This episode is brought to you by Dame products women, founded and owned company that's working to close the pleasure Gap. All their toys are tested by real people and couples will explain more in a bit. But first, let's get into the episode.
I come to work in order to develop in order to become a better version of myself. It is part of who I am. In addition to a paycheck. It is part of the development of the self. It is an identity.
Act. I'm currently vacant and I'm Danielle Weisberg. Welcome to 9 to 5s with the skin. We've run into so many questions over the years and had so many moments where we needed advice and we got it from women, who'd been there and that's what we're bringing you with this show each week. We're helping you get what you want out of your career by talking to the smartest leaders. We know because we know your work life is a lot more than nine to five. All right, let's get
To it.
Today, our guest is a stair, / L. She's a psychotherapist a New York Times bestselling author and she has become one of the most prominent voices when it comes to Modern relationships. Her TED Talks have more than 20 million views and she has to podcasts one about romantic relationships called. Where should we begin and one about work called housework? And she's just launched a new card game for your next date or dinner party. And I am very, very
To it. Astaire. Welcome to nine to five ish. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, Danielle. So usually start things off with a lightning round. But today, we're going to do things a little bit differently. We're actually going to kick it off with some modified questions from your new game, which I'm loving already. Okay, you want to see if I can eat the food? I cooked.
Answer this question with something. Joyful. I owe a thank you, too. I owe a thank you to my younger son because I sometimes think I take for granted the multiple ways in which he shows up and it feels so seamless that the seamlessness edits out the gratefulness and that shouldn't be. So Iowa. Thank you to one of my mentors from
DC where I haven't connected with and probably eight years and I sent him an email just saying I was thinking about you. And I know we haven't talked in a while, but I love to connect and we ended up having a great Zoom session and I'm so thankful to have those types of people in my life when I need them. And I'm also so thankful that I was prompted to reach out after doing a mentorship episode on the show. You know, what's so beautiful about this question for me. Is that it? Of course feels great. When
He reaches out to you, out of the blue, but it also feels even better to do it is you just feel full from acknowledge. If suddenly you kind of feel like you, you connect the dots that needed to be connected in the Stream of your life. And I would have taught of mentors too many times. I just have been the situation and I'm doing something and it reminds me of where I learned it. And I'm just like, it's like an a lot of love and appreciation for that person. So I thought that
This was a really a really good question. Answer this with something that gets you worked up. My most tenacious Vice is my most tenacious Vice. I'll go. If you need to go ahead, I have a go. I think it's my memory.
Because I don't forget. And so it's actually, like, I have a hard time, letting things go and I'm able to keep active things that like other people. Just forget. It's a grudges to yes. So one should not step on the wrong foot. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, and I'll remember and there's and it's hard to make up its hard to make it up for you. It's
There's a bridge as a slight. There's a tear and it just cannot be mended. That's it. Yeah, right. That it's interesting that you corded device, but it's a beautiful way of understanding the question. I went more concrete. Actually, I think probably my oldest Vice is that I bite my nails and I was a very busy nail-biter, as a child. I've done everything I can to stop and of course now I sometimes,
This will put polish and hope that, you know, the Aesthetics will deter the destructive. Yeah, and especially because we work on Zoom. I see myself sometimes in the middle just doing it. You don't even realize. It's not like I'm biting. I just have the The Habit that nasty habit. Yeah. Of bringing the finger to my mouth. It does. It's really a vice, I get that. Okay. So answer this was something out of character. If I wasn't working as a psychotherapist.
I would be oh, I could be a singer. Are you talented? I sang for many years. I perform I would be a performer but I I found a different way to do the Performing to tell the stories. I have always loved to be other people than myself and when you sing, you also can enter a character, you enter the story of the song, the lyrics. So I would do something that invites me to step.
Outside of the bounds of the self that I know into the worlds of others, which is a different version of doing what I do as a therapist. Yeah, and as a podcaster, but I would be the one entering the different role rather than meeting people that take me into different world. So I would be a spin instructor and or yoga instructor because and the spin instructor is because I like motivating people and I like having burst of energy.
And having people focus and getting them out of their own heads and to believe in something else. And with the yoga part. I like Collective group energy. That's like focused on something. One of the, the most resourcing and nurturing things. I created during the pandemic was a yoga group of friends, over three continents that has been meeting for 20 months four times a week.
