Quick Fixes on Confidence: How to feel less awkward at the office, stay strong during a job search, and build up your team (w/ Morra Aarons-Mele)

Summary

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Fixable Podcast Summary

Episode: Quick Fixes on Confidence: How to feel less awkward at the office, stay strong during a job search, and build up your team
Hosts: Anne Morriss & Frances Frei
Guest: Morra Aarons-Mele (Author of The Anxious Achiever, Host of The Anxious Achiever Podcast)
Date: September 29, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this dynamic, listener-driven episode, Anne Morriss and Frances Frei tackle real-world questions about workplace confidence, with special guest Morra Aarons-Mele. The trio offers practical advice and thoughtful coaching on:

• Returning to the office confidently after remote work
• Helping team members build confidence, especially in preparation for a leader’s exit
• Staying resilient during the job search, withstanding rejection, and fighting perfectionism

Their warm, witty, and empirical approach seamlessly blends personal stories, research-backed insights, and humor. Notable for its actionable advice and inclusive, non-judgmental tone, this episode is a must-listen for anyone who has struggled with confidence at work.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Nature of Anxiety and Its Relationship to Confidence

Timestamp: 04:14 – 06:56

• Morra Aarons-Mele:

  • Anxiety isn’t a defect—it’s universal and not something to “cure.” Attempting to banish anxiety completely is unrealistic and unhelpful; instead, we should approach it lightly and, when possible, use it as just another signal or even a kind of wisdom.
  • “We feel anxious about feeling anxious… stressed about being stressed. Can we treat it more lightly and bring it into our lives as even a source of wisdom?” (04:50)
  • Anxiety and confidence are closely linked. Anxiety often shows up when we’re pushing our growth edge: “You can’t have confidence without anxiety. You can’t be great at anything without anxiety.” (05:31)
  • It’s important to distinguish between normal, manageable anxiety and conditions that are debilitating (e.g., chronic anxiety, depression, or avoidance) that merit professional help.

• Anne & Frances:

  • Recognizing when anxiety passes from normal to detrimental helps reduce stigma and encourages people to seek support when needed.
  • The critique of pathologizing is fair, but support is vital when anxiety is truly interfering with life.

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2. Returning to the Office & Managing Awkwardness

Listener Question: How to build in-person confidence after remote work
Timestamp: 09:39 – 19:02

• Caller: Early-career professional feeling awkward in-person after years of remote work.

• Morra’s Advice:

  • Grant yourself grace: Socializing at work is a learned skill, and the pandemic interrupted this learning for many.
    • “Learning how to show up at work is a skill and you didn’t get the chance to learn that skill… it’s a muscle you haven’t exercised yet. So give yourself some grace.” (10:36)
  • Reality-check your self-perception: Is your awkwardness really as visible as you think? Most people are too distracted by their own insecurities to notice yours.
    • “Our outside doesn’t match our inside… before you feel worse, establish if it’s really true.” (11:38)
  • Practice consciously: Try Toastmasters, record yourself, join in social challenges (“lunch week,” “meeting week,” “snack week”), and treat each challenge as a playful experiment.
  • Connect by curiosity: When unsure what to say, ask others about themselves—“our favorite topic.”
    • “If you feel like you’re struggling to make conversation… ask them about themselves. You’re engaging them, and talking about themselves, which let’s face it, is all of our favorite topic.” (16:37)

• Frances’ “Chunking” Advice:

  • Break “work” into its component activities: meetings, lunch, snack room, hallway, etc. Focus on one area each week (“lunchtime week, snack week”), experimenting and sharing learnings with friends. Make it fun and a communal project.
    • “Work is not a monolithic thing… I would identify the six to ten things. Lunch week, snack week, meeting week…” (14:31)
  • Most people are too self-absorbed to notice your “awkwardness.”

• Generational Stereotypes Discussion:

  • Younger people are better at naming feelings, but may need support navigating in-person interactions.
  • Mutual teach-in: “They can teach us how to be less awkward on Slack; we teach them how to be braver IRL.” (18:55)
  • “Anxiety never killed anyone. Normal anxiety never killed anyone. You can do it.” (18:46)

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3. Building Confidence in Your Team

Listener Question: How can a manager prepare their team to be confident and independent before he exits?
Timestamp: 19:08 – 26:38

• Caller: Manager of a small team sends weekend affirmation texts and wants to know how else to boost confidence.

• Morra’s Feedback:

  • Tough love: Weekend texts may backfire! Messages from a boss “out of hours” can spark anxiety, given the brain’s threat response.
    • “When you hear from your boss out of hours, it can create a threat response… that’s not what you want.” (20:51)
  • Check behaviors against intentions: Positive intentions do not always translate into positive impact. Evaluate whether you’re unintentionally fostering dependence/micromanagement.
  • Let go—truly!
    • Ask yourself, “Am I doing things that cause them to defer to me?” Actively step back and allow team members to try, fail, and learn.
    • “If you want them to spread their wings, let them spread their wings. They’re adults.” (23:25)
  • Celebrate publicly: Recognize successes in front of others, not just with private affirmations.

