Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 203: Civility Pays, Christine Porath

Episode Date: September 4, 2019

For Christine Porath, meditation was one way of coping with a toxic work environment. Her own experience, paired with watching her father suffer a serious health scare tied to his own harmful workplace atmosphere, led to her interest in researching civility in the workplace. She shares with us her findings, such as how working with uncivil co-workers can drive down morale as well as performance, and she presents data on the real-world financial consequences of incivility in the workplace. Porath is the author of "Mastering Civility: A Manifesto for the Workplace" and co-author of "The Cost of Bad Behavior." Plug Zone Website: http://www.christineporath.com/ Books: https://www.amazon.com/Christine-Porath/e/B01NCOGEER%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share Twitter: @PorathC Ted Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/christine_porath_why_being_nice_to_your_coworkers_is_good_for_business ***VOICEMAILS*** Have a question for Dan? Leave us a voicemail: 646-883-8326 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the Great Meditation Teacher Alexis

Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay on with the show. to baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey guys, you probably noticed this, but I'm just going to make sure that I bring it to your attention. We have a new look.

You may have noticed we have a new icon up in the podcast store, wherever you get your podcasts. We're looking a little bit different now. Nothing to be concerned about. Nothing else is going to change just a bit of a facelift. Okay, so let's get to our guest this week. Christine Porath is a professor at Georgetown University at the business school there. The McDonough School of Business. She's written a book called Mastering Civility, a manifesto for the workplace. And she also co-authored a book called The Cost of Bad Behavior. So, as you can tell, she's an expert in civility, which is a huge issue in the culture now, and she approaches it in a way that I really like. Well, first of all, with scientific rigor, but also through the pleasure centers of the brain. She points out that civility is really important if you care about your own performance and the performance of your workplace.

It's important for employee engagement, overall happiness. She's got a lot of strategies to deal with people who are not civil. How do you handle that? How do you boost your own civility and how can meditation help in all of this? I love to this interview, center the bullseye in terms of what's interesting to me. So here we go, Christine Porath. Great to meet you.

Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. I've been invoked your name on the show before and I've been following your work for a while, so I'm really excited to be sitting across from you. I always start by asking people if they meditate and if so, how did they come to it? Do you meditate and if so, why?

I do, because it's so helpful and it has been a calming influence. I would say it was a late starter. My mom actually teaches meditation and mindfulness classes. Yeah, and has in South Carolina, she has for about the last decade plus and Really turned me on to it particularly as I was going through I would say some rough times and struggles as a practice that would Be helpful and help pull me out of a rot, you know, and just more generally be healthy in a mental way and now I

Have heard it be termed as like why wouldn't you be doing something like exercise for your brain? And I'm so bought in on exercise and athletics, it's like how could I possibly neglect this for longer? And I teach a lot of it as far as the research, the positive effects on people and so to not be doing it seemed really not very smart. Did it help you when you were in a rut? Absolutely. I would say, I would say night and day, but an evolution over time.

I'd say it's extremely calming effect on me personally. I was probably more type A and driven and so forth. And I think that this is a way to kind of calm yourself down and also process things much better. And be much more peaceful, I think, kind of letting go of some of the control and surrendering, you know, like Michael Singar's work, has been helpful. I haven't read, he wrote a book called Untethered Soul, I haven't read it. Yeah, I highly suggest it. So he's really all about, you know, you got to let go of things and let nature take its course. You can't control things. And he started with meditation and got deeply into it

and started a meditation center and so forth and really changed the complexion of his life as well as those around him. Did your rut have anything to do with the instability? Yes, I mean, I would say I've been in rut professionally and personally across the board, you know, Academia, you've got a 10-year situation where it's up or out and so it's a tough, you know, slog, if you will. Up or out meaning you either get tenure or you're out. Yes. Of that particular university. You start over somewhere else.

So in the likelihood is not high. And fewer and fewer people get it at their first place. So, that was one of the challenges is kind of, how do I control that at a place where I really want it to work and move forward. And then I would say personally, you know, in the relationship front, something doesn't work out, it's a disappointment. How do you move forward, you know, from things that, you know, on the relationship front, something doesn't work out, it's a disappointment. How do you move forward, you know, from things that, you know, maybe you wanted, but you kind of have to let go of and move forward in as healthy a way as possible. And focusing on your future versus, I think, getting caught up in the past or worrying about the future, you know, is been, I think, the most helpful thing, kind of staying more present and appreciating

each moment for a moment or each day through a day and kind of taking that on. You're at Georgetown and did the tenure situation work out or is that effective? It did, congratulations. Well thank you, but I started my career at University of Southern California out at USC. So I moved without getting turned down officially, but it was a situation where I was kind of starting over in many ways. And part of it stemmed from the belief of the type of work I wanted to do, the right books like you do and to do work more generally for public consumption, versus solely for academic journals and things like that.

So we kind of got your origin story on meditation. Yeah, I want to hear your origin story on civility. Why, why, what an interesting area to pick in terms of academic research. Why that? Well, mainly because of my own toxic workplace experience. So when I started out, I had interned at the largest sports management and marketing firm in the world when I was in college, with their headquarters, had a great experience, learned a ton, followed my boss down to a subsidiary of theirs down in Florida to launch the sports academy. It was a new arm of an existing academy. And what I failed to realize was it was a really toxic workplace environment. And I was just very naive. I really didn't know how to handle it. Honestly, I was so surprised that they would allow this to go on, you know, as the best people left

and had affected people and they weren't performing as well. They were taking it out on customers. It was literally contagious. And yet, no one't performing as well. They were taking it out on customers. It was literally contagious. And yet, no one was changing the environment. And I think it may have been, in part, because of my economics undergrad degree, I just focused on, I wanna go back to school and study, like, what are the consequences? And as objective-oil as possible

for how we should create better environments where people really thrive in the workplace. And so that really seeing the toll it took on people, not only in the workplace, but how it colored their personal lives as well, is what led me to think, you know, people spend so much time at work, can't we, and shouldn't we do better than this? And that ties to the fact that my dad had actually suffered a heart attack scare, a few years prior to that. And at the time, he was a really healthy, athletic, vivacious guy. And so it was so shocking.

Walking into that hospital room and seeing electrodes strapped to his bare chest was, you know, just really memorable and hit me hard. And at the time, he hadn't shared a lot of the stories, but I definitely knew it was tied to workplace toxic bosses over the course of a decade or so. But at the time, I really believed he was just an outlier. You know, he was an unlucky soul. This didn't happen to many people, but my own workplace experience and seeing how many people this may affect led me to really pursue it as a career to say, you know, we can and should do better. And so let's put some financial figures or let's put some consequences behind what's the toll that rudeness and instability of these bad relationships costs people and

organizations? And more recently, what are the benefits of creating more civil or positive environments kind, you know, situations where people thrive? Well, so on the prior question, what did you learn? What's the cost of instability? It's enormous. So on the personal front, you know, people don't perform nearly as well, cognitively, because there are too many demands on their prefrontal cortex.

