The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 466: Liz Fosslien - How To Deal With Uncertainty, Build Your Career, & Embrace Your Emotions At Work

Episode Date: April 3, 2022

Text Hawk to 66866 for "Mindful Monday" - A carefully curated email with the most useful leadership ideas of the week Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12    https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12 Liz Fosslien is the co-author and illustrator of the book Big Feelings and the Wall Street Journal best-seller No Hard Feelings. Liz is an expert on how to make work better. She regularly leads interactive, scientifically-backed workshops about how to build resilience, help remote workers avoid burnout, and effectively harness emotion as a leader. Her work has been featured by TED, Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, The Economist, and NPR. Ask yourself… When you look back at your career and think of your best boss and your worst boss… What behaviors did each of them have? How can we embody more of the best boss behavior? Set up a regular cadence of not-urgent, developmental meetings with the people you're leading. Show them and prove to them how much you care about them and their career. What have you enjoyed most? What have you not enjoyed? What have you learned? What do you want for your next job? Use envy to reveal what you value. But remember, ask yourself if you'd want that person's entire life. Not just the cool part you see on Instagram. The Gretchen Rubin story of feeling envy over seeing someone else publish a book. She used that as fuel. Anger is a signal that something occurred that you didn't like. Acknowledge what you're feeling. She met her co-author, Molly West Duffy, on a blind friend date! How to deal with uncertainty? Over-communicate - Be transparent Switch from "I need to have this all figured out" to "I'm a person learning to become a manager" Pixar recruited animators that were frustrated at their current place of work... Liz's research process: Read a lot Talk with academics Learn from practitioners who are applying it Work-life balance? It's well-intentioned... but a very individual thing Some people are segmenters Some people are integrators... They like to mix work with friends Both are okay... Goal setting: There are long term and short term goals Liz chooses to abandon long term goals to live the life she wants to live She enjoys creative time on the weekends Short-term goals... What's going to make an impact? Top 5 priorities - "You have to run into the spike" Career/Life advice: DO something. Do the work. Take action See everything as a learning experience... Think, "What can I learn from this?" Liz once worked at a Starbucks and learned a lot about hospitality from it Create an emotional experience

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book to get your free copy today. Welcome to The Learning Leaders Show, presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of Mindful Monday. You along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world will receive a carefully curated email for me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right.

You'll also receive details about how my new book, The Pursuit of Excellence, will help you become a more effective leader. Text, Hawk to 66866. Now, on tonight's featured leader, the great, Liz Foslian, the co-author and illustrator of the best-selling book, No Hard Feelings. She is also the head of content at Bumu,

a company that uses behavioral, science to make work better. Liz's writing and illustrations have been featured by the economists, the New York Times, NPR, and Freakonomics. Her most recent book is called Big Feelings, How to be OK when things are not okay. During this enlightening conversation, we discuss the three common myths around uncertainty and anxiety and how to reframe negative self-talk. And then how to use anger as fuel for creativity and motivation. This one definitely surprised me. And then Liz shares the two types of work-life balance and how reframing this can help you both at work and at home.

Ladies and gentlemen, you're going to love this one. It's the great Liz Foslian. All right, Liz, so good to have you here on The Learning Leaders Show. Welcome. Yeah, thanks for having me. Excited to be here. Well, I love flipping to the back of books and looking at the acknowledgement section first. Longtime listeners know this about me.

And so I did that with your most recent book. And I love starting with love, as cheesy as that sounds, because I love talking about the people I love. So I think other people do too. You mentioned a few people at the top. Molly, your co-author, and your mom and dad. I actually wanted to start with your mom and dad. You said that they're, they've always been your biggest champions, even when they're not quite sure what your job is and what this internet thing is. Can you talk me about your upbringing a little bit and what your parents did and how it's, how it's then you've become the result of their hard work?

Yeah, totally. And I love that that's where you go first and that's where you start the conversation. So my parents are both immigrants. they are both academics, and I would say from Northern Europe, like very traditional in their terms of their outlook on what a career is, and then also very stoic. So growing up, there was a lot of emotional suppression. I think it wasn't even anything that we didn't even know that we were suppressing emotions. And so that definitely, yeah, if you got angry or if you felt something strongly, it was always sort of a bad, scary thing. And so then when I entered the workforce, I studied math and economics in college, so very quantitative fields, because again, it was like this immigrant academic pressure.

And then worked as a consultant after college, and it was a job that sort of checked all the success boxes for me. I had a good salary. There was a very clear career path. My parents always like get a job, stay there for 30 years, get a graduate degree, that kind of outlook. I put on a banana republic suit. I went into the tall building. I felt important. And I just hated it.

Like I was, we were working for law firms. So you would be at the office till 6 p.m. Then you would get an email from a lawyer. And then your workday would start. So I would be there till like one in the morning, two in the morning. And it eventually got to the point where I just completely burnt out and had to quit.

I didn't know what I was going to do next. And that was really when I started exploring. You can't just will yourself to love something. something, and that's eventually going to severely impact your productivity, your ability to stay at a company, all these metrics you care about, organizations care about. And then I will give my parents credit for opening up with me as I've started exploring emotions, and that obviously, like, my work focuses on the workplace, but it has large implications for your personal life, too. And it was funny.

One story I'll share quickly about my dad. He's a retired pathologist. And when I started talking to him about the idea for no hard feelings, the book about emotions at work, he just said, I'm so glad I'm retired. I don't even understand what's happening in your generation. And then when I finally gave him the book, he started reading through it. And it was so interesting, he would call me and say, I had a boss who was like this. And this would have been really valuable for me.

