Transcript
Annalisa Holcombe (00:01:31):
Today we're joined by Laurel Smylie. Laurel is an executive coach and an organizational culture expert. She is the managing partner of Four Letter Consulting, and is based out of Los Angeles. She is a certified Dare to Lead consultant and was a partner at the Great Place to Work Institute. And today we are talking about courage.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:02:00):
All right. So I want to start with the first question that I warned you about, which is how we start off every single episode, which is the who are you really kind of an answer. So if you remove all things work, school, I'm going to say research, college work, none of this stuff you do, if you take all that away, what are you most proud about yourself as a human being?

Laurel Smylie (00:02:33):
I have dealt with mental health issues since I was a teenager. So I've dealt with depression, anxiety, more anxiety than depression. And I think my commitment to my own mental health and my own personal growth remains something I'm consistently really proud of.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:02:52):
I am so glad you said that. I think I wonder if it's okay with you if I just bring that up, because I think that that is something that so many of us out there in the world struggle with and don't talk about.

Laurel Smylie (00:03:05):
Yeah, absolutely. It is. I saw a statistic recently that said, it takes the average American 11 years to get mental health support after 11 years of struggling, and it just broke my heart and I completely understood it. I fought it for a handful of years in high school and it makes perfect sense. And I also, after doing 20 plus years of work, I am so infinitely grateful that that's been a part of my path too.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:03:35):
I love that so much. I remember working with, in the mentoring program I had, we co-facilitated these sessions and it was just regular people like me co-facilitating and we had this man who worked with us who was 65. During the conversations he would say regularly, when I talked to my therapist and eventually one of the students asked him, "How long have you been seeing a therapist? What do you see a therapist for?"

Annalisa Holcombe (00:04:04):
He said, "If you had this big scratch on your arm and that you kept scratching it, and pretty soon it's a giant wound, why don't you go regularly, take care of the scratch on your arm to help prevent it from becoming a giant wound?" He goes, "We would do that for our arm. So we should do that for our mental capacities, for our emotions." Let's just have regular care for how we're doing.

Laurel Smylie (00:04:35):
It's been a really interesting thing. Because I have that. I mean, I've probably spent at this point, I think I probably have spent, I've definitely spent the better part of 20 years, but I've probably spent close to like 17 years in and out, in therapy. And I wonder about that sometimes. Do I need this right now? Is this something I could not do? And the place I always come back to is yeah, I could. I mean, it's not like I wouldn't be functional in the world, but I think there's also, for me, there was an awareness a few years ago that I'm an external processor. And so it's so nice for me to have somebody to just talk things out to because so much gets cooked in that process.

Laurel Smylie (00:05:17):
That if I was thinking about it myself, I would overthink it probably to death and my dear sweet friends who I adore and respect and are great supports, it's not their job to sit there and listen to me for an hour either. And so I really appreciate having that space. But it is, it's the kind of thing that I also do intentionally share in my work more often than not, because I think it's really easy, especially when you do the kind of work that I do for people to think that you've got it all figured it out and you've got what you're doing in all of these kinds of different categories. And we're all human, and we're all just trying to figure it out and do the best we can.

Laurel Smylie (00:05:59):
And so anything I can do to almost normalize and remove from a pedestal back process and that journey, so it's not like, oh, one day you'll get to the mountain top. It's like, no, all of us are on the trail every day. And some days we get up towards stuff and some days we slip and fall and that's all the normal process. And so that feels really important to me to be a voice that I wished I had heard more of. And also to just create more humanity in that space, I think.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:06:31):
Will you talk a little bit, you mentioned that based upon the work that you do, will you talk a little bit about what is the work that you do. What's a day in the life? What do you do?

Laurel Smylie (00:06:42):
It's funny. So in the official terms, I'm an organization development consultant. I have my masters in the field. I have my undergraduate degree in the field. I've been doing it for about 15 years. That means nothing to the average person. And so what I talk about is I work with folks around leadership and culture and really, really, to me as I continue in this space, it's really about leadership to me. I came up with this belief, I still, I fundamentally believe that we make work harder and colder than it needs to be.

Laurel Smylie (00:07:15):
I have friends and colleagues who approach that challenge from a systemic level. And I'm so appreciative of that, and I do some work in that space, but the places that bring me the most joy are actually working with individual leaders on how to really understand what their own leadership is about and who they are. It's really a self-identity and a self-growth process. But it's through the lens of work. And so it feels a little bit lower stakes and those challenges, but so much of it to me really is about bringing out the human and bringing the human to work.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:07:51):
No, it's real that you say that, I'm so thrilled. It matches up this podcast super well, because if we're going to spend more of our time at work than we do anywhere else except sleeping, then don't we owe it to ourselves to really make sure that that time is well spent and how can it be better spent than finding some purpose or meaning or joy.

Laurel Smylie (00:08:17):
Exactly, exactly. That's is dead on for me. I think we have these ideas about how we're supposed to be at work. I've talked a lot in the last year about the fact that I think we're in this kind of pendulum swing, where we went from these really like you show up, you do your job, you leave your problems at the door, I don't care about your full humanity. It's not that I want anything bad to happen, it's just, it's not my job to care about those things. And as we have really decided as a culture to bring more of the whole person to work, we struggle with that. We have no idea what that looks like.