Yeah, it hijacks their performance. Literally, people are not as attentive to information. So they will miss the five times more likely to miss information right in front of them on the computer screen after just witnessing this. And in a hospital or air traffic control environment or lots of other high stakes of military environment, that can cost lives. Absolutely. In fact, there's plenty of stories that have been shared since then. I was working with Steve, this physician, and he mentioned to me that they had a physician

at his hospital that was often rude, especially to nurses and junior staff members. But Steve said that there was one particular time where this doctor had shouted at a medical team. And right afterwards, the medical team gave the wrong doses of medication to the patient. And Steve said, the information was right there on the chart, but somehow the entire team had just missed it. And simple mistake, well, the information was right there on the chart, but somehow the entire team had just missed it. And, you know, a simple mistake, well, the patient died.

And what's scary is I've heard a lot of stories like that about these mistakes. And researchers in Israel have actually documented that medical teams exposed to rudeness perform worse, not only in all their diagnostics, but in all the procedures they do. And this is mainly because people stop sharing information as much, and they stop seeking help from their teammates. And you said before, and I think I got excited and said something and maybe walked on what you were trying to say a little bit, and so I want to go back and make sure we don't miss it, you can miss it.

You're more likely to miss information, not only if you've been the victim for lack of a better word of instability, but even if you simply witness it. Yeah, so even if you witness it, your cognitive functioning, your working memory operates about 18% slower. You take longer to physically record your answers, you know, on the computer, let's say, and we have found that people make significantly more errors. And so this is obviously really important not only in the medical field, but I see this affecting really all industries where there's thought

or people are counting on using their mind in any way. And I would imagine knock-on effects because there's the direct effect of what's happening in any given workplace. And then there's the knock on effect of what happens to their customers or in worse patients. But then there's what happens when those workers go home and deal with their family.

Yeah, and so 80% of people actually lose time worrying about this. So that's a workplace cost, but I think also affects their personal lives as well. And we do see that people admit that they take it out on those that they live with or it's friends with. It's really hard because it flows both ways. So it happens in the organization,

people take it home with them. And they're nasty to their partner or spouse. They may kick the dog kind of thing. But also, we see that when it happens in the home or whether you're taking it on social media for example, just taking in even the words is what we found. So when people see or read rude words, they actually, it affects them and hijacks their performance as well. And so we can imagine nowadays that what people are consuming, whether in social media or other ways, that it's affecting them in the workplace as well. I don't want to

otherwise the folks who are being uncivil because I've been that guy and not in like the distant past. In the distant past, yes, also in the not so distant-distant past. Right. And, you know, I've said on the show before that I got what's called a 360 review. Yeah. I'm very, sort of, compassionately done 360 review, which is for the uninitiated is where you hire a firm and they come and interview people, you work for, people who work for you, and your peers.

And in my case, I also talk to people in my personal life, like my meditation teacher, my wife, my brother. So 16 people, hour long interviews, and then I got a 41 page report, and the results were horrifying and humbling. And I realized I was behaving poorly, and I didn't even know it. I mean, I knew some of it, but I really didn't know the extent of it.

And I can't imagine i'm alone no not at all i mean one of my biggest learnings i started this work thinking gosh there's some real jerks in the workplace and we need to correct this and where i've landed is the vast majority of this stems from a lack of self-awareness you know we ask people why they're rude only four percent say cuz it's fun and they get away with it you know the vast majority think, lack information about,

what are the little things that I may be doing to set people off or the rub people the wrong way? I think especially nowadays where people are constantly on, we're not necessarily focused on the other person or how they're reacting to us. We may miss that information, but almost all people have blind spots. So Tusha Yurik has done some great work on self-awareness.

She has a great book insight and a TED talk, and she has found that 95% of people believe that they have self-awareness. You know, they have a good sense of their strengths and their weaknesses, but only 10 to 15% of people actually are self-aware. So 80% of people are fooling themselves on any given day. Want to be self-aware? Get a 360 review. I've called it like an autopsy on a living person.

It's horrifying. And now all of a sudden I'm pretty self-aware. I would have told you I was self-aware. I'm just a meditator. I'm like, wow, wow, wow. And, you know, I was being jerk. Yeah. And lots of ways that, again, I had some visibility into some of it and no visibility into lots

of it. So is it your view having looked at this that, that instability in the workplace and maybe even the culture generally, because I don't know if you look beyond the workplace, is, is getting worse? It definitely is getting worse. Sadly, over the last couple decades, we see a rise in instability in the workplace and other data, as well as my own would suggest in society. The vast majority of people are really worried

about a lack of civility in society. And the good news from my perspective is when I started this work nearly a couple decades ago, I don't think it was on the radar of managers and organizations at all. They may have been thinking about sexual harassment or that term, trainings were starting around that, but civility or respect wasn't really something that was talked about or looked at, and now it absolutely is. So I think some of the positives are, organizations are really bright spots for this because now leaders and

companies are paying attention to how do we do better, you know, how to create these more positive civil or kind cultures because people do tend to thrive more there. Well, let's talk about that side of the research. I have a million questions for you. Yeah. So I'm not going in any pre-ordained order. I imagine organizations are getting better at this because they've seen data from you and your colleagues that suggest that if you do this, as you said, your workers will thrive, which of course goes right to the bottom line. So what do we know?

What's that data? What does that data say? Yeah, so the earliest study that I worked on with Christine Pearson was one in which we surveyed Business School alumni working in old different industries. And we asked them to report one time where they felt like they were treated rudely, disrespectfully, or insensitively. They wrote a few sentences about it and then answered how they responded. And the results were eye-opening because over two-thirds of people intentionally cut back

work efforts, 80% of people lost time worrying about the incident, often for very long periods afterwards, and 12% actually left the company as a result of this. 25% intentionally took it out on customers, and so it adds up quickly. And so when we published these initial results, we got a lot of calls from organizations saying, how can you help, but Cisco actually took just a few of those numbers

and estimated conservatively it was costing them over $12 million a year. And a small regional hospital that I work with recently estimated that it's costing them over $30 million a year. So that will motivate some change. Now, when we published that, the other thing that happened was academics were skeptical. They said, you know, people are reporting this but does it really affect their performance? And you know, we thought, well, the obvious answer is yes, they're admitting this,

but we actually showed in experiments that those that experience instability do actually function much worse than those that don't experience it. Now some people say, okay, that makes sense. You know, it's natural if you experience it, that you might not perform as well. And that's where we took it then to witnesses. Because most of my job experience was not on the receiving end as much as just being around it. And it was consuming me daily.

What to do, how to respond, was something wrong with me, how do people act this way. And so what we found in studies on witnesses was it affected them too. And really just as much so, in cognitive detrimental ways, as those that experience it. So how confident are you in the data now, and are there still academic critics out there who say you don't have this nailed? No, I mean, it continues to evolve. And so I think we continue to learn how is it affecting people?

What other ways is it hurting people? But I think it's pretty convincing. I mean, there are a lot of other researchers that have shown different outcomes. Other things that we learned is that people are far less creative when they witness in civility. They are much more likely to think in aggressive and dysfunctional ways.

