← This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil
This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil
Think You Said Too Much? Why Oversharing Might Be Your Secret Weapon with Leslie John | 390
00:34:28
Harvard Business School professor Leslie John breaks down the science of oversharing, vulnerability, and trust — and why revealing more (strategically) can increase credibility, deepen relationships, and build confidence at work and in life.
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- [00:01]
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- [01:24]
Nicole Khalil
I am Nicole Khalil and you're listening to the this Is Woman's Work Work podcast, where together we're redefining what it means, what it looks and feels like to be doing woman's work in the world today. And today we're going to talk about something that most of us have been trained to fear and to overthink in bed until 2am that thing where you spiral and replay every word like it's evidence in an upcoming trial and desperately wish for a do over. Yeah, I know you know what I'm talking about. It's that regret loop that comes from oversharing. Because we've been taught that power lives in restraint, that credibility comes from polish, that professionalism means keeping your cards close and your feelings closer and your mouth firmly shut unless you're a hundred percent sure that you know whatever you're about to say is going to land. Don't say too much. Don't reveal the messy part, don't admit the doubt, the failure, the thing that you're still figuring out because God forbid you lose control of the narrative, right? But what if that's backwards and friend full disclosure. I really hope that it is because I am a perpetual oversharer and also a paradox Because I am pretty unfiltered about my own experience and also rigorously discreet about everyone else's when it comes to my thoughts, opinions, mistakes, head trash, whatever you want to call it, I tend to put it all out on the table. I've written, spoken and sent oversharing messages that I later want to crawl back into the cloud and somehow retrieve. And at the same time, when it comes to other people's stories or relationships or struggles, I'm a cone of silence that trust is non negotiable and I'm not talking about other people's stuff unless I have direct permission. But again, with my own stuff, I have far too often laid awake wondering, did I cross the line? And how do I even know where the line is? So today we're getting a roadmap and I for one, could not be more excited. We're going to dive into the questions of when sharing builds connection and when it backfires, when admitting a mistake may make you more credible, not less, and why we're so convinced that being guarded equals being smart, when the data might be telling us a very different story. Our guest today is Leslie John, the James E. Burke professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. She's an award winning behavioral scientist whose research on trust, disclosure and decision making has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Economist. And her new book, Revealing the Underrated Power of Oversharing is out Now. Leslie has spent more than a decade studying why we reveal, why we conceal and why we so often get it wrong, especially at work and in our closest relationships. So Leslie, I am clearly very glad that you're here and as I mentioned in my intro, you've spent years studying how and why people choose to reveal or with parts of themselves. So to set the stage for our conversation today, can you walk us through what your research shows about oversharing and revealing and maybe give us a few examples of where we tend to get it right or wrong.
- [04:35]
Leslie John
Great. And first let me say Nicole, that was such a powerful introduction. It gave me goosebumps. You showed the. The gut wrenching. The you we can really feel that that gut wrenching post reveal regret. Right? The oh my God, I said too much. The disclosure hangover that we can all relate to. Right? But you also I think the reason it gave me goosebumps is you also pointed the promise of opening up and that there's so much redemption in even sometimes our most unfiltered blurts. And it's something we often feel ashamed of but actually there's so much good in it. And so I can't wait to talk about my work with you and talk about how we can reveal better because it really is a skill. So your question on what I saw in the research. So one of the things that really struck me is that I started to realize how much of a problem under sharing is like the real costs it has. And I started to realize that not sharing, not opening up, not saying the thing is not neutral, it often has its own costs associated. And those costs are usually kind of missed opportunities, friendships that never deepen, colleagues that never trust us, romances that never spark. And for me, one of the most powerful studies, because you talked, you asked me about my nerdly research, which is my love language. And so let me ask the listeners. So, listeners, one of the things we did was my colleagues and I, we did a series of thought experiments. And the thought experiments really illuminated to me how important revealing is and how costly or dangerous holding back can be. So here's a sample. Thought experiment. Listeners imagine that there are two prospective suitors, two people that you're interested potentially in dating. And you talk to the first one and you ask them, have you ever had any STDs? Now, admittedly, this is a. You're not going to lead with this question. I'm boiling it down because we're busy people here.
