Women at Work - Perfect Is the Enemy

Episode Date: October 15, 2018

Perfectionist tendencies are a trap that can be difficult to avoid, but we’ll be more productive and advance faster if we don’t worry so much about making the occasional mistake. We talk about how perfectionists can get out of their own way, and how to effectively manage a perfectionist. Guest: Alice Boyes. Our theme music is Matt Hill’s “City In Motion,” provided by Audio Network.

Over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at Work. Having access to it is... Thank God it was you and not me. And we're doing power poses. Just doing quick power poses. Can I say I'm Amy Bernstein again? We do a lot of takes, and our producer edits them together so that we sound like ourselves, but pithier and more polished. Even if we never get a line quite right, or even if we stumble through a question to a guest, we're usually pretty happy with how the show turns out overall by the time you hear it. If we tried to be perfect podcast hosts, we'd just get in our own way.

We'd ruminate over small mistakes, and we'd never take risks in conversation. We'd probably end up sounding fake. And who would want to listen to that? No one. You're listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review. I'm Amy Bernstein. I'm Nicole Torres. And I'm Sarah Green Carmichael. This episode, we're talking about why we should not be striving for perfection in our work and how to let go of unrealistically high standards for ourselves. We'll also talk about how to mentor someone who's a perfectionist.

Alice Boyes says perfectionism isn't a virtue, but instead a kind of self-sabotage. She's a former clinical psychologist turned writer. Her books are The Healthy Mind Toolkit and The Anxiety Toolkit. Alice, thank you for joining us. Thank you. I'm excited. Do you see a difference in the way perfectionism grips men and women? Yeah, so women are more likely to have anxiety and imposter syndrome perfectionism because there are more men in leadership roles. You get men who have narcissism driven perfectionism and who hold other people to their standards and have that sort of belief that

they're special and entitled and extraordinary and everyone else around them has to deliver performance that lives up to that person's view of themselves. Wow. So you mentioned standards. What is the difference between perfectionism and just having high standards? Yeah, so there's a lot of overlap, obviously. The problem is when perfectionism actually interferes with having high standards. So some perfectionists will avoid a behavior completely

if they can't live up to their own standards. So if someone can't clean their house as thoroughly as they'd like to clean their house because they don't have the time to do that, they'll avoid cleaning their house altogether. So that happens quite a bit. The other thing is that perfectionists are often extremely distressed about negative feedback. They ruminate a lot about negative feedback and so they avoid getting feedback. And that obviously slows down their progress and their improvement and development. So often when I am talking with people about perfectionism, there is a resistance to seeing it as a problem. But you've just

highlighted a couple of ways in which it can be problematic. What are some other examples of problematic types of perfectionism? Yeah. so someone with high standards can see the big picture, whereas someone who's a perfectionist gets very stuck on the details. For example, they might have a really hard time focusing on the important rather than just the urgent. So someone that's a perfectionist doesn't like to ever let anyone down or doesn't like to leave something undone. So that can lead to doing a lot of unimportant things.

Perfectionists tend to ruminate a lot over mistakes and spend far too much time and effort trying to avoid any mistakes rather than seeing the big picture and categorizing mistakes as either mistakes that are important or mistakes that are relatively unimportant. So they'll avoid making decisions, they'll avoid taking action. And a lot of that is because ruminating over mistakes is so psychologically painful that they know that making mistakes is going to trigger that rumination. And that's what causes the person to be so motivated to avoid mistakes. So where does all of this come from? Why do we obsess over mistakes? Or why,

you know, am I so afraid of disappointing people, letting people down? Oftentimes, for example, if someone's a smart little kid, they will really get reinforced for that. So they'll learn that high achievement, get some social acceptance. What happens as well is that people who have imposter syndrome tend to continually raise their standards. So they'll achieve a lot and then their anxiety will temporarily decrease and then that relief won't last. So they jumped to the conclusion, the erroneous conclusion, that it was because their standards weren't high enough and they'll raise their standards again. Perfectionism is a real mixed bag. So perfectionism does pay off

a decent percentage of the time, but then it's harmful in other cases. So it creates that sort of intermittent reinforcement slot machine effect where if a behavior works some of the time, it tends to really keep that behavior going. Again, people with imposter syndrome tend to feel like high achievement is the only thing helping them escape disaster. So they feel like their imposter status will will be revealed if they make any mistakes or they feel like really going the extra mile with everything is the only thing that's