So we, for example, one of the tasks we give them is a brainstorming brick task, where they have five minutes to come up with as many ideas for how to use a brick. And witnesses will come up with things like synchabadi and a river, attack, torture, kill someone, smash the experimenter's face. People who have witnessed disabilities are more likely. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And the list goes on and on. And so what we have seen is that it's really detrimental.

The other thing that we've learned is that even just witnesses are three times less likely to help anyone after seeing disability. Not just the person that was rude, but anyone. And so you can imagine if this stuff goes on in a culture, you get people that aren't as good as collaborating, right? And so I think that there are just a lot and lots of consequences, not to mention the fact that, you know, stress, health consequences, and so forth that affect individuals.

So okay, so what can be done about this? And when I ask that from, I want to dive into it from several different angles, what can organizations do, what can individuals do in terms of dealing with lack of civility in their workplaces, and what can individuals do who might be the source of that in civility? And it's probably, it may be you listener even even if you don't know it. So let's just start at, and I may have even left good questions out, I'm sure you'll direct me if I have. But let's just start with, what can an organization do?

You said you were working with organizations who want to deal with this, what are they doing? Yeah, well, I'd say concentrating in four main areas. One is recruiting and selecting. That's probably where you get your biggest return on investment. If I were to say focus your attention, I would say do not select more uncivil people into your organization because, you know, sadly, what we've learned is this stuff is like a bug or a virus, you know, and it spreads very quickly. And so being cautious on the front end, you know, in really doing your homework, going beyond the three references or references tend

to be about bosses. And really what we know is people kiss up and kick down. So if you're looking to select someone, you might look at what do people that report to them, think about them, or what do their peers think? How did they treat the parking attendant, the secretary, the coordinating person for their interview? That's where the stuff tends to show up. And I would say it's so worth the investment to do your homework because it's just too costly, not.

And beyond hiring? Yeah, so I think, you know, I- For example, I heard about a hospital, I read in your research, a hospital, or somewhere, I think maybe in a TED Talk you gave, I can't remember. A hospital that included, it had a rule that was sort of spatial in nature. Yeah, so that happened to be the 10-5 way.

Oshner Healthcare System in Louisiana started that. And the whole idea was that if you were within 10 feet of someone, you were to make eye contact and smile. And if you were within five feet of someone, you were to make eye contact and smile, and if you were within five feet, you were to say hello. And what they found is that civility spread, patient satisfaction scores rose, as did patient referrals.

So it really showed just the contagion of how this stuff works. So I think one of the positive things is small actions do matter. But can't that become like a nanny state of, you know, your pop and... Yeah, of course. I don't think it can be a rule, right? It can be a suggestion that we think about how we show up. And of course there were some doctors that were less than thrilled, you know, when this

was announced, like, you can't make me, I don't have to, you know, kind of smile and show up differently. But I think more generally paying attention to the culture. And so kind of the second area that I would highlight is what I call coaching. And that includes the setting expectations. It doesn't have to be something strict or some rules or whatever. But what are you striving for? You know, what do you believe in?

The respect, the, you know, staying away from unconscious biases, the niceties that you would strive for and hope for positive collaboration, things like that. So setting expectations, I would say even training. So one of the things that I and many others have found is that training in this stuff has actually shown to have improvements for people and that people are much more satisfied. It's interesting because a lot of theiques of, you sometimes hear diversity training criticized as maybe even backfiring in some cases,

but sounds like civility training can work? It can, and it's interesting, because I get a lot more inquiries from now, vice presidents or people that are responsible for diversity and inclusion. And I think the idea of just respect is a little bit more maybe palatable to most people. So they're not as defensive about like, you know, the fact that they may not be biased

or something like that. Like I think that there's a little bit more rallying around the idea that we can all get on board with people should be treated with respect and dignity. Or most of us would get on board with that message. And so trying to show the benefits of civility in respect has been one that organizations I think are embracing more and more. And I would say that holds true on an individual level.

I don't have any data that you probably do, but my data is all just experiential. I would say to the doctors at that healthcare center organization that you were working for. I mean, I get it. I grew up in, this is going to pick up on several of the threads of what you've just said. I grew up in this organization where we're sitting right now at ABC News. I've been here for more than 19 years. On this floor, a couple hundred feet away from us, sat a guy named Peter Jennings, who was a legendary news anchor, who I loved and still loved, but was really difficult and mean sometimes.

And that spread through the entire environment. Wasn't just Peter's fault. There were lots of mean people around at that time. that combined with my character, character, or logical deficiencies, led to me sort of not knowing that I was walking around, not being as nice and attentive as I ought to be, and as it turns out, in my experience, upping your game in this way just improves your day, it improves your inner weather, in ways that are really dramatic. So is there any data behind that?

I would say a little bit, and I would say definitely the stories. I think people experience it and feel very different. The data that we do have around that is when we ask people why are they rude, 25% say because my leaders are. So leaders are role models and people look up and whether they're conscious of it or not, they're role modeling. The Peter Jennings of the world in your your case, and other organizations that's top leaders that may be toxic. And most people assume they may have gotten there because of that behavior, not in spite of it, which is what we would hope would be the message that people would take. And so I think what organizations are trying to do now is not only have this in their mis-stage

statement and have it be an expectation, but make sure the role models, the leaders, are buying into it and actually leading by example. But isn't part of the problem when we're talking about Peter, and I don't want to pick on him too much, especially since he was an amazing human being in many, many ways, but he did have some flaws and they did include a lack of civility, if we're being honest about it. But I think part of the issue with Peter, and I've seen this with a lot of very powerful people, is you're surrounded by yes men and women, and you don't have, nobody's giving

you the feedback that, hey, you know, this is not cool. I wasn't getting that feedback until I only got the 360 because I thought it was a good narrative technique for a book I was working on about compassion. I had no idea it was going to be so devastating. So I wasn't looking for this feedback really because I thought I was doing okay. But I think that's because I am a person with a lot of power and privilege in the culture. And nobody really, it's not comfortable to come up to somebody like me and say, hey, you were kind of a jerk there. Yeah, it was really interesting over a decade ago, I had a friend that was a VP of a top

organization and she shared with me, she said, I feel bad for people as they rise up in the organization. And I'm thinking, I don't understand, where's this going? And she said, because as they rise up, they get less and less realistic feedback about how they're doing, you know? And certainly to improve themselves. And so the whole idea, as you're 360 illuminated, is that that's really helpful to most people, because otherwise, unless it's anonymous, people are not going to report to you.

Oh, yeah, mine was anonymous. Yeah. And so it was as a consequence, very harsh. It was also very kind. It anonymous. Yeah. And so it was as a consequence very harsh. It was also very kind. This was a very skillfully done 360 where I heard about my strengths and then a lot about my weaknesses. But I don't know that everybody can get one of these because it's hard and I don't know that they're always administered well, but it was astonishingly helpful. Yeah, 360s are enormously helpful in this area. in part because, again, people are much less likely to ever report.

Like when we did that first initial survey, well over half of people said that they never told anyone in the organization about the incident. So of course, nothing's going to change if they're not finding out about it. And so three-sixies are a great source for this, because ideally it is seen as protected feedback and the sources are going to be revealed. I think it varies as terms of how helpful it is if people really feel like it's anonymous and whether it's a culture or feel if you're or not. So I do think you have to do some setting the table to get people to really be honest.

