This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - Think You Said Too Much? Why Oversharing Might Be Your Secret Weapon with Leslie John | 390

Starting point is 00:00:00 Are you looking for a podcast that your whole family can enjoy that asks the deep philosophical questions like, do trees fart? If you are, then you'll love Tumble, a science podcast for kids. I'm Lindsay. And I'm Marshall. Join us as we explore stories of science discovery from butts to animals, dinosaurs, astronomy, and everything in between. You'll love these stories, and you'll learn something new. Find and follow Tumble Science Podcasts for Kids wherever you get your podcasts, or at sciencepodcast for kids.com.

Starting point is 00:00:32 Quick pause. We expanded to YouTube because we keep hearing I needed this 20 years ago and the next generation shouldn't have to wait. So tell the young women in your world who are scrolling and watching

Starting point is 00:00:48 to subscribe to This Is Woman's Work on YouTube. I am Nicole Khalil and you're listening to the This Is Woman's Work podcast. We're together. We're redefining what it means, what it looks and feels like to be doing women's work in the world today. And today, we're going to talk

Starting point is 00:01:13 about something that most of us have been trained to fear and to overthink in bed until 2 a.m. That thing where you spiral and replay every word like it's evidence in an upcoming trial and desperately wish for a do-over. Yeah, I know you know what I'm talking about. It's that regret loop that comes from oversharing. Because we've been taught that power lives in restraint, that credibility comes from polish, that professionalism means keeping your cards close and your feelings closer and your mouth firmly shut unless you're 100% sure that you know whatever you're about to say is going to land. Don't say too much. Don't reveal the messy part. Don't admit the doubt, the failure, the thing that you're still figuring out because God forbid you lose control of

Starting point is 00:01:59 the narrative, right? But what if that's backwards? And friend, full disclosure, I really hope that it is because I am a perpetual oversharer and also a paradox because I am pretty unfiltered about my own experience and also rigorously discreet about everyone else's. When it comes to my thoughts, opinions, mistakes, head trash, whatever you want to call it, I tend to put it all out on the table. I've written, spoken, and sent oversharing messages that I later want to crawl back into the cloud and somehow retrieve. And at the same time, when it comes to other people's stories or relationships or struggles, I'm a cone of silence. That trust is non-negotiable and I'm not talking about other people's stuff unless I have direct permission. But again, with my own stuff, I have far too often

Starting point is 00:02:46 laid awake wondering, did I cross the line? And how do I even know where the line is? So today, we're getting a roadmap and I, for one, could not be more excited. We're going to dive into the questions of when sharing builds connection and when it backfires. When admitting a mistake may make you more credible, not less. And why we're so convinced that being guarded, equals being smart when the data might be telling us a very different story. Our guest today is Leslie John, the James E. Burke professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. She's an award-winning behavioral scientist whose research on trust, disclosure, and decision-making has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal,

Starting point is 00:03:31 and The Economist, and her new book, revealing the underrated power of oversharing is out now. Leslie has spent more than a decade studying why we reveal, why we conceal, and why we so often get it wrong, especially at work and in our closest relationship. So, Leslie, I am clearly very glad that you're here. And as I mentioned in my intro, you've spent years studying how and why people choose to reveal or withhold parts of themselves. So to set the stage for our conversation today, can you walk us through what your research shows about oversharing and revealing and maybe give us a few. examples of where we tend to get it right or wrong. Great. And first, let me say, Nicole, that was such a powerful introduction. It gave me goosebumps. You showed the gut-wrenching. We can really feel that gut-wrenching post-revealed regret, right? The, oh, my God, I said too much. The disclosure hangover that we can all relate to, right? But you also, I think the reason it gave me

Starting point is 00:04:34 goosebumps is you also pointed to the promise of opening up. that there's so much redemption in even sometimes our most unfiltered blurts. And it's something we often feel ashamed of, but actually there's so much good in it. And so I can't wait to talk about my work with you and talk about how we can reveal better because it really is a skill. So your question on what I saw in the research. So one of the things that really struck me is that I started to realize how much of a problem undersharing is. Like the real costs it has. And I started to realize that not sharing,