And so he had just never seen some of these situations through the lens of emotions and thought about how emotional intelligence might have helped him. So that was a very cool experience to get to share that with my dad and have him come around to these ideas. I love, how did that feel when your dad kind of was like, oh, you taught him something. Like you taught a really smart person something that probably the most important person in your life one of the two, I'm guessing. Yeah, it felt really validating. I, you know, when you have spent, I would say a good 25 years of your life on the certain track and especially treating your emotions

in a certain way, which is just to ignore them completely. It's sometimes I still have these little flickers of doubts, especially I do a lot of illustration work. And sometimes I'm just like, what am I doing with my life? You know, my dad. I was a doctor and I draw cartoons and talk about feelings all day. And so it was nice to hear from him that he sees the value in that work. You mentioned illustrations and I said this to you before we started recording, but I am just amazed at the talent and skill and some of the simplicity that you bring to your illustrations. I mean, you illustrate your books.

There's their illustrations are all over the place online. they're shared by a bunch of really smart people constantly. And I would love to develop this skill. And I hate saying, like, I'm just a bad drawler. I can't do it because I think you can learn anything. I really believe that. But I don't know how you do it. Can you take me inside your mind when you think of a concept or an idea?

And for people who haven't seen them yet, I'll make sure to share them and link them in show notes. And you can buy the books and they're out there online and follow you guys on social. but can you take me kind of inside your thought process when you have like this idea and it's maybe a sentence or two or a paragraph and now you want to turn this into an illustration, a picture and they're kind of funny, but they're also like to the point. They're really well done. You have your own unique style now. Can you share like how that works, how it goes from words or ideas to, okay, here's the picture. Yeah, absolutely. And I want to quickly pause on what you said about. you can learn anything. So I did not study art. I did not take drawing classes. The first art I ever made

was an MS paint back in the day. And I was in that for like three years. So definitely learned this myself. See, as an example, usually it's something that a friend or a colleague will say, sometimes it's a tweet or just something I'll see on LinkedIn that just sparks. For me, that really resonates. So a recent one was just how much we try to please people and how it's actually physically impossible to please everyone. And so then there's this question of who should you try to impress. And so that had been floating around my head for a while. So whenever I have a thought like that, I'll just scribble it in a notebook. And then I will, I'm actually pretty, like I have a routine around this. I don't have time to do illustration during the week. So on weekends, I'll set aside a couple

hours in the morning when I've had my coffee and the juices are really flowing. And I'll go through and look at these little ideas I've dotted down and then just try to map those to, to your point, the most simple visual way I can think of expressing them. So that's often a Venn diagram, a bar chart, a line chart, stairs. Like I sort of have this bank of visual, yeah, visuals that I will reference and then just try to think like, okay, here's the idea, here's all these. different ways of representing ideas. What's the best intersection of the two? And then go from there. Funny what I'm looking at right now. It's titled adulthood. And you have Clean the Kitchen, Arrow, Clean the Kitchen, Arrow, Clean the Kitchen, Arrow, Clean the Kitchen. It's just one big

circular emotion of cleaning. Because I was just saying that lunch. That's, yeah. Like some of them were just cheeky and funny and they still are true. And that's why they're funny. It's like stand-up comedy. why is it so true because the person's so good at like pointing out something that's true that you haven't necessarily thought of. That's what I think you do. And then there are obviously other ones that are that are more serious than that. But what do you, yeah, what do you use? What's your process? Like, do you just have an iPad or like, what are you doing? Yeah. So I have a W-A-com tablet. It's a comes with a pen. It's a tablet that hooks up to your computer. So you draw on it and then it appears on your screen. What is it? A-C-O-M. Awakom, W-A-C-O-M.

Some people say WACOM, so I might be misproncing it. I've never heard of it. Yeah, I think it's a Japanese company. My tablet cost about $80. I've had it for eight years. I just somehow never, most people use an iPad. And if you have an iPad, I highly recommend the program Procreate. That's what I would say most illustrators use.

I'm just a dinosaur that hasn't made the switch yet. And then I use Adobe Illustrator to sort of clean up edges. and add color, that kind of thing. It's really cool. I love it. By the way, since you've now become who you are and so well known because of the books and things that you've done and the illustrations, are people coming at you all the time saying, hey, Liz, can I partner with you and you be the illustrator of my work? Yeah, I've had a couple of requests like that.

It's always flattering to get those. Generally, I have a full-time job, so I don't really have time. And then the not having time makes this a non-issue for me. But I also, because Molly, my co-author and I have our own brand and write our own books, it's probably not something that I would do anytime soon, just to sort of protect that brand. So your full-time job, what is your full-time job? So I'm the head of content and communications at HUMU, which is a company that uses behavioral science to make it really easy for leaders and their teams to improve.

So we send teams nudges, which are really small, short, science-backed suggestions for actions they can take. So it'll be things like kicking off the meeting by starting with an icebreaker. Research shows if everyone speaks in the meeting in the first five minutes, you have more equitable conversation down the line because people just feel more comfortable chiming in. So things like that. And then I work on some of our thought leadership projects.

putting out e-books, putting out points of view on hybrid work, the future of work, and then also work with our Nudge team to write those small suggestions. Gotcha. And working with a co-author too, Molly. So what's Molly's day-to-day like? Yeah, so Molly is an organizational design expert. So she is currently a director of learning and development and really thinks about, again, at organizations, how can you equip people with the skills they need to be successful?

in whatever their job and environment might be. Gotcha. And how did you two come together and say, we want to write books together? We want to do this work together. Yeah. So I was when I was about, I would say like in my late 20s,

I was living in San Francisco, got a job in New York, and I moved to New York. I grew up in Chicago. I had never been in New York before. And I was terrified because I thought everyone was just going to be like calling me an a hole

and like pushing me off. I was really scared. And so I emailed all my friends, and said, set me up on blind friend dates. I just need to have a network in New York when I land. And Molly was one of those blind friend dates. And we just instantly bonded. We're both introverts.