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Nicole Khalil
But is not question number one. But yeah, we get it.
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Leslie John
Yeah, right. It's not question number one. Right. Harvard professor says, no, not question number one. And, and, and what this person says is they say, I've actually had a lot of them. Not good. Then you ask the other person the same question and they say, I'm not going to answer that question. Who, admittedly, neither of these is exactly your first choice of who you'd want to date. But if push came to shove, if you have, if you had to choose one, who would you choose? And again and again, we found that people tend to choose the revealer who admits to the really bad things relative to the person who abstains from answering. And it's interesting because the person who doesn't answer, who says, I'm not answering that, there could be a lot of reasons why they didn't.
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Nicole Khalil
Right.
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Leslie John
They could be saying on principle this is an inappropriate question. It might not be because they've had a lot of STDs. And so it was really fascinating to me that again and again, people still tend to prefer the revealer in all kinds of situations, not just dating. Another series of thought experiments was around Hiring people would rather hire someone who really comes clean about the fact that they sometimes got bad grades relative to this someone who. The person who. The new college grad who doesn't reveal this shocked me and I wanted to understand why. And what we found was that it's because revealing. Opening up, Saying sensitive things about ourselves is fundamental to building trust. The way we build trust is by actually being vulnerable. Because when we say something sensitive, when we reveal something sensitive to someone, we are relinquishing control to the universe. We're implicitly saying, I trust you with this thing to not make a fool out of me. Sometimes we're wrong, but we're modeling trust. And when someone does that to you, it causes you to trust them more. And we know that trust is so fundamental to human relationships and flourishing. And so when someone abstains from this activity of opening up, we view them with contempt. So much so that we'd rather date someone, hire someone, just be around someone who admits to kind of shady things sometimes relative to someone who just is tight lipped all the time.
- [08:59]
Nicole Khalil
Okay. All of that made perfect sense to my brain. And I feel like it's a little contradictory to what we see out in the world, especially if we think about social media or like when we listen to a successful person speak or what have you. I think what we see so much more of is the polished perfectionism. And so I guess my question is how do we navigate between trust versus credibility conundrum?
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Leslie John
I love it. This is really important, especially important for women, right. I go immediately to the workplace, right? You want to be trusted, you also want to be viewed as credible. I actually view trust as the combination of credibility and warmth. Right. So trust is the belief that the person has good intentions.
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Nicole Khalil
Right.
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Leslie John
They're nice. It also, it's not enough though to have.
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Nicole Khalil
For that.
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Leslie John
Right. You also need, there's a credibility component to trust too, which is I believe you're capable, you're competent, you're capable of following through on those good intentions. So I do view them as hand in hand. But you're speaking to a really important point. Are there career limiting self disclosures? Absolutely there are. And we need to be really careful that what we share does not undermine our credibility. One way I like to think about this is if we think about in the workplace, when we're in a leadership position in the workplace, we have, by virtue of being a leader, we have status. So we already have a bank of competence, of credibility. Right. By virtue of this position that we've earned. And when you Reveal something a little bit sensitive as a leader. For example, sometimes I get nervous public speaking or I'm working on my time management skills. So that's, that's a, that's something that we often aren't forthcoming about as a leader. But when you reveal a small weakness like that, it does nothing to your competence. Capital, right? It's like this giant bank you have. It's like taking a grain of salt off of that or a grain of sand. But it does a lot for that, that warmth and likability. Because basically when you reveal something sensitive, you, you're making yourself as a leader especially you're making self yourself relatable. People like you more. And so that's a really important component of trust. And so it doesn't diminish your trust in that sense. It actually augments it. But you're right, we have to be careful because there is a point where we lose credibility. Now if we're, we're a leader and we say, and we've done many studies on this that have like asked your exact question of where's the line? What's too much? Where's that line between too much information and too little? So we've done all kinds of studies and overall what we found is that leaders can reveal a little bit more than they think they could or they think they should, and it reaps a lot of benefits. So when leaders express a little weakness they're working on, people are more motivated to work for them. They also get more helpful feedback. Because when you reveal as a leader, your employees are now actually comfortable telling you the truth. So you can actually become more competent because you're getting that helpful feedback. But when does it backfire? So as a leader, it would backfire if you said something like, I'm sticking with the public speaking example. If you, if you shared more in terms of like the emotional feelings of it. Like sometimes I get nervous public speaking and I get so nervous I have panic attacks, right? Or I get so nervous that sometimes I can't come to work. That's, that's crossing the line.