• Frances’ Additions:

  • Feedback in public, not just private.
    • “Positive reinforcement in general should be given in public. So why reserve it for private?” (25:32)
  • Celebrate failure AND success: How you react when someone “comes down to earth” after spreading their wings is just as essential as when they soar.
  • Leaders should prepare teams for their eventual absence “from the get-go,” not just at the end.
  • Preserve weekends for rest; don’t interrupt employees' recovery time with work messages.

• On authenticity and frequency of praise:

  • “People know when they deserve praise… If it’s happening every Saturday, yeah, that’s a little…” (26:14)

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4. Staying Confident During a Job Search

Listener Question: How to maintain confidence after repeated rejections in a job hunt?
Timestamp: 28:56 – 40:42

• Caller: “All this rejection is getting to me, especially because I really can do [the jobs]. How can I remain confident?”

• Morra’s Advice:

  • Give yourself grace: Job searching is incredibly tough, and today’s climate is particularly harsh.
    • “This sucks. It is the worst. And my LinkedIn feed every day is full of really qualified people who are just not getting hired.” (30:10)
  • Validate the emotional toll: The anxiety isn’t just about the job—it’s existential, linked to self-worth, security, and providing for family.
  • Get curious and seek feedback: Reach out to interviewers for feedback, even if it’s via a quick voice note. Play detective for any patterns you can control/address.
  • “Acting out of character”: Invoke the most confident version of yourself (Brian Little’s “acting out of character”).
    • “Is there a confident, amazing version of you that you can put on just for that interview?” (33:51)

• Frances’ Story & Mindset Shift:

  • Treat rejection as “not now,” not “never”: Her repeated Harvard rejections (high school, grad school, faculty, tenure) taught her to see “no” as temporary, leading to eventual acceptance and success.
    • “When somebody says no to me, I simply hear, not now.” (36:44)
  • Use rejection as a superpower: Repeated failure inoculates you against brittleness and perfectionism, fueling growth. “For me, my hearing not now has absolutely fueled almost every great thing.” (36:44)
  • Perfectionism is brittle; resilience is flexible: Don’t equate rejection with unworthiness or finality; greatness necessitates risk and experimentation.

• Anne’s Take:

  • Sometimes, “they don’t have all the information.” Keep giving the world more evidence of what you offer.
    • “You knew you were the right fit. You kept going back and giving them more information until it made sense.” (37:50)

• Morra:

  • Write Frances' advice on a sticky note: Keep reminders like “I got this” visible, especially for tough Zoom calls.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Morra Aarons-Mele:

  • “Can we treat [anxiety] more lightly and bring it into our lives as even a source of wisdom?” (04:50)
  • “You can’t have confidence without anxiety… Because anxiety happens when we’re pushing our growth edge.” (05:31)
  • “Give yourself some grace. Learning how to show up at work is a skill and you didn’t get the chance to learn that skill.” (10:36)

• Frances Frei:

  • “Work is not a monolithic thing. I would first identify the six to ten things… lunchtime week, snack week, meeting week…” (14:31)
  • “When somebody says no to me, I simply hear, not now. I would also take all of this experience you have and start using it to form your future superpower.” (36:44)
  • “Flawless or failure is such a limiting way to go through the world, and it’s likely to lead to mediocrity. Great irony.” (39:52)

• Anne Morriss:

  • “The probability that anyone else is even noticing any of the behaviors she’s fixating on… is quite low.” (12:49)
  • “You kept going back and giving them more information until it made sense to everyone that you should be there.” (37:50)

• On Generational Differences:

  • “I want to get to a world where you can be in your feelings and do your job because you can understand how to manage your feelings.” (17:46)
  • “Maybe they can teach us how to be less awkward on Slack; like this can be a generational teach-in going both ways.” (18:55)

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Timestamps of Major Segments

• 04:14 Anxiety myths & reframing
• 05:31 Anxiety as a growth signal, managing illness vs. ordinary challenge
• 09:39 Handling workplace awkwardness after remote work
• 14:31 Chunking the workday, playful experimentation
• 17:46 Generational differences & emotional fluency
• 19:08 Building team confidence for manager’s departure
• 23:25 Truly letting go & letting employees learn
• 25:32 The power of public feedback
• 28:56 Confidence through job search rejection
• 36:44 Frances’ “not now” mindset
• 39:52 Perfectionism vs. resilience

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Closing Tips & Actionable Strategies

• Give yourself grace: Navigating change is hard. Be kind to yourself.
• Reality-check your self-perception: Most people are too focused on themselves to notice your “awkwardness.”
• Break challenges into chunks: Choose one social/professional context to focus on at a time.
• Practice openly, share learnings: Make team-building and personal growth a communal project.
• Celebrate in public, not just private: Affirmations have more power when done openly.
• Seek feedback, control what you can: Ask for feedback in the job search and tweak what’s within your reach.
• Reframe rejection: “No” means “not now.”
• Summon the best version of yourself: Find cues or rituals (“lipstick on,” a favorite outfit, even a post-it) that help you “act out of character” for challenging moments.
• Combat perfectionism with experimentation: Greatness demands risk and accepting temporary setbacks.