We both have massive sleep issues. So we have like sleeping masks and earplugs and white noise machines. So we just have this instant connection. And then we're both at the time had been for a couple years. She had a very similar experience to me where she worked at a startup that had a horribly toxic environment, burnt out of that job was getting like really intense migraine. So it was also manifesting physically. And that shared experience kind of made us start to think we should just work on a project together. And we started actually researching how introverts can be successful at work.

And then that turned into this larger thing of just emotional intelligence and embracing emotions. Could you have ever expected your first book to do what it did and blow up like it like it has? It actually, I would say it didn't really blow up at first. So it was, yeah, it's, excuse me, it's been an interesting journey. I think when it, at least from our perspective, when it really started to pick up steam was when the pandemic hit. And that's, we also noticed that's when conversations around emotions at work really changed. It went from people saying, how can I have a good meeting with my reports to, saying, you know, my team is exhausted. They have young kids at home. They live alone. We don't know

when we're coming back to the office. I feel like I'm leading without one of my senses. I just don't even know what's going on with people. What do I do? And so that was, I think, a tipping point for our book, but then also for just how people talk about feelings at work. What do you say to the potential skeptics? And we're going to get into more of the stuff from both books, but the skeptics that say, Liz, yeah, this sounds great. You know, and I want to be, I want to make sure I take care of the feelings. But at the end of the day, we got to hit the number. And so do whatever you got to do, hit the number.

I mean, I come from a sales background. So as a manager, director of EPA of Sales. And so I know this talk all too well when you're in your QBRs. And they don't really care, at least there are some bosses that don't really care about feelings. They care about you hitting the number or not. And if you don't, you're going to get crushed. And if you do, good job, bud.

Hit the next one now at the next quarter, right? And that's kind of how it goes. And that's not everywhere, but I've definitely experienced that. And I'm sure a lot of other people have. What to that person who's kind of skeptical of this one and this conversation like, let me go to something else here because I'm really just about getting results. And I don't necessarily want to hear about this stuff. What do you say to people like that?

Yeah, I would say, first of all, I absolutely was a skeptic when I started doing this work. So especially I studied math and economics. I really came at it from a data perspective. Like I wanted to dive into the research. And I remember initially I came across this advice that was like, be vulnerable, bring your whole self to work. And my question was always, one, what does that mean? If I'm a manager on a Tuesday morning at 9 a.m.,

what the heck does it mean to be vulnerable? I have no idea. And doesn't it depend on who I am, who my team is, the environment, can to backfire to be vulnerable? So that advice to me was very impractical. And then second, sure, this is research coming out of Google, but what about at an investment bank? Or if you're a firefighter, like is it just these touchy-feely companies where this matters? And so I also, as an aside, when I was in college, there was a year where I really wanted to be an investment banker.

And I thought that that was just an industry where you throw coffee at the wall and you slam notebooks and you work all the time. And that's just what it is. And that's what you need to do to be successful. And so there's actually research that looked at hedge fund managers. And what they find there are that in this very quantitative financial environment, managers who are supportive of their teams, so who allow them to ask questions, who check in with them regularly, who create an environment in which people just feel safe, asking each other for help, their teams have higher returns on their investments than the

managers who are throwing the copy against the wall and slamming the notebooks. And there's all kinds of research in hospitals and among firefighters that again and again proves out the same thing, which is that the way that people are compassionate towards each other and support each other, that looks really different in different environments. But it's just that feeling of people care about me. If I make a mistake, it's okay. I'm not going to get fired or punished. I can ask a question if those fundamentally exist, all of the metrics that anyone in an organization should care about improve, retention, productivity, sales quotas, sales performance, like, and this also is true in, like, call center environments where productivity numbers are really easy to calculate. So

again and again, it just bears out in the research. Yeah, I was, during a quarterly business for you, I never forget this, was talking a lot about this type of thing, which people call soft skills, which I hate, I think I said they're not soft skills, they're essential skills, which other people have said to. I borrowed from whoever else that has said that is on this podcast. And you still kind of get the eye rolls or whatever. I'm like, do you understand, like, this is the reason why the performance is good and going to even get better? This stuff matters. This is what we should focus on. And it is the more longer game play. Like, If you want to make sure we hit next week or whatever, I mean, I don't think that's the way,

the right way to think is to build from the foundation up of a place where people love to do great work. And they love to do that probably where the leaders actually care. And they prove how they care. And I think that's what your work to me is why it's inspiring because from a leadership perspective, which is what this podcast is all about, it's about loving and caring for. the people that you're leading. And then the results are the results of that. And that is a more longer game play. But I think the much more effective one. Yeah, absolutely. And one of the questions