Starting point is 00:05:14 not opening up, not saying the thing is not neutral. It's often has its own costs associated. And those costs are usually kind of missed opportunities, friendships that never deepen, colleagues that never trust us, romances that never spark. And for me, one of the most powerful studies, because you talked, you asked me about my nerdly research, which is my love language, And so let me ask the listeners. So listeners, one of the things we did was my colleagues and I, we did a series of thought experiments. And the thought experiments really illuminated to me how important revealing is and how costly

Starting point is 00:05:54 or dangerous holding back can be. So here's a sample thought experiment. Listeners, imagine that there are two prospective suitors, two people that you're interested potentially in dating. And you talk to the first one and you ask them, have you ever had any STDs? Now, admittedly, this is a, you're not going to lead with this question. I'm boiling it down because we're busy people here. But this is not question number one, but yeah, we get it. Yeah. Right. It's not question number one. Right. Harvard professor says, no, not question number one. And what this person says is they say, I've actually had a lot of them. Not good. Then you ask the other person,

Starting point is 00:06:35 the same question and they say, I'm not going to answer that question. Who admittedly, neither of these is exactly your first choice of who you'd want to date. But if push came to shove, if you have, if you had to choose one, who would you choose? And again and again, we found that people tend to choose the revealer who admits to the really bad things relative to the person who abstains from answering. And it's interesting because the person who doesn't answer, who says I'm not answering that, there could be a lot of reasons why they didn't, right? They could be saying on principle, this is an inappropriate question. It might not be because they've had a lot of STDs. And so it was really fascinating to me that again and again, people tend to prefer the revealer in all

Starting point is 00:07:20 kinds of situations, not just dating. Another series of thought experiments was around hiring. People would rather hire someone who really comes clean about the fact that they sometimes got bad grades relative to the someone who, the person who the new college grad who doesn't reveal. This shocked me and I wanted to understand why. And what we found was that it's because revealing, opening up, saying sensitive things about ourselves is fundamental to building trust. The way we build trust is by actually being vulnerable because when we say something sensitive, when we reveal something sensitive to someone, we are relinquishing control to. of the universe. We're implicitly saying, I trust you with this thing to not make a fool out of me.

Starting point is 00:08:07 Sometimes we're wrong, but we're modeling trust. And when someone does that to you, it causes you to trust them more. And we know that trust is so fundamental to human relationships and flourishing. And so when someone abstains from this activity of opening up, we view them with contempt, so much so that we'd rather date someone, hire someone, just be around someone who admits to kind of shady things sometimes relative to someone who just is tight-lipped all the time. Okay. All of that made perfect sense to my brain. And I feel like it's a little contradictory to what we see out in the world, especially if we think about social media or like when we listen to a successful person speak or what have you. I think what we see so much more of is the polished

Starting point is 00:08:58 perfectionism. And so I guess my question is, how do we navigate between trust versus credibility conundrum? I love it. This is really important, especially important for women, right? I go immediately to the workplace, right? You want to be trusted. You also want to be viewed as credible. I actually view trust as the combination of credibility and warmth, right? So trust is the belief that the person has good intentions, right? They're nice. It also, it's not enough, though, to have for that, right? You also need, there's a credibility component to trust too, which is, I believe you're capable, you're competent, you're capable of following through on those good intentions. So I do view them as hand in hand, but you're speaking to a really important point. Are there career limiting self-disclosures?

Starting point is 00:09:51 Absolutely, there are. And we need to be really careful that what we share does not undermine our credibility. One way I like to think about this is if we think about in the workplace, when we're in a leadership position in the workplace, we have by virtue of being a leader, we have status. So we already have a bank of competence of credibility, right? By virtue of this position that we've earned. And when you reveal something a little bit sensitive as a leader, for example, sometimes I get nervous public speaking or I'm working on my time management skills. So that's that's something that we often aren't forthcoming about as a leader. But when you reveal a small weakness like that, it does nothing to your competence capital. Right. It's like this giant bank you have. It's like

Starting point is 00:10:42 taking a grain of salt off of that or grain of sand. But it does a lot for that, that warmth and likeability because basically when you reveal something sensitive, you're making yourself as a leader, especially, you're making yourself relatable. People like you more. And so that's a really important component of trust. And so it doesn't diminish your trust in that sense. It actually augments it. But you're right. We have to be careful because there is a point where we lose credibility. Now if we're a leader and we say, and we've done many studies on this that have like asked your exact question of where's the line? What's too much? Where's that line between too much information? and too little. So we've done all kinds of studies. And overall, what we found is that leaders can