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Where to Find Morra Aarons-Mele

• Book: The Anxious Achiever
• Podcast: The Anxious Achiever
• LinkedIn: Open to direct messages and always responds! (41:52)

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Final Word:
Write Frances’ advice (“No means not now”) on your monitor. Make confidence a collective, learned process—embrace both awkwardness and failure on the road to success.

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Transcript

[A]

Hello everyone. We heard you loud and clear that you wanted advice on a special topic and we have some exciting news for you. We're now planning a series on Fixable to help you with your confidence at work and we need your help to make it happen. What are your most pressing questions and problems when it comes to building and maintaining confidence in your job? Please give us a call at 234 Fixable. That's 234-349-2253 and let us know what's on your mind. We can't wait to hear from you. Only Boost Mobile Boost Mobile. We'll give you a free year of service. Free year when you buy a new 5G phone.

[B]

New 5G phone?

[A]

Enough.

[B]

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[A]

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[C]

And I'm your co host, Frances Frey. I'm a Harvard Business School professor and I'm Ann's wife.

[A]

For the last few weeks we've been talking about confidence and what gets in the way. We've talked about the science behind it, how imposter syndrome works, practical strategies for being your most confident self at work. If you've missed any of these episodes in our Confidence series, definitely go back and check them out today. Like every day on Fixable, our goal is to be super helpful to you, so we're going to answer some of the great questions that you, our listeners, have sent us about confidence.

[C]

Oh, I'm so glad we're hearing directly from our fixers. What are we tackling today?

[A]

Love, Francis. We're going to talk about how to transition confidently back to the office after being remote, how to build up the confidence of your team, and how to stay confident during a job search. An experience that is perfectly designed to destroy your confidence and make you doubt yourself.

[C]

I love all three of these. Maybe the last one the most.

[A]

Yes. And there's more. Today we're going to get some help answering today's questions from the wonderful Maura Ahrens Mele. She's the author of the Anxious Achiever and host of the terrific Anxious Achiever podcast. She focuses on managing and harnessing anxiety at work. Anxiety and confidence are so interrelated, which is why we brought Maura on and think she's the perfect person to help us answer today's questions.

[C]

Oh, she does such great work. I'm really looking forward to this.

[A]

As am I. Let's bring her in. Mora Aarons Mele, welcome to Fixable.

[D]

I'm so, so happy to be here. You all, I feel like, are my constant companions in my ears on my LinkedIn. It's great to be here.

[A]

We are super fans of yours and so excited to share you with our audience. So here's how today is gonna work. We are gonna spend a little bit of time getting to know you so that all of our fixers out there, as we call our audience, can also love you the way we love you. And then the three of us are going to answer some questions about confidence that our audience has sent in. This is part of our series on confidence that we are doing this season.

[D]

Awesome. Let's do it.

[A]

What are the big things that people get wrong about anxiety?

[D]

That it's bad. That it's something that we can cure and never feel again. That's ridiculous. And we wouldn't even want that. But then I think on the other spectrum that if you're in a really tough spot with anxiety, that you're never gonna feel better, because that's not true either. There are so many great proven treatments for anxiety. Cause it is so, so common. Some of the best advice I got about anxiety was from Dr. Alice Boies, and she said, you know, can we treat anxiety a little more lightly? Right. We feel anxious about feeling anxious. We feel stressed about feeling stressed. Can we treat it more lightly and bring it into our lives as even a source of wisdom? That's how I feel about it. There is Still a lot of stigma around this stuff. Anxiety is weirdly stigmatized because I think we conflate it with weakness in a way. Like if I'm anxious, I'm not going to do a good job. I'm not going to be trustworthy. That is absolutely not true.

[A]

We are having this conversation as part of a series on confidence. How do you think about the relationship between anxiety and confidence?

[D]

You can't have confidence without anxiety. You can't be great without. At anything without anxiety. Because anxiety happens also when we're pushing our growth edge. And it keeps us literally on our toes, you know? And so I think you'll talk to any public speaker. We all know a ton of public speakers, performers. They're anxious all the time. And it's a really important thing to remember because I would say that everyone will experience anxiety. No one gets out of here without it. But when I think about anxiety as an illness, it really can be an illness. And that's where it just. It really affects your life, like maybe flying. You have to take medication and you avoid certain things. It's treatable and it's workable. I'm here living proof. But it's something that needs to be dealt with and managed. And when I say illness, I also mean things like bipolar disorder and major depression and things like that.

