Episode 122: How to Help Your Teams Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay (an interview with Mollie West-Duffy & Liz Fosslien)
In recent years, with the pandemic, rise in cost-of-living, and war in Ukraine, it is inevitable that we have all at some point experienced some form of overwhelming emotion. As such our guests for this weeks show of the Digital HR Leaders podcast, are the authors of the book Big Feelings: How to be Okay When Things Are Not Okay, Mollie West-Duffy & Liz Fosslien. Mollie and Liz share something incredibly relevant and valuable in this podcast, that being, it is ‘okay when things are not okay’.
The conversation will cover:
The top 3 big emotions identified in their research: perfectionism, burnout and uncertainty
How as HR and People Leaders, we can not only help ourselves address these big feelings, but how we can also guide and support our employees in dealing with these oversized feelings that they may be experiencing.
Support from this podcast comes from Charthop. You can learn more by visiting:
charthop.com/digitalhr
David Green: Over the past few years, with things like the pandemic, the rise in the cost of living and the war in Ukraine, many of us will have experienced some form of overwhelming emotion. But how do we handle these big emotions when they become overbearing, and how do we help our colleagues work through them?
Today, I'll be talking about just that, handling big emotions, with Mollie West Duffy and Liz Fosslien, co-authors of Big Feelings; How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay.
Mollie West Duffy: Two of the early warning signs that seem to resonate most with people, one is this notion that if I get sick, not really sick, but get a cold or just don't feel that well, that sounds like a relief; I will have an excuse to finally step away from the barrage of emails and messages and DMs and whatever else is coming towards me. That's a really bad sign, when you actually have to be physically ill to grant yourself permission to take a break.
David Green: In our insight for discussion, we'll be talking about three identified big feelings that people are currently experiencing: perfectionism, burnout, and uncertainty; and how, as HR and people leaders, we can help ourselves and our workforce be okay when things are not okay.
As I was fascinated to learn more about what inspired Mollie and Liz to write their book, I started the interview by asking them a little bit about themselves, and their inspiration behind researching and writing about dealing with big feelings.
Mollie West Duffy: So, we both wrote a book, called No Hard Feelings, which came out in 2019, and that book was really about emotions at work. Then, after that book came out, we both went through some difficult times; so, Liz was dealing with the death of her father-in-law due to cancer, and I was dealing with chronic health issues and work issues, and so we said, "Actually, there are some really hard feelings", and we wanted to write a book about what it's like to work through those difficult emotions, and share how other people had worked through those difficult emotions.
So, we actually pitched this idea to our editors in January 2020, before the pandemic, and they said, "You know, that sounds like an interesting idea, but it's sort of a niche audience; who's going to want to read about difficult emotions?" So we said, "Okay". And then, in June 2020, after the pandemic had started, they came back to us and they said, "We would actually buy that book. All that anyone is experiencing right now is difficult emotions".
I'll share just a little bit about ourselves. So, my background is in organisational development and learning and development, and so I'm very interested in how emotions affect us in work and life; and Liz can tell you a little bit more about her background too.
Liz Fosslien: Yeah, so my far background is actually in maths and economics, so I'm always interested in what are the outcomes, what happens when you make these changes that help people express emotions more effectively. Then, I'm also the Head of Content and Communications at Humu, which we use behavioural science to help teams of leaders improve.
Mollie West Duffy: And Liz does all of the illustrations in the book as well.
David Green: So, the book's got seven chapters, each chapter is dedicated to one of seven identified big feelings. So, just to list those for our listeners: uncertainty, comparison, anger, burnout, perfectionism, despair and regret. How did you come to the conclusion that these are the seven big feelings; and what have you identified as being the top three emotions that people are experiencing, and Liz, maybe if I come to you first this time?
Liz Fosslien: So, Mollie and I started with a list of maybe 10 to 12 emotions, and those are just ones we had experienced. So, as people probably guessed, these emotions rarely show up in isolation. So, if you're comparing yourself a lot, you feel envy, but you might also feel anger or regret or despair. And then we surveyed about 1,500 people, who had read our first book. So, all around the world, we tried to get a really big mix of demographics, and these were the seven that seemed to resonate most with people.
What was interesting though was, these emotions, we also asked people if they'd ever heard these emotions described as bad, and 99.9% of people said yes, so they're very stigmatised. What we found, and what some people pointed out to us, is that one of the chapters, uncertainty, and another, comparison, those aren't necessarily emotions. But when we asked people about anxiety, which is usually underneath uncertainty, and envy, which is the result of comparison, there wasn't a big response. But then, when we said comparison, there was this overwhelming outpouring of stories and people saying, "Yes, I engage in that behaviour".