Starting point is 00:11:24 reveal a little bit more than they think they could or they think they should. And it reaps a lot of benefits. So when leaders express a little weakness they're working on, people are more motivated to work for them. They also get more helpful feedback because when you reveal as a leader, your employees are now actually comfortable telling you the truth. So you can actually become more competent because you're getting that helpful feedback. But when does it backfire? So as a leader, it would backfire if you said something, like I'm sticking with the public speaking example. If you, if you shared more in terms of like the emotional feelings of it, like sometimes I get nervous public speaking and I get so nervous I have panic attacks, right? Or I get so nervous that sometimes I can't

Starting point is 00:12:09 come to work. That's crossing the line. Or it stems from some deep personal trauma that I'm going to tell you about from my childhood where you're like, completely. That's another, that's another thing. That's a no-go zone, no-go zone, which is it's not relevant to the discussion at hand, right? That's definitely in the overshare territory. Now, the other side of this that I wanted to mention is we're not always in leadership roles in the workplace, right? Women especially, we often juggle so many different roles as parents, as leaders, as colleagues, as friends. And sometimes we are talking to our bosses, right? We all have bosses. And so there, when we're in a lower status situation, we need to be much more careful. We have a lot less room to maneuver in terms of this,

Starting point is 00:12:53 this competence or credibility bank. So we need to be more careful there. But even there, we've done lots of studies showing that when you show a little bit of your sass, in my case, a little bit of your personal side, your personality via revealing, it can reap benefits. And so in the book, I tell lots of stories of me oversharing and the redemption sometimes. I tell the story of how I inadvertently insulted my interviewer when I interviewed for Harvard. And that insult was inadvertent, but in hindsight, it was me being a bit sassy. And I showed a bit of myself. And I think that I got the job not in spite of that reveal, but actually partly because of it, because I was showing it to myself.

Starting point is 00:13:37 So much of what you said feels aligned with my personal experience, this sharing a week that you're working on or a barrier or an obstacle, I think makes you more relatable. What I often hear is, oh, thank God, it's not just me or it's nice to hear I'm not alone in this, right? It's this humanizing of ourselves. And I think that there is this element of, from a credibility standpoint, is, oh, this person has self-awareness and they also have a commitment to growth or they're learning and growing just like me. In my experience, that happens more often than what we fear most, because what we fear most is, you know, people are going to think we have no idea what we're doing or leave and droves or bash us on social media or whatever the case may be.

Starting point is 00:14:30 And to your point, too, like another story I tell in the book is how, you know, there was a woman who had just been promoted to a leadership role. And to her team, her new team, she said, I'm nervous about this role. I'm not sure if I could do it. And that was very, undermining, right? Because it's a new team. They don't know you. So you haven't kind of built up this esteem. And that was too vulnerable, right? So it's a tight rip walk, but it's, it's so doable. And it's all, I believe all those things you said, it signals self-awareness. It signals emotional maturity. It's relatable. It reminds me of, I often think of things as a pendulum swing. And it's like on one side of the pendulum, you have not revealing at all. In the example of the woman getting a new

Starting point is 00:15:12 roll. It's like sending the message, I got this, I know what I'm doing, I have no fear, I have it all figured out. The other end of the pendulum is I have severe imposter syndrome and I'm going to tell you all about it. What I'm hearing is that there is a middle ground and we are probably airing too far on the side of polished perfection where we could swing where a middle ground is a little bit more in that vulnerable, revealing, but not so far that we swing the pendulum in the opposite direction. Is that making any sense? Does that seem, that makes total sense?

Starting point is 00:15:51 One rule of thumb is Goldilocks. Can you tell I have small children? So not too much, not too little, just right. But what does just right mean? So can I be more tangible on what that means? The rule of thumb I would use is go a little bit deeper than how far you ordinarily go, right? Just a little bit more, not a lot more, a little bit more.