But to your point, if an organization or a team doesn't have the resources to get people to really be honest, but to your point, if an organization or a team doesn't have the resources to do a skilled 360, like you were able to do, one of the things that I found that has worked really well is peer feedback. And there's even a hospital that I'm working with where physicians are going to be giving each other peer feedback. And those that they work with are going to be in an informal way, providing more peer feedback. And we're measuring this now, but we're going to see if that makes a difference.

I suspect it will, given what else we've seen happen. But it's something that you can do even really informally, like in the book and on my website, there's some team resources. And I just suggest that if you're working in a team, you might have a conversation about this stuff. And it can be as simple as starting with, you know, what are three things that you do well and, you know, that you should continue doing that help you and your team or your organization? What are three things that you could work on? You know, and it can be an index card, you know, and you just go over that. And I think that has been told really helpful because teams that have the courage and trust

each other and will share, you know, areas of improvement, it really is helpful. So feedback is a gift. I think it's something that most of us are uncomfortable with negative feedback. And so we have to work on. Kim Scott has a wonderful book called Radical Candor and I think that's the sweet spot that we're striving for and what she talks about is if you care personally and you've shown through little things that you know you like people and you want them to do well and so forth, you can give more direct and candid feedback. So it's care personally, challenged directly. And I think

that ideally you're doing that because what I don't want the message to be a civility is just about being nice, you know, and sugar-coating things or that because I think that there needs to be a balance with, you know, providing people with the developmental and constructive criticism that you just described even on your 360. That's my helpful. So you just very gracefully walked me up to the next point I wanted to get into, which is what kind of, what can an individual who's in a toxic environment do about it. So you're talking about radical candor. Let's just get specific. Just say you have a boss or a co-worker, and I think those are actually probably two very different

scenarios, who's being a jerk. What can or should you do? Well, ideally, you would provide the feedback to them. A lot of people don't feel safe doing that because like you said, it makes a difference. If it's a boss, I might not be comfortable with that. If you can get yourself comfortable, one way that you could approach that is to ask them for some information about strengths and weaknesses of you and then to try to offer up some information and strengths and feedback for them.

That would be one way to open it up. A lot of people are still not comfortable with that and so it might be going to a director of HR or that person's boss or a mentor to figure out like what's the work around. How do we get this information to them in a way that I'm safe? But again, so much of this stems from a lack of self-awareness that I got to encourage people to have the courage to provide some of this feedback, to someone to get them the information,

because so much of this, they're never going to learn. In this, it was interesting. The first time I ever taught executive education, it was with medical staff. These were chief medical administrators. I wasn't sure how this session on civility was going to go. I had a lead doctor speak up and say, we just started 360 feedback. I never realized that people thought I was such a jerk, you know, that they hate working for me.

And honestly, he had a very direct military like style about him, so I wasn't surprised, just given kind of his tone. But he said, you know, I just thought that I was training them the way that I was trained. Like he was being so authentic and saying, I was doing the best that I could for them. Like I got this great training and so I was passing it along. But you know, there may be generational differences or they may be differences in norms. You know, this guy was in his early 60s probably. So things that may have changed from when he came through that same medical training system.

And so I think the idea is if you can get them feedback somehow, that would be the goal. If you can't get them feedback? If you can't get your feedback, I think it's really important that you focus on protecting yourself and often by avoiding them. So sometimes this may be, you know, corresponding with the secretary or administrative assistant or a teammate that gets along with that person that may not be Getting some of the toxicity a lot of times it may be working from home moving your desk Working different hours from that person and you know, I think the whole idea is but I could say how that would make me feel like a victim

Even more it might it might but I think if you have the mentality that you don't want to let them pull you off track, you know, that you want to say strong and deliver your best. And your best is probably not working around them because for most people- Your best is probably not working with them. With them, yeah. And so for many people it's taking yourself as much as possible out of that situation. For example, one of the things that we've learned in our research is that de-energizing relationships, even if they're not rude, it's not intentional.

They just may be people that suck the life out of you. You're named to a project team and you're thinking, ugh, I don't want to work with him or her. Those de-energizing relationships have four to seven times the effect as positive energizing relationships. Psychology research shows that bad is stronger than good. When you're working around these situations, they're really, really depleting. It makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint, we evolved for threat detection.

The salience of the saber-toothed tiger is pretty important. I think that's where, if you stay in those situations, that's where you see the health consequences catch up to people. Because, you know, like my dad, for example, you know, he was a strong athletic guy. You know, he probably felt like this should not affect me, right? I should be stronger than this. I don't want to feel wimpy by complaining. I don't feel safe complaining about bosses, but what stress

researchers like Robert Sapolsky and others have shown is that it's like these thousand paper cuts that add up and you know unfortunately it can lead to things like heart attacks, cancer, diabetes and other really harmful consequences. And for example, there's a research study at a Harvard medical school that shows that women working for a toxic boss, it's more detrimental than for their health than obesity is. Well, I'm glad you brought that up

because I've been curious. Do you see discrepancies in the numbers here between men and women or men more likely to be uncivil than women? I think it'd be equally bad from either gender. I don't think it's a gendered phenomenon. We are doing a lot more research on this on gender and status, and what we do know is women have a higher bar for civility. So they expect more for this. I would say we also know that it plays out differently. For example, men, it's

much like Debertana's work on playgrounds where it's like boys do get out, you know, and then they're done. They're fine. Like, you know, if Samuel is uncivil to you. Samuel is standing in the next room. He's one of the... Not that he would be. ...store employees of the 10% happier company, and he's way taller than me so he can be as uncivil as he wants. But if he ever was uncivil, you know, you might reciprocate and, you know, kind of start yelling, you know, you may, you too may do get out so to speak and then, but then you'll forget about it, right? It's done. Whereas women, it's much more passive aggressive. So, you know, it's not that they may not get even, it's much more passive-aggressive. So it's not that they may not get even.

You may not know when it's coming. Or they may withhold information. Or they may talk badly about you. But the message shouldn't be they don't make you pay. It just plays out very differently. So we know that there are subtleties with gender differences. But I think not as much as people might anticipate. And when, do you, where do you put sexual harassment in?

Is this a good, different category altogether than civility, or is it under civility? I would say it's related. So, civility is not sexual harassment. They are different, but I think what we know is that there tends to be more harassment in uncivil environments. In other words, this is a slippery slope.

So if you allow the norms to go on where people are really disrespectful, it's more likely that those leaders, some of which you mentioned, having worked with, but I would predict that those same leaders would be more likely to potentially harass people in different ways. And the good news on this is that we know that civility training is actually one way to mitigate some of the consequences of or eliminate some of the bullying and harassment. For example, there was an organization that I was working with training all their employees on civility this past year and over 90% of people are satisfied with civility. And bullying and harassment has gone down 16 to 18%

in just a year. So I think that if you strive for more civil, respectful, workplace environment, you're minimizing risk for harassment, lawsuits, so forth. Stay tuned, more of our conversation is on the way after this. Life is short, and it's full of a lot of interesting questions. What does happiness really mean? How do I get the most out of my time, you're on earth?