So, it was interesting to see, people could identify the situation or the behaviour, but somehow we're still a little disconnected from the emotion that it elicited. And I would say, over the past six months, the top three: burnout has been big, I think that's been consistently big over the past two years; uncertainty, it feels like we've hit some kind of new stability and then something else happens, so that's consistent; and then probably we've heard a lot of anger of people, and anger showing up in the same vein as hopelessness as, "How do I change things? What do I do? How do I feel better? I've been pushing and pushing now for two-and-a-half years, and now I'm just frustrated".
Mollie West Duffy: When we first did a survey back in 2020, when we started writing the book of our newsletter audience and our readers, the interesting thing then was that the emotion that most people said was actually perfectionism, which is interesting. I think there's always some sort of level of that. And then, I think depending on what's going on in the world and in your work life, all of that, these other things can come and go, so that's a big one. And then, comparison as well, related to perfectionism, is another big one that comes up.
David Green: There seem to be lots of people that suffer from the perfectionism problem. Before we dig into burnout, which I know is really going to resonate with many of our listeners and, as you said, is the one that's really coming up as the big one at the moment, I'd love to hear a little bit more about perfectionism and what you've found, what are some of the challenges that people have in that particular area?
Mollie West Duffy: Yeah, perfectionism is really interesting, because some people immediately identify with that word, and Liz was giving examples of some people are like, "Yes, that word!" and others don't. I think part of that is that perfectionism, when we think about it, you might think, "That shows up in terms of having colour-coded folders and keeping your house neat all of the time", and that might be true for some people. But for other people, perfectionism is less about that and more about a fear of failure, so a fear that, "If I don't do this to 110%, that will be considered a failure". So to your point, it's not okay to do 80%.
That's really black-and-white thinking, that's like there's either good, perfect or bad, and there's nothing in between. We talked to a therapist when we were doing research for the book, and she said a lot of her clients who are perfectionists, or show perfectionist tendencies, have this feeling that if they stop doing 110%, they will immediately become a couch potato, get fired, stop being valuable to any of their family and friends, it's like, "It's all going to go to shit after this"; and not realising that the things that are actually making us successful and be loved and appreciated by other people are separate from those perfectionist tendencies, and that's what's really hard I think to let go of, is we feel that the perfectionism is what's really helping us.
In some cases, it might be. Putting in extra effort can be helpful in your career; but it also can make us less productive, because we're so focused on this one area, that we're not seeing the forest from the trees. So, I think we talk about a couple of things in the book. One thing is to use the mantra, "I am a person who is learning to [blank]". So, "I am a person who is learning how to be a parent during a pandemic summer" or, "I am a person who's learning how to be a manager in a hybrid setting", and not expecting ourselves to get it right the first time, giving ourselves some grace.
David Green: Yeah, because we learn from failure. I think that's the thing; we can't always succeed, no one ever succeeds all the time. And I suppose the most important thing is, if you do fail, to try and learn from it. And obviously, you take your own learnings from it, but other people can provide hopefully constructive feedback that will help you do it better next time perhaps. But no one succeeds all the time, do they?
Mollie West Duffy: Exactly, yes. And I think that again, a lot of times in the book we talk about, "What's the underlying emotion or need that can help us understand one of these difficult emotions?" and so, that fear of failure very much sits right below perfectionism. We don't often think about it in those terms, but it very much is. So, then you can go into, "Okay, what would be the worst thing that would happen?" or, "What am I saying is a failure?" Is that actually a failure or, as you said, is it an opportunity to learn?
David Green: Now, perfectionists, if they're spending too much time and too much energy on it, I guess there's a nice link to burnout there; and you mentioned that burnout is one of the top, big emotions that people are currently experiencing, and I'm not surprised, given what's happened over the last two-and-a-half years. Often, people associate burnout as overworking themselves and working too many hours, but something that really stood out when reading the book, and I'm going to quote here, "Burnout isn't only about the hours you're putting in, it's also a function of the stories you tell yourself, and how you approach what you do, in the office and at home".
What are the other contributing factors associated with burnout, besides working long hours; and why do you think that now, more than ever, more people are experiencing burnout?
Liz Fosslien: By the clinical definition of burnout, or the clinical assessment, is the mass life burnout inventory. And what we really love about that is that it breaks burnout into different shades, so like you just said, most of the conversations focus on, "There's too much on my plate, I'm working too many hours", and it absolutely is a big problem for many people. But there's also feeling ineffective, so you feel like the work that you're putting in isn't actually leading anywhere. So, you can be working nine to five, have a great work/life balance; but if it's very routine, you don't feel motivated by the work, you're still going to feel pretty drained at the end of the day.