[A]

That framework also, I think, invites people to reach out and get help when it really starts to be a debilitating.

[C]

Part of your life.

[A]

I understand the critique of pathologizing this universal human experience, but I also think, to your point, there are experiences of this experience where it really can make an enormous difference to reach out and get help from healthcare professionals.

[D]

Yeah. If you feel like you're anxious and you don't know why. If you feel anxious 20 hours a day. Day. If you're avoiding things.

[A]

Beautiful.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

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[D]

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[A]

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[B]

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[E]

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[A]

All right, let's get into it. Let's hear from some of our friends. So this first question comes from a fixer who is struggling to feel more confident at the office after working remotely.

[F]

Hi Ann and Frances. I'm early in my career and have spent most of it working remotely. The pandemic started my junior year in college and so all my work experience has been remote until recently. Now I'm working in an office for the first time and I struggle being confident in person. It feels different speaking in person versus zoom and I find myself tripping on my words and fixating on my body language. How can I get better connecting with my coworkers and feel less awkward in the office?

[A]

Oh man. I know she's early in her career, but we hear some version of this from the full like spectrum. We had a pandemic. We all went to our homes. We now have to kind of re enter the world of other human beings and start to interact with them. What advice can you give our caller and the rest of us on how to do this with grace and curiosity and harnessing the awkwardness? Mara, that's what I'm going to try to do here.

[D]

Oh man. I listen. I feel you. I struggle to work in an office even to this day and be with people all day because people are complicated. The first is to give yourself some grace. Learning how to show up at work is a skill and you didn't get the chance to learn that skill. And so you're learning, you know, and that's okay. And like for me, when I was early in my career, I would literally spend a good part of the day hiding in the bathroom just to get a moment and figure out, like, what do I do now? I'm supposed to stand up in this meeting, you know, so this is a really common experience and it's a muscle that you sort of haven't exercised yet. So give yourself some grace. And here's the second one. And I, and I thought about this, is that the thing about feeling anxiety is that it's an internal belief and it doesn't always tell you the truth. And so what I would say to our caller is, do you know that this is true? Like, do you know that you're showing up and you're whatever presence could use a little bit more zhuzh? Or is it your internal belief that's telling you this? And is there a way that you can find that out? You know, like, is there a friend you trust? Is there some way? Because you know, we were talking before, for a lot of us, our outside doesn't match our inside. And so before you start feeling worse about yourself, establish that. And the third thing is to practice, you know, maybe join a toastmasters group, practice with your friends, start recording videos on social media. You know, I think that we have to learn. No one tells us this. And so practice. And I thought about what she said about making friends and I thought, like, could you sort of challenge yourself to be really brave and ask someone to lunch, you know, like take a small step and then reward yourself? That's what I thought.

[A]

I love it. And I love your point earlier about exposure therapy too. Like this is a learning by doing sport, like learning how to go into an office and interact with other human beings. This is not something that, you know, we're born knowing how to do. And so I think starting, I would. My instinct was to start where you're starting, which is the story around the experience of feeling awkward and deciding that something is. Something is wrong. I think the other place my mind goes is it is also thinking about the other people in the storyline. Here our own awkwardness is very self distracting. It's something we want to pay attention to. But the probability that anyone else in that room is even noticing any of the behavior that she's fixing on, much less attaching meaning to it that is similar to herme is quite low. But can we work on the story about our hero here going back to work and can we work on the story around the other people in the room? There was a point in my career where I really got in touch with the fact that self distraction is a universal human experience. People are not thinking about me. They're just not right. Unless I work very hard to say, pay attention to me. And being awkward in a meeting or tripping over my words is not enough to pull people out of their own self distraction. And so just learning by doing and continuing to expose yourself, for instance, I'm not going to project, but I suspect you may identify slightly with the experience of this caller.

[C]

I do, and I have an idea that would work for me. So we'll find out if it works for them, which is work is not a monolithic thing. Work is, I don't know, six or seven different things. There's the meeting moment, there's the snack room moment. There's the lunchtime. There's the playtime. There's the bathroom. There's the walking in from the parking lot. So I would first identify the six to ten things. Get it?

[A]

Get it.

[C]

Mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive. And then I would have lunchtime week, and I would just experiment on lunchtime week and then hold off on snack week, because that's next week. And then I would do snack week, and then I would do meeting week. And I would also try to, like, spread the joy. I mean, you laughed at the thought of it. And it would be fun to have some fun talking to people and have my friends would all know I'm going to meeting week.

[D]

Is snack week like, shark week?

[A]

Well, snack week. We work on our, like, comfort. With snack time?