And what really is the best cereal? These are the questions I seek to resolve on my weekly podcast, Life is short with Justin Long. If you're looking for the answer to deep philosophical questions, like, what is the meaning of life? I can't really help you, but I do believe that we really enrich our experience here by learning from others. And that's why in each episode, I like to talk with

actors, musicians, artists, scientists, and many more types of people about how they get the most out of life. We explore how they felt during the highs and sometimes more importantly, the lows of their careers. We discuss how they've been able to stay happy during some of the harder times. But if I'm being honest,

it's mostly just fun chats between friends about the important stuff. Like, if you had a sandwich named after you, what would be on it? Follow Life is short, wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen to Add Free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app.

Alright, let's get to the, what I think is probably one of the most important things to discuss, which is most of us, I mean, your friend, Dallie Chug, who was on the show a while ago, has a brilliant way of talking about our self-image. We all, most of us, think of ourselves as good people, and any challenge to that is really hard to take. She likes to reframe it as thinking of ourselves as good-ish people, or generally good, but have a capacity to make mistakes. And I think your point is, a lot of us may not know that we're actually the source of instability. So how do we figure that out?

And why should we bother figuring that out? And what do we do about it? Please suspect we're not being civil. Well, I think it's great whether you're an individual organization, if you attack it with the framework of good to great. I think all of us can relate to whether we're practicing meditation or something else that it's a work in progress, right? So we want to improve. And so

I think the idea is really honing in on whatever blind spots we may have. And for most people that's seeking feedback. So that's asking for feedback, you know, from those in our work lives, those in our personal lives. Again, it can be as simple as asking for strengths and what to work on. I think you can do a team tune up where you attack this as a team and give each other feedback around this. I think that you can be reflective about this throughout the day. Some people keep a journal. You know, one of my best, one of my not. I mean, Dan Pink, who you also had on talks about the win factor, right? And for me, for example, I'm much more of a morning person. I would not want to have

a crucial conversation or give negative feedback or respond to an asked email late afternoon. That would not be a good time to send that off. I may draft it, I'm not going to send it, right? So even knowing, like, time of day day also knowing your stress levels. So we know that stress is the number one reason for being rude or uncivil. So kind of paying attention to even your body and how my feeling matters and can help people that way. I think so much of this is actually about taking care of yourself and like the energy management aspect whether that's the physical you know the exercise, the eating right, the whether that's the physical, you know, the exercise,

the eating right, the idea of meditation and mindfulness, you know, really working on that, nutrition wise, are you hangry? How'd that go? No, so moments of that, and then anything that you can do to reduce stress. So whether that is the meditation mindfulness, whether that's yoga, being outside, whatever the case may be. I think those things can help prime you, and of course, sleeping well, which you mentioned earlier, but it can prime you for interacting more effectively with people. I mean, so funny. I mean, I believe I can't remember if it was from reading an article you wrote or reading the notes of an interview

that one of my colleagues may have done with you or maybe you said in your TED Talk, but somewhere you said something to the effect of, you know, one of my first pieces of advice is get more sleep. Yeah. This is incredibly simple, but so I see it right away. It's brilliant. Well, I didn't actually, you know, there was a wonderful woman who works for Harvard Medical School and was affiliated with those hospitals that saw me present this to some Harvard business executives. She immediately came up to me and said, have you ever studied sleep? She's a sleep doctor.

And she said, because I've been fighting for, you know, net rooms and things like that, because I believe that so much of this stems from a lack of sleep. The giving of it, like we talked about, like, why am I on edge and maybe brewed or short with people or my tone isn't great, I'm not mindful of this, but also how are we responding to that? If you're sleep deprived, you're on edge. You're not going to take that well. So her idea and advocacy has been around, you know, fighting for better norms around sleep and nap rooms

and things like that. But she really has pushed me to focus on that. And I do know, even from our own selves, if you're traveling or something, you just know. You feel different. You show up different. Yeah, I really optimize for sleep, exercise, diet. Those things are just incredibly important. But I was doing that pre-360 and I was still being a jerk.

And I'm still, I'm sure being a jerk in lots of ways that I'm unaware of. This is a lifelong issue. I will say that one of the things that's been really useful for me in terms of trying to improve my behavior, well I said two things come to mind. One is the self-awareness. Having very specific feedback, seeing where my weak spots are, for example, I wasn't following the 10-5 rule.

I would often be so stuck in my own head that I wouldn't give people basic affirmation, not because I don't like them because I was just self-centered and worried about my own stuff. So just waking up to that was super useful and actually really just changes the complexion of my day. Because now I have many more positive interactions, which of course were down to my benefits psychologically and also professionally, politically, all that other stuff. And I would add this is a very collaborative environment so your relationships matter. And we're sitting at ABC News right now,

a relationship matter here, because we work together so closely. The other thing is stress management in terms of how much do you have on your plate? Do you have an unreasonable set of expectations imposed on you or adopted electively? And so we're sitting here on a day when it's just been announced,

you and I've been walking through the hallways here at ABC News and people have been coming up and saying congratulations to me. I've just announced that I'm going part time effectively here at ABC News. So I can spend more time on 10% happier the company. I've been trying to do it all and it wasn't working out that well for me. And this decision I made is a direct consequence in many ways of getting that 360. And find that I'm pretty hopeful that cutting back on the amount I expect of myself and that is expected of me will make me less crazy. Yeah. I think to your point, it really starts with you and how you feel, you know, in taking care of yourself. And that's actually my focus moving forward is I want to encourage leaders to take care

of themselves. And then I think you get the positive effects, the positive spirals that allow you to have better relationships or better connections with people. So whether that's respect, whether that's valuing people, whether that's recognition and appreciation, whether that's giving good feedback, all of that ties into the next level, which is the organization's culture. And so you can imagine if you have these better connections, and of course that's multiplicative because a lot of people are doing that, then you have a much better culture. And then the last piece I would suggest is organizations doing good for society, or doing meaningful work.

And I see that as kind of four stages or four things, but I think what really kickstarts things is leaders need to take good care of themselves. Because, in part, I've data with Tony Schwartz and Harvard Business Review, we collect a data from over 20,000 people working across industries, and what we found is that there are real differences between just if a leader encourages self self-care, you know, and they role model it. And if you're not doing both, you don't get many gains. But the hard thing is, is again, as people move up in organizations, it gets harder and harder to be an agist. And of course, we have technology and everything else pulling us in a million different directions, we're on 24-7. I mean, the world has become so much more stressful, and also there's plenty of negativity pulling us down.

So I would really love to emphasize the taking care piece and especially anyone that's a leader. But even thinking about leaders and families or leaders and communities, because a lot of people will say, well, have you focused on families or have you focused on communities or have you focused on kids? And I think the messages are actually quite similar. I'm glad you brought us here because, you know, we haven't talked a lot about leaders,

and I think I'm just putting myself in the mind of a listener of the show, may think, okay, well, I'm not the boss, I'm an individual contributor or worker bee, or I work on my own, whatever. But I really do want to encourage people, and I think we're in lockstep on this, to evaluate their own behavior, whatever rank, whatever position they occupy.