Then another aspect is feeling disengaged, so your work doesn't feel meaningful, you feel disconnected from other people, you're starting to feel cynical; so it's really important to understand which of these aspects you're experiencing, and you could be experiencing all three. That's actually the clinical definition of burnout, is when you have too much to do, you're disconnected, and you feel ineffective. But by pinpointing what's driving those feelings, you're better able to take action to feel better.
So in the instance of, let's say you feel disconnected, and this I think is a really overlooked one in the modern world, where many of us are still working from home, or at least are not in person as much as we used to be, it's really easy to just suddenly drop the social parts of your calendar, or get on a video call, you're admitted back to that call, so you just dive right into the agenda, you're exhausted, you're just, "I don't want to talk about my weekend, I want to get this over with". But it's actually really important then to reach out, and connection at work in particular, it doesn’t have to be a two-hour bare your soul to someone; it can be just organising a quick lunch with people, having a quick catch-up call, starting off team meetings with personal check-ins, again just to re-emphasise the fact that everyone is human, building empathy, building those connective bonds.
If you feel that your work is no longer meaningful, really sitting down and saying to yourself, "Why am I doing this?" and on your worst days, it might be, "To pay my rent", and that's fine; that can also be a motivator. But hopefully there is something else that you can reconnect with, you can reach out and read through a customer testimonial, remind yourself of the impact that your work has, which we often lose sight off, again in a remote setting. Your work has a lot of impact on other teams internally and on the world at large, so it's really again valuable.
This is a big theme in the book, just to get granular about what you're experiencing and the need behind that emotion, so you can start to address it.
Mollie West Duffy: I think that we're so burned out of talking about burnout, so the specifics here really help, as Liz mentioned, just getting a clear sense of that. For me, I experienced burnout after our first book came out. I was working a full-time job and launching our book, and doing a bunch of travel, and it was just too much and I got really sick. I got a cold and then it turned into a flu, and I basically hit a wall. After looking back I was like, I did miss a lot of those early warning signs. I was just go, go, go for a couple of months, and it took me a long time to recover; it took months to recover from it, and I did recover. But I had to ask Liz to do a lot of our events for me, which was sort of a bummer, and she's very gracious in doing that.
I share that, because I think that we don't take it as seriously as we should, until we have experienced burnout, and I'm curious, David, if you've ever experienced burnout, or got close to burnout?
David Green: I probably have, and I know certainly there was a time prior to the pandemic when I was probably doing too much travel. I remember one particular example, I'd been in Australia and New Zealand. Now, I'm in the UK, so Australia and New Zealand are on the other side of the world to me. I flew back from New Zealand on -- I think I left New Zealand on the Wednesday, I think, I might be wrong, and I landed back in the UK on the Friday morning. I had Saturday and Sunday with my family, two young children and wife, and then on Monday morning, I got a flight to New York; I was chairing a conference. I must admit, I felt pretty burned out there. I went straight from the conference hall to the hotel and tried to get to bed, and of course with jetlag, I couldn't sleep.
That wasn't great, and I think what I started to see, and maybe I saw the danger signs, because my energy levels were severely depleted, I started wondering what I was doing. So, I was starting to regulate it better, and then the pandemic happened, so I thought, "I won't be travelling, I might actually have a bit more time on my hands". But then I started to have a bit more of a challenge around, I'd look at my calendar every day, and I'd see, "Oh, I've got seven or eight hours of calls today, and I've got no focus time", so that made me much better.
I look at the research and the importance of having focus time to do deep work, but also to have a break from the screen. So, I've got much better at blocking time in my agenda, which I probably shouldn't admit on a podcast with people listening!
Mollie West Duffy: No, I'm so glad that you have, I think that's really important. And similarly, I know now, if I have more than one day of back-to-back meetings in a week, I say, "I know how I'm going to feel after those days, and that's not being kind to myself". It's very easy to be like, "Sure, I'll deal with that on Thursday", but Thursday comes around and you're like, "Why did I do this to myself?"
So I similarly, on Sunday, I'll look at my week and I'll move meetings back. I'll say, "Hey, can we move this back [or] can I listen to this later?" and I think sometimes we're hesitant to do that, especially if we're more junior in an organisation, or we feel like we're needed in all of these. But guaranteed the other person is like, "Yeah, great, next week works better for me too. Thank you". It's constant, we can't let up with it, we have to continually take action to prevent burnout.
Liz Fosslien: One thing I'll add there too, we've heard there a lot in particular from HR leaders and managers that they have a really hard time moving things around on their calendar, and so they're experiencing something we call "burnout burnout", which is they're under the same stressors as everyone else, they're facing the same uncertainty, plus they're having to help everyone around them manage their burnout. So, it's this really, really difficult thing to move through. HR leaders often are also tasked with delivering really hard news, with creating stable policies, and in a world that is absolutely not stable anymore.