[C]

Yes, with snack time. Like, how do you play with other. Because you have to go into the snack and I have to tell you, snack rooms, like, they're narrow and there's like a rule. There's like a secret memo that was published that I sure didn't receive on how do you behave in there? And like the eagles and the yogurts and the bananas and the avocado, I just knew that was like, whoa, be careful what you do with an avocado, because a lot of they're precious. They're gone by 10am people care a lot. So I would just take the each week and experiment with it because I have no idea how good you are at work. I bet there's variation in these. And I would just have fun and don't make it a solo sport. Make it a group project and then share your learnings and then make it discussable and I think beautiful. Things are on the other side of it.

[A]

It's so fun, Francis. And to your point, more about. Can we bring some lightness?

[D]

Yes.

[A]

Can we bring some lightness to this and to the point about variability? She might be crushing the walk, you know, in from the street to her desk. She might be strutting it, she might look amazing, but it's the meeting moment that she's feeling awkward. So, yeah, let's like complicate this in a beautiful way.

[D]

I'm thinking of like WNBA and NBA players. When you see their outfits as they're coming into stadium, it's like the tunnel. Listen, I love everything you're saying and I'm just going to give her a pro tip from a, from an introvert, which is to your point, Ann, people think about themselves and if you feel like you're struggling to make conversation and connect, ask them about themselves. Like, you don't have to think about what you're going to say because you're engaging them and talking about themselves, which, let's face it, is all of our favorite topic.

[A]

I've been using that tactic my whole life, totally. To manage my own awkwardness. That's awesome. Let me ask you a meta question here more, and then we'll go on to our next one. There are some generational stereotypes about young workers who have grown up online and then are now struggling with real world interactions. Are you seeing any of those patterns in our work? Or is it just that young people are better at talking about their feelings and feelings that the rest of us have had our whole lives?

[D]

I love young people for sort of wearing their badge of honor. You know, I have anxiety. This makes me anxious. And I hear about it a lot from older generations. A lot. And it's also couched in a way of like, they're always in their feelings and I just want them to do their jobs. You're nodding.

[A]

Yeah, no, we've heard. We've heard that a lot.

[D]

I want to get to a world where you can be in your feelings and you do your job because you can understand how to manage your feelings. And that's the crucial step. Just like if you've grown up online, my kids don't really socialize as much as I did in person. They socialize online. That feels weird to me. That's their life. So maybe when you go to an office, you have to teach them a little bit. And maybe they can teach us about how to feel our feelings, but we can teach them about how to be brave and be resilient and be Courageous and feel our feelings and do it anyway. Like, anxiety never killed, you know, normal anxiety never killed anyone. You can do it.

[A]

Yeah. Maybe they can teach us how to be less awkward on slack. Like, this can be a generational teach in going both ways.

[D]

If I use Gen Z, slaying my children literally make me feel I've committed a federal offense.

[A]

I do it all the time just to make our children crazy. Okay, we're going to go on to our next question, which is from a fixer who wants to build up his team's confidence as he anticipates his eventual exit from the organization. Okay. He writes, I'm in a position where I've created a team of eight over the past 15 months, and I'm at the point where I need to let them spread their wings a bit, have confidence in their own abilities and talents, and make decisions without deferring to my authority. It's an interesting point in my own professional journey where I'm essentially preparing for my own exit, but leaving a team that is able, confident, and skilled to continue without me. I've taken to sending individual text messages to staff generally at the weekend, highlighting something positive I noticed over the past week and affirming their decisions with the assumption that it's a nice message to read on a Saturday morning. It's also a bit more personal than an email, which they may not see until the work week begins. Again, what else can I do to boost the confidence of my staff so they're in a good place when I leave the team? I love this man. All right, Maura. He's. He's doing the thing. He's sending the text, the weekend text. That's affirming them. Why isn't it working?

[D]

Oh, can I. I don't know you, but I'm going to give you a little bit of tough love. Is that okay?

[A]

Yeah. Am I Ann, or am I channeling the caller?

[D]

The caller, yeah.

[A]

Okay.

[D]

So one of my favorite leadership teachers, Margaret Andrews, talks about the disconnect sometimes between our intention and our behavior. And so we know that our intention is really good, but our behavior may not be interpreted as such. And I love your intention, but would you want to hear from your boss on a Saturday? I know from data that when you hear from your boss out of hours, it can create a threat response because our little brain is so ancient and triggered anxiety and stress, and that's not what you want. So, first of all, love the intention, but let's find a different way to deliver the message, because sending something they don't you know, like, why, why is he sending me this? It's Saturday morning, so.

[A]

So not only may it not be working to your point, it may be making the problem worse.

[D]

Correct. It may be backfiring and making people anxious.

[A]

Where does your beautiful mind go on how? What else he could be doing to boost the confidence of his team?

