homer Simpson, because usually they have very little qualification for the job, and if they do get the job, they tend to flake out and not last long. Whereas they call the people who are really qualified, they call them purple squirrels. And they call them purple squirrels because they're very rare. They're hard to find. And almost all of those people actually come through referrals. And so, you know,

if you don't have a friend who's well-employed, it's difficult to get jobs. And so, you know, our friends are making a big difference in all sorts of aspects, not just sort of in terms of what we imitate, but also just in terms of connections and opportunities we have. And I think people have heard that before, that you're more likely to get a job if somebody refers you than if you just apply. And it just makes common sense that someone's going to pay attention to somebody who gets referred than somebody who's just sitting in a stack of resumes on their desk. But as you make the point, you can only be referred if you have somebody in your circle

of influence who can refer you. Yeah, exactly. And then when you begin to look at the numbers, then what you see is that you can be at high employment but there can be pockets where there's a whole community that's unemployed. And it's not just because there aren't businesses in that area. It's because they're all friends with each other. And none of those friends tend, you know, if none of my friends are employed, then I don't get employed. And if all my friends are employed, then it's a lot easier for me to find a job. There was actually a fascinating study that was done of how people got jobs after World War I.

And this was done by Ron Lashever. And what he did was, you know, the U.S. Army had, before we entered the war, the First World War, it had like 300,000 people. And then it went up to 4 million people by 1918. So, you know, they had to get a huge number of people into the Army. So this was a massive draft. And the way they put companies together was they randomly picked groups of 100 people. They put them all together.

And then these guys, you know, were in the trenches together, literally. So they became best friends. And so it's sort of a unique opportunity to see people randomly put together and completely mixed. And then what he does is follow them, you know, through the 1930s and then looks at whether they get employed or not. And it turns out that whole companies tend to be more employed or less employed. So a 10% increase in the employment in somebody's company led to that person having a lot more job opportunities and a 4% higher chance that they're employed.

So you get these huge correlations in whether people are employed or not just by whether their friends are employed. And the effect is lasting. This was like 10 or 20 years later that he was looking at this, and it makes a big difference. So our friends are just so important in so many ways. How else, you've given some really good examples of how this is kind of happening behind the scenes. How else? Are there other ways, other things that are going on like this that we may not even be aware of? There's a lot of studies of sort of information flows that are quite fascinating. The way we learn about these things is from our

friends. There's a study, it's the original Wisdom of the Crowd study. And this was a study that was done in 1907 by a guy named Sir Francis Galton. And this was sort of a fascinating study. So what he did was he, this was a poultry, livestock and poultry fair in West England. And what you could do is you could go up and guess the weight of an ox. So they had this ox there, a prize ox. You could go up, you could guess the weight. And then, you know, the person who got closest to the actual weight won a prize. So what did they find?

You had 787 entries. The ox actually weighed 1,198 pounds. The average guest was 1,197. So the average of all these people was almost right on the mark, right? So somehow the crowd, the people together, you know, if you combine all that information, would just nail it. So collectively, people have a lot of information, a lot of knowledge, a lot of expertise. The question is, how do you get that together? How does somebody learn that? So if I'm at the poultry fair, I can start asking people and polling people. If I polled enough people, I could guess the weight of an ox and be very accurate.

The problem is that we're not averaging all're not averaging our, all our guesses. We don't have a bulletin board where we all post our guesses and then look at them. You know, we're talking to each other and I'm talking to, I'm not talking to everybody. I'm talking to a few people. I tend to talk to people who think like me. And then out of those people, I tend to talk to the most popular ones, you I'm not getting that full view of the whole society's impressions. Well, that's kind of the theory behind the random sample. If you randomly poll people, you'll get a pretty accurate, if you randomly poll enough of them, a pretty accurate response.

But if you're always inside your own little circle of influence and you poll those people, you're probably way off. Right, exactly, exactly, yeah, yeah. And the internet is changing that a lot nowadays. So, you know, via the internet, we get exposed to a lot more information. So we have the opportunity to seek out a lot more information, to look at more sources, to do searches, to a lot more information. So we have the opportunity to seek out a lot more information, to look at more sources, to do searches, to find out more things, and to come closer to polling people. The difficulty is that it's also easier to find things we like and people who are just like us and then say something that resonates with us. We'd like to hear our own view

bounced back at us, and so it's hard to necessarily pay attention to the whole, to be unbiased and to really sort everything and make a good estimate. It does seem that, compared to other creatures on the planet, that humans are more susceptible to being influenced than other creatures. And maybe that's just my perception, and maybe it's not true, but there does seem to be something unique about humans where we're able to influence each other with thoughts and pictures and things like that. What makes humans so special in that way? One thing that's very special is that we