So, I think anyone who's in that profession who's listening, you really do need to be kind for yourself, you have to put your wellbeing first. That is actually the best thing you can do to show up for the people that you're caring for, but that's something we're hearing a lot, which is, "How do I care for myself when I feel like my job is to care for everyone around me, and it just feels so tenuous to step away from that?"
David Green: Burnout can impact your self-awareness, so can you walk through maybe some of the early signs of burnout that people often overlook, and possible actions they can take to help nip it in the bud; and maybe, you see it yourself, maybe that could be colleagues or managers seeing it in other people as well?
Liz Fosslien: So, in seeing it in other people, I think the biggest one is just disengagement. So, it's very easy to assume that someone maybe is just becoming lazy, or they're not interested in the work, and that's actually, as we talked about earlier, a clear sign of burnout, especially if they used to be really motivated and a high performer, so starting a conversation around that and seeing how you can offer them better support.
On an individual side, two of the early warning signs that seem to resonate most with people, one is this notion that if I get sick, not really sick, but get a cold or just don't feel that well, that sounds like a relief; I will have an excuse to finally step away from the barrage of emails and messages and DMs and whatever else is coming towards me. That's a really bad sign, when you actually have to be physically ill to grant yourself permission to take a break. Similarly also, people describing weekends or vacations as opportunities to recover, as opposed to opportunities to enjoy time with your family, or invest in your hobbies and things that you love to do outside of work.
Then, the other one that really resonates with people is this concept of something called "revenge bedtime procrastination", which is you've had a really busy day -- and usually the moment we say this, the response is, "Oh, that's what it is, that's what I've been doing!" So, you have back-to-back meetings, then you maybe take care of your kids or you go to dinner with friends, or you just wanted to exercise. You go to bed, you're exhausted, you feel yourself falling asleep, but you resist that to get on your phone, to scroll through social media, to read the news, whatever it might be, and so you self-sabotage yourself, you don't get the rest you need.
It's a sign that you're just trying to claw back some control over your day, because that's the only time that you have for yourself, and that is a really important signal to listen to, and then you can start to build breaks into your day so that it's not at 11.00pm it's like, "Finally, I have some me time". That should not be the first time in your day that you feel like you can have time for yourself. So, Mollie, I'll let you share -- I love Mollie leaves a magazine in the kitchen. I'll let her share ways that she's built breaks into her day.
Mollie West Duffy: Yeah, a lot of it is just physical cues in my house, so I'll leave out a magazine on my kitchen counter to be like, "Hey, as you're walking through, get off your phone, sit down for a second, read a magazine for a few minutes". Lots of people take walks and all that, but that's an easy one for me. And, we talk a little bit in the book about garbage time and downtime, and garbage time is a phrase we really like, because it's just so catchy. But you have to build in time for that during your day, and we feel bad about that sometimes. It's like, "Oh, should I really be reading celebrity news at noon?" Yes, I should be, because the rest of the day, I'm doing really intensive, brain-heavy work, and my brain needs a chance to recover; so just letting go of that guilt around some of these things.
David Green: Well, it supports wellbeing and maybe helps mitigate against burnout; but also, having breaks also improves your productivity as well. So, you're treating yourself better, but you're also treating your colleagues or customers, or whoever that you're going to be working with in the afternoon, as well, and it's really interesting. There's enough data out there, there's enough research that's externally available that talks about the importance of focus time, of breaks, of not spending nine hours on consecutive Zoom or Teams calls.
Certainly, we look at some of the -- at Insight222, the company I work with, we work with people analytic teams in a lot of bit companies, as I'm sure you do, Liz, actually in your work as well, and it's amazing how much of the work now is focused on understanding wellbeing within the organisation, trying to look at maybe people at risk of burnout, because if you look at some of the network data, you look at some of what people are self-reporting in surveys, you can start to see some of those early warning signals perhaps, and try and take organisational measures to prevent them.
Maybe we're fortunate in some ways that we live in a world where we are able to look at some of this data now. But looking at it is one thing, taking action on it is another, I guess.
Mollie West Duffy: Yeah, even outside of data it's interesting. So, one of the questions that we sometimes ask, or I just sometimes ask people is, "In what situations do you feel like you're at your best; and, who are you when you're at your best?" and people have surprisingly accurate answers. So it's usually, "I've slept well, I don't have meetings all day. And when I'm at my best, I'm generous. When someone emails me a request, I don't immediately have a rage attack because there's 15 other things on my to-do list; I actually think, 'Oh, that's interesting, that's a good suggestion' or, 'I see why you might be asking this'".
So, I think that's a nice exercise for anyone listening to do as well is, "When am I at my best; and who am I when I'm at my best?" and hopefully the "when" helps you to figure out, maybe you do need to move things around in your schedule. And the "who" is that motivational piece of, "Oh, yeah, I forgot that I could be this person that isn't falling apart".