Laurel Smylie (00:08:59):
And so we're in a place where some folks bring too much of that to the work. And some people still bring too little, and we're having these really interesting conversations that are painful and uncomfortable, but I think critically important. So in terms of the day to day at the moment, I would say I've got typically two to three hours of coaching leaders one-on-one. And so those are folks that like yourself are heads of organizations. It can also be all the way down to director level.

Laurel Smylie (00:09:30):
I absolutely love working with mid-level leaders who are really wanting to understand their own leadership style and are so hungry for learning, especially at that point in their growth. And then after that, I'll do some, typically some either work with teams on kind of building stronger relationships, addressing conflict, addressing dysfunction. I also do quite a bit of training around with the content of Brené Brown's Dare to Lead, and really kind of using that as either the substance or a portion of, but really thinking about what does courageous leadership really look like in the world.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:10:11):
I feel like you kind of just are trying to move me into the next step than I might have so well done. So you mentioned two really important things today, like the underlying subject that we're talking about is courage, and then you also brought up Brené Brown. So of course, I'm really interested in Brené Brown's way of defining courage and talking about courage about, and I wrote it to make sure it's like to speak one's mind by telling all of your heart. It brings the heart, the core right into it. And one I'm really interested in, what do you think of a definition like that about courage?

Laurel Smylie (00:10:55):
I think it's funny, I actually was looking up the definition of courage myself, because I was like, I think, I mean, I live in this space, so I want to make sure I'm actually kind of using the right words. And I think it's a really beautiful definition because I think so much of what is scary these days has its roots in vulnerability. It's a fear of pain, I mean, it's a fear of shame. It's an avoidance tactic.

Laurel Smylie (00:11:24):
And so to make choices that can make any kind of courageous choice and the idea being you do something that you're scared of doing is creative in and of itself. But the addition of explicitly calling out, bringing in heart really deepens both the impact and frankly, the fear that's associated with it. Because when you actually name that this is a heart exposure, especially for people that don't live in that space and are a little weary of that, you raise the stakes in and of itself.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:11:57):
And isn't that interesting that over time we've made, like if courage originally had that definition and then we've made it so much more about like heroism and I'm going to go conquer everything and I am infallible like that it seems the opposite.

Laurel Smylie (00:12:18):
In my opinion, it totally is. I take it back. It's not that it is the opposite to me, but it is so the tip of the iceberg. It is almost like, I wouldn't say this legitimately to a firefighter, like running into a burning building is courageous under any circumstance, but so is telling somebody you love them. And so is sitting with your team that is really struggling with the realities of what the last year has been and actually saying to them, I hear you, I care about you. And I wish there was something I could say to fix it, and I can't.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:12:56):
It's one of those things that when we talk about courage, I feel like in our society, we only talk about those unusual, I don't know, archetypical types of courage. I feel like it would be so much better if we celebrated the everyday courage that's happening all the time, all around us. And we just don't recognize it. And I think it goes to that, we really want to be seen. I had to speak at something this week where they were filling me and they were asking me questions about why don't you love what you do?

Annalisa Holcombe (00:13:31):
I was talking about it, and it was funny because I had this moment that choked me up where I was like, right this minute, why do I love what I do? Right this minute, all around the country, there are people who have full lives with so many responsibilities and so many deadlines and hard things that they're dealing with. And they're choosing in the small moments that are quiet when like a baby is on their lap to open up their computer and take a class to make themselves get to a better place, or to help create a better socioeconomic life for their children. What's more courageous?

Laurel Smylie (00:14:12):
Seriously, it gives me chills. And it is, it's the kind of thing it's funny, I wrote this down actually, as you were saying that, because one of the things I do with teams, especially when I do group coaching or anything like that that I absolutely love, one of my favorite kind of exercises or questions to walk them through is like, what is something from the last week that you're proud of?

Laurel Smylie (00:14:32):
And it's so interesting because people lock up for... So initially when you asked that question, people were like, well, I didn't close a huge deal or I didn't do this huge momentous thing. And I always break it down with them like, look, some days the thing that you're proud of is that you got up the next day and you kept going.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:14:55):
Yeah.

Laurel Smylie (00:14:55):
And it's the same thing. I actually I'm looking forward to doing this. I've got a group that I'm going to do this with on Thursday, but to ask them, what was a small act of courage, because I wholeheartedly agree with you, I think we set the bar unnecessarily high and we miss out on these moments of joy and these moments of victory that we don't give ourselves anywhere near enough credit for. We are so busy looking for the fallacy, the place where we failed, the place where we've been unsuccessful and we should be looking at that.

Laurel Smylie (00:15:25):
And I think my graduate degree was in positive organization development and I didn't totally get it until I really went through the program, how distinct that actually is, and how much we live in a deficit based world. But it actually, in a funny way, it does require courage to actually decide to not be driven by what you stink at and instead be driven by the things that are your passion, that you are good at, that there's a lot more there than we give credit to.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:15:56):
I totally agree. I totally agree. And it's the Ross school, right?

Laurel Smylie (00:16:03):
Yeah.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:16:04):
I completely fan girl it too. When I started my PhD program, I didn't know about it. I learned about it. I was like that will be a fun place to go to school.