preventing disaster and of course like society really reinforces perfectionism in contrast to New Zealand for example where I'm from America so, there's so much more opportunity in America, but it's also, there are a lot more other people going after those opportunities. And there's such an aggressive frenetic work culture here that all of that really reinforces perfectionism in anyone that's remotely prone to it. Alice, this is Sarah. I want to just throw a flag on the field for a second and pause because I feel like on the one hand, the message we're sort of starting to convey is these standards are unreasonable. No one should have to live up to them. Let's opportunities. You know, women do have to prove their competence over and over. And there is some interesting experimental evidence that shows that when women do make mistakes, they are remembered for longer and judged more harshly. In a sense, I feel like women do have to be perfect to succeed in the world that we're in. Yeah. And it is a balancing act. I think the important thing there is to not internalise that.

So there is a real argument that imposter syndrome is a reaction to real sexism. Acknowledging and seeing that that exists rather than thinking that it's something that's wrong with you personally. And then deciding objectively how far to go and what sacrifices you're prepared to make personally in terms of giving up other parts of your life. And there might be, for example, seasons of life, times in your life where you're prepared to overwork, for example, but then you step back at other times. But talk about the role of anxiety in all of this, which is kind of impossible to control. Well, having written a book about anxiety, I would say that the problem with anxiety is the more you try and control it, the more it will sort of bite you back. So trying to control anxiety is sort of the exact wrong approach, and that's what causes it to spiral.

But anxiety and perfectionism are are extremely linked so lots of the the psychological models of perfectionism come from researchers who work on anxiety disorders or eating disorders or those types of problems anxiety is associated with that fight flight freeze response and you can see the freeze and flight manifestation and people who avoid things that make them anxious so that's one type of perfectionist the avoidant perfectionist and then you see the fight manifestation of fight flight freeze is where somebody will be super hard driving and overcompensate and just be relentless and maybe impose their standards on other people and those those kinds of things so you see those two different manifestations that are both anxiety-based and both indicate that the person's kind of flooded

with anxiety. So maybe we can talk about both of those types of perfectionism, because I would say that I'm kind of an avoidant perfectionist. You know, a lot of the behaviors you just talked about, I, since reading your book, have found myself or I'm realizing I do. So if you find yourself, you know, avoiding starting something because you think that I won't be able to do a perfect job or procrastinating on something because the thought of doing an imperfect job really overwhelms me. Like, what do you do to stop thinking that way? It's much easier to use behavior to influence thoughts than it is to use thoughts to influence behavior. So really the key to that is figuring out what you can do to change

your behavior in the smallest ways that feel manageable to you. And then your thinking will kind of catch up with your behavior so practicing doing things in a less perfectionistic way so I really like keeping in mind the 80-20 rule so when I think of something that I might like to do I think well is there a version of this that would take 20% of the work and would give me 80% of what I want. And taking that approach over and over helps you get used to the idea experientially that getting 80% of what you want is often enough. So it's really behaving in ways that are different that help your brain realize that not always doing 100% of what you would ideally like isn't going to be a disaster. Alice, one thing I struggle with is when I have a lot to

do, the thought that often jumps to mind is I just need to work harder or I just need to spend more time. And you have talked about how that can become a kind of trap. I have a really hard time figuring out what else to do in those situations because there is simply so much to do and because working harder does often yield good results for me. So what should I be doing instead? So one of the big problems with that I just need to work harder thinking is that people need to take breaks to be able to step back and see the big picture. And when people are really overworking and hard driving, they really lose sight of the big picture very quickly. And so what will happen is the person will be keeping up with all their urgent tasks. They'll be keeping up

with all the emails that come in that need a response that day. But they'll be leaving hugely important things undone and especially important things that if they're left they might eventually cause a huge amount of stress later so you really learn from taking more breaks that you end up working on those really important things more and you find it easier to let go of the things that are less important or do the things that are less important to like just a bare minimum standard. Again you need to lead

with behavior and expect that your thoughts and feelings will catch up with your behavior. So it's really finding any small ways that feel manageable to be able to do that. Can you tick off some of those strategies? What are the ones you rely on most? One of them that I use, which is if I have something big that I've been putting off for a really long time, and I might've been putting it off for years, usually like months or weeks, that really to get done, like something like choosing health insurance. And that's when I devote a whole day to just one thing. And that once I have done that thing, I can do whatever I want for the rest of the day. And that's something that I find really useful. The other one I use a lot is making project specific to-do lists. So rather than

having a daily to-do list, I have all these different projects that I have going on and I have little things that I need to do toward that project. And often tackling all of a task will just feel way too intimidating. But sometimes there'll be something like I need to make a phone call. Making the phone call feels too intimidating, but I know that the first thing I need to do is actually find the phone number for the phone call. So it might be just finding the phone number is what gets me started with it. What does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform.