I remember last year, when I hadn't even realised I was burnt out, and my husband asked me to send him a calendar invite for a dinner we had with friends, and I burst into tears. That was just, "Wow!" One little request for me just pushed me over the edge, because it just felt like the straw that broke the camel's back, in terms of there's just too much to do, I can't even take the 30 seconds to do this. So I think reminding ourselves we don't want to be in that place, that's not who we are at our best, so let's try to get back to that.
David Green: Yeah, that's a great warning signal, when something that probably is quite small and won't take long, if that gives you stress, emotion, you probably need a rest, don't you.
So burnout has been, obviously we've talked about, found to have a detrimental effect on efficiency, productivity, engagement and the wellbeing of employees. What advice could you give our listeners today to help their teams find balance at work, and ultimately avoid burnout? A lot of people listening to this podcast, in fact most people, will be working in HR, so I guess it's for their own teams, but also how they can help the organisation, I guess, to try and avoid burnout.
Mollie West Duffy: One of the things is training managers on how to have check-in conversations about burnout and help their employees prioritise their work. So something like, "Are there any blockers that you're facing; where do you need help prioritising; where are you feeling overwhelmed?" So rather than saying something general like, "Where do you need help?" or, "What's on your mind?" asking some really specific questions that get at burnout, and knowing that this can change week to week. So, you might have some employees who suddenly have a family member that they have to take care of, or their kids are now out of school for summer, and so now they're being pushed into burnout, whereas last week they were totally fine. So, it does change; continue to check in.
Then, training managers on how to say to people, "I would like for you to share with me all the things that you're working on so that I can help you prioritise. I know that you have a lot on your plate, let's talk about what we can move off of your plate, or what we can push down on your plate", because that's often when we hear how employees struggle. It's like, "I'm so overwhelmed, I feel like I have way too much to do, but all of it feels important". As a manager, you want your people to be working on the most important things, so this is mutually beneficial to both parties; so, giving specific training around that.
Liz Fosslien: I think those are good ones. I would also say encouraging managers and leaders to model behaviour that helps people invest in their wellbeing. So often, we will get questions from both HR leaders and leaders in other departments saying, "We looked at the data and no one on my team is taking vacation. I know that this is important; how do I encourage them to take a day off?" Then we say, "Well, when was the last time you took a day off, and really took the day off, not PTO equals Pretend Time Off, where you're still emailing and active across all platforms?" The answer's usually silence. So, I think that is ultimately what's going to create the psychological safety for people to feel better and to feel safe taking the breaks they need, is if they see their leaders modelling that.
David Green: There was a pretty famous study that Microsoft did, when they started to understand what was driving -- I think they managed to quantify that every time a manager sent an email at the weekend, it caused each member of their team, who was a recipient of that email, 20 minutes of work, and they felt they had to do it at the weekend; not everyone, obviously, but a lot felt they had to do it at the weekend, because they were receiving it at the -- and they used that insight to change behaviour, and ultimately that's what it's about, isn't it; can you use the data from some of the examples that you gave there, where you could bring data to the conversation, and then actually getting that behaviour changed as well?
As a manager you think, "I'm worried about my team, but if I don't actually model that behaviour myself, then the team aren't going to, it's going to be a downward spiral". So, really important point there.
Mollie West Duffy: One thing related to that too, what you just said about clarifying response time expectations for people responding on evenings and weekends, so we recommend teams have a kick-off meeting to talk about how they want to work together; so, "How do we want to communicate; what are the response time expectations; how do we want to get feedback; what are our individual goals?" all of that. This is something, when I worked at the global design firm, IDEO, we did and we called them flights. So, we had a pre-flight, mid-flight and post-flight.
The pre-flight, we said, "Okay, what are the expectations?" and we were doing client work, and so we were serving clients, so it was really important to say what is expected. I think so often, it's like, "I'm a manager, I'm sending an email on a weekend, it's just easier to just get this out". We recommend using the Schedule Send feature, but not everyone remembers to do that on the weekend. But even if you do send that, just saying either beforehand as a team, "I'm going to be responding to things at all hours. That does not mean that you need to be"; or, putting it actually in the subject like, "Hey, I'm sending this now, you don't need to respond to this until Monday", whatever it is, just making that explicit can be really helpful.
David Green: So, burnout was one big emotion that's causing problems at the moment. Not surprisingly, uncertainty was another top, big feeling that people were struggling with. How can leaders help their team alleviate the negative feelings of uncertainty, and try and create a sense of certainty and stability?