[D]

So one of the things is that he says he wants them to make decisions without deferring to him and spread their wings. And I would ask him to look inside and say, is there anything that I'm doing that is causing them maybe to have to defer to me or not spread their wings? How many times am I checking in with them a day? Like, literally count it. When they check in with me, what kind of feedback am I giving them? Am I sort of encouraging that? Sort of like almost infantilization, Right?

[A]

Yeah, I'm getting some Papa Bear energy from this.

[D]

Yeah, Papa Bear energy. And here's the thing, and I'm not diagnosing in any way, but sometimes when we're anxious, like about our next job, we tend to micromanage. And so I would just ask him to again, get curious, be detective, and of course, give himself some grace. And so my challenge to him is like, do the thing. Let them, let them do the work. And then if it's good, shine it up the flagpole. Right? That is the best thing that you can possibly do is if you want them to spread their wings, let them spread their wings. They're adults.

[A]

And then let's celebrate the shit out of the ones that do a great job. I love it. Frances, I suspect your mind was going somewhere similar.

[C]

So for a few reasons. One is I was bothering employees this weekend.

[A]

I know this is actually an intervention.

[D]

Bad girl.

[A]

Stop texting.

[C]

But you know what I learned from Arianna Huffington back in the day? She had always had two full time executive assistants. One Sunday to Wednesday, the other Thursday to Saturday.

[A]

That's a pro move.

[C]

It's a pro move. I might need some support on weekends because it's not like, oh, this weekend I. So anyway, that's just a note to sell. And I'm listening. Part of a job.

[D]

Totally. It's all about expectations. If that's part of the expectation, cool. If it's not, that's when it triggers them.

[C]

So I was uncool this weekend. That was just about me. But now let me give three things on the tough love side of it as well, but just the. I love the framing. What else should I be doing? And I'm Just gonna go back and edit the things you were doing. So I'm not even gonna give you a what else? I'm just gonna give you. And your intentions were beautiful. Beautiful to your point. So leadership is the act of making other people better first as a result of our presence in a way that lasts into our absence. I love 15 months in, he's thinking about this. If I had a time machine, I would start thinking about this 15 minutes in. So we wanna prepare people for our absence from the get go. So that's just the first thing. And again, you know, in his next job, that's what we can do. One way to prepare people for our absence is to celebrate failure. So when you let someone spread their rings, you know how I know you're really letting them? How did you handle when they came down to earth? And was it a delicious. Was it as delicious as when they soared? Because the learning is as poignant. So that's the first one is the absence, leadership, celebrate failure side of it. The second one, and I agree with Maura, is on the feedback. But here's what I know about feedback. Positive reinforcement in general should be given in public. So why reserve it for private?

[A]

The good things, secret Saturday text messages.

[C]

And then the Saturday that goes to the third one, which is that the difference between a peak performer and the rest of us is that they and you have just guaranteed that this person's not going to have as good of a next week because you interrupted their recovery. Now, intentions were pure and I think these are pebbles and small, small adjustments that can make a big difference.

[A]

Francis, I think in our framework, a couple clues in his message that he is in the state of fidelity with high devotion. But the standards are probably too low for this team to be performing at its best.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

And I think just. Francis, your point about feedback in public is that we all can smell bullshit. Are they really doing that great a job that they deserve the text message every Saturday, do you know what I mean? Like people know when they deserve praise and when to your point, it's always next time. Like people are adults.

[A]

Yes. If it's happening every Saturday. Yes.

[C]

That's a little. It's a little.

[A]

It's a little.

[D]

Oh, a good one.

[E]

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[F]

Hi Francis and Ann, I'm calling in because I'm currently looking for a new job. I guess you can say I'm one of the lucky ones because I'm actually getting interviews with real humans rather than AI written rejection emails. But I guess it really doesn't matter because when I get to the final stages of the interview process, I am not chosen. All this rejection is getting to me, especially because I feel like the jobs I'm applying for, I really can do them and I can do them well. I'm asking you guys for some advice about how to remain confident during this job process.

[C]

So good.

[A]

Oh, such a great question. We talked about this in the intro more, but job search seems perfectly designed to spike our anxiety and undermine our confidence. And in contrast with the first caller, where there are probably some questions about what she's whether what she's experiencing is real or not, this caller is getting very measurable rejection to putting herself out there in a job search. So where in coaching this person, where would you begin the conversation in the.

[D]

Confidence quadrant that Ian shared? I think she would be in the can do, but external barriers are coming and that's frustration. Right. That creates anger. So let's use our three point framework. The first is to give yourself grace. This sucks. It is the worst, right? It's the worst. And my LinkedIn feed every day is full of really qualified people who are just not getting hired. So it's in the water. And I think just understanding that is really helpful and understanding, like you said, Ann, that this experience is meant to bring up all kinds of tough emotions. Disappointment, anger, sadness, and of course anxiety. Like, when is it ever going to change? Am I ever going to get a job? Right. We feel really out of control of our future and we humans can hate uncertainty. So of course you're feeling this way. So I'm so sorry.