Laurel Smylie (00:16:13):
I mean, their work is just amazing. I was at Case Western for mine, but it was inspired by a lot of the work that had come out of Ross and just the things that people are doing that I just, frankly, that I myself would have been skeptical of before I really got into some of the work and was like, oh no, this actually does demonstrate results. It's not to say that we can all just ignore our gaps and our weaknesses, but at the same time, we can definitely change how much focus we put on different things and get pretty different outcomes.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:16:44):
So I have a question for you, which is, why do you think that we have moved toward that heroism ideal of courage?

Laurel Smylie (00:17:00):
Well, I'm not educated enough on the topic to say so, but I think first of all as I, as a white woman progress in my anti-racist journey and really work to educate myself, I think so much of that kind of stuff has to actually do with patriarchy and white supremacy. I think it's so fundamentally baked in our culture. I think that's a really challenging piece. I think it's also, it's simple. It aligns with those things. It's a simple way to check a box like, oh, that's what heroism looks like. Great, I can do that. But I think we're realizing the limits. And as the world gets more complicated on top of it, we're realizing that you can't superhero your way out of things. The other thought that comes to mind is a colleague that used to say this and I just, I love it.

Laurel Smylie (00:17:57):
She was like, "If you reward firefighting," she's talking kind of organizationally and workload wise, but she was saying, "If you reward firefighting, you encourage arson." And just like, that's always really stuck with me that if all we're talking about is heroism in the big picture, what does that mean if you don't have opportunities to show up in that way, does that mean that you're not as valuable? So I think there's a necessity to expand that definition, but yeah, I think patriarchy has a big role in why we see it that way and really dangerous, sadly constrictive definitions of masculinity and all of these things and that hopefully we're reassessing, but all the pain that goes with that reassessment is up.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:18:47):
Yeah. That's really interesting. And when you talked about it, so I have this story that in my doctoral work, I said I wanted to study leader vulnerability. And what was fascinating to me is I talked to the students I was working with who were college age and 17 to 24 year olds, and they just loved it. They were like, "Super cool. I love that you're going to talk about leader vulnerability." And then I talked to people my age and older, and they were like, "I don't understand what you mean." They couldn't... Even my faculty members whose job was to study leadership, they were like, I don't understand what you're talking about.

Laurel Smylie (00:19:37):
Yeah. And I think that's what's been so amazing and so wonderful to me about Brené Brown is that her work, much of... I mean, not much of, but some of her work, she's not the only person in that space. It's not like she's the first person to have these thoughts, but somehow she has managed to sync up with the cultural lexicon and actually be able to become a part of these things. I remember when she came out with Dare to Lead, my former business partner and I were laughing that we were so happy that she had finally put out a business book, so we could finally not be giving our clients what would be perceived as a self-help book, and instead we could be giving them a leadership book, and then they'd be getting the same messages, but we weren't having to bring to them like, this is it.

Laurel Smylie (00:20:24):
But she had said this and I couldn't agree more. I think senior leaders, OD friends and I have joked about this like, I don't think you should be able to be a leader without... A senior leader in particular, without at least a year if not multiple of therapy. Your stuff is going to be your organization stuff. And if you don't want to look at that, then your organization isn't going to want to... The trickle-down is there, but again, those things are scary for a lot of people.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:20:58):
I am also interested in what may have first come to your mind. So that's one piece of what did you think? And then the second is, I'm really interested in, first of all, what did you think? Second, what does it mean to be courageous at work? And third, have you ever seen it? What did it look like?

Laurel Smylie (00:21:19):
Yeah. So I was excited. I love talking about courage at work. I love talking about courage in general. I think it's a big part of... I mean, it's one of my core values. It's one that I just am crystal clear I have a whole belief system around. In terms of what it looks like at work., I think there are a lot of examples, but I think... I'm going off the cuff here. So let's say 90%, but it's the vast, vast, vast majority, are all about interpersonal relationships.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:21:50):
Yeah.

Laurel Smylie (00:21:51):
It's all about having hard conversations with people and really working to get on the same page, which is not the easiest thing to do.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:22:03):
I think that's really interesting. Can we just dive into that a little, because I may be wrong, but I would imagine that a lot of people think what? Right? Like, so you work with leaders and you're talking to them about the courage it takes for them to have hard conversations with the people they lead.

Laurel Smylie (00:22:22):
Yeah.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:22:22):
And I would imagine that people might be like, "What?" "What about..." "Like, what?"

Laurel Smylie (00:22:27):
Yeah, it's so interesting to me. I think there's a connection point too, with imposter syndrome. But I think one of the best kept secrets that makes me sad sometimes is that senior leaders are human. Like a very funny thing to say, but I think there's this thought of like, oh, once you get to a certain level, you don't deal with insecurity anymore and it becomes easy to have hard conversations with people. And that is just completely untrue. If my practice is any indication in my studies or any indication, it's just not true. And it's such a sad thing to me in terms of, I'm always so grateful to be able to provide people with opportunities where either younger, less mature kind of folks earlier in their career get the opportunity to hear that from a senior leader.

Laurel Smylie (00:23:16):
I'm like, okay, great. We can start to break this, but hard conversations, even people who are out in the point where I question if anybody is really comfortable with conflict. I actually think the vast majority of people are conflict avoidant, and many people are willing to have a conversation, but I find that it's rare that they're actually willing to have that conversation. There actually is an unwillingness. I'll sit down with somebody, but for us to really talk about what's going on is exceptionally rare.