Liz Fosslien: So I think two great tips for leaders, one is to rally the team around a short-term mission. So, when things feel very uncertain, it's just really important that people still have some semblance of certainty. So one thing to do is, three months is usually a reasonable timeline; even if things change dramatically, there's still some wiggle room within that. And that can be anything. It could be a cultural mission so, "Over the next three months, we're going to try to really reconnect as a team, we're going to try to deliver this amazing customer experience", but it gives people something concrete to focus on, and allows them again to feel some kind of control and focus on that.
The other actually comes from NASA. So, we interviewed a woman, an organisational designer, who worked with teams there, and even at NASA where getting it right is extremely important, they don't make plans, they make what they call "plans from which we'll deviate". What's really nice about that is, it sets the expectation that things are going to shift. So I think uncertainty feels particularly bad, when we get too attached to a very specific outcome, and so a plan from which we'll deviate allows you to figure out, what are the two to three most likely outcomes, or what paths forward, and let's put some concrete steps in place.
What's nice about it is again, it allows you to focus on an end goal, work towards it, work together as a team to think through that scenario; but also leaves you open if things do change. You've thought through alternate scenarios and it's not so startling. So, I think that is a nice grounding exercise that also, again, allows you to have more adaptability down the road, because you've set the right expectations for yourself and your team. So, you can do this as an individual, you can do this as a group, but creating a plan from which we'll deviate is a great practice.
Mollie West Duffy: One piece of research that I think you and your audience will really like, David, is there's this psychology study that looked at giving people electric shocks and they said, "Okay, one group, you're going to have a 99% chance of getting an electric shock", and the other group they said, "You're going to have a 1% chance of getting an electric shock". It was a painful, but safe shock. The two groups were willing to pay about the same amount of money to avoid getting the shock, even though the actual chance of them getting the shock was greatly different.
I think what that shows, is any amount of uncertainty is hard for us, and in some cases it would just be easier if they were like, "You're going to get an electric shock". You'd be like, "Great, okay, I can prepare myself for that. But what that says about us is we're pretty bad at taking the actual chance and translating that into the amount of anxiety that we should feel. So, if there's even a small chance, we still might feel a large amount of anxiety about something.
David Green: I know we're going to talk a little bit about uncertainty, and again I'll probably come back to how managers can help their teams with uncertainty. I guess the point that you made earlier about one-to-ones are really important, they're really important around understanding uncertainty, aren't they, because different people will react to uncertainty in different ways? If we think of the pandemic, if you're a caregiver, for example, you had a real different impact of the pandemic to somebody that maybe wasn't a caregiver, didn't have maybe young children or elderly relatives living with them at the time. So as a manager, it's important to understand how uncertainty is impacting people differently within your team, isn't it?
Mollie West Duffy: Absolutely. And we actually have a couple of assessments on our website; and our website is lizandmollie.com. One of them is your uncertainty tolerance tendency, so how much can you tolerate uncertainty, and this does change. So, the research shows that we have much greater tolerance for uncertainty early in our lives. In our 20s, we really want a lot of change and excitement, and then over time we want less of it. So, that can change, and it can also change based on the setting and all of that. But I think understanding that there are people who are your colleagues who are going to want everything to be completely certain, and how do you help them versus people who are a little more cool with having an open-ended…
That being said, all of us in the past two years have undergone way too much uncertainty. I don't think anyone feels like they're really thriving.
So, one of the big topics, maybe the biggest topic in the world of work at the moment, is hybrid. Now, what tips do you have for listeners, and again remembering that most of the people listening are in the HR function, to help them better manage their hybrid teams; and is there anything people should stop doing, for example?
Liz Fosslien: I think when it comes to having people come back into the office, research at Humu that we conducted actually shows that a hybrid model is best for employee performance and happiness. That's because having some time at home allows you to build flexibility into your calendar. You can go to the grocery store if you need to, go to the nail bar or post office; but then, when you're in person, it's really valuable to have those connections, build your relationships at work. It's much easier to learn by observing other people, to develop a mentorship relationship. So hybrid is actually, if it is done well, the best of both worlds, but it's hard to get right, because there are all these biases that can creep in when we're not together in person.
So, a couple of things. The first is really being intentional about in-person time. So, there's no benefit to being in the office together if everyone is just sitting at their desk doing work that they could be doing at home. So, relaxing a little bit of the maybe intense focus on productivity when you're in person, and encouraging people to go to lunch together, have brainstorms, I think giving managers a list of things they should prioritise when people are in the office. And again, it's all these interpersonal things. So, difficult conversations, performance-related conversations, team bonding exercises, getting lunch together, standing around the water cooler, that's what you should focus on in person, and then lead to the heads-down work for at-home days.