With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. That's netsuite.com slash women at work. Hey listeners, if you want to hear from more leaders to help you answer questions like, should I talk about my anxiety at work? Or how do I claim my leadership power? Then you should listen to TED Business, hosted by Columbia Business School professor Madhupe Akinnola. The show features TED Talks about everything from setting smart goals to the latest on DEI in business,

followed up with a mini lesson from Mudupe on how to apply these lessons in your own life. Listen to TED Business wherever you get your podcasts. One of the themes that you keep coming back to is this idea of thinking errors that perfectionists make. For example, either or thinking. Walk us through that. What does that look like? How do we overcome it? Yeah, so that usually manifests as either everything will be fine or it will be a major disaster. that when you do something non-perfectionistically or when you give up a little bit of control,

often the person doesn't do it exactly how you would want it to do or small things. They do small things that you're unhappy with, but that's different from it being a complete disaster. So usually people who are anxious or people who are perfectionistic think that there's no middle ground. And the reality is, is that usually, usually there is a middle ground and usually the problems are small and either tolerable or fixable. Alice, I want to double down on this idea of giving up control for a minute, because I do think this is something I see a lot of women struggling with. I have struggled with it. And I've seen men struggle with it too. This idea that I can't give this task to someone else because they won't do

as good of a job as I would. So therefore I have to keep doing whatever this is and I actually can't let anyone else do it. How can we overcome those feelings and just get to a place where it's like, you know what, maybe that person isn't going to do it the way you would do it, but you won't have to do it. And that's a win. Yeah. So thinking about what you could be doing with that time instead, like getting really specific about what you would be able to achieve or how you would be able to enjoy that time that you would save so that you're actually comparing something specific against something else specific. The other thing is recognizing that sometimes when you let other people do a task, you can really benefit from that. So you can see that they might not do it the same way as you, but they might do it in a different way that's actually really interesting or that you learn something from, or that by handing it off

to somebody else, you actually manage to streamline the task a lot more down to something that's more manageable. So one of the other strategies I actually use for avoidance is imagining that I was going to outsource the task and writing down the steps of what would be involved if I was going to be handing it over to someone else. And when I do that, I often strip it down to something that would be manageable for somebody else because I have less lofty expectations for other people than for myself. So yeah, seeing that other people might actually do something different than you but better in some scenarios. One of the other behaviors that I picked up on in reading your book, The Anxiety Toolkit, as a sign of perfectionism is if

you have a tendency to minimize compliments. So if someone says to you, oh, you did a fantastic job, you know, editing that article, and you say, oh, really, it was nothing. Or, you know, hey, really nice presentation you gave today. Oh, really, you know, I could have done so much better. Like if that is your tendency, you might be a perfectionist. Why do those behaviors go together? How does minimizing sort of reveal inner perfectionism? Yeah. So people who are prone to anxiety are hypervigilant to negative messages and can just kind of gloss over positive messages. And there's an extent to which when someone has anxiety, when you give them some positive feedback, it can activate their rumination about past examples of negative feedback or a past mistake. And that can make it really difficult for the person to accept what they're hearing.

I really find that you get this huge sort of memory and attention bias. So sometimes I will read an email and I'll come away thinking that the tone of it was negative. I'll look back on it after 24 hours and realize that I had just completely overreacted to something ambiguous in the email that actually wasn't negative. It just may be something that sounded a bit like a backhanded compliment and that I've ignored like the 90% of the email that was positive. So how does someone manage someone like you, Alice? I mean, what if I'm giving you feedback, I'm your manager, and you aren't taking in the positive feedback? How do I deal with that as a manager? Yep. So one of the things in terms of relationships is to understand the concept of attachment style. So everyone has an attachment style and about 55 or 60% of people have a secure

attachment style and everyone else has either an avoidant attachment style or a preoccupied attachment style. And so people who have got a preoccupied attachment style, they think a lot about relationships. Relationships are really important to them. And that's actually the category that I have. So I really like building sort of close relationships with mentors and people that I trust to give me feedback and once I feel accepted by that person they can really give me any feedback that they want and I'll be open to it. I might feel a little bit defensive briefly but that will quickly subside. People tend to have that defensive reaction but if you can give them a little bit of breathing space to process the feedback on their own, they can often overcome that defensiveness.