Laurel Smylie (00:23:52):
And I think it's interesting that there are actually some folks who work to do that and are met with almost a reaction that leaves them feeling like the quote unquote, weird one. When really they're the one actually bringing really good communication to play, but it's not something that we're all particularly accustomed to. Yeah.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:24:19):
Does that have a lot to do with that whole idea of the meaning of courage of bringing your heart?

Laurel Smylie (00:24:24):
Yeah. I think it's so much around... I mean, so much of armoring, so much of avoiding vulnerability is shame avoidance, right? We don't want to wind up in a place where we can feel anything like that. I think so much of it is also ego and self-image. And if I have this conversation... I had somebody I was coaching a few years ago and he had a colleague, the relationship was terrible. It was a bad relationship. They were really struggling. And at least according to him, she would roll her eyes in meetings when he was talking and I said to him, "Okay, what about having a conversation with her and saying, "Hey, when you do that, what I start to make up is X, Y, and Z. What's going on? Can we talk about it? Is that accurate?"

Laurel Smylie (00:25:14):
And he was like, "Well, what do I do if she says, yeah, that is accurate. I do think you're dumb and that's why I'm rolling my eyes if I'm really going to be painfully honest." And I was like, "Well, then you know, and then we can figure out what to do with that, as opposed to playing this passive aggressive game that we're currently playing that serves nobody." And so I think there's a lot of that, of like, I don't want to know what the truth is, I'd rather... Even if my story is painful, it feels less painful to have that story than it does to actually deal with it. I'm reading this book, My Grandmother's Hands, and that is fantastic. And one of the things they talk about is the distinction between clean pain and dirty pain.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:25:55):
Ooh, what is that?

Laurel Smylie (00:25:57):
And I just, I love the idea. It's basically that clean pain is this idea, it's the things that build your capacity for growth. It's those moments when you're like, I know I should have this conversation, it's going to be so painful. That's clean pain. If you actually choose to have that conversation, it's productive pain. And dirty pain is like it has its roots in avoidance. It's really like, I can't have that conversation, it's too painful. So I'm just not going to have it. And then I've got this dirty pain that I'm stuck with as opposed to this clean pain that at least is moving me towards some kind of progress.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:26:31):
I feel like that idea, I love to have the shorthand language for that idea that really is that conflict avoidance thing that I think just is it infiltrates the whole culture. It infiltrates how you wake up in the morning, like how you might even read how people are talking to you that may or may not be correct, but you're like, so because you avoided it, you're actually not avoiding it, it's more present than ever.

Laurel Smylie (00:27:02):
You got it. It's such a fallacy that staying quiet will keep you safe. And I think that's one of the biggest heartfelt learnings for me in the last few years, is like so many of us grew up believing that if I stay in whatever my box is, everything will be okay. And that is unfortunately just not how life works. And so it is a really interesting thing to instead work through so much, sometimes clean pain, to get yourself to a place where you are able to really stand in your own voice more than you have been. That's a hard one, but well worth it.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:27:45):
How risky do you think that is to actually engage in the difficult conversations? I mean, what if you're... I get it, if you're the leader and that's scary because it may affect the way that you lead, what if you're the employee who needs to tell your leader something?

Laurel Smylie (00:28:02):
Oh yeah. When I do this work in every context, but especially when I'm doing Dare to Lead with folks, one of the big things I repeat early and often is we're going to give you skills and encourage you to be more vulnerable and be more courageous in the world, do not confuse that. That is not me saying, be vulnerable in every situation. There's that idea that empathy without boundaries is self-destruction, it's the same kind of thing. If you're like, no, I'm going to be vulnerable in every situation or I'm going to have every hard conversation, probably not the best guidance. And so for an employee considering having a conversation with their manager, I think there's a lot to think through.

Laurel Smylie (00:28:42):
And I'm a big advocate of having the conversation, but there's also nuance around how you have the conversation. Do you approach it with a question? Do you approach it with a suggestion? Do you have prejudice of a needs articulation? When do you talk to your manager about it? How do you frame the conversation? But I think somebody said this to me semi-recently, and I loved it. They said feedback is always something it should be in service of the relationship. And I think about it in service of the relationship, the individual.

Laurel Smylie (00:29:11):
And so if you can clarify to your manager why you're bringing this to them and it's to everybody's benefit, those things are going to go differently than you needing to have a conversation with your manager to make sure that they knew you were right about something, going to have a different outcome.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:29:28):
I was talking to someone recently for this podcast about communication at work, and we had this whole conversation about some of our communication is actually... Often at work, our communications should be to like, we're trying to move something forward. There's a purpose to the communication. Often in our personal lives, the purpose of the communication is to be known, and that we sometimes conflate the two at work. Sometimes we communicate to be known when, what we need to communicate is to move something down. How would we know the difference? Because I also I struggle with the deep desire that I have to know the people with whom I'm spending my time, which is at work.

Laurel Smylie (00:30:17):
Yeah, absolutely. It's a great question, and even just a beautiful concept. I think to me, some of it is intuitive. I think it's part of the reason I'm such an advocate of therapy and coaching, is you've got to have a lot of self-awareness to be able to really ask yourself those questions. And to really understand. I've talked to the way I've articulated it to folks sometimes, especially both having been an employee that was a bit like this, and certainly watched it a lot over the years of the person in the town hall, the big town hall meeting who goes to the microphone and they're going to let somebody know with their question, what they think is going on, and they're going to bring all of this emotion to the conversation.