Another piece is really to train managers to combat proximity bias. So, that is this out of sight, out of mind. You might have a team where some people are in the office and some cannot come into the office as much. So, one tip to give managers is, when you're thinking about there's a new assignment, or you want to offer someone a learning opportunity, do not go with the first person that pops into your head. That's probably going to be the person sitting across from you that you looked up and you saw them and boom, they're in your head. So instead, actually look at a list of your entire team and go through that list and think, "Who on this list is the best person to get this growth opportunity; who have I not offered a chance to learn, or just take on a new project recently?" and that's a very tactical way to combat proximity bias.
So, I think (1) just really understanding that hybrid is a very effective way of working, it just takes more intentionality; and then (2) giving managers and leaders the skills and the tools that they need to make sure that they're prioritising the right things, that they're aware of the biases that can creep up. I think hybrid done with a very hands-off approach probably will fail, because you will have all these biases creep in, people won't feel included. They'll also come into the office and then be resentful that they're in the office, because they're doing the exact same thing they were doing from home, except now they had to commute two hours to do it. And so, I think one way to pull people back is again, to make the office experience enjoyable, and really emphasise the benefit of having that time.
David Green: As leaders, we tend to feel that we have to be perceived as perfect, in the sense that we don't express big feelings and try and have our emotions under control; but obviously, in reality, that's not the case, we're not robots, leaders, and we're still susceptible to these oversized feelings. How can leaders go about communicating their feelings with their teams without appearing emotionally weak?
Liz Fosslien: So, we talk about this in our first book, No Hard Feelings, and we really encourage leaders to practise something called "selective vulnerability". So this is, as a leader, you do have to walk this line between sharing, which is necessary for building trust, for becoming a leader others want to follow; but you also can't overshare, which undermines your authority. So an example of this is if you lose a big customer; if you say nothing, when you're silent, people will assume the worst. They think you're a robot, that you're not human, you have no reaction and they're not going to trust you. You also can't come in the next day and start sobbing and say, "I didn't sleep at all, I don't know where our team is going, this is the worst thing to ever happen", people are also going to look for a different job immediately.
So, this balance is what we call selective vulnerability, and it's pairing a moment of openness, so you're talking about your emotions without becoming emotionally leaky; then you're following it up with a path forward. So in the instance of losing a big customer, it's coming into the meeting and addressing what everyone knows happened. So you'd say, "Hey, I'm not trying to sweep this under the rug, we lost this customer, this is not good. I'm definitely feeling it, I know it's been really disappointing and frustrating. If you have questions or concerns, we can talk about those now". You can also let people know they can come to you in one-on-ones. You can say you're going to schedule a debrief to see what happened. Just give them a sense of when and where they can raise concerns and ask questions.
Then the path forward. So, "Here's what I plan to do over the next three months to make sure this doesn't happen again, to make sure that we get to a better place, and here's what I need from you". And what's nice about that is you have acknowledged the emotions in the room, made people feel like you are understanding of what's happening; but you've also shown that you have it together enough as a leader to figure out what to do next. So, you will guide people through this challenging time, and that's the formula that we always recommend.
The other thing I'd say is, as a leader, you are going to have bad days, potentially more bad days than individual contributors, because you have so much more information about the organisation and people are coming to you with so many different issues. And so, it's not about never having a bad day, it's just about flagging that for people so you don't cause unnecessary anxiety.
So one example, we interviewed, Kim Malone Scott, who was a manager at Google, wrote Radical Candor, we really love her work. She thought that she was this cool and calm and collected leader, until one day someone on her team came up to her and said, "I just want to let you know that the team knows what kind of day we're going to have by your mood when you walk in the door". That for her was a startling moment of, "Oh, I guess these bad days I have not been hiding as well as I thought".
What she started to do is, if she noticed that she was exhausted or frustrated, she would just say as she entered a meeting, "It's been a day, I just want you to know if I seem a little distracted, it has nothing to do with you, and I'm really going to try to be present". So, she's not going into any detail, she's not oversharing, but she is making sure that if the person picks up on something, they don't immediately assume they did something wrong, and that turns into an anxiety spiral for the rest of the day.
So if you haven't slept, if you're in back-to-back meetings and it's 4.00pm, just flagging, "I've been in back-to-back meetings, it's been a long day. I'm excited for this meeting, but if I seem a little tired it has nothing to do with you or the work that we're talking about", again a nice way of practising selective vulnerability.
David Green: Yeah, very good advice. Mollie, anything to add from you on that point?
Mollie West Duffy: I think in the context of HR leaders, this is even more complicated, because you really have to monitor what emotions you share and you have to be an extreme model of this. So, I think it goes back to what Liz was saying, we're hearing burnout burnout, and there's something called "emotional labour", which is when we have to surface act and we can't show our true emotions. This often comes up in a customer service context, where you have to be happy and positive all the time. But it also comes up for HR leaders, where you are seeing a lot of things that are difficult, and you have to maintain professionalism and objectivity. So, I think it's about finding people who you can go to.