So some people might prefer getting feedback in an email form or something like that where they can actually digest it and have a little bit of time to see it more clearly so they can see the positives and negatives and balance. Someone with an anxious attachment style, it's more important for them to have messages like, you're a really valuable member of the team. These problems that I can see in this piece of work, we'll get through this together. Whereas people with more avoidant styles need their autonomy and independence emphasized. But what would you tell someone who is maybe afraid of getting negative feedback? Maybe they have a more preoccupied attachment style, but how would they talk to their manager about that? How would they let their manager know what their attachment style is? I don't know.

Oh my God, talk about your awkward conversations. Yeah. So how do you have that conversation? How do you let your manager know that you want feedback and that you might be scared of it? You might need it a certain way. One of the things is admitting that you get a bit defensive when you get feedback, but then within 24 hours, that defensiveness has had time to subside and that you really value that feedback. Again, letting your behavior guide your thinking. So expressing appreciation for feedback often makes me feel more open to feedback. So I will really go out of my way when I get feedback to go back to the person and say how incredibly helpful it was. There's also a kind of distortion effect that happens when you're giving feedback to someone you're mentoring who might have perfectionist tendencies, where you're trying to encourage them to go easier on themselves. But what they hear is do a crummier job, you know,

or your efforts aren't valued. And it's really hard to kind of get the message across that really they could lower their unreasonably high standards and still be fine. So is you're overworking on something, you're not doing something else. So really modeling, prioritizing to that person. And of course, you can also maybe empathize with the, especially if it's someone sort of like in the early stages of their career or an intern or something like that, you can maybe give them some materials to read on perfectionism. What about working with a perfectionist, collaborating with a perfectionist? Perfectionists can be a real pain in the neck to work with. What do you say about that?

So one thing when you're working with a perfectionist is to not internalize their expectations. So it's kind of like just seeing them for what they are. So seeing that the person maybe themselves can't see the big picture so when someone is nitpicking about small things like realizing that that's a problem with them and you're just kind of ending up on the other the other end of it especially the the type of like someone with an anxious attachment style the type of overworking perfectionist that I am I find it really really helpful when people set limits with me call me on theist that I am, I find it really, really helpful when people set limits with me, call me on the fact that I'm spending too much time on something. And I think just, you know, in terms of limit setting, sometimes you just have to create your own limits,

like you'll have to decide for yourself if somebody's going to email me at all sorts of hours, I'm not actually going to respond till Monday morning and I'm going to kind of try and shape that behavior or give them some messages that I'm not jumping every time they say jump. It's interesting because I have heard many an executive say over the years something like, well, I have high standards, but I never ask my team to do anything that I wouldn't do myself. And what I'm hearing you say is that there may be cases where actually it is unreasonable to hold other people to your own standards. Yeah. So what often happens is people don't value other people's time. The perfectionist who is willing to work extraordinary hours on something to get it just perfect because that is something that they would prefer to do

rather than let something go in a state that's less than perfect. So the perfectionist doesn't realize that everyone else isn't necessarily like that so they will be asking other people to spend time on things and the other person comes away feeling like their time really isn't respected and that can create a lot of problems in personal relationships and in work relationships. One thing we're hearing from a lot of our listeners is how draining perfectionism is. I mean it's exhausting to worry so much about being perfect and about not being perfect. Like how much energy are we losing to perfectionist behaviors and tendencies? What kind of energy would we get back if we learn to work through this?

Yeah. So, you know, it obviously is exhausting and often something has to give. So somebody will be, someone's perfectionism in their career will end up having costs with them in terms of like the time they get to spend with their children or they'll just be losing sight of the big picture so they might be sort of doing a great job on unimportant things and but have these big issues that are nagging in the background of their mind about things that they need to actually take care of so it's a real gradual process of improving and over time kind of reaping the rewards of that like and it really is just experimenting with different behaviors and different approaches if you can just find tiny ways that feel manageable to let things go or to

do things at a lower level then you'll learn that no disasters or catastrophes happen as a result of that or if disasters and catastrophes happen they're things that you can cope with you can either emotionally cope with them or you can do stuff to fix them and that's the best way to overcome it but don't expect it to be like something that you overcome completely you really have to just kind of chip away at it and think of it as almost like changing your personality. So that's something that you just gradually change over quite a long period of time. Well, Alice, this has been really helpful. Thank you so much.