can process abstract ideas and thoughts. So for instance, you could describe a place you've been to. Say you went on vacation. You could describe the city. You could tell me what you ate. You could tell me where you went. You saw these amazing sights. And I can get an image of that in my mind, right? So you experienced it, and I experienced it vicariously. I listened to you, and I feel like I'm there. And I form an image in my mind. That's something that's very unique to us, that kind of communication and our ability to imagine things by hearing from other people,

get an idea in our minds of what actually went on. And that's great. It's what allows us to teach people how to do things much more easily. It allows us to build knowledge bases and to develop technologies and all kinds of stuff. But it also leads us to mistakes, right? Where suddenly I imagine that I've done something that I've never done, or I can have superstitions because somebody tells me something, I can imagine it being true. So it leads us down some strange paths as well. Well, I appreciate the insight into how influence works. It's especially interesting where it happens and we're not really aware of it. So I appreciate you sharing it. My guest has been Matthew Jackson. He's a professor of economics at Stanford,

and he's author of the new book, The Human Network, How Your Social Position Determines Your Power, Beliefs, and Behaviors. You'll find a link to his book in the show notes. Thanks, Matthew. Well, thanks so much, Mike. It's really wonderful talking with you. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation

with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best

podcasts a few years back. And in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed, critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone. Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong?

Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener poll results from But Am I Wrong. And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.

When it comes to discussions about emotions in the workplace, I think the prevailing wisdom is that they don't belong together. You've probably heard the advice that you should never cry at work because, well, because if you're a professional, you keep your emotions out of the workplace, and crying and showing emotion makes you look weak and unprofessional. But when you stop and think about it, that's really impossible. At work, just as in any other part of life, when you deal with other people, there will be emotions. So rather than deny our emotions at work,

perhaps we need to deal with them. Liz Fosleen is a consultant and author of the book No Hard Feelings, The Secret Power of Embracing Emotions at Work. Hey, Liz, welcome. Hi, thanks so much for having me. So let's start with where the issue of emotions at work comes up a lot. What's a good example to begin this discussion? So I think a great one is just if we don't acknowledge emotions, we run the risk of blowing up at each other in the

workplace. So it's really important not to let misunderstandings fester and turn into huge issues. And so a great way to do that in the book, we provide this conversational framework where if someone has done something that you find irritating or that frustrates you, we advise people to say, when you do X, I feel Y. And that's a really wonderful way of starting a conversation without creating like a victim and a perpetrator. And so I'll give a quick example. From my life, a few years ago, I was working with someone

and I realized that anytime I asked him a question, whenever he would answer, he would start slowing down and really enunciate each word. And it drove me absolutely crazy because I thought that he was being extremely condescending and thought I was a moron. And then a few weeks later, we were all at dinner, and he and I were having a good conversation. And so really calmly, I just brought up, I said, do you realize that when you ask me questions, you start slowing down? And he told me that he did notice that he was doing that, but he was just afraid of looking dumb in front of me. And so he wanted to carefully choose every word. And that's why he was speaking so slowly. So if I hadn't brought that up, if I hadn't kind of

opened the floor for a discussion around that and invited in his perspective, I probably would have just kept festering in anger and might have ruined a relationship with someone who was actually trying to kind of get into my good graces. In every workplace I've ever worked at, and I suspect other people would say the same thing, you know, there's always that one or two, there's always one or two people that seem to be the most problematic. They're the ones that stir the pot. They're the ones that everybody gets upset with. They're the problem. Are they the problem? Yeah, you know, they are, and then they aren't. So there's definitely ways we advise managers have a really great ability to handle these people. Just to start with empathy. Often if someone is upset or they're venting a lot, it's because they have a need that's not being met. And so as a manager, if you sit down with them, you might say something like, hey, it seems like you've been kind of frustrated over the past week. Is there anything that you need from me? Is there anything that

kind of the team can do to better support you? And now often that conversation doesn't really go anywhere. And then it's really important for the manager to figure out a way. You know, sometimes that is letting that person know, like you are kind of bringing the team down. And so, again, how can we really work towards making you happier? And maybe it's moving to a different team. Maybe it's switching your roles. And then if you're not a manager, we really want to encourage people not to let the office grouch

turn you into a grump. And so one way to do this, I mean, the best way is just physical distance. But often, you know, if you're sitting next to someone, you can't get that. So then you can try something like, I think problem people, they vent a lot, and that can affect you a lot. And so responding to that by saying, hey, in that situation, what could you have done differently? Or what are you going to do about it? It's a really nice way of pushing them, one, towards action, and then secondly, kind of gently shutting down the venting. You mentioned the office grouch. Are there some predictable people like that? There's the office grouch and the office something else. Is there a predictable cast of characters in almost every workplace?