I like to ask leaders, especially those who are skeptical of this, is when you look back at your career, just remember how you felt when you were working for the worst manager you've ever had and how you felt when you were working for the best leader you've ever had. And it's night and day. one makes you feel exactly what you said invested in the company excited to learn new things try new things and the other just makes you want to clock out at five and you know basically sink into your couch and watch Netflix all night because you can't have a bad day at work and have an amazing time at home usually it bleeds it to each other well it's so true like I remember like my my backgrounds in sports to play football in high school college and a little bit after college and the coaches who you knew like

deeply cared for you, they could still push you and be very hard on you, but they deeply cared for you. I so badly wanted to win for them. I mean, let's go. Like I so badly, and the guys who I could tell didn't really care, I was like, you know, I still want to win. Don't even wrong. I'm competitive. I want to win. It's just different. It's a different feeling. Like, it's not the same of like, I will do anything to prove that this is a great coach. And the way you prove these great coach is you got to win games. Right. So I was like, that's the type of environment, though, you want to create whether it's on a sports team or in the business world is, remember one of my all-time favorite bosses, Dustin Kim. I've had her on as a guest on this podcast

because she's so good. I so badly wanted to help her be known in the company as an awesome boss because of how much she cared for all of us. It's definitely for me, but our whole team. And I think, like we all, I think that's a great thing to strive for is because you care and love for your people and you show them that and you give them the safety that that then is such an inspiring and motivating force to get people to overperform, that seems to be like a great way to go about it than just constant like hammering on people, which isn't fun. I can't even imagine it being fun for the boss either, you know? Yeah, that resonates with me a lot. My current manager is excellent. And also we have every six weeks conversations about where do I want my career to grow and

how could she help me? And then yesterday she emailed me something like a question she wanted help with at 8 p.m. And for me, it was, it was not intrusive. She said, you don't need to get back to me right away. Tomorrow's fine. But I just right away was like, I want to help you in the way that you've helped me. And that just would not be true if I didn't have that relationship with her. So I wanted to actually go inside that meeting for a second because a lot of people in workplace, and I've been this person where you're so focused on the urgent. Like there's always fires. There's always something that we have to solve for right now. but I think it would behoove all of us as leaders to have the important but not urgent meetings on a regular basis.

So it sounds like you do these every six weeks. Can you take us inside? I would call them like the developmental meetings as opposed to we have these three things that we have to have done right now because we have a problem or just an initiative versus this one of more longer term thinking in me as your manager as your leader and one who wants to be a value at, wants to be one of those best bosses you've. ever had. What's a developmental every six weeks type of cadence meeting look like with, with this boss? Yeah. So I think the first point, which we've already made, is just make it explicitly on the calendar at a regular cadence. So you always, these are conversations that never happen in the normal flow of work. So you do have to be more intentional about creating space for them. And then in those conversations, the things we discuss are looking back at the last six

weeks, what do you think has gone well? What have you really enjoyed? What skills do you think you've developed? What have you not enjoyed so much? So she can get a feel of helping me job craft essentially. So these are the areas where Liz is not excited. And these are the areas where she really wants to invest in in the future. And then she can assign future projects accordingly. And then also taking a step back longer term and thinking, you know, like she's asked me explicitly, what do you want your next job to be. And let's look at some of the requirements for that job and what that would mean. And a lot of it, especially at more senior levels, it's not learning Excel or, you know, teaching yourself a, again, a hard skill. It's these, I like that to essential skills of, you know,

I want to bring more visibility to my team internally at an organization. I want to be seen by the executive or the board in a certain way. And so, it becomes almost more like mentorship and coaching, but I think that's also really important to touch on is it's not just what specific skills and results do you want to attain, but how do you want to grow as a professional and as a leader who is viewed by others as an influential person within the organization? Think about like for anybody, if I reported to a person where we had those meetings that focused on me or if I am the person having those meetings for others, I mean, that

that's the boss you're going to put in that that great boss column that you're going to remember because of meetings like that. So I think that's an immediate action people can take if they're not doing it, whether it's up or down, both ways within your organization. You mentioned earlier that your book really caught on when the pandemic started hitting. And I think one of the things that most people struggle with, I certainly am in this camp, especially when like keynote speeches were getting canceled left and right because of there were no events in person. And some shifted to Zoom and some were like, we don't know when we're going to get back. And that we don't know part is what's the hardest.

And that is uncertainty. And you have written and talked about uncertainty and the myths around uncertainty and the anxiety it causes and reframing negative self-talk. Can you share more about uncertainty, how to deal with this, what, how to better respond to these times when we're not really sure what's going to happen because there are there is science out there which I know you know that says people would rather get bad news than uncertainty. So can you share more about that? Yeah.

So one of my favorite studies on this, we would rather know for sure something bad is going to happen than have the potential of something bad happens. Researchers had people in a group and they split them into two random groups and then they administered harmless but painful shocks. One group had a 99% chance of getting shocked in the next few minutes. So it was guaranteed mostly it was going to happen. The other group had a 50% chance. And the group with the 50% chance was three times more stressed out.

So it was like, you know you're going to feel pain. But if you can prepare for it and it's on the calendar, somehow it's easier for our minds to grapple with that. So a couple of things that I've seen in the research that I found really valuable. I think for leaders, the first one especially is to communicate, communicate, communicate. So often leaders, you know, we think I need to have all the answers for my team or this decision is still being made and I'm not really sure where it's going to go yet. So I don't want to say anything yet.

I don't want to lead people down the wrong path. And that alone is important information just to say, hey, I know this is on your minds. We're still discussing it and I will let you know as soon as possible. If you don't say that, people will just immediately start, like the rumor mill will start, and they will kind of lean towards the worst possible scenario. They might think you just don't care. You haven't considered their feelings or their future. So I think it's just providing as much transparency as possible, even if that's saying, I don't have the answers right now. The second is, I really love this specific phrase.