[A]

I just want to underscore that it really is the worst. And these anxiety are tied to really core existential stuff with significance, value, security, feeding my family. So it really, this just. This puts all of us in a very vulnerable position.

[D]

Right. You're right. Because it triggers both our own personal anxieties about ourself and our self efficacy and then also may depending on your childhood, like you're a money worrier.

[C]

Right.

[D]

And so money is a real anxiety source and not having a job triggers that. Yeah, it's tough.

[A]

And not just our childhood, but the adult experience. Well, the reality, the reality of providing for our families.

[D]

Totally.

[A]

Okay, so meet this person where they are and okay, I'm giving myself some grace. This is out of my control. This is a tough experience and.

[D]

And I'm gonna get curious. Is there any way we never get feedback on why we didn't get it? Is there any way I could challenge myself to reach out? Cause she's getting to the finals, so she's getting to know people pretty well, which is serious. Yeah, totally. So is there anybody I could reach out and say if you had a minute. And what I do when people are so busy, I say is if it's too much to email me, I leave me a voice memo and I give them my phone so that they can just leave me a voice or tell ChatGPT. Right. So that she can play detective a little bit and get some feedback. And is there something she could change? Is anything within her control? Right. Cause when we feel out of control, she can't change the economy, she can't change a lot. But is there anything within her control that she can change? And maybe there is. Right? So that could be a really positive thing. And then she talked about confidence and showing up in an interview with confidence. And this is the hardest thing But I just wanted to share a technique, and it's a technique that we introverts use a lot. And you can use it when you're feeling anxious. And it's from Brian Little, and it's called acting out of character. So we talked about all those amazing performers earlier who are just. Their insides are jelly and their outsides are like, I'm Eddie Murphy. And acting out of character is really assuming the most gregarious and sparkly and confident version of you. And Brian Little is a very introverted professor and one of the highest rated professors at Harvard. Because when he is Brian Little, the professor, he is on.

[C]

Right.

[D]

And so that's his character. And so I would say you gotta fake it till you make it a little bit. Is there a confident, amazing version of you that you can put on just for that interview? Right.

[A]

I love that. Also your direction to not necessarily be Eddie Murphy or it's. But to find the character inside you. The version of you who showed up at your best friend's wedding or who, you know, like that person is in there and can you invite her to this particular party and into the room?

[D]

I put lipstick on. To me, that's my cue of like.

[A]

Yes. Yeah.

[C]

Beautiful. Yeah.

[A]

More. More is showing up, Frances. Yeah.

[C]

So I have two things to say. One is, and I want to go to one of Brian's classes, but I don't think he's acting out of character. I think, as you said, he's acting within character. It's just a different facet. And I think that's actually important because if we're insincere the same way, we don't like insincere positive reinforcement. I don't think we like insincerity from people. And I think he's tapping into a portion of himself. It's what I do when I teach as well. I'm an introvert who is most relaxed when I'm on a stage where there are thousands of people in the audience. It is my most calm moment. So I'm not out of character. I'm just a different facet than when I'm one on one. So that's my first one is get in touch with all of your delicious facets. And to your point, experiment. Bring up one facet in this interview and another facet in this one and see where do I make it further with these. Get curious. I love that part of it. But as someone who has. I believe I am. I don't know this empirically, but I feel quite confident in the following statement. I have been rejected by Harvard more than any other Harvard professor. I was rejected when I applied out of high school. I applied to get my PhD. So they said no out of high school. No for grad school, no. The first time I went to try to join the faculty. No. The first time I came up for tenure, no. The first time I tried to be a senior associate dean. Now I'm like an amazing fit at Harvard. So I'm a good. I'm a useful experiment. I got no's all along the way. The superpower that the nose gave me is that I don't treat failure or I don't treat rejection the same way other people do. Other people. I find it so permanent and so destabilizing. I treat it as a temporary condition. When somebody says no to me, I simply hear, not now. So I would also take all of this experience you have and start using it to form your future superpower, because I assure you, it's on the other side of it. I remember the best direct sales company in the world. I talked to them about how they hire people that go door to door, and they said, oh, we need to get people that are comforted, even excited, by getting the door slammed in their face. So we can't pick, like, a students they're not going to.

[A]

Were far too brittle.

[C]

No, no, no. You want dropouts. So he, first of all, didn't. So he had no competition for the employees that he wanted, and he had these super successful ones. I would use this as fuel for the future version of you. For me, my hearing not now has absolutely fueled almost every great thing. And honestly, I wouldn't have had the courage to ask Anne Morris to marry me had I not had all of this experience from Harvard.

[A]

Oh, baby.

[D]

Wow.