We talk about the grouch and then the slacker. So this is someone who's not upholding their part of the project. I think everyone has worked with this person at some point. And then the third person we talk about is the dissenter. And this is the person that always brings up issues without ever providing a solution. And so in dealing with slackers, there we think it's just really important for everyone to be accountable. So making sure that you know, if you're the manager, again, you know what everyone is doing, and that you can check in on them, creating an open space and one-on-ones for people to maybe gently bring up, hey, I'm not feeling like this person is being as supportive

to the bigger project as possible. With dissenters, again, these are the people that are just always criticizing. There we advise people start using a colon practical suggestion. And this is, you cannot bring up a problem unless you propose a solution afterwards. So for the dissenter, instead of saying, hey, I think there's a huge issue with this, and then I'm silent, which is not really constructive to the larger conversation, I have to say something like, hey, I think there's an issue with this, colon, and here's one way that we might be able to solve it. There's also the guy in the office, as I don't work in a big office anymore, but when I worked with a lot of people, there's always that complainer.

Everything's a problem. Everyone's a jerk. Everyone's just, there's, it isn't a problem. They're not verbalizing problems so much. They're just complaining about the way things are. And to me, that's the person that seems to just suck the life out of everybody. Yeah, and that usually happens through this process called emotional contagion, which is we catch the feelings of the people around us. So in that example, I think anyone who sat next to that complaining

person, after a while, you just start to feel really down yourself. And one interesting side note about that is that researchers have actually found that emotions can spread across offices. So say that I sit next to the complainer at my work, I come home and I'm just really down and grumpy towards my partner. we go to sleep and the next day he goes to work really grumpy and then that spreads to his office. So it's really important to protect yourself from these people. The best way to do this is physical distance. So if you can get up, go for a walk. Another way is just what we call building an emotional flak jacket and that's keeping a file of positive feedback that you've

gotten. If someone thanks you for something over email, screenshot that, save it somewhere. And so if this person's bringing you down, just reference that file and it might be a nice way to pick yourself back up. And then kind of what I mentioned earlier, if they're complaining, pushing them towards action and trying to shut down that venting by saying, what could you do differently? How can we improve the situation? But it does seem, my experience anyway, it seems that those people, that's the way they are. And to try to change them seems somewhat pointless. And, you know, I think the other factor is that it's not really the co-worker's job to try to change somebody, typically, is it?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's still worth it as a co-worker or as a manager not to make that assumption right off the bat, but to start with, especially if you're the manager, trying to understand if there's anything you can do to improve their situation, and then that might improve their mood. So a lot of emotions, we experience them because there's a need behind them. And so I was leading a project once, and I realized suddenly I was extremely irritable with everyone around me. So I'd become one of these constant complainers. I was grumpy. I was feeling blue. So I went around the floor, walked around the block, and kind of took a few deep breaths. And what I realized is that we had a big deadline coming up,

and I was irritable because I was anxious. And the need behind that anxiety was that I just needed to know that we were going to meet this deadline. And so once I had understood that, and again, this required a lot of kind of internal reflection on my end, but once I'd understood that need, I was able to go back to the team and say, hey, I'm worried about the deadline. Is there anything we can cut that's not necessary just to make sure that we're in a good place ahead of the deadline?

And once we'd had that conversation, I found that my irritability went away. And so, again, as a coworker, as a manager, helping someone get to a place where they understand what that need is and then working with them to help them feel better at work or like work on projects that make them happier. Inevitably, it seems that in every workplace, sooner or later, if you work there long enough,

there's going to be some emotional outburst. Emotions are going to rise to the surface. Something's going to happen. Somebody's going to lose it, somebody's going to get really angry, somebody's going to start crying. What's the advice then? What's the first aid advice when that happens? Do you just let it pass and get back to work? Do you deal with emotions? Do we all hold hands and kumbaya? What's the advice? Yeah, So it's not, you don't need to hold hands in Kumbaya. I think if there's a big outburst, the best thing is just to take a break. So we are really against the advice, never go to bed angry.

We always say go to bed angry. Sometimes you just need to calm down and sometimes sleep, getting a bite to eat, going for a walk, all of those things can kind of help you return to a place where you're not going to be as influenced by the strong reaction that you're having. And so once you've calmed down, once everyone has calmed down, then it might be worth, especially if it was between two people and you're one of those people, pulling the person aside

in a private situation and saying, hey, you know, this came up. I'm curious to understand why you had such a strong reaction. And again, this is trying to get to the root of the issue in a way that's unemotional. So speaking to your emotions about getting emotional about them. But if you find yourself constantly getting into these kind of, if you're bickering with someone or just doesn't, the conversation with them doesn't seem to be working, then we advise really just focus on the task at hand.