And it's been super valuable for me over the last year, which is switching from I need to have this all figured out to I'm a person learning to blank. So when I became a manager of a team in a hybrid world, in a remote world where I never saw my people in person anymore, that was very overwhelming. And so reminding myself, I'm a person learning to become a remote manager during a global pandemic, shifted me into that growth mindset of how can I seek feedback from people?

It just makes you more willing to experiment. as opposed to beating yourself up for not having all the answers. And often you're in a situation where it's unrealistic to expect yourself to have all the answers. Gotcha. I like that. I'm a person learning to become. I think that's really good. One of the other parts that you've written about is comparison.

And this is something that I've probably messed up. So I always just say, you know, don't compare yourself to the other people's Instagram feeds because it's just the high. Real. I mean, my Instagram feed is definitely a highlight reel. Like, I don't show any of the bad stuff. Maybe it's just boring, I think, but also you're, you're embarrassed by a lot of it, or I am. But you've talked about how comparison can be a good thing. How is embracing comparison? How can that actually make you healthier and happier? Yeah. So it's definitely there's an art to embracing comparison without letting it torture you forever. And so it's really when you allow yourself to feel envy, which is usually the emotion that comparison evokes, it can reveal what you value.

So one of the people we spoke with for our upcoming book, Big Feelings, she shared the story. She was a lawyer and she'd been a lawyer for 15 years and she got her school's alumni magazine. And she was going through it. And there were stories of people who had really illustrily legal careers. And that was great. She just flipped through it. And then she came across someone who's been in her class who had written a book. And she said she was like physically nauseated by how envious she was. And to her, that was a sign that this is something that she wanted to do for herself. And so she started writing here and there and then eventually wrote a book. And that woman is Gretchen Rubin, who's rich in like multiple bestsellers, the four tendencies, the happiness

project, like she's very, very successful. And she said she wouldn't have gone down that path had she not listened to that very intense feeling of envy. So I think when we suppress that emotion, we actually lose out on important information. And so questions are, when you feel envious is, what do they have that I want? But then another important question is, am I willing to live their day to day to day to get that? So often, we might really envy the CEO. but then when you think about it, it's like, actually, I really like that I have great work life balance and I'm not traveling and I get to spend time with my family. So I think it's a, it's really about exploring that emotion and trying to figure out what

important information it's telling you and then mapping out the next steps that you want to take. And the final thing I'll say here is often when we're envious of someone that turns malicious. So we shut them out or we avoid them because they trigger these negative emotions or hard emotions within us. And actually, it can be really valuable if it's another colleague or a leader at your organization to ask them to be your mentor because they're doing something that you envy and that you kind of want for yourself. And so they can actually be a great resource for you. I love that. And a big Gretchen Rubin fan of had her on the show. I love the way you told that story and saved the review at the end. Just a little podcast guesting tip right there for anybody.

Like, that's how you tell a story. Really well done. When it comes to, though, another surprising thing, which again, I love when I'm surprised by work, anger and using anger for your benefit. How could one, we all get mad sometimes, some more than others, but how can we use anger to actually maybe be more creative and use it for a benefit? Yeah. So anger is a signal that something occurred that you don't like. So anger actually, if we know how to leverage it, can make us more creative, can help us advocate for ourselves. I think, you know, the sort of, I wouldn't say this is a good example, but rage quitting is this term I've heard thrown around a lot recently. And that's anger finally of someone saying, I just can't stand this environment anymore. I'm out. And there's much more productive ways to channel your anger, but it's kind of a nice extreme example. And so when you feel yourself getting really upset, again, I think so often we get this message of anger is bad or it's harmful and it's

destructive and it absolutely can be, but that doesn't mean that you should ignore that feeling. So the first step is just to acknowledge what you're feeling. Give yourself time to calm down. So, you know, big advice around emotions is you should always wait until you can explore the emotion without getting overly emotional about it. So really thinking through what was the violation that occurred, what happened that made me feel this anger, and then what do I need in the moment to feel better, and what do I need longer term to feel better?

And then also as a leader, so there's a story that came out of Pixar where they actually often would recruit animators that they could tell were really frustrated on a movie. So they were angry, they were upset about some decisions I had made, and they would get them into a focus group and figure out, what made you upset?

Like, why are you so frustrated? And then put them on new movies. And that's actually, some of those animators created the Incredibles, because they were like, I wanted to make the movie differently, and I thought that this is a wrong decision. And so the leadership team very smartly said, okay, well, let's, you know, obviously you're passionate about this and you feel strongly. So maybe there is some interesting learning here that we can apply

to a future project and actually come up with something amazing. So I think it's both on the individual side, exploring how you can move forward, what it's telling you. And then on the leadership side, not just dismissing someone who's frustrated, but saying like, this person cares a lot.

And so what is it that that frustration, like what might I be able to learn from those feelings? Right. Like the opposite of love is, is indifference. Like, I don't care, whatever.

Like that's, that's the worst. Like that's, if they don't care, then you're kind of, you're kind of out. Like there's, it's hard.