So would you agree with that? Absolutely. And I was doing a talk with a corporation last night, and I had someone come up to me afterwards, and she said, have you ever studied parents and the effect on their children? She said, because what I'm catching now is if I look at my child, I now have to say, where did he or she learn that from? You know, some of the behaviors that I wouldn't want,

for example, and I think that the same things happen in families as we would be talking about in the workplace or certainly in communities in schools and so forth. So I think really, even though I focused a lot of the work on the implications for organizations, a lot of it is just on real people. And a lot of these experiments, for example, are on students.

And so they're not necessarily working, but we see the same effects on people. And so I think it's really important that we strive to improve in all areas. You have a self-assessment test up on the web. I do. Tell us about that where we can find it. Yeah, so it's on my website.

It's just ChristinePoorAfter.com. It's a free assessment. It's 32 items. Real quick, you're checking off how consistently you do these things. How often do you say, please, or thank you? How often are you sharing credit? How often are you using email when you should, you know, have a face-to-face conversation? And the whole idea is to hone in on what areas might you start, you know, working on to

improve. And the test online gives you specific things that you could focus on, you know, literally behaviors that you could do that might lead to better improvements. I would be interested to hear how stories from your own life. Do you think that you are, you know, if you took that self-assessment, honestly, that you'd get you score 100, but I scored 66, though. No, I'm very much a work in progress. You know, I am not mismanners, I am not, though. I get it like a C or a D. No, I'm very much a work in progress. I am not mismanners, I am not, and I'll be all,

I am very much a work in progress on all of this stuff. I would say that some of the things that I would feel worst about would be things like sending an email that I wish I wouldn't have. Just shorts, a sink, but maybe could be interpreted like, I didn't have a lot of patience. I would say the place that I started my improvement, and this was a long time ago that I shared in the book,

was actually something that leaders are often criticized for, which is interrupting people. So I think I literally in a conversation would get excited, but I would be jumping in. And I had a colleague, actually, at USC, a friend that said, do you realize that you're interrupting? And he kind of alerted me to it a few times. And that really helped me. And I'm sure I still do it. I've probably done it with you but you have

i do it i do it a lot i've actually worry about it one thing that's really help me because i think the motivation for me is i'm sure there's lots of really negative motivations that i'm unaware of but the one i'm aware of is exactly what you just said i get excited and i want to say the thing before forget it one of the really help me is carrying a notebook with me And I just write it down and wait until the person finishes. Yeah, that's an awesome example.

And Richard Branson and others would say, like taking notes throughout is incredible. And especially as a leader, because you're signaling that you care, you're paying attention, you can come back to that. And people notice that, by the way. You know, so I think it actually serves multiple purposes, not just for yourself, but I think it actually serves multiple purposes, not just for yourself,

but I think it's helpful for other people to see that. So what do you do just staying on you for a second? Just say you have, I'm sure everybody at Georgetown is perfect, but just say hypothetically there was a nasty colleague. What do you do? What do you do? Yeah, this would be a work in progress too. I would say that my tendency, like my conflict management profile, would say I'm more of an avoider and a commentator. So I tend to put my head down and just work independently. I mean, I have a little bit of a luxury as an academic and consultant and speaker that, you know, I have a fairly flexible schedule.

I do not have to work from my office. I usually do not. That's not always seen as a good thing by colleagues at all. It has consequences, but I would say that I got into this career to make a difference, and I see it more as a calling. So for me personally, I want to focus on my performance and making a difference and having it impact. And if that means doing it from someplace else,

other than the office and taking it in my face or having to wait out, when do I go to the bathroom? So I have to avoid someone or then that's what I do. It's not for everyone. I feel bad giving that advice because not everyone can choose to work flexibly or from home or what I do. It's not for everyone. I feel bad giving that advice because not everyone can choose to work flexibly or from home or with different. I also get to choose co-authors. We get to choose projects that we collaborate with.

Something like we do write books. You would never write with someone that sucked the life out of you or that was going to be difficult, right? Those books take on a life of their own. And so do our research projects. It's, it's embarrassing to admit, but even the top researchers, it takes years, you know, doesn't take years to collect the data, but to get them through the top outlets, it definitely takes many years. And so, I'm now much more careful with like, who do I want to spend my time with? You know, I think also

as you get older and all the meditation practices and so forth set in, you start to realize life is short. How do I want to spend my time in energy? Where do I want to spend it? And you make choices based on that. So it becomes not just about the organization, but it becomes the question that I ground a lot of this in. And this actually started from the personal stuff

is who do I want to be? You know, and I actually wrote that on a post it. The day I got tenure and stuck it next, stuck it in my computer. Because the whole idea is you're supposed to be able to choose that, right? Once you get tenure. Yeah.

And so I thought I'd definitely better live by that. But that was my mantra on a day-by-day basis, also, like making choices. And how do I want to respond to people? And that's actually the question that I use and that I encourage people to use as to, how do I want to respond to people and that's actually the question that I use and that I encourage people to use as to how do I want to respond. Like if you have the ability to kind of not respond negatively or abruptly or reciprocate immediately, the idea would be to think about like who do I want to be. Do I want to send this email or should I think about this differently?

Is there solid evidence to back up the assertion that if you are more civil, if you are kinder, if you do have better relationships, you will do better professionally, no matter what level you're at? Yeah, absolutely. I think your guest, Adam Grant, and a friend of mine, has done amazing work in this area. He has a great book called Give and Take that show long-term benefits to being a giver. He is very careful to say, like, you can't be a doormat, though, right? They're thinking about the win and the how and so forth.

So there are some boundaries to that. It's not all about giving, you know, what kind of resources are you sharing? And things like informational resources or connecting people versus, you know, just making time for one-on-one meetings with everyone. You know, you got to be aware of those things, but his research shows that in the long run, being more of a giver than a taker actually wins out. And my own research is that civility does pay. So one of the ways that we tackled this was we do the social network surveys. So we survey people that are working with each other, like an IT department. You answer questions about everyone in the IT department.

So, how civil are they? And what we find is that those that are perceived as more civil are, twice as likely to be viewed as leaders, and they perform 13% better. And the neat thing about this research is that we found this to hold true with MBAs in the U.S., a very international MBA population abroad. And the neat thing about this research is that we found this to hold true with MBAs in the US, very international MBA populations abroad, and even more recently with the global consulting firm. So I think more and more what we're seeing is that people want to work around respectful people. And people are more likely to seek information from you and share information from you.

And in the long run, it pays as far as your performance. Do you think there's any evidence that meditation can help on this room? Absolutely. I think that what they've shown, and you had one of the top leaders from GE that started their program there that found that people that went through this meditation training at e. General Mills or General Mills sorry that they were much more likely to be better listeners. And so I think you know to your point about the not always interrupting or taking a moment I think that's been shown to improve things. I also you would know this better

but I feel like more studies could be done to show that people carry themselves differently, you know, that people probably show up and feel better about dealing with a leader that his embraced meditation or mindfulness. It is not as silver bullet as my 360 would suggest. You know, it was interesting in the 360, people talked about he clearly has gotten a lot better, but there's more work to be done. And so I think, I think realizing meditation is one tool among many and that you're never going to arrive at some Brigadoun perfect, perfect situation. You're just going to have to keep working at this.