Laurel Smylie (00:31:03):
Not inherently a bad thing, I'm not necessarily saying don't do that, but the way I've articulated it to folks that sometimes you have to decide what's more important to you having your message actually be heard or being able to use your voice. Sometimes I just need to yell, and that is actually more important to me than if somebody actually hears what I'm yelling about in a weird way. But if I want somebody to hear what I'm saying, sometimes the delivery is not going to feel as-

Annalisa Holcombe (00:31:33):
In service of the relationship.

Laurel Smylie (00:31:35):
Right. Like I have to think about that more. If it's about what are we trying to do, if we're trying to move things forward, I actually have to think about the other person. I have to think about how they're going to receive this, where when I'm just needing to get something off of my chest, I'm thinking about that less.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:32:03):
If this conversation has caught your attention and you want to join in on conversations like this, check out our website at connectioncollaborative.com.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:32:11):
Welcome back. Today we are speaking about courage with Laurel Smylie. Let's jump back in.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:32:40):
I was thinking, I feel like the place of vulnerability in our society right now feels particularly acute. I just feel like we're all, everybody is super vulnerable, and I'm interested in what courage might look like here. And especially when I was thinking about that definition we have of the courage being able to speak your mind while tailing your heart. And I feel like we may be speaking our minds out there, but I'm not sure our heart is there. And so what do you think about where we are in terms of courage in our society?

Laurel Smylie (00:33:22):
I think a few things. I think a lot of the reactions that we're seeing from people, a lot of the entrenchment I think is actually in my most empathetic moments, I think is actually a vulnerability response. I think it's an armoring response. This has been an excruciatingly vulnerable year. With COVID alone, it would have been an excruciatingly vulnerable year in a thousand different ways, but you bring in everything that has happened.

Laurel Smylie (00:33:50):
The increased focus on, I don't want to pretend that these things started last year, but the increased focus on all of the racial dynamics in our country and the racial problems and issues and challenges and all of these things. I think sometimes this is what's challenging is there's no blanket that we can kind of put over it, right? So sometimes being courageous is loudly and clearly telling somebody that their behavior is unacceptable.

Laurel Smylie (00:34:20):
And sometimes courageousness is very gently reminding somebody of the impact of what they're saying. And sometimes courage is actually not naming those things and having a more gentle, exploratory curiosity driven conversation. And I think that's the challenge is there's no one clear way to be courageous right now, I think requires a lot of self examination, situational examination, and really thinking about the work that needs to be done in whatever space it is.

Laurel Smylie (00:34:55):
But I think it's again, to the conversation earlier about the heroism of courage and that kind of look. I think sometimes we think it is being in the frontline on a protest and that is absolutely sometimes, but sometimes something very soft and very counter to that is actually a courageous act as well.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:35:17):
I think when you're talking about it, it feels so hard. I remember last summer I was talking with my daughter and I said something to her along the lines of how proud I was that I could see such activism and such inspiration in young people. And she immediately said to me, "But you see, that as a young person, I'm really frustrated with you saying that because we are out there marching and being loud, but your generation is in positions of power where you could actually do something right now. So you should not get to look at us and say, look at you guys leading the charge. That's a way for you to shrug off your own responsibility here."

Laurel Smylie (00:36:05):
Yeah. Dead on. I mean, I completely agree with her. I've had a lot of very interesting conversations with my parents in particular. But one of the things that we were talking about a few weeks ago with my mom was talking about the complexity of the world right now. And I said to her, I was like, on the one hand, you're totally right, it is a deeply complicated world, and on the other hand, that's garbage.

Laurel Smylie (00:36:28):
We've hidden behind complexity for a long time about things that we should have actually been a lot more courageous about just taking on the nose and saying, no, that's not what we're going to do. We're not going to both sides this, we're not going to soften this, we're going to actually, all actually have a hard conversation and really show up in this.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:36:47):
And it also goes to that place of... I read this article recently and I'm a little embarrassed because I feel like I'm really late to the party of understanding this. And so people probably already know this long ago, but it's newer for me, the idea of it. And there's this guy that I read his website, it's called Nonprofit AAF. And I think he's great. And he was talking about... He is of Asian ethnicity, I'm not sure exactly, but he was talking about the shootings that had happened in Atlanta recently and how done he is with people looking to him and two other individuals of Asian descent to say, "Gosh, your activism is important. You need to be active, and what are you guys doing about it?"

Annalisa Holcombe (00:37:43):
And him saying, "This has been the way that we in America, oppressed people forever is by putting the onus on the oppressed to do something." And he said, and when they say like, "Well, don't, you have examples of what we can do?" He used this simple tweet that this woman had done about paying women. And he said, "Here you go. Here's an example." And it was like a woman saying me or some man saying to this woman, "Gosh, we need to do something about gender inequality and pay."

Annalisa Holcombe (00:38:17):
And the woman's saying, "Yeah, we should pay women more." And he said, "Yes, but I mean, what are we going to do about it?" Her, "Pay women more." "But what can I do?" And she said, "Pay the women you work with more." The answer is right there. It's super simple.

Laurel Smylie (00:38:34):
And I think that's it. I think it's been one of the things that really leaves me thinking and reflecting and having an answer and then circling back and realizing I don't have an answer and all of this is, so much of this is all about culture. That's the thing is I'm so grateful to have my background and my training in that space to really be able to say like, this is why it's hard. This is why it's hard to legislate to these things, is because the legislation matters profoundly, don't get me wrong. But in the same way that in an organization you can create policies and practices all day long, and those are important.