I'd rather than care and be mad than just to be like, ah, whatever. I mean, we've seen those people who are kind of checked out where they quit, but they actually don't quit, you know? That's the worst for an organization where they've tightly quit,

but they, they haven't actually resigned yet. They're just kind of there collecting. And I think that's, that's rough. That's where anger can be really good. Just an aside, you've already referenced numerous cool stories from your own research,

whether it's Pixar, Gretchen and others. What's your, What's your research process to help when you write books like this? Yeah, it's a mix primarily of just reading as much as possible and then talking to experts. And I would define experts as, actually, I'll say one reading as much as possible, two talking to experts, which would be academics, who have studied this, and then practitioners who are actually applying those insights to the workplace, because often you can research something,

but then not really know how that translates into meetings, into leadership. And then the third is for our upcoming book, Molly and I surveyed about 1,500 people from all different walks of life around the world, all who worked at large organizations, though, just to sort of understand which big emotions do you encounter often in the workplace and asking them, like, what are some challenging situations that you faced? because we wanted to make sure that any advice we gave was applicable and practical and actually addressed real problems that people are facing. So we didn't just want to kind of sit in an isolated chamber and pontificate about what might people think in the workplace. It was like, okay, here's what we're hearing and here's some specific advice for how to deal with that. I'm really fascinated about this serving because Dan Pink did the same thing on regret.

I know you write about regret. Dan was just on a few weeks ago. can you what were some of the questions on the surveys and like how did you go about actually executing on this idea of the questions that you came up with and then getting them out to people i'm really curious about that part yeah so we didn't use anything fancy we made a google survey and then we promoted that on our instagram and then on lincoln so kind of using our existing audience channels us or newsletter and then also invited people to share that as much as possible. I think the key for us is keeping it pretty short, so making it easy

for people to just click, click, click, and then they were done. Questions we asked, so we had some open-ended ones, but the first two, one was we listed out the seven emotions that we talk about in our new book. So it's like uncertainty, perfectionism, burnout, anger, regret, those kinds of things. And we asked, have you ever heard these emotions described as negative or bad? And 97, percent of people said yes. And then we asked in the last month, so in the last 30 days, have you experienced at least one of these emotions? And 99% of people also said yes. So that we were trying to get at. These are such universal things that we all encounter. And if you haven't encountered them in the last 30 days, you certainly will in the next year or two years. Like,

if you live long enough, part of that you're signing up for to feel like hard things at certain times. You will encounter loss. You will encounter failure. You will go through difficult periods. And so if these are so common, why do we still think of them as bad? Why do we still feel shame? Like you are not the only person feeling this. So that was one part. And then we also had open-ended questions around, yeah, what, like what would you like answered? What do you struggle with so we could get at what would be useful advice? Very cool. Okay. What do you think of when you hear the phrase work life balance. Oh yeah. This is a good question. I think generally people are well-intentioned when they use it. I think to me, the first thing that comes to mind is just that

it's a very individual thing. So there's research that shows that there tend to be two kinds of people. some are segmenters. And these are people that really like having their work completely separate from their home. So they don't really want to see colleagues on the weekend. They don't want to share baby photos with their work friends. Like it's just the two are separate. And then you have integrators who are much more happy to go out, like just become lifelong friends with their colleagues, check their email on the weekend. Like it's just, you know, it's more fluid.

And so I think as a leader, even understanding that, like this person is a segmenter and this person's an integrator can help you help them achieve better work-life balance. So if they really like separation, then maybe that person you're more careful about let's not send them emails on the weekend. If we can avoid it when they're on vacation, I really want to make sure that all projects are wrapped up so they completely have that time off. Whereas an integrator, not that you should be paying them constantly when they're on vacation, but they might actually not mind like just on a Sunday afternoon catching up on tasks that kind of thing.

So yeah, for me, the first thing that comes to mind is it's just so individual. I think we all have different sort of value sets and preferences around that. What is it for you? For me, it is getting a good night's sleep. It's crucial. And then it's just having time for the, people and things that I love. So are you a segmenter or an integrator?

I think I'm kind of a mix. So I would say on the social side, I'm probably more of a segmenter. Like I think this is still my traditional upbringing of just being a little hesitant to share everything in my personal life with people at work. And then, but I do, I don't really mind checking my email on the weekends. Like it's not disruptive to me. It doesn't feel overwhelming. I like knowing what's going on.

I like catching up being ahead on the week on a Sunday night. So again, it's just what feels okay to you. Those things don't feel, they don't cause me to burn out. That's just my preference. So you also have written about self-worth and detaching that from the work you do. And I guess my job's different because I do this for a living. But I mean, I absolutely, if things are going well with my podcast and the speaking and the leadership circles I run, I just feel like I'm fulfilled. I'm happy. I'm in a much better

place. And if maybe something's going bad or a crowd didn't go well, I feel awful. I mean, I feel like I'm a dumb the worst. And so I've probably messed this up. And I try to stay composed. My parents are really good about teaching that, but you know, you still mess things up. What's this, what's your thought process on detaching yourself worth from the work that you do? Yeah, so it's completely normal to if you again are struggling at work or something doesn't go as well as you wanted to feel badly and have a night or you're kind of down. It's more when you get into this sort of in therapy. This is called enmeshment when it's just you're one with your work. So you're just so closely.

Your identity is so intertwined with it. And that's when it becomes very harmful. So that's when getting critical feedback feels. like the end of the world. It feels like a complete failure of who you are. And then it's harder to pick yourself back up again and keep trying. It's really, really easy to get addicted to the little dopamine bursts of affirmation we get at work. I absolutely feel this. And the way that it manifests for me is I call it like day one vacation despair, where if I have a week off, the first day, I'm always just like, who am I?

Like what, what am I doing? I'm not getting slack. I'm worthless. I'm not doing anything. Yeah. Like I'm not getting, yeah, just like I'm not getting these little hits of dopamine of like, oh, I got an email response. My boss said, good job.