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Nicole Khalil
Or it stems from some deep personal trauma that I'm going to tell you about from my childhood where you're like completely.
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Leslie John
That's another, that's another thing. That's a no go, no go zone, no fly zone, which is, it's not relevant to the discussion at hand. Right? That's, that's definitely in the overshare territory. Now the other side of this that I wanted to mention is we're not always in leadership roles in the workplace, Right. Women especially, we often juggle so many different roles as parents, as leaders, as colleagues, as friends. And sometimes we are talking to our bosses. Right? We all have bosses. And so there. When we're in a lower status situation, we need to be much more careful. We have a lot less room to maneuver in terms of this, this competence or credibility bank. So we need to be more, more careful there. But even there, we've done lots of studies showing that when you, when you show a little bit of your sass, in my case, a little bit of your personal side, your personality via revealing it can reap benefits. And so in the book, I tell lots of stories of me oversharing and the redemption. Sometimes I tell the story of how I inadvertently insulted my interviewer when I interviewed for Harvard. And that insult was inadvertent. But in hindsight, it was me being a bit sassy and I showed a bit of myself. And I think that I got the job not in spite of that reveal, but actually partly because of it, because I was showing it to myself.
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Nicole Khalil
So much of what you said feels aligned with my personal experience. This sharing a weakness that you're working on or a barrier or an obstacle, I think makes you more relatable. What I often hear is, oh, thank God it's not just me, or it's nice to hear I'm not alone in this. Right. It's this humanizing of ourselves. And I think that there is this element of, from a credibility standpoint is, oh, this person has self awareness and they also have a commitment to growth or they're learning and growing just like me. In my experience, that happens more often than what we fear most. Because what we fear most is, you know, people are gonna think we have no idea what we're doing or leave in droves or bash us on social media or whatever the case may be.
- [14:53]
Leslie John
And to your point too, like another story I tell in the book is how, you know, there was a woman who had just been promoted to a leadership role and to her team, her new team. She said, I'm nervous about this role. I'm not sure if I can do it. And that was very undermining, right? Because it's a new team. They don't know you, so you haven't kind of built up this esteem. And that was too vulnerable, right? So it's a tightrope walk. But it's so doable. And it's all, I believe all those things you said, it signals self awareness, it signals emotional maturity. It's relatable.
- [15:24]
Nicole Khalil
It reminds me of I often think of things as a pendulum swing and it's like on one side of the pendulum you have not revealing it all in the example of the woman getting a new role. It's like sending the message I got this. I know what I'm doing. I have no fear, I have it all figured out. The other end of the pendulum is I have severe imposter syndrome and I'm going to tell you all about it. What I'm hearing is that there is a middle ground and we are probably erring too far on the side of polished perfection where we could swing, where our middle ground is a little bit more in that vulnerable, revealing but not so far that we swing the pendulum in the opposite direction. Is that making any sense? Is that seem that makes total sense.
- [16:14]
Leslie John
One rule of thumb is Goldilocks. Can you tell I have small children, so not too much, not too little, just right. But what does just right mean? So can I be more tangible on what that means? The rule of thumb I would use is go a little bit deeper than how far you ordinarily go, right? Just a little bit more. Not a lot more, a little bit more. And you can also experiment too. There's a I love to think about revealing as a skill. And as a skill we need to practice and experiment. We're not going to always get it right, but the way we learn, of course, is by trying different things. And so what I recommend is going trying a little bit more than you than you usually do and see what happens.