So if they email you, just focus on giving them the edits back, being as cordial as you can to avoid falling into these traps of, again, like personality conflict. Are there things people can do to prevent problems from happening in the first place? I mean, much of what we're talking about is to deal with emotional issues when they come up at work. But wouldn't it be great if we could prevent them from coming up in the first place? So can we? Yeah, so there's absolutely preventative measures. One of the things that we've seen work best is if teams, at the outset of a project,

they take just half an hour to sit down and have everyone fill out what we call user manuals. You can also think of them as how-to-work-with-me guides for each person. And this is a chance for people to answer questions individually, like, are you more of an introvert? Are you more of an extrovert? Do you prefer to receive critical feedback in person, in front of the group, on email, so you can kind of digest it by yourself and then control your emotions a little more? And doing this and then having an open discussion around that, or, for example, if we experience a lot of conflict, how do we want to resolve that?

So setting these expectations and having a better understanding of different people's work preferences at the beginning can do a lot to avoid miscommunication and conflict down the road. It does seem that the common wisdom and the common practice is to do whatever you can to keep emotions out of work, that in order to be professional, in order to get our work done, we check our emotions at the door and we stay professional. And yet, from what you're saying, that's not really practical. Yeah, so it's not going to go away. Unfortunately, we are all going to experience emotions at the workplace. And part of the idea behind why it's so important to acknowledge them in the moment and not continue to suppress them is really so

that we don't have these big outbursts. And I think part of the reason that there's such a stigma around letting emotion into the workplace is that currently we only see it come out in these big explosive ways, right? Like someone maybe bursts into tears or someone just suddenly starts yelling at someone else. And those are all just indications that the office place hasn't been designed, that people are not emotionally fluent. And so they don't know how to address these issues when they're still small and are not going to blow up into a huge problem. So really important to acknowledge what you're feeling immediately. And then once you're calmer about it, either have a gentle conversation with someone, talk to your manager

about it, or sometimes it's just reflect internally, what can you be doing differently to set yourself up more for success and for sustained well-being. And that might be, you need a day off. It might be you need an evening off. You need to have a conversation with someone. But I would really encourage people, when you feel strongly, take a moment to reflect on why you might be feeling that way and what you can do about it. Where does this advice come from?

Is this just from your experience or a theory? How do we know this works? So my co-author, Molly West Duffy, and I, when we first set out to write this book, we actually started with a pretty comprehensive look at the academic literature. So we spoke to professors at Berkeley and then flew out to Boston,

spoke to people at Harvard Business School, who then pointed us in other interesting directions. So it starts really at the core with the research and what well-designed experiments show. And then after that, we spoke to about maybe 50 to 100 executives at tech companies, Fortune 500 companies, startups, just to see, given the research, what are people actually applying in the workplace and what's really working. And then in the book, we pepper out, we pepper in our personal experiences, but we really tried to make this research-backed, practical advice. And what does it mean to be working? What's the goal here? And what's the benefit? What's the outcome? Why are we doing this? Yeah. So Molly and I both had experiences early in our careers where we had very stressful jobs and we didn't acknowledge our stress and we also didn't know what we could do about it, whether that be asking our manager to switch up our roles a little bit or just practicing emotional self-care. Again, not getting too invested in your job, taking an evening off, maintaining your personal relationships.

And so we both had our emotions manifest as physical symptoms. I started getting horrible headaches. Molly experienced numbness in her right eye because her muscles were so tense. And so the goal of talking about emotions, accepting that they're going to be in the workplace, is really to help people have sustained success. We want to help people prevent burnout. We want them to be happier at work so that they can be more productive and ultimately contribute more to society. We really want to lower turnover rates and just make people find situations a little less scary to deal with. Well, it's interesting to talk about a topic that

for a lot of people is a non-topic or they feel shouldn't be a topic or is a topic to be ignored. But the fact is people will have emotions at work and it's good to understand how it all works. Liz Fosleen has been my guest. She is a consultant and author of the book, No Hard Feelings, The Secret Power of Embracing Emotions at Work. There's a link to her book in the show notes. Thanks, Liz. Yeah, thanks so much. Bye. A penny doesn't buy what it used to. In fact, a penny doesn't buy anything anymore, and it should probably just go away. Plus the fact that for over 10 years now, it's cost more to make a penny than its face value.

So why is it still here? Other countries like Canada, New Zealand, and Australia have gotten rid of their lowest denomination coin, but we still in the U.S. mint millions of pennies every year. Why? Well, there hasn't been any serious effort to kill off the penny in years. And, well, the zinc industry is a big reason. A penny is actually 97.55% zinc and only 2.5% copper. So the zinc industry is very invested in keeping the penny around. In addition, the penny has its own lobbying group called Americans for Common Sense, C-E-N-T-S. So far, they've been very successful at keeping pennies in our currency mix. And that is something you should know. If you like this podcast, and the fact that you've gotten all the way to the end

here would indicate that you probably do, I invite you to subscribe for free wherever you listen to podcasts at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, CastBox, wherever you listen, you can subscribe, and it is always free. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the

killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lining, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.