I know an HR leader who, she will go to her director of her office when she's really feeling stressed and, "I just need somebody to talk to about this to share my true emotions about this, because I can't really show any of them, that wouldn't be professional". But I do think as HR leaders, you can do some of what Liz said around, when we're in the middle of still a pandemic, still a lot of global tough events happening; as an HR leader it's still appropriate for you to say, "I'm feeling this too, I'm feeling a lot of anxiety around this". Having some empathy and sharing that this is on your mind as well is appropriate and maybe will even make you feel better.
David Green: We spoke about burnout and uncertainty today, but there are another five big emotions that we listed earlier that people are struggling with. If there's one piece of advice that you can give to listeners today, what will it be?
Mollie West Duffy: I can start, and I think that just on this last topic of being selectively vulnerable, I think that this takes practice and it's not like you're going to be immediately comfortable. But the more that you do open up as a leader and get positive feedback about that, the more you'll feel comfortable doing that.
So, earlier in my career, I had a moment where I was leading a project and I was up until 2.00am one night, and I was like, "Should I share that I was thinking about this?" and I came in the next day and I said, "I just want you all to know that I care so much about this project, and I was up at 2.00am thinking about it, and I need you all, as my fellow leaders, to lean in a little bit here". I felt scared saying that, but it ended up being the moment in the project where my team and my clients were like, "We knew that you were really onboard and we felt that you were really invested", and that then helped me feel like, "Okay, I can share a little bit more moving forward".
David Green: And, Liz?
Liz Fosslien: Yeah, I think it's just being okay with having a bad day, and having a "negative emotion". So emotions actually aren't good or bad, they're just responses to signals that we're taking in, and there's a lot to be learned from them, and there's also research that shows, when we feel bad, we actually feel worse when we make ourselves feel bad for feeling bad. So, I think this often happens. We feel angry, or we're just going through a rough time, and then we self-berate, so we say, "I should just be able to get up and do all this, I shouldn't feel this horrible". In general, it's much better to sit with it and say, "This is how I feel in this moment. What is the need behind this emotion? Can I take action on it? If not, I'm just going to get through the day and give myself some grace".
Especially with the last two years that we've had, it is absolutely normal if you feel overwhelmed, if you feel frustrated, it's because the conditions that we're existing in are overwhelming and frustrating. So I think giving yourself permission to sit with those emotions, learn from them, is the fastest path to actually feeling better, rather than again, going back to perfectionism, putting this, "I should be feeling good all the time". That's just not a reasonable expectation.
David Green: Now we're going to move to the question that we're asking everyone on this particular series, and I think you'll both have a really interesting take on this. What do you think the role of ethics is in HR?
Mollie West Duffy: People who lead HR definitely have a responsibility to think about ethics, but I don't think it should be entirely on them, and that's the theme here. They're doing a lot, and to ask them to be the sole keeper of the organisation's ethics, maybe there could be some other leaders who help out with that.
Liz Fosslien: Yeah, HR is becoming much more data backed. So, we've even talked in this episode about all the data that's accessible, because we're doing so much online. You can look at calendar data, network analysis, and I think there's a huge responsibility that comes with that too. So, making sure that as you're going through the data as much as possible, you're looking at it at an aggregate level, so you're not violating the expectation of privacy that employees have. It's not actually helpful. There are many examples of when you really hone in on a specific metric, people are going to change their behaviour to make sure that that metric looks good to someone who's monitoring it. So, if it's computer usage, there's lots of videos online of people putting their mouse on a little robot, or on the Roomba vacuum cleaner, so that there's constantly motion, but they're not actually at their computer!
So I think really, as you're going through data, reminding yourself, "Let's try not to look at this so much at the individual level, and are we really looking at this for a good purpose? Is it in the interest of employees' wellbeing?" because, yeah, I think there's a real danger to having so much data. So that's to me where ethics really, really is going to come into play even more so over the coming years.
David Green: Please can each of you let listeners know how they can stay in touch with you, follow you on social media, and of course find out more and purchase your book? Mollie, I'll come to you first.
Mollie West Duffy: Yes, well first of all, thank you so much for having us, we really appreciate it and we had a great time. You can find us at lizandmollie.com, and we are on Instagram, same thing, and Twitter @lizandmollie, and I'll hand it over to Liz.
Liz Fosslien: The books you can buy anywhere books are sold, No Hard Feelings, and Big Feelings is the latest one.
David Green: Liz and Mollie, thank you very much for your time, and hopefully at some point, now that travel's starting to come back, our paths will cross somewhere, maybe at a conference in the US or in Europe in the coming year or so.
Mollie West Duffy: Fantastic, we'd love that.
Liz Fosslien: Thanks so much again.