And I became one of the teachers, there are other people in the group, who are real teachers. I was one of those teachers but I have never thought in my life and it is such an out of character thing for me, you know, ya hear me, say those things to lead and I've always loved teaching, but I've never thought yoga when you teach you clarify for yourself, as well as for others, and it holds you accountable in an incredible way. So, here I am for the past. 20 months. I have been a yoga teacher as well. That's a
Nothing. Okay. So let's get into why do you workplace relationships and Dynamics matter? Like why is it important to start focusing on the interpersonal relationships at work? And I think more and more people are asking this and wondering this. Now that a whole bunch of us are working, just like this /. Zoom over FaceTime little cutting relationships have always been important in the workplace.
Ace. But paying attention to them, noticing the Dynamics, understanding how they influence collaboration connection, conflict resolution communication, that was often relegated to what was called soft skills and soft skills didn't seem to meet the bottom line and soft skills. Also, were often seen as feminine skills and feminine skills. Could often be idealized in principles and actually quite disregarded in reality.
What is changing is the understanding that relational intelligence in the workplace is part of the bottom line. And why? Because the meaning of work for people who work in that economy and it's, this is just this does not cover. The entire work. Reality is an identity economy. I come to work in order to develop in order to become a better version of myself. It is part of who I am. I'm in addition to a page.
Check. It is part of the development of the self. It is an identity project and for that my connections to others, to my managers, my mentors, my colleagues becomes the active context of my experience at work when relationships are at work. Don't work. Well, no matter. What is your remuneration? No matter what is your promotion? No matter if you get free food, or if you used to get a gym, you basically won't sleep.
Well and that it would surpass everything, you know, nothing will compensate for posting this relationships in the workplace partly also, because for so many of us it is a central place for us for so many years. It is the place of our social life and our Mobility. What's some advice that you have for people that are really struggling in this new way of working? Whether it's totally remote. Whether it's a hybrid, on starting those,
Those relationships, especially, you know, when we see the idea of work and what people want to get out of, it is changing so much. We've seen people leave their jobs. And so they're not only trying to keep up with relationships in a different setting but they're also potentially creating them for the first time people seeking at work, a sense of belonging.
A community a sense of purpose and meaning and a sense of identity, all three that's part of where relationships are. So Central. It is extremely difficult for newcomers. And I know the scheme has a lot of new people that have just joined to create all of that in a remote setting when basically nothing on on the screen, a spontaneous. We schedule every meeting there is no serendipity.
There is no happenstance. There is no chance encounter which are all those detours that lead you to places. You could never have anticipated. Everything is extremely planned and predictable that is one of the great losses of the flattening of relationships and work life. That is taking place on the screen. You can do tasks but that's very different than how you find the meaning of the tasks, the connections with others around the task and all of that. The next thing is that people
By working remote are also working often from their bedrooms. They're spending their whole day in their bedrooms. That means at home is no longer home and work is not really work. It was a kind of a merging of environments without boundaries. So what is really helping us at this moment is to create routines and rituals and boundaries and I think the routines and rituals and values can be done towards oneself with oneself, but also in the workplace to
To have conversations that are not about work, but that are about the people who are at work. Who are you working with? Who is this person that you are sending this document to who is this new person who just joined us? And not just to say Mitch is joining us today. He's going to be taking care of such and such and such and such and that's the end of Mitch's introduction and Mitch will not have much of a chance because people have three four minutes before everybody arrives to do chitchat to do small. Talk that
Major glue between people, but many times people just go from one meeting to another. And so, Mitch is going to remain a rather unknown entity, who doesn't really know where he fits. There is no context. There is no linkages. The systemic part of work is kind of fragmented and then the purpose becomes challenged to. So I think you raise an interesting point, which is it's helpful. When you have a shared experience, that is spontaneous. That isn't just, you know, what's on the agenda.
AA. Correct. And at the same time. I think it's also really important especially for managers to have boundaries to keep people focused because there's so much going on that we can't control. When you say that being able to bring your whole self is integral in this way of working together. And if so, how do you begin to lay the trust like for Mitch to be able to feel comfortable doing that? So,
I'm going to answer it to you in the two parts of your question. Bringing our whole self to work, is something we always do. It's just that sometimes we're aware of it and sometimes not. And what is the whole self will bring tour? Is that we all bring a relationship resume to work. We bring to work the history of how we connect with people how we communicate, how we trust, how we collaborate, how we ask for help. Etc. That is the part of the unofficial resume. I think one of the very nice.
Nice questions. When people come in is instead of asking them. Where have you worked before or what are your skills or what, is the strengths that you bring to this task? We actually ask people to introduce themselves by their unofficial resume. What is the stuff that actually defines a lot about who you are, you know, other things that you care about that. Keep you busy that you enjoy that you share with other people. That is not of what you have written on your CV. Have that be the introduction. It's a beautiful.