I made a presentation. And it takes me a couple of days to kind of realize that I'm still interesting. I'm still worthwhile. If I just take a week off and like look at TikTok or read a book or something that I wouldn't call quote unquote product. And so I think that's really what it's about. It's about maintaining enough emotional distance from your work so that when you have a bad day, you're still able to say like, this was a bad day and tomorrow's a new day, as opposed to,

I'm never going to get over this. And I'm just completely a failure. That's when it's really harmful. Okay. Okay. Gotcha. That makes more sense. Also, I was reading about PTG.

that's post-traumatic growth. What is that? What's PTG? Yeah, so PTG is something researchers have identified that we feel after going through really challenging times. And so one of the things that Molly and I say in our book, Big Feelings, is when you are, like let's say you got laid off and you're looking for a new job or an extreme case, you just lost someone that you love.

It can feel extremely insulting. in the moment for someone to be like, everything happens for a reason. You know, like tomorrow's a new day. You'll learn and grow from this. But I ask you like that first one there, I mean, what do you think of that? Everything happens for a reason statement when people say that. Trying to make the intentions are usually good, almost always, but I don't know. I don't really.

Just a PSA that doesn't, I don't like that one. Yeah, I don't like it either. to me it's again I agree people are usually really well-intentioned when they say it but it sort of it doesn't create space for you to just feel what you're feeling it doesn't acknowledge that yes in the long run so this is post-traumatic growth which is you can emerge from these experiences with a deeper sense of meaning and with a changed worldview that allows you to create kind of a more fulfilling life for yourself but that doesn't you know it's I think most of us would choose not to go through that hard thing in the first place. So it's different. There's a difference between you struggled through this

difficult period and emerged with a newfound sense of meaning versus, you know, what a joy that your father died and you got to experience this new outlook on life. You know, like that that is just horribly insulting. And so I think it's the acknowledgement of you can grow from this, but in the moment, it is so hard. And we just need to support that person in that moment. Like if you just got laid off, you probably need a couple days to just sit with that and just eat the ice cream and cry and feel terrible. And that might be part of the process. And so I think in those moments, the better thing to say is like, I'm here for you.

How can I help? Do you want to talk? Can I distract you? And then later on, when that person is ready to start moving forward, then it's. Okay, like I'm here to help you. And later, later on it might be, look at how you got through this and the new meaningful life you've created. But it's never this trivializing how difficult that experience was.

Okay. One thing that I struggle with, or at least I think about it a lot, I think I'm getting a little better, but I don't know. And I'd be curious just because you're a thoughtful person who reads a lot and writes. So your writing creates like the, all leaders should read and write a ton because even if you don't publish because it creates clarity of thought. leaders need to be clear thinking. So I'm thinking longer term and goal setting. What is your overall philosophy on those two things, on setting goals and longer term thinking? Let's say just for

yourself and building your career and building the life that you want. I know this is kind of a broad question, but I'm just curious by you, a really thoughtful person. How do you think about long-term goal setting, thinking big or not, writing them down or not. Like, what's your overall mindset on that? Yeah. So I split them into long-term and short-term. So long-term, I have abandoned the notion that I can predict where I'll be in five years or 10 years. When I look back three years, I would never have predicted where I am.

Yeah. So I try to make those goals more around the life that I want to be living and the values that are important to me. And then the details, you know, that provides a decision-making framework. So it's always important to me to have a life where if my parent gets sick or if my husband needs me, I can make that a priority. I am an introvert. So I, you know, I'm just never going to be jet-setting around doing one meeting after another. I always want time on the weekends for creative work. I always want to have some form of creativity in my work.

I really like leading and investing in people and watching them grow. So those are things where those, it's not like I want to be VP at this company and then CEO at that company, but they do allow me to make really good decisions for myself longer term. And then short term, or go ahead. No, I was just going to you have a kind of a clear understanding of what you actually want to be doing during the day or the actions you want to be taking, not necessarily the titles or the money, but actually I want to spend my time with these types of people doing these types of activities I sense.

Yes, that's exactly right. And a lot of it is the world is changing at such a pace that there's jobs that exist that will exist five years from now that don't exist now. So it's kind of an exercise in futility to be like, this is the title I want. Now I'm starting to see Chief Happiness Officer and Future of Work Director So that, I didn't see that

five years ago. And then in the short term, I've always tried to really focus on what's going to make an impact. So every month saying these are the five things in my work that are my top priorities.

And that also helps me I think it's so easy in your day to day to get sucked into Slack message and emails and the small request and the small changes. And it feels good to do those because you're checking things off a list and they're usually easier. But I had a boss, I don't know how I feel about this phrasing. And he always said, you have to run into the spike.

So it's like, what is that like big, important thing that will move your career forward, that will help your team make an impact in advance? And you kind of have to just prioritize that even when it's painful. because those are usually like longer term. It's when you have to sit down and focus. It's when you have to do a lot of internal politics and meetings and shopping ideas around and getting buy in from stakeholders. But I think making sure that it's like this is serving these priorities that I've set for myself

helps you continue focusing on that as opposed to just jumping into like answering these 10 unimportant emails feels really good right now. So that's what I'm going to do. What's an example of some of those top five priorities, whether it's now or some of you had in the past, like what are some hardcore examples that you put in place for yourself? Yeah. So some will be, the very specific one is hiring for a certain role. I have found hiring is hard. It takes a lot of effort and energy.