[A]

You have totally changed my relationship with failure and rejection for many, many reasons. I was also quite affected by your own storytelling in these moments that, oh, it's not now. It's not. No. But also, they don't have all the information. I have all the information. I know that I'm the right fit. You knew when you were 17 that you were the right fit for this institution, and they didn't have all that information. So you kept going back and giving them more information until it made sense to everyone that you should be there. And I think that's also a really powerful pivot.

[D]

That's the best superpower I've ever heard in my life.

[A]

It's pretty spectacular.

[C]

It's very liberating. It's very liberating.

[D]

If I could have just 1/10 of that.

[A]

It's available to all of us. That is the public service announcement that it is available to all of us. That is. It is a mental decision that you made, Frances. Where do you think that came from? Why do you think you got in touch with that truth that is available to all of us at such a young age?

[C]

Because I wasn't in a pristine package coming out of the gate, I didn't get a lot of the secret memos. I was just figuring it out along the way. But I had really good stuff on the inside. And so I made it hard for people to access me. But when I've, you know, maybe in also competitive sports, like, you never win every game. I don't take losing all that. I'm like, not off a limb competitive. And losing is a part of life. It's a part of sport. It's a part of life. And so I'm not devastated by any particular loss. But, wow, am I going to squeeze every ounce of insight into it and watch the film and figure it out and get better. Get better the next time. So Maura, my wife, she has. I joke, she has a one strike and you're out philosophy.

[A]

Maybe because of you, it's one and a half strikes.

[C]

I have no such. I have no such one strike. Are you kidding me? I've just said hello. Just said hello.

[D]

Oh, God. I'm just like. I'm just, like, sucking this in. It's funny what you said about brittle, because when I work with anxious achievers, like, we tend to be perfectionists, and it's really hard to fail if you're a perfectionist. And I try to give them.

[A]

The stakes are high for us.

[D]

It's high for everything. Like making dinner. It's like, what? And perfectionism is brittle. It's brittle. It's so fragile. And what you're saying, and they keep.

[A]

You safe, but the opposite.

[D]

Exactly. And what you're saying, Frances, is like, bring it on. I'm not gonna break. It's amazing.

[C]

I do feel like I go through the world of one of the people that has had the blessing of not an ounce of perfectionism in me, and it's been, like, so wonderful. So I coach a lot of people on how to overcome it because it is this, you know, flawless or failure is such a limiting way to go through the world, and it's likely to lead to mediocrity. Great irony.

[A]

Oh. Cause you can't take the risk of greatness.

[C]

Yeah, but. And when I see the ingredients of greatness, there I'm gonna help coach you to get to the higher part of it. But anyway.

[D]

Yeah. Because perfectionism is anxiety and it's anxiety that we have to break through.

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[D]

And get to the other side. We have. That's the good anxiety that's telling us to push ourselves and we have to break through our fear of it.

[A]

Moira, very sadly we're gonna have to wrap up this.

[C]

Please come back next week.

[A]

Yeah, I feel like we just got started for this conversation. We're just gonna call it this conversation. Is there anything else you wanna share with our audience?

[D]

I just think everyone should write what Frances said on a pillow or on a post it note in front of their computer. I'm a big fan of post it notes on your monitor. So if you heard anything in this conversation or from your excellent podcaster, write it on your computer. So when you're on that zoom meeting, you can see it and think, I got this.

[A]

What's on your monitor right now, Mora?

[D]

Think before you speak.

[A]

Nice.

[D]

I'm a blurter.

[A]

Mine says host the party and I have another one that says tell the truth. But I'm also a big believer in this tactic.

[C]

I don't have any.

[A]

You don't need it.

[D]

She doesn't need them, bitch.

[A]

Oh, you're above the post. Its okay, everyone else, use the pose. Great. Moira, how can our listeners find more about your incredible work?

[D]

Oh, well, you can buy my book, the Anxious Achiever. You can listen to my podcast the Anxious Achiever. But if you want to talk to me, find me on LinkedIn. Send me a message. I'll write you back.

[A]

Amazing.

[C]

That's an amazing offer, everybody. An amazing offer.

[A]

You are incredible. Thank you so much for joining us today.

[D]

This was so fun. Thanks.

[A]

Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Your participation helps us make great episodes like this one. Please keep reaching out directly. If you want to figure out any of your questions about a workplace problem together, send us a message. Email, call, text [e-mail] or 234-fixable. That's 234-349-2253 and we love reading and.

[C]

Listening to every one of your messages. Messages.

[A]

Fixable is a podcast from ted. It's hosted by me, Anne Morris and me, Frances Frey. This episode was produced by Rahima Nassa from Pushkin Industries. Our team includes Constanza Gallardo, Banban Chang, Daniela Baloro and Roxanne hi Lashes.

[C]

And our show was mixed by Louis at Storyyard.

[H]

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