Laurel Smylie (00:39:18):
But if you're not culturally behind them, if you're not culturally reinforcing them, supporting them, modeling them, whatever it is, then you've got some nice words on a page. But I think it is when I look at organizations and I think that that tweet is a perfect example because it wouldn't surprise me if that man had a daughter and wants his daughter to be able to do all these great things, but it's those kind of micro moments that we worry in all of our individual ways about losing social capital and losing the power that we do have.

Laurel Smylie (00:39:54):
And I think those are the places where it's like, I think for me, it's really been a very interesting reflection of like, let's get real, you are a very fortunate, very privileged white woman. And I've worked hard for my accomplishments and yada, yada, but they have come a billion times easier than they would have because of many facets of my background. To pretend that we don't lose something, I think is also disingenuous. I think there really has to be a lot of reflection from those in power in whatever the context is or the situation to say really, really, really, what are you willing to lose?

Laurel Smylie (00:40:34):
What are you willing to give up? If we talk about returning land to indigenous folks, are you really willing to give up your piece of property? Are you willing to do that? Are you willing to potentially lose your job? Being the person who says this is not acceptable. And that's a lot of the courage that we actually need to be looking out and talking about.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:40:54):
I think that's right. And I think that's the... I remember when I had stopped being a lawyer and I had basically like, I'd been doing well, then I had nothing. And there was great freedom in that because I was able, because I didn't have anything left really to lose, I felt like I could speak my mind. I have this story that I would tell my students. I went to a speaker, I saw this keynote speaker that nothing has stayed with me longer than this guy. He was a digital ethnographer, something like that. But then before that, I mean, he was basically a cultural anthropologist and he had been in Papua New Guinea for a long time by himself studying the folks there.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:41:41):
And he told the story that I think is the best. And I told my students all the time, like, here's what empathy looks like and it's really... But it's the story he told of, he's there, and it was their culture, how different it was from our culture and he's there and he said he missed home. So he needed to get away from everybody. He hiked up to the top of this plateau so that he could see the village he was staying in. And he said, "I went up there and wept because I was just bereft, I missed home, I wondered about things that was happening." He said, "And then as I'm sitting up there, this man crying, I see the men of this village who had been out doing something together, walking up the Ridge toward him."

Annalisa Holcombe (00:42:30):
And so he's like, "Ah, I got to get my shit together." Wiping his face. And as they get to him, he can see as they're walking toward him, that they're weeping. These big men who had been hunting or something together, weeping. And they got to him and he said, what... He could speak to them and he said, "What are you doing?" And they said, "We saw you up here And we saw your sadness. So we came to sit with you in your sadness."

Laurel Smylie (00:43:02):
That's I mean, so beautiful and like...

Annalisa Holcombe (00:43:05):
So beautiful. They didn't want it. They had no questions, and they found their own thing that they could weep about because they could feel that too. That's empathy. We all know what sadness feels like.

Laurel Smylie (00:43:18):
Right? And that's the thing. It is a courageous choice to touch into that sometimes.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:43:23):
Yeah.

Laurel Smylie (00:43:23):
Sometimes you're like, oh, I don't want to feel this feeling, I don't want to feel this feeling. I'm not in such a common experience. The avoidance usually makes it worse anyway. And I mean, not that I don't still work to avoid my emotions as much as the next girl, but I mean, I at least know that when I get into those moments, I'm like, you know it's that difference between clean pain and dirty pain, right? You can feel the clean pain of actually feeling the emotion or the dirty pain of trying to avoid that emotion and numb and get angry at somebody else and do all of these avoidance things. But sometimes it is hugely creative to actually get tucked into that and deal with it.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:44:01):
So I also wanted to ask you about just this moment you work with leaders and you talked about this a little bit. So is there any... Talk to me a little bit about leadership and courage and COVID and pandemics, what has... I just don't even know the question to ask you, but I feel like courage in this time is something that is hard to deal with.

Laurel Smylie (00:44:28):
So hard. I think it's part of what I see is first empathy is the order of the day. If you have an employee with three kids under 10 and a partner and they're in a two bedroom apartment and they're losing their mind because all of those things are true, as a leader, you can't fix it, and you also are potentially in the position where you are needing things from that person. And so you are having to, as a leader, first be courageous in just trying to figure out and actually show up for this because I would argue the non courageous response is to just pretend like everything is normal and it's fine.

Laurel Smylie (00:45:12):
Like when I hear people who are like, well, we've gotten an opportunity to see what working from home would be like, I'm like, no, you haven't, you haven't at all. People have been home in the middle of a pandemic. These are not normal working conditions. So I think there's just the brave new world element of it that requires courage. I think there's the definitive need for empathy. And I think in that space of the unknown, you have to try new things. And I think that's been really interesting. It's been interesting to watch leaders either decide to run their teams the same way that they've always run them and not change anything or to really embrace a totally different way of working or something in between. But I think all of those pieces have been front and center on the COVID front.

Laurel Smylie (00:46:07):
I think the burnout that folks are experiencing, I think we're going to see a lot of the consequences. I think we're going to see a lot of the, yeah, maybe consequences is the right word, of what the impact of how well we did as leaders was felt. And what I mean by that is I'm starting to see more and more morale issues pop up, but I think we've done a good job of white knuckling our way through the worst of it. But it's almost like we've now passed through the storm and, or hopefully fingers crossed, passed through much of the storm.