It's very easy to deprioritize, but it's the most important investment you can make in the fastest way to scale your team and your impact. Others will be, you know, thinking about it's a very specific goal. So it's we want to increase web traffic by 20% this month. We want to get X number of media mentions. We want to, so at Humu, we're now starting to nudge new worker types. So instead of just people who sit at computers like truck drivers and people who work on a manufacturing floor. So coming up with new nudges for those people, where again, it's these. bigger projects that just take, it takes more resilience to just keep plugging away,

but it's useful again to keep in mind. So like here's how those are important. And then also how those ladder up to the bigger company goals. Got you. Oh, one more question. So there's somebody, let's say they're a recent college graduate within the last couple of years. And they want to leave a dent in the world in a positive way. They want to be a productive achiever.

as I like to say that means they want to achieve in a way that's productive for society, but they're kind of uncertain. They're not really sure what they want to do, but they want to do good. What are some general pieces of life slash career advice you'd have for that person? Do something. So too often, and we get this message a lot, you know, do what you're passionate about, discover your passion. And if you're 19 or 21,

you don't know what your passion is. You haven't done anything. How on earth are you supposed to know? I mean, I think there's very few people who kind of know from age two, but the majority, the vast majority of us are not like that. So take a job that's good,

that seems interesting, and see everything as a learning experience. I, after I burnt out of my consulting job, didn't know what I was doing with my life. I needed health insurance. I needed some money. So I worked as a brist at Starbucks for six,

six months about. And I was, yeah, yeah, I was 23. It was the Starbucks that I'd been going to as a customer. So I, because like as a consultant, I just trying to escape the office a couple of times a day. And so now I was like serving coffee to the people that I used to work with. It was very, it was an intense experience. But that was Starbucks is so thoughtful about the onboarding process. Like, you know, there's a lot of turnover in retail. So making sure that everyone feels like part of team, that they learn really quickly, that they're able to, like, get up and running fast. The store is very thoughtfully designed. Some of the tables are circular instead of square.

So if you're alone, it's not like there's three edges where there's nobody sitting with you. The design. Yeah, like everything is just so thought out. Intentional. Intentional, with an emphasis on creating an emotional experience, both for employees and for customers. And that I have come back to Starbucks as an example.

over and over in my career of the importance of this in creating this billion dollar brand, basically off of coffee that is not amazing. I still drink it, but it's phenomenal what they've been able to do. And so that is, I would say, again, it's not a job that I would have like said at the start of my college experience, this is what I want to be doing at age 23 or 24. And yet it was foundational in the rest of my life and the rest of my career path. So I think, yeah, like do something, see it as a learning experience and just try to like soak in everything you can ask lots of questions that will always be valuable. That's so, that's so good.

I remember I had like a really bad boss at one point. And we've all, if you work long enough, you're going to have one probably. And I was, I would, I called my dad up and I'm just complaining, you know, like a little baby. And he goes, dude. what an opportunity to learn. Just see it as that. And it just shifted how I looked at it. And did I still complain?

Probably not as much though. But I just changed the perspective of how I viewed the interactions of most of it was learning of what I wouldn't do if I had that job. But still there was a lot of learning happening. And I think the same way, like you get a job at Starbucks where you could go in and be like, this sucks. I'm going to complain because I'm not, I don't have this big job. Instead, you're like, why are those tables? square and the other one's round. Let me ask, but like, what a cool thing? I didn't know that. Like, what a cool thing? The thought process of experiential design and like curating an experience,

even though the coffee is whatever. I think like that is an awesome way just to kind of view the world, whatever it is you're doing. There is probably some stuff to learn no matter what. But if you don't do anything, like you said, your first thing you said was do something. If you don't do anything, then you don't pick up on it. Liz, this is so awesome. Awesome. The latest book is called Big Feelings, How to Be Okay, When Things Are Not Okay. We covered, we scratched the surface. There's so much more. And you don't get to see Liz's artwork through a podcast, which I highly recommend looking at online, all the stuff that you do. It's really well done. And I'm so grateful that you chose to invest an hour with me today, Liz. And I would love to continue our dialogue as we both progress. Yeah, thanks for having me. I feel like I also learned from your stories too, especially I think your dad's seeing bad manager. That's still a learning experience. I love that. It is. And we are all, if you work long enough, you're going to have one or two. So awesome. All right. Thank you so much, Liz. This is great. We'll certainly keep in touch, okay? Great. Sounds good. Prior to recording this outro, I went back and watched some of the video of that conversation between Liz and I, which, by the way, I, uh,

publish all videos of these conversations on my YouTube channel, YouTube.com slash Ryan Hawk. Anyway, it was just packed with smiles, which made me think, this is just so cool. I'm so grateful that I get to have these conversations with someone as thoughtful as Liz. And we were just both smiling the entire time

because I think we're both having fun and learning. It was really neat to watch. Anyway, a few takeaways from my notes. Ask yourself, When you look back at your career and think of your best boss and your worst boss, what behaviors did each of them have? And how can we as leaders embody more of the best boss behavior? And then setting up a regular cadence of not urgent but important developmental meetings

with the people you're leading, show them and prove to them how much you care about them and their career. That's what these developmental meetings are. Liz does these every six weeks with her boss, and it really proves to her how much her boss cares about her, not just in what she's doing right now in the urgent matters, but long term. And that's where the results follow when we show that we care about them truly as people in their long-term development. And then comparison, this one really surprised me. Use envy to reveal what you value. But remember, Ask yourself if you'd want that person's entire life, not just the cool part you see on Instagram. And I love the Gretchen Rubin's story of her feeling envy over seeing someone else publish a book and how that motivated her.

And now she's a multi-time bestselling author. And she's amazing. It was also on this podcast. I love this conversation. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. I just wanted once again say, thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two. Hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Liz Fosceland. It shall help you become a much more effective leader.

And because you continue to do that and you continue to write reviews on Apple podcast and rate the show, hopefully five stars, you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.