The rest of your career seems to be the way to look at it. Yeah. I think really focusing on, you know, I learned this from Doug Cohnet who was the former CEO of Campbell Soup Company and I loved his story so he actually came into Campbell's when they were doing terribly. So they had just lost half their market share, sales were declining, lots of people had just been laid off, a Gallant Manager said it was the least engaged organization they've ever worked with. And within five years, Doug had really turned things around

within nine years. They were setting all-time performance records, racking up awards, best place to work, most ethical company, most diverse company. And when I asked Doug, how did you do this? He said, well, on day one, I promised that I was going to be tough on standards, but I was going to do it with civility and respect. And for him, it all came down to being tough

minded on standards, but tenderhearted with people. And he said, really, it was all about touch points, or these brief daily interactions he had with people, whether in the hallway in the cafeteria or in meetings. And if he handled each touchpoint well, he'd make employees feel valued. And so whether that was, you know, he wrote, hand wrote, 30,000 thank you notes, we'll see. Yo, it was evidence like that. But really what he said was, you know, paying attention and listening to people was really key, you know, but he's he warned me, said, you know, leaders have 400 touchpoints a day. Most don't take two minutes, you know, but he warned me, he said, you know, leaders have 400 touch points a day. Most don't take two minutes, you know, but the key is to be agile and mindful in those moments. Yes, yes. I just keep hearing, and I don't know if this person is out there, but I suspect there may be somebody out there listening to this and saying, yeah, this all

sounds good to a point, but my job really requires a ruthlessness. How would you respond? I suspect you hear that pushback. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I don't get it as much, nearly as much anymore. And it may become because some of these concepts like radical candor have become more popular. But I think that what I don't want the story to be about is civility is all about being nice, not having the tough conversations or not giving you the 360 feedback.

Actually that is kind. And I think Burnet Brown pointed this out on your show recently. It is about having the courage to have these tough conversations. And so I think creating an atmosphere where that feels welcome and people don't feel defensive about that is really what you're striving for. And to me, the sweet spot is that I care personally, but I can challenge directly. And I think organizations are really looking to find that balance because they don't want

to, and I have heard this from one organization. Like, you know, they were very popular with doing a ton of unconscious bias training and other things. They knew that psychological safety drove team effectiveness. Psychological safety is just the ability, the feeling that you can speak up. Yeah, there's a sense of trust and respect. I feel comfortable giving you that tough feedback or bringing up an issue that I care about

or throwing out a crazy idea because it's cool. I can take it if you say that's crazy. I'm okay with that, but I'm not going to sit here and withhold this information. And that particular organization wanted to make sure that they hadn't gone too far. So it's staying in touch with, am I giving the tough feedback? Am I speaking up under tough circumstances? And I think largely you have to have individuals and leaders

thinking about that daily. But making sure the message isn't, we're just sugar coating this, because that's not what we want. And I think this idea of radical candor is something that we should all strive for. Is there something that I should have asked, but didn't? I don't think so.

I mean, I know you're working on kindness and I think that that's really needed and I hope that that improves things because I think we're not in a good place in society or in a lot of workplaces and I think we can and should do better. I think the good news is I know from research that small actions do better and that even if you don't have a leadership position, you doing little things, some of our newest research is actually that we find that civility spreads too. So people not only reciprocate it, but they pay it forward.

You know, it changes their mood for the day, and they pass it on whether they're aware of it or not. So we actually, I think, have more control over this than we know. And so I hope that that's a inspiring and encouraging message given that most people feel pretty defeated and pretty negative these days, just with the climate inside and outside of organizations. That feels right to me. That's why I wanted to have you on the show.

I feel like your work is really important. In closing, can you just plug? Can I push you to plug your books and where we can find you on the internet, et cetera, et cetera? Sure. Thank you. So website is ChristinePoorF.com. Recent book is Mastering Civility. There's a TED Talk out there and hopefully I've seen it. It's really good. Thank you. Hopefully some other resources for people to get. And there was a book before it that you co-authored? Cost of bad behavior with Christine Pearson.

And are you on social media? I am. I'm on Twitter. For FC, at For FC. Did I get it all? Did we put everything? I think so. Some people are uncomfortable with this, so I really have to nudge them to plug.

This was great. I really appreciate you doing this. Thank you. Thank you. Like I said at the beginning, I loved that conversation. So thank you again to Christine for coming on. So interesting. Let's do the voicemails. Here's number one. Hi, my name is June, and I have a question regarding movement. There's so many

in meditations that allow movement, and I know there's so many different meditations. In general, I love to listen to Joseph Goldstein, but I have difficulty with his directions of sitting with a dignified posture. Almost the minute he says that my body starts to itch or twitch, I'm under the impression that I shouldn't act on the impulse to scratch. There's a lot of direction on the focus of Brad Borshound, but what is the value of not scratching? How does one break from these twitches and comfortable myths and twangs of pain tend to

then just encompass the mind and it's hard to pull away from them and to live, you know, acting on the impulse to scratch my edge. Strange question, I apologize. Love being an insider. Thank you so much for everything. Thank you. So that's not a strange question at all, actually. This is quite a common question.

Before I answer it, just thank you, June, for being an insider. That's a huge deal for us. It really helps us get better at what we're doing here, which we care about a lot. So thank you for that. Traditionally, the advice on this is, first of all, if you've dared to scratch your itch in the past, you're not going to get hit by lightning. This is not a big deal. I should not be a source of shame. But the traditional instruction as I've heard it is, if you're sitting in meditation and you're feeling a little bit

discomfort, the urge to shift in your chair or to, if you've got an itch, you feel the urge to scratch it. That good way to practice is instead of doing what we habitually do, which is scratch the itch because we don't like it. We have a reverse a, a reverse of reaction to it or to shift in our chair is to actually tune in to the raw data of the sensations of the itch. And then to notice what kind of thoughts you're having in relationship.

Wow, this itch is never gonna go away. I can't believe I'm meditating. Meditation is so stupid. What kind of exercise would force you to sit here and not scratch this itch, I hate this thing. Remember when I was itchy when I was seven? Blah, blah, blah, blah. And just to notice like, how does the mind react?

You know, two levels here, at least. What are the physical sensations of the itch or whatever discomfort you're experiencing? And then what does our mind do in reaction to these sensations? And there's a lot to be learned from that because we are kind of on a string all the time in our lives when we're mindless. Just being yanked toward things, blindly going toward things that feel good and running away from things we don't like. And this can be the source of suffering

if you're aware of it. And actually, you're not aware of it. Actually, the powerful move that we can get to when we start to bring mindfulness to these situations is that we don't have to just be yanked around all the time on this roller coaster between avoiding the unpleasant and gorge on the pleasant, that we can have a little bit more ease

in the way we live. And so the price of admission sometimes is sitting there on the pleasant that we can have a little bit more ease in the way we live. And so the price of admission sometimes is sitting there and trying to be mindful of discomfort or itching while you're meditating. What you'll say, there's a great expression that Joseph Goldstein might teach you often uses is awareness doesn't care. In other words, aversion may be coming up in your mind in these situations, but the raw awareness that undergirds all of your emotions and desires and thoughts, the raw awareness that holds it all has no preference.