Starting point is 00:16:14 And you can also experiment, too. There's, I love to think about revealing as a skill and as a skill we need to practice an experiment. We're not going to always get it right, but the way we learn, of course, is by trying different things. And so what I recommend is going trying a little bit more than you usually do it, see what happens. Here's my hot take.

Starting point is 00:16:32 What if we all gave the finger to resolutions about losing weight and focus instead on gaining pleasure. This year, instead of another resolution that quietly dies by mid-January, more women are choosing something different. They're having better sex. Beeducated is an online platform with over 150 courses on sex and intimacy designed to help women explore pleasure in a safe, private space at their own pace from the comfort of their own bedroom. And you don't have to guess where to start. You take their quiz and get a personalized roadmap to sexual happiness, no pressure, no performance, no shame. So if you're done with resolutions that make you feel smaller, try one that actually expands your life and relationships. Click the link in show notes to

Starting point is 00:17:17 kick off your journey by taking the quiz. Get your personalized roadmap to sexual happiness with Beducated. Okay, great advice. And when we do that, because it's uncomfortable and new and we don't have a lot of practice and we don't yet know what the outcome is going to be, it can trigger this overthinking, spiraling. Like I've had so many times where I've said or sent something out and then like I go, oh my God and I want to take it all back. Any tips about how to, I don't know, prevent is the right word or manage that, not taking it too far in our own minds and just testing and practicing going a little further than we normally would. Yeah. No, that's great because I am a huge ruminator.

Starting point is 00:18:07 So how can we stop that spiral? One of the things I suggest is a tool where a tool that helps us think about what to share and whatnot to share. Because if we spend a little bit more time thinking about this being a little more intentional up front, that stops the rumination spirals afterward because we've gone in with a more full reckoning of what the costs and benefits are. And the specific advice I would give here is when we're thinking about a decision of whether to reveal or not, immediately we think about the risks of revealing, right?

Starting point is 00:18:44 We're like, oh my gosh, I'm going to say too much. People are going to think I'm an idiot. I'm going to ruin this friendship if I give this hard feedback. And on and on and on. We're really, really good at thinking about the risks of revealing. But that's not a very balanced way of thinking this through, right? We can't just think about one thing. we almost always fail to consider the costs of holding it in, right?

Starting point is 00:19:08 So before we make a decision, if we think about what naturally comes to us, but then also think about what are the costs of not saying the thing? So here's an example. Imagine you're at work and you and your team created an amazing product or an amazing ad campaign or so on. And you know that the idea, the core idea was yours. Well, it was a huge success. It was a group effort implementing it.

Starting point is 00:19:31 but the core idea was yours and you overhear your colleague on the team who you love when the boss asked them whose idea was it they say oh it's a group ever and a part of you dies inside and and so if you're like me right we've all had these situations right like this is so common with women right we often don't get the credit we deserve for the core idea the brains behind the operation and often if you're like me you just kind of oh take it with stride and you think oh if I say something I'm going to be petty. I'm going to ruin the relationship with my colleague, which I really love. Okay, but now think about the costs of not saying the thing. You're going to ruminate even more because it's going to bother you. You're going to rage about it if you're like me. And it's not just perimenopause. It's valid. Not that very monopause raging isn't valid. But I was going to say rage is always valid in my mind. So anyway, keep going. Yeah, 100%. Rage is always valid. And it's therapeutic, sometimes letting it out. Oftentimes it is for our well-being. Okay, so what are some other costs of holding it in? Well, you may subtly be distancing yourself from your colleague, right? And then once you start thinking about the costs, you naturally are more

Starting point is 00:20:44 likely to think about the benefits of revealing. So now you're thinking, okay, well, if I say the thing, I'll stop ruminating. But then you might start thinking of bona fide actual benefits in their own right of, hey, if I tell my colleague this in the right way, you know, we can think about how to say things in the right way, then they may value it. They may respect me because I'm modeling that I care about ideas. And they may learn more about me that I, you know, creativity is really important. It's a value to me. And when they know you better, that is the source of a stronger relationship with them. So you can start seeing that once you think these things through more, you have a more reasonable analysis of the costs and the benefits. And I think that will help us to then afterwards,