Laurel Smylie (00:46:47):
And as we enter the like let down the kind of like still processing, it's almost like you almost get into a car accident and you miss it and it's all okay, but your hands, at least for me, my hands are just shaking, like a leaf, right? I'm still processing what's going on. I've gotten through the initial incident, but then I'm processing. I think we're in some of that processing space and I think we're going to see a lot of stuff come up-

Annalisa Holcombe (00:47:15):
At work, in our families, in our schools, in our churches, in our neighborhoods.

Laurel Smylie (00:47:20):
All over the place. And I think leaders are going to have to courageously own that there were places that they misstepped, there are going to be a lot of conversations all up and down levels of leadership. I think sure, middle managers are the ones that are going to hear it most from frontline, but it's going to be all up and down organizations. And then you add on, I mean, that's just the COVID piece, but the world has been so complicated in so many ways in the last year.

Laurel Smylie (00:47:50):
There've been so many other things that have demanded courage that there's almost a part of me that feels like there's just going to be a lot of surrender that's needed a lot of this like, I did the... A lot of surrender and forgiveness, a lot of like I did the very best I could and I understand I screwed that up and I'm going to do it differently, and I really appreciate you telling me, and I hope we can all move forward together to a new space.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:48:17):
I think that will be really important. Even yesterday, I was talking to someone who was acting as though, like, she felt bad that she hadn't done as much during the COVID time. And I'm like, your kids are alive.

Laurel Smylie (00:48:32):
Yeah. I saw somebody on social media that was talking about, you're mad at your body because you gained 10 pounds in the middle of a global pandemic. Your body had other priorities, your body got you through this, let's be happy about that. And I think even that, it's just such an interesting idea. Like what if we actually love things for what they could do rather than, you know…

Annalisa Holcombe (00:48:52):
It's that whole abundant stuff. Yeah. I love that you bring the positive and the abundant to what we do. And I want to be cognizant of your time and I appreciate how much time you've given to me. One of the things I usually talk about like, who is a mentor that you've had. So I'm interested in if you want to, but I have two questions for you. One of them, I just can't help and I know my listeners will care deeply about, so I just can't let it go. Which would be like, what was it like to actually have Dare to Lead training from Brené Brown? I know the students of mine that listen to this podcast will be like, what?

Laurel Smylie (00:49:37):
Yeah.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:49:37):
Yeah. So what was that like?

Laurel Smylie (00:49:40):
It was so cool. I really have to say, and it's funny because I have a bit of the heart of the skeptic, which is funny for all of this positivity that I'm talking about, because I have that too, but so she's coming in. It was not a cheap training. It wasn't like a, oh, you just flunked out a few hundred dollars and you go. And so we had invested a chunk of money and the room was about a... she had done four trainings in 2019. You had to apply, you had to be in the field, blah, blah, blah.

Laurel Smylie (00:50:12):
So I got in, I'm accepted into the June cohort, my business partner's accepted into the September cohort. And there's about 100, 125 people per cohort. And I'm sitting there like, she's about to come in, and the room is unsurprisingly dominantly women. There are a handful of men, international group, really interesting. And there's some women that are over there kind of fan girling like, "Oh my God, she's about to come in." And I'm sitting there arms crossed, leaning back, like, all right, let's see what you got. Let's see what you got.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:50:45):
Prove to me that you're all that.

Laurel Smylie (00:50:47):
Like, I love you, I fan girl you, but also like, really? And I mean, she was amazing. She is as charismatic as you think she will be. She is also profoundly authentic, and I really appreciated that. She treated us also like we were colleagues, which I think was a really special thing. And actually set a boundary with the group in that particular way. She talked about like, "You all understand the challenges of being a facilitator, so I'm just going to be real with you guys. These take energy from me. I love doing them, but I'm an introvert and this requires a lot of energy from me and I need to keep some of my energy for my family.

Laurel Smylie (00:51:37):
And so I'm going to ask that you guys don't come and approach me or try and take pictures of me on a break." And just the way that she'd set that boundary was really interesting to me. And as somebody who has been a student in my personal life as well as professional around boundaries and is a recovering people pleaser and all of that, I think it was really important for me to see modeled what it is to set a boundary clearly and still kindly. And also I actually loved the fact that she's warm, but she's not super warm and fuzzy.

Laurel Smylie (00:52:16):
And I actually really appreciated that. It was like a nice reminder that this work gets positioned as very soft. And is that really important? And all these feelings and stuff. And it was just a nice reminder that you can talk about these things with somebody. These can be very real. They don't have to be everybody only has nice conversations. In fact, the heart of the kindest and strongest relationships are the ability to have conflict and have to be courageous and have hard conversations and trust that there will still be support there.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:52:56):
That's awesome. I'm glad to hear it. It's a sad thing that you don't get to have your picture taken with her at the thing, but it makes sense for her.

Laurel Smylie (00:53:04):
Right. She will do one group picture with everybody and it was really interesting, but I was like...

Annalisa Holcombe (00:53:11):
Super fair.