And so that's an interesting thing. I sometimes drop that expression into my mind when something unpleasant like a physical sensation comes up while I'm meditating. Awareness doesn't care. Because it kind of throws you back into that space of being mindful of it rather than caught up in this endless cycle between aversion and desire. So just to be clear, if you are sitting and experiencing a significant amount of pain and you think you're going to hurt yourself, do move or get up. So the goal here is not to hurt yourself. But if you think you can be with it, I think there's a lot to be learned about the way the mind works. And another thing to steal from Joseph, he's got this phrase, in order to mind. You might notice that you're actually sitting there on some level being mindful of an itch

or a pain in your knee. But actually, if you look closely, there's a thin layer of aversion there because you're being mindful with in order to make it go away. And so just noticing, well, is this how mindful am I really being? Because they're, you know, it can get deeper. And so just that phrase in order to might, you know, now that you've heard it from Joseph via me, might surface, I found that it can sometimes surface at an opportune moments in meditation. Thank you, June. Let's do voice mail number two.

Hi, Dan. My name is Claire and I live in St Paul, Minnesota. I'm an avid listener to your podcast and I'm very happy to be a podcast insider as well. I also use your app for my daily-ish meditation and I've got a lot out of some of the courses on it in particular. So, thank you for that and thanks to the whole 10% happier team. I know it takes a team effort to produce all these things. Anyway, to my question, Dan, you talk a lot about meditation helping you to be less of a jerk to people around you and yourself.

I have a different challenge. I tend to be too nice and probably not direct and tough enough as a way to avoid hurting people's feelings or avoiding conflict in those situations. I'd really like to hear more about how meditation can help with that challenge. I got a lot out of orange-a-sophers course on the app about communication, so I definitely think there's a lot that mindfulness and meditation can do to help with not avoiding being a jerk as it were. So anyway, I'd like to hear more about that. Thanks so much. Okay, this is where I was. So I'm working on a book about kindness and this is where I wish I had already finished the book and really knew what I was talking about. So I'm going to say a bunch of things, but with the caveat that I wish I had Sharon Salzburg here because her rap is much tighter than mine and she's been looking at working with her own mind and teaching other people to work with

this stuff in their own minds much longer than I have. So just to put a little humility out into the discussion here from the jump. But so the first thing that came to my mind when I was listening to you say this is that it's such a useful reminder because I am working on this book about kindness and sometimes joke that I want to call the book the self-interested case for not being a different word than jerk starts with an A and ends with an E. And I remember I was talking to a young woman who I was working with and she said, you know, that's funny, it's funny title.

But you know, for me, she said exactly what you just said, which is, my problem is not a jerk. My problem is I need to learn how to stand up for myself. And so it's very useful for me to hear. So how do you practice compassion in a way that does not end up with you being a doormat? So there are a few expressions that come to mind that might, and I'm going to riff on them in a sort of unscripted way that I think might be useful here. One is that this Tibetan phrase, idiot compassion.

So being compassionate does not mean, properly understood compassion does not mean that you just give away all of your money and let people who you disagree with have their way with you or like have people who have wronged you over to dinner, this is not what's on the menu per se. So that's a misunderstanding and the Tibetans often call that idiot compassion. As I understand it, and please, if you're there are experts in Tibetan Buddhism who know way more than I do, and if I've got that wrong, please let me know on Twitter. But there are ways to practice compassion that absolutely are in consonant with standing up for yourself without being a jerk. So there's a concept of fierce compassion, and then there's the concept of self-compassion.

So let me just unpack both of those for a second. So the fierce compassion thing is that, you know, sometimes if something is unjust in the world, a certain amount of ferocity is what's called for, and that doesn't have to come out of a place of hatred, and maybe not even out of a place of anger. Yes, there may be some anger there, but it's an open question for me at least to how useful anger is. But you can nonetheless

be fierce and determined and relentless in pursuit of protecting the underdog or protecting yourself, which brings me to self-compassion. So I wouldn't argue that you need to be more of a jerk, but you may need to stick up for yourself and it is entirely possible to do that without being a jerk. And that's self-compassion, you know, communicating as clearly as possible with as much empathy for your interlocutor as possible, what your needs are while understanding what that person needs maybe. All of that seems doable to me.

And I think it's one of the PR issues that compassion has, which is that people think, well, if I do this, I'm going to, everybody's gonna walk all over me. The data that my friend Adam Grant, who's a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania at the Wharton Business School there, he's come up with, he's studied the workplace and he's found that there are three types of people

in his schema in the workplace. Givers, takers, and mattress. So givers are very generous in a workplace environment, takers not so much, and matchers are kind of transactional. And he's found that the least successful people in workplaces are the givers, and that the most successful people are the givers, which illuminates an important lesson. You can do it right, or you can do it wrong. So you don't want to be giving so much that you don't get any of your work done,

but you do also want to give in a wise way that creates an atmosphere where people feel, say, for you, they trust you, they want to help you, you feel in live and invigorated, because giving feels good, but you also don't want to be a doormat. And so finding this balance is incredibly important. And I think you have a leg up actually because it sounds like being a jerk does not come

naturally to you. But what you need to learn how to do, perhaps based on your voice mail, I don't know you, but perhaps what you need to learn how to do is be better at protecting yourself, being fierce in defense of the more vulnerable and being fierce on your own behalf to make sure that you're getting what you're need and you're not being treated unfairly. And doing that does not require being mean or cruel. Whereas the great Sharon Salzburg has said it's possible to compete without being cruel. I hope that I haven't been trying not to add live my answers recently, but for reasons

that are not going to be interesting to you, I'm add living the answer today, so I didn't prepare for that in advance, but I hope that whatever came out of my mouth was useful, and I really appreciate the question, and I also appreciate you being an insider. As we close here, two things. I want to make an ask that I used to say this at the end of the podcast all the time, but I've kind of fallen off. When it's kind of perfunctory for podcast hosts to say,

at the end, please rate us or review us or share us on social media, because all that stuff really does matter. It helps us grow. But let me just hone in on the sharing piece for a second. If you're up for it and you're feeling inspired to share, maybe there's an episode that really has meant a lot to you. If you feel moved to share it with an individual or many individuals or on social media, I think that would be great for us. The podcast is doing great, but we could always, as I've quoted this expression on the show before, but in the words of Zen Parable, everything is perfect, but it could also use a little

improvement. So we'd be always be happy to grow more, and I think sharing might be an interesting way to do that. So if you've got the time and the motivation to do that, that would be awesome. Before I go, big thank you to all of you for listening. Big thanks to the people who make the show possible including Samuel Johns, Grace Livingston, the inimitable Ryan Kessler, and Mike D was working the board states. The busky, right? Mike the busky. Really appreciate it, see you guys next Wednesday. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and add free

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