Yes, thank you. Thanks so much, Alice. Thank you guys very much. What does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work.

That's netsuite.com slash women at work. One of the things that really struck me about our conversation with Alice is that I think women really are in a double bind on some of this stuff. We're not imagining it. We're not crazy. You know, we are held to a higher standard. We are rewarded in many ways for achieving a flawless performance at work. And I think our feelings occasionally of, oh, I have to keep proving myself or, oh, I'm only as good as my last assignment. Those are rational feelings to a world where we are often held to a higher standard. And I think there's sort of two ways of looking

at that. One is sort of outrage, you know, anger, despair, negative feelings, which I do feel from time to time. But the other way is just realizing that, oh, if you feel insecure some of the time, you're not crazy. It's not your personal foible. Like there's no way around the kind of bigger societal ocean that we're swimming in. And in some ways, these negative habits are things that are rational adaptations to an irrational world. For me, the real insight, you know, the kind of mind blower was that you cannot wait for your thoughts to dictate your behavior. You sometimes have to let your behavior shape your thinking. Yeah. And I like that she gave really good practical steps that I think I will probably start taking, you know, like if you have something big that you've wanted to do for a really long time and you just haven't done it for so many reasons, just like dedicate an entire day to that one thing. oh, that's a nice job. This is a piece of advice I got years ago. And I think it's taken me that

long to really work on it because I think women are so socialized to deflect praise. And so it's weird. I've been working on just if someone says something nice to saying thank you. Yes. And kind of and then it like is weird. It hangs in the air. People are like, oh, my God, because it's not expected. But I've just been trying it. I find this topic fascinating because for years, decades, I was completely hobbled by my own perfectionism, the fear of being found out, that sort of thing. And I have to say that, you know, it took recognizing that I was undermining myself

for me to kind of get over it, just flip that switch, to shut that voice off. Where are you guys? Sarah, where are you in this? I think that I have come a long way. I also, especially earlier in my career, really struggled to know, you know, when had I done a job that was good enough? So I got a couple of really good pieces of advice. One of them was just, you know, when had I done a job that was good enough? So I got a couple of really good pieces of advice. One of them was just, you know, being reminded that the perfect is the enemy of the done. If you spend a lot of time trying to perfect something, you will never finish it. And then the other piece of advice I got that was even more helpful was to focus on the big picture, sort of focus on the quality of the overall thing as opposed to the quality of the individual parts.

Well, you just pointed to a phrase that rings in my head all the time, although differently. I think about not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. And my great leap forward was not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good enough. Because I worry about that extra two hours that produces a quarter percent of benefit. Nicole, where are you on all this? So I never would have called myself a perfectionist before. I never thought of myself as a perfectionist. I would be most likely to call myself a procrastinator

or kind of lazy because I'd have a big thing that I have to do. And I just put it off to the last minute. I get very overwhelmed thinking that the outcome will be something not perfect. But reading Alice's book, I started to notice that I have a lot of these tendencies, these perfectionist behaviors that do undermine myself. And I think when you're more junior, maybe you guys will know if this is true, like you have a tendency to focus on those details because your job isn't really focusing on the big picture yet. And so I'm trying to figure out how to jump from focusing on details, execution, making sure everything is perfect. So my boss is like, stamp 100, great job, to being a little more strategic, being more productive with my time, like learning how

to prioritize. So I'm focusing on the big picture, not on the smaller stuff. I think there is a point where the details become just almost second nature. And I think earlier in one's career, you do have to focus on the details because the details are your job. And then there is a kind of part where as you start to master that learning curve, you just take on more complex projects and kind of you're doing the details even though you're not obsessing over them or thinking about them. Right. But I think also you have to recognize what details matter. Yes. All details are not created equal. So you have to figure out what matters in the big picture.