Laurel Smylie (00:53:13):
Right.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:53:13):
I think it's the best way. I had this friend of mine who with priorities, I kept trying to talk him into volunteering for something. And he was like, "Look, I only have time in my life to do three things well, work, family and one volunteer thing." This year I already committed to the volunteer thing, so ask me next year.

Laurel Smylie (00:53:29):
Right.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:53:30):
And I was like, "That's fair. I don't have an argument for you."

Laurel Smylie (00:53:34):
Exactly. Right. And that's the stuff, is that clarity is... I just feel like we somehow got the message that being clear was mean, and some things I just am like super grateful, like, oh great, now I don't have questions. We don't have to have this conversation 18 times.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:53:50):
Yeah. And I don't even have to worry that it has anything to do with me. We make it about like, this has nothing to do with me, this is about you.

Laurel Smylie (00:53:56):
Seriously.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:53:57):
Yeah.

Laurel Smylie (00:53:57):
Seriously.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:53:58):
Awesome. So before we go, just, is there any... Because I care so deeply about mentors and the way that mentors show up for us in our lives, sometimes not realizing they're a mentor, sometimes clearly knowing. Is there any mentor that you've had in your life that you would like to honor by telling a little bit of their story here?

Laurel Smylie (00:54:19):
Oh, I love that question. The person that comes to mind who, I don't know if she would define herself as a mentor of mine, but it definitely was, I had two at the same period of time. I was at Great Place To Work from the time I was 24 to 32, 33. So I really, I grew up in that organization in a myriad of different ways. And I got to a point where I was the longest tenured person on the team and also the youngest by about 10 years. And it was this really odd intersection of like, I don't know what to do with this, but all of these brilliant, lovely colleagues who had more experience than me and were still looking to me for my thoughts on something, or I would have a contribution.

Laurel Smylie (00:55:07):
And Tony, one of my mentors really was consistent in reminding me that I had things to actually contribute and that my age had absolutely nothing to do with... And even the kind of experience I had had, because it had been only at Great Place To Work at the time I was a bit like, is this as valuable as it could be and blah, blah, blah, and a lot of stories about it. And he really, I think part of his job, part of his quote unquote, job as a mentor for me, was to really remind me of my own contributions and my own gifts, despite the fact that I was... I think at the time I was 20 years younger than him. And he had so many... I mean, he is such a brilliant and gifted consultant. So I think that was a huge mentorship moment for me.

Laurel Smylie (00:55:55):
And the other, I can't even think of something specific, but was my boss, Sarah at that time, she just, what I experienced from her, what she really modeled and helped me learn about was again, how to be caring without the traditional look of it. It wasn't like, "Are you doing okay?" I remember I started crying in a review with her and I was mortified and she wasn't like, "Are you okay? Can I give you a hug? Do you want to talk about anything?" She like got up and left the room and went and got me some tissues and allowed me to collect myself and came back in and was like, "Talk to me about what's going on." And it just, there was a really different experience of empathy there that was a huge lesson for me. And Sarah always served as that touch point for me.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:56:43):
Oh, I love that. She didn't actually try to cover up what was happening, she was just like, "Okay, I'm here to listen when you're ready to talk about it."

Laurel Smylie (00:56:51):
Exactly. I lost a friend in November and she had been sick for about seven years. And I was with Sarah, I was with a team when I got or almost immediately after I got the news that she was sick and everybody else is doing, they're like, "She's going to be fine. Everything's going to be okay." And in that context, in that moment, it was not an inappropriate thing to say, but Sarah conversely was like, "She may not make it, but you guys are going to live out whatever time she's got in the best possible way that honors her."

Laurel Smylie (00:57:26):
And it's so funny when I tell that story, because some people's reactions are like, "That's a terrible thing to say." And mine was like, exactly what you said, I just appreciated the realness of it and it wasn't covering up and diminishing, it just was like that stinks, and you have the capability to meet this moment.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:57:47):
And to get through it. Yeah. Yeah. It's that whole resilience stuff like we can get through it.

Laurel Smylie (00:57:53):
We can do it. We can do hard things.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:57:54):
Yeah. But I deeply, deeply appreciate that you gave me this time. I'm so grateful.

Laurel Smylie (00:58:01):
Yeah.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:58:02):
I just think you're the most brilliant and the most thoughtful and I'm just deeply grateful that you would do this and that I could hopefully share with a few hundred m

ore people, at least what you have to say and what I get the honor of hearing regularly. Laurel Smylie (00:58:24):
Thank you. I'm so honored to be here. I so appreciate you asking, and it's anytime.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:58:50):
Thank you so much to Laurel Smylie for her own courage in sharing her knowledge and her vulnerability and honesty with us. You can learn more about her by following her on LinkedIn and through her website at fourletterconsulting.com. Next week, we will have a particularly special episode. We've invited several of our past guests to join us, to talk about their experience and our focus will be self-awareness.

Annalisa Holcombe (00:59:37):
As always, thank you for listening to 92000 hours. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a review. We really appreciate your support. If you're interested in integrating the personal and professional through authentic conversation, just like you heard on our episode today, please check out our work at Connection Collaborative. You can find us at connectioncollaborative.com or send me an email at Annalisa.connectioncollaborative.com. Thank you and see you next week on 92000 hours.

Annalisa Holcombe (01:00:12):
92000 hours is made possible by Connection Collaborative. This episode was produced and edited by Brianna Stegell. Lexie Banks is our marketing director, and I'm your host Annalisa Holcombe.