- [16:54]
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- [18:14]
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- [19:41]
Nicole Khalil
okay, great advice. And when we do that, because it's uncomfortable and new and we don't have a lot of practice and we don't yet know what the outcome is going to be, it can trigger this overthinking spiraling. Like I've had so many times where I've said or said sent something out and then like I go oh my God and I want to take it all back. Any tips about how to I don't know if prevent is the right word or manage that. Not taking it too far in our own minds and just testing and practicing going a little further than we normally would.
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Leslie John
Yeah, no, that's great because I am a huge ruminator. So how can we stop that spiral? One of the things I suggest is a tool where a tool that helps us think about what to share and what not to share. Because if we spend a little bit more time thinking about this, being a little more intentional upfront that stops the rumination spirals afterward because we've gone in with a more full reckoning of what the costs and benefits are. And the specific advice I would give here is when we're thinking about a decision of whether to reveal or not immediately, we think about the risks of revealing, right? We're like, oh my gosh, I'm going to say too much. People are going to think I'm an idiot. I'm going to ruin this friendship if I give this hard feedback. And on and on and on. We're really, really good at thinking about the risks of revealing. But that's not a very balanced way of thinking this through, right? We can't just think about one thing. We almost always fail to consider the costs of holding it in, right? So before we make a decision, if we think about what naturally comes to us, but then also think about what are the costs of not saying the thing. So here's an example. Imagine you're at work and you and your team created an amazing product or an amazing ad campaign and so or so on. And you know that the idea, the core idea was yours. Well, it was a huge success. It was a group effort implementing it, but the core idea was yours. And you overhear your colleague on the team who you love, when the boss asked them whose idea was it, they say, oh, it's a group effort and part of you dies inside. And so if you're like me, right? We've all had these situations, right? Like this is so common with women, right? We often don't get the credit we deserve for the core idea, the brains behind the operation. And often if you're like me, you just kind of, oh, take it with stride and you think, oh, if I say something, I'm going to be petty, I'm going to ruin the relationship with my colleague, which I really love. Okay, but now think about the costs of not saying the thing. You're going to ruminate even more because it's going to bother you. You're going to rage about it. If you're like me. And it's not just perimenopause, it's valid. Not that perimenopause raging isn't valid, but
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Nicole Khalil
I was going to say rage is always valid in my mind. So anyway, keep going.
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Leslie John
Yeah, a hundred percent, I'm a. Rage is always valid and it's therapeutic sometimes letting it out. Oftentimes it is for our well being. Okay, so what are some other costs of holding it in? Well, you may subtly be distancing yourself from your Colleague, Right. And then once you start thinking about the costs, you naturally more. Are more likely to think about the benefits of revealing. So now you're thinking, okay, well if I say the thing, I'll stop ruminating. But then you might start thinking of bonafide actual benefits in their own right, of, hey, if I, if I tell my colleague this in the right way, you know, we, we can think about how to say things in the right way, then they may value it. They may respect me because I'm modeling that I care about ideas, and they may learn more about me that I, you know, creativity is really important. It's a value to me. And when they know you better, that is the, the source of a stronger relationship with them. So you can start seeing that once you think these things through more, you have a more reasonable analysis of the costs and the benefits. And I think that will help us to. Then afterwards, if things don't go as expected, we think, well, at least when I made the decision, I really thought it through. And I'm not suggesting we get super cerebral about all our decisions. Just do it for one or two. Maybe it's a big one, maybe it's a banal one. Sometimes the banal ones are easier to practice on because they're less. There's, there's high, the stakes are lower. But if we just do that a couple of times, it really conditions our brain to do this more naturally.