I mean, I'm sure you think about that now, but even more. Well, when do you start realizing those things? Like when did you start realizing that some perfectionist things you were doing were undermining you? I hate to tell, I hate to say this, but I think I was in my 40s, so it would be way in your future, in both your futures, but please learn from my mistakes. I was frustrated. I was frustrated. I knew I had no one to blame but myself. I was frustrated because I felt that I could be further down my chosen path than I already was. I had to look inside and ask myself why. To me, perfectionism is the other side of insecurity. Totally. And no one fixes that for

you. You cannot wait for the external affirmation that you are good at what you do. The world is telling you that every single day. You're not hearing it. I think it also for me was connected to sort of other transitions of life. There was a time when I was younger where especially like being a perfectionist was kind of a humble brag, like I'm such a perfectionist, you know, you're sort of proud of it. It's like I was here until 3 a.m. Yeah. Yeah. But then over time, I started to realize that really for me, it was about internalizing other people's expectations and then gradually deciding things like, you know what, maybe I'm not the kind of person who's going to wear heels. Maybe I just don't care. I find them uncomfortable. I'm not going to do it. Maybe I'm not really going to wear makeup, even if I'm on stage at an event me. And I still do care. I mean, I care enormously, but I care less. And I feel like that helped me overcome the perfectionism too. Because it's like, well, if I'm in tune with my standards and I think I'm doing a good job, then that's good enough. And the other thing to remember is that no one's waiting around for you to fail.

And people are very invested in your success. The people you work with are cheering for you. And if you recognize that, you'll ask for help more. You'll ask for informal mentoring more. I think that it's recognizing that no one is waiting for Nicole to screw up. And no one expects it to happen. And by the way, all of us fall. All of us skin our knees. Sometimes we do it very publicly. I certainly have.

And you get up and you walk away. You know, that's the resilience piece. Yeah. Like I have not really messed up ever that bad. I'm kind of constantly worried about the worst thing to happen. But maybe that's because it's never really happened. Think of how much time you waste doing that and how much energy you put in to worrying about that and then ask yourself, what if that happens? What's the worst that can happen? And what if it happens? especially early on really helped me was sort of intentionally being like what is actually the worst that can happen yes and then a couple of times that has happened and it I'm still here

so yeah here we are I feel like what's really challenging to me now is trying to help other people overcome their own perfectionism because so often the message that you're trying to give is one where it's like okay to make mistakes or even you know hey I really don't need 120 you can give 95 and that's just fine and I think the message that people end up hearing is usually don't work so hard don Don't do such a good job. Quality doesn't matter. You can turn in shoddy work. And that's hard because that's kind of the distortion of the perfectionist mindset.

And as a mentor or manager, it's really I have found it challenging to try to convey to people I really value all that you're doing, but you're not going to get to the next level until there is a little more risk-taking or a willingness to make mistakes or even just you learn to do this in two hours instead of six hours. Okay. Has either of you ever had a feedback, just a review, an annual review? And I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that either of you ever had a feedback, you know, just a review, an annual review? And I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that both of you always get very positive reviews. Do you ever walk out of your reviews thinking, I have no recollection of what just got said? I definitely have done a thing where I walk out focusing on the one bad thing that was buried after like 20 good things.

Yes. of walk out focusing on the one bad thing that was buried after like 20 good things yes and if you asked me what any of the 20 good things where i probably couldn't tell you but i can tell you in detail about the one bad thing definitely yeah yeah in positive performance reviews like i'm still working on accepting compliments like my first reaction is usually someone says something like very nice and I just go, oh, thank you. With a little squeak? Yeah, I squeak. Nicole, I thought you did a really good job in this interview. Thank you.

You really, you really helped. Thank you. Laryngitis. Yes. And so did you, Sarah. Thank you, Amy. That's our show. I'm Sarah Green Carmichael. I'm Nicole Torres.

And I'm Amy Bernstein. Our producer is Amanda Kersey. Our audio product manager is Adam Buchholz. Maureen Hoke is our supervising editor. And we get production help from Rob Eckhart and Isis Madrid. Something that can help us thrive at work is to have trusting relationships with women from different backgrounds. So we're putting together an episode about shared sisterhood in the workplace that will come out later this season. To get a sense of what sort of kinship or lack of kinship you have with the women you work with, we've made a survey. There's a link to it in our

show notes and on our website. Once we get enough responses, we'll tell you what we learned. And as part of this shared sisterhood project, we'll be exploring how women of all ethnicities can work together to reduce workplace racism and sexism. More on that soon. Thanks for listening. This episode, we're talking about why we shouldn't... This episode... Sorry.