Starting point is 00:21:35 if things don't go as expected, we think, well, at least when I made the decision, I really thought it through. And I'm not suggesting we'd get super cerebral about all our decisions. Just do it for one or two. Maybe it's a big one. Maybe it's a banal one. Sometimes the banal ones are easier to practice on because they're less, the stakes are lower. But if we just do that a couple of, of times, it really conditions our brain to do this more naturally. So I love this cost benefit. And I think the acknowledgement that either way there is a cost. And so which cost are we more willing to deal with? The cost of risk or the cost of damaging relationship, raging all day. I mean, yes. So there's that. I also, I want to go back to the word intention. I think, too, as I think, as I think,

Starting point is 00:22:22 think about the times where I've felt really good about oversharing or where I feel like it did build trust and make people feel less alone. My intention was that, was to be honest, to share what I was learning or struggling with. There was a beneficial intention, not just for me, but for the person I was sharing with. And I can't control whether that intention actually becomes the outcome, but at least going into it, there was that intention. I think checking in with ourselves is my intention to dump my stuff onto somebody else or to blame or to excuse. There are intentions where if we're being really honest with ourselves, it's pretty clear that it may not be beneficial for us to share. But if our intentions are good, is that a fair? Absolutely. So to emphasize a couple of the really important

Starting point is 00:23:18 core points you just made. One is doing this exercise will increase your self-awareness. You'll become more aware of why you do the things you do and why you don't do the things you do. And secondly, the intention is really key because the way you communicate something will be fundamentally based on your intention. So if your intentions are benevolent, which they would be in saying the thing, you will naturally say it much better than if you haven't thought through what your intention is. Okay. This idea that we trust people more when they admit their mistakes or embarrassing truths or failures or messy parts, if we do that, then why do we punish ourselves for doing the same? Why are we attracted to it and other people and resist it within ourselves? Oh my gosh.

Starting point is 00:24:08 I love this. This is so astute. So I would venture to say that the beating up, to be blunt, of ourselves, is more in our minds than in actuality. And by that, I mean, when we actually do the thing, when we say the thing, we are more apt to experience the benefits. But the problem is we're beating ourselves up in our minds before we even say the things, right? We're thinking to ourselves, if I say this,

Starting point is 00:24:35 it's going to go horribly. But if we do the thing more, if we say the thing more, it's not going to always go well, but we will be more at, then we'll actually see the problem. benefits because the problem with undersharing with not saying the thing is that we don't see the missed opportunities, right? And so in that vein, what I'd like to do is I'd like to try to help us make visible what's often invisible in daily life. And that is the sheer number of opportunities

Starting point is 00:25:03 we have to share that we don't realize and just how often we're holding back. So here's a day in the life, right? It may be informed by my own life, but I think it's pretty relatable to All of us other women who are just trying to survive in the world. Okay, so you wake up in the morning, you roll over in bed, you say to your spouse, you know, we'll start off in a cuddly level, I love you, good morning, you say that. But what you don't say, you don't say, I slept really crappily, when I don't sleep well, I can't regulate my emotions, I might need more help today. You don't say that.

Starting point is 00:25:42 You don't even think about saying it often. And it's probably your fault because you snore. Exactly. Oh, my goodness. Preach. So then you go to the bathroom. You're standing next to your spouse. You're brushing your teeth. You think to yourself, you know, I feel older than I thought I would at this age.

Starting point is 00:26:01 How come I still have acne and I'm in my 40s? You don't say these things. You just think them. And then you get down to the kitchen. The kids are frolicking. Your spouse is making the lunches for the kids and says to you, hey, what do you think they want for lunch? what do I do? I snap. I say, I don't know, too many decisions. That's what I say. What I think is,

Starting point is 00:26:19 I'm tired, I'm exhausted, I might need a hog. I could go on and on. I have many more examples of what we share and what we don't share within the day in the life, right? We're not even at breakfast yet. And what we see is we've said a lot less than what we have not said. I'm not saying we should say all of those things that occur. But what I'm suggesting is, I think that we should think about sharing those things more. These things go under the radar. We don't even consider sharing them. And you can imagine, right, if we shared some of these things, if I said I slept crappily and I might need a little more grace, when I do that because I practice now, when I say that, my husband is so much more accommodating. He's so loving, but he can't read my mind. And so the

Starting point is 00:27:05 snack, the tiff over the snack is never about the snack. And if we are a little more proactive in sharing our feelings, we can have stronger relationships and not just avoid the TIFs, but have stronger relationships. That monologue of when I was looking in the mirror at myself, if I had shared some of those things, I bet my husband would have helped me work through them. I am so glad you went through that example because I don't think it even remotely occurred to me how much, even as an overshare, I'm not sharing and how many opportunities there are. and to your earlier example of the costs of not sharing, it's that built up resentment.