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Nicole Khalil
So I love this cost benefit and I think the acknowledgement that either way there is a cost. And so which cost are we more willing to deal with? The cost of risk or the cost of damaging relationship raging all day? You know, I mean, yes, so there's that. I also, I want to go back to the word intention. I think too, as I think about the times where I've felt really good about oversharing or where I feel like it did build trust and make people feel less alone. My intention was that was to be honest, to share what I was learning or, or struggling with. There was a beneficial intention, not just for me, but for the person I was sharing with. I, and I can't control whether that intention actually becomes the outcome, but at least going into it, there was that intention. I think checking in with ourselves is my intention to dump my stuff onto somebody else or to blame or to excuse. There are intentions where if we're being really honest with ourselves, it's pretty clear that it may not be beneficial for us to share, but if our intentions are, yep, good. Is that a fair.
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Leslie John
Absolutely. So to emphasize a Couple of the really important core points you just made. One is doing this exercise will increase your self awareness. You'll become more aware of why you do the things you do and why you don't do the things you do. And secondly, the intention is really key because the way you communicate something will be fundamentally based on your intentions. So if your intentions are benevolent, which they would be in saying the thing, you will naturally say it much better than if you haven't thought through what your intention is.
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Nicole Khalil
Okay, this idea that we trust people more when they admit their mistakes or embarrassing truths or failures or messy parts, if we do that, then why do we punish ourselves for doing the same? Why are we attracted to it and other people and resist it within ourselves?
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Leslie John
Oh my gosh, I love this. This is so astute. So I would venture to say that the beating up, to be blunt, of ourselves, is more in our minds than in actuality. And by that I mean when we actually do the thing, when we say the thing, we are more apt to experience the benefits. But the problem is we're beating ourselves up in our minds before we even say the things, right? We're thinking to ourselves, if I say this, it's going to go horribly, but if we do the thing more, if we say the thing more, it's not going to always go well, but we will be more. Then we'll actually see the benefits. Because the problem with, under sharing, with not saying the thing, is that we don't see the missed opportunities, right? And so in that vein, what I'd like to do is I'd like to try to help us make visible what's often invisible in daily life. And that is the sheer number of opportunities we have to share that we don't realize and just how often we're holding back. So here's a, here's a day in the life, right? It, it may be informed by my own life, but I think it's pretty relatable to all of us other women who are just trying to survive in the world. Um, okay, so you wake up in the morning, you roll over in bed, you say to your spouse, you know, we'll start off on a cuddly level, I love you, good morning. You say that, but what you don't say, you don't say, I slept really crappily. When I don't sleep well, I can't regulate my emotions. I might need more help today. You don't say that. You don't even think about saying it often.
- [27:58]
Nicole Khalil
And it's probably your fault because you snore.
- [28:01]
Leslie John
Exactly. Oh, my goodness.
- [28:04]
Nicole Khalil
Preach.
- [28:06]
Leslie John
So then you go to the bathroom, you're standing next to your spouse, you're brushing your teeth, you think to yourself, you know, I feel older than I thought I would at this age. How come I still have acne and I'm in my 40s? You don't say these things. You just think them. And then you get down to the kitchen, the kids are frolicking, your spouse is making the lunches for the kids and says to you, hey, what do you think they want for lunch? What do I do? I snap. I say, I don't know. Too many decisions. That's what I say. What I think is, I'm tired, I'm exhausted, I might need a hog. I could go on and on. I have many more examples of what we share and what we don't share within the day in the life, right? We're not even at breakfast yet. And what we see is we've said a lot less than what we have not said. I'm not saying we should say all of those things that occur, but what I'm suggesting is I think that we should think about sharing those things more. These things go under the radar. We don't even consider sharing them. And you can imagine, right, if we shared some of these things. If I said I slept crappily and I might need a little more grace when I do that, because I practice now when I say that my husband is so much more accommodating, he's so loving, but he can't read my mind. And so the snack, the tiff over the snack is never about the snack. And if we are a little more proactive in sharing our feelings, we can have stronger relationships and not just avoid the tiffs, but have stronger relationships. That monologue of when I was looking in the mirror at myself, if I had shared some of those things, I bet my husband would have helped me work through them.