To
enter into people's worlds into stories. So that you begin to create not only shared experience. But also which is connected shared reality and then other people start to talk about their unofficial resumes and that too is beautiful because the majority of the time people who have worked together, sometimes years still don't know any of this. Yes, you did that. You went there you traveled for two years. You play this instrument. You saying you cook, you know, who is the person?
Ian, and then, once I know those elements of your unofficial resumes, I can start slacking. You little things that I found that connect to those parts of you, then you start to feel like I exist, not just, I work.
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I think that's a really important change. I exist. Not just I work. Do you feel like, in the people that you've talked to, there's been an added layer of social anxiety in the past 18 months. Yes. I think that the way I understand some of the elements of the social anxiety, the social anxiety was not so much. During the confinement, social anxiety is actually part of a few things part of the re-entry, but also,
Of the prolonged uncertainty, you know, this is long-haul covid, you know, people ask me questions. Usually, what do you see in the post covid? And I'm thinking post. I know that drives me crazy when people are like, oh, when we were in the pandemic, I'm like, aren't we still in it? Like, all of these things are still very present. We are very much in it and we are in it. Also mentally. So in the beginning of the pandemic, when they've confinement started, the social anxiety was,
About the disconnecting about the reducing of our Social Circles to very small numbers of people about creating, you know, Reliance on a tiny part. Sometimes, one person sometimes for. But, you know, it was about the shrinking, the centrifugal force of our social life. And for many people that was often very challenging for other people. It was a relief. It was a reprieve for other people. It was a discovery. How actually I'm and there's
Actually soothing about that having to go out there and be out and about all the time, but everybody had reactions, you know, we all went in for a weekend to see if the, the digital work that we can turn into two weeks and those two weeks turn into 20 months. So prolonged uncertainty. Then as we began to talk about the full, we had this notion that we're all going to go back to work in some variation of hybrid or another. And the social anxiety is because of social atrophy.
For all this period, We have dealt specifically with what is predictable, what is stable? What keeps us safe and secure. And we have basically shunned the other part of our existence, which is the spontaneous, the happenstance, the improvised the unknown, the mystery, the anticipation that comes with curiosity and exploration, our range of exploration became very, very limited and predictable as much as we could. So
We could feel safe and in going back out, people tell you, I haven't been in a gathering for so long. I haven't been with more than three people in a room. I haven't seen those friends in so long. I haven't seen people in full body. We have been very much disembodied in our social life and all of that. For some people is part of the social anxiety, more introverted people are suddenly wandering path. I have to you know, it's like I'm going to open the door and a wolf of wind is coming.
Being on me. Can I brave it? All of that is part of the social anxiety and some way when you're confined. You try to control your environment. When you go back out, you have to deal with all the elements and the unknowns of life and the world. So, I love when you talk about relationships and I think there's one relationship that highlights. If it's really not working in this remote environment, which is between a colleague and a boss and
If you were doing couples therapy of sorts with with a boss and their direct report, what key questions, would you push them on to try to learn about their relationship? So so interesting. You ask me this question one because I I actually in the new season of how its work did exactly that, I did. A few sessions, one is actually called bringing my boss to therapy. And the question I asked there is what do each of you need.
From the other, in order to succeed at what you're doing. What is it that she can do for you? So that you can do what she needs from you. And then in another episode, what is really highlighted is that you cannot understand the relationship outside of the context. It is a situation of two people and a supervisor manager, and and his direct report. He's black and gay. She's white sis woman, and basically they cannot deal.
Their relationship without understanding the issues of gender inequality, and race and racism in the workplace there. Try very much in particular to make it just about him and her, because they get along so well, and to kind of individualize their issues, but in fact, their individual conflicts are part of larger social ills and social tensions, so it's about opening that up. You hear her say, you know, but you're my friend, you should have stood up for me. You should have negotiated.
My raised etcetera and you hear him say but you're not just my friend, that is true too, but I can never look at our friendship and our collaboration outside of the fact that I'm a black man. Supervising a white woman in, if I go to bat for you, that has meaning. That is beyond the one that we alone will ascribe and to the conversation itself that lays this out and then takes the sting out of it is extremely productive for work.
Under relationship and on the future of the working together. Here you talk about that just how much trust has to be built between people. To have that type of conversation. They did reverse to do Danielle. The trust comes from the conversation. The question always is, do you need to have trust in order to take risks or is it the act of taking the risk? In this instance, the difficult conversation, the brave conversation that actually will strengthen the trust and that is the way this
This goes, but of course, it is helped by having a mediator by having