Starting point is 00:27:46 It's the, why doesn't this person know or why can't they see you or the feeling of feeling alone or lonely or that there's something, I mean, there's so, so, so many things that come out of it and so many examples in our day, again, like even before breakfast of opportunities where we could. So I really, really appreciate that. Now, I'm curious your thoughts.

Starting point is 00:28:11 There are a lot of words that are really important, big, meaningful words that I think have been hijacked, so much so that it is, like, annoying to me. Words like confidence, vulnerability, authenticity. Vulnerability and authenticity are superpowers. Like, the amount of power and umph in those words cannot and should not be minimized. And yet they're being flung around like buzzwords, and I feel like they are losing their impact in their purpose. And sort of feels performative in a lot of cases. So I guess my question is twofold.

Starting point is 00:28:53 A, are you seeing that too? And B, any advice or suggestions about how to be authentic and be vulnerable without being performative about it? I 100% agree. Authenticity, vulnerability. they're superpowers, but what the heck do they mean? And we toss these words around. So vulnerability, I think of as sharing sensitive thoughts and feelings, especially feelings. Feelings are inherently more risky, more sensitive. But where there is risk, there is reward, right? That's where the magic is

Starting point is 00:29:23 in sharing our feelings more. But we have to be very careful to your point. It's really deep your question because I started writing this book thinking that it was for everyone else because I fancy myself a card carrying oversherer. But it was not until I was writing the book that I realized that even I, oversharer, was holding back on the important stuff, the deep stuff, and that my oversharing was kind of performative. And as I wrote the book, I realized that I had been carrying a secret that had deeply affected me about my mother for 10 years. Literally, the woman who studies this was writing a book about it, did not realize she was doing this. She was withholding until I was writing a book. And so that, of course, led me to then have a conversation with my mother. And that was one of the

Starting point is 00:30:16 deepest conversations I've ever had. And it's a thread kind of through the book now and something that I was scared of and withholding. And it had so many benefits. And so I think that's my hope for us, for listeners, for women navigating this world is not reckless. oversharing, but thoughtful revealing. And revealing is a skill. We can all get better at it. I'm still a work in progress getting better at it. And if we do the thing, if we reveal a little more thoughtfully, we can just, we can get so much. Extremely well said. And I can relate completely. Again, I think there are aspects where I feel like an overshare. And then as you were talking, there are so many examples, especially when it counts, because that's usually when it feels the most

Starting point is 00:31:02 risky, right? Where I have so much opportunity in relationship at work. Thank you for revealing that of yourself and for doing this work and for writing this book. Listener, again, the book is called Revealing the underrated power of oversharing. We're going to put all the links and all the ways to find and follow Leslie in show notes, but her website is proflesleyjohn.com. So P-R-O-F, as in short for professor, Leslie, john.com. Leslie, thank you for being here. for revealing and your incredible work. Thank you so much, Nicole. It's been such an honor to be here.

Starting point is 00:31:40 My pleasure. All right. Friend, if there's one thing you take with you, let it be this. Saying less doesn't automatically make you smarter, safer, or more credible. Sometimes it just makes you harder to know, harder to trust, and easier to misunderstand. Oversharing may not be the goal, but being honest, intentional, and true to yourself is. Choosing what you reveal, not out of fear, but out of self-trust, is where the real power lies. So the next time you feel overthinking shame, spiral, regret loop kick in, pause and ask some better questions.

Starting point is 00:32:14 Not why did I say that? But what did that reveal? Was it actually a mistake or was it just uncomfortable? And if I stopped worrying about all the things I can't control, did I share my truth in a way I feel proud of? We're talking about less guarding and more revealing. feeling less perfect and more true. It's time we share ourselves with the world because that is woman's work.

This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - Think You Said Too Much? Why Oversharing Might Be Your Secret Weapon with Leslie John | 390

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.