- [29:41]
Nicole Khalil
I am so glad you went through that example because I don't think it even remotely occurred to me how much, even as an oversharer, I'm not sharing and how many opportunities there are. And to your earlier example of the costs of not sharing, it's that built up resentment. It's the why doesn't this person know? Or why can't they see? Or the feeling of feeling alone or lonely or that there's something. I mean, there's so, so so many things that come out of it and so many examples in our day, again, like even before breakfast, of opportunities where we Could. So I really, really appreciate that. Now I'm curious your thoughts. There are a lot of words that are really important, big meaningful words that I think have been hijacked. So much so that it is like annoying to me. Words like confidence, vulnerability, authenticity. Vulnerability and authenticity are superpowers. Like the amount of power and umph in those words cannot and should not be minimized. And yet they're being flung around like buzzwords. And I feel like they are losing their impact and their purpose and sort of feels performative in a lot of cases. So I guess my question is twofold. A, are you seeing that too? And B, any advice or suggestions about how to be authentic and be vulnerable without being performative about it?
- [31:18]
Leslie John
I a hundred percent agree. Authenticity, vulnerability. They're superpowers, but what the heck do they mean? And we toss these words around. So vulnerability I think of as sharing sensitive thoughts and feelings, especially feelings. Feelings are inherently more risky, more sensitive. But where there is risk, there is reward. Right? That's where the magic is in sharing our feelings more. But we have to be very careful to your point. It's really deep. Your question. Because I started writing this book thinking that it was for everyone else because I fancy myself a card carrying over sharer. But it was not until I was writing the book that I realized that even I oversharer, was holding back on the important stuff, the deep stuff. And that my oversharing was kind of performative. And as I wrote the book, I realized that I had been carrying a secret that had deeply affected me about my mother for 10 years. Literally, the woman who studies this, who was writing a book about it, did not realize she was doing this. She was withholding until I was writing a book. And so that of course led me to then have a conversation with my mother. And that was one of the deepest conversations I've ever had. And it's a thread kind of through the book now and something that I was scared of and withholding. And it had so many benefits. And so I think that's my hope for us, for listeners, for women, navigating this world is not reckless oversharing, but thoughtful, revealing. And revealing is a skill. We can all get better at it. I'm still a work in progress, getting better at it. And if we do the thing, if we reveal a little more thoughtfully, we can just, we can get so much.
- [33:02]
Nicole Khalil
Extremely well said. And I can relate completely. Again, I think there are aspects where I feel like an oversharer. And then as you were talking, there are so many examples, especially when it counts. Cause that's usually when it feels the most risky, right? Where I have so much opportunity in relationship at work. Thank you for revealing that of yourself and for doing this work and for writing this book. Listener again. The book is called Revealing the Underrated Power of Oversharing. We're going to put all the links and all the ways to find and follow Leslie in show notes, but her website is proflesleyjohn.com, so P R O F as in short for professor. Lesliejohn.com Leslie, thank you for being here, for revealing and your incredible work.
- [33:50]
Leslie John
Thank you so much, Nicole. It's been such a. Such an honor to be here.
- [33:53]
Nicole Khalil
My pleasure. All right, friend. If there's one thing you take with you, let it be this. Saying less doesn't automatically make you smarter, safer, or more credible. Sometimes it just makes you harder to know, harder to trust, and easier to misunderstand. Oversharing may not be the goal, but being honest, intentional and true to yourself is. Choosing what you reveal not out of fear, but out of self. Trust is where the real power lies. So the next time you feel overthinking, shame spiral, regret, loop, kick in, pause, and ask some better questions. Not why did I say that, but what did that reveal? Was it actually a mistake or was it just uncomfortable? And if I stopped worrying about all the things I can't control, did I share my truth in a way I feel proud of? We're talking about less guarding and more revealing, less perfect and more true. It's time we share ourselves with the world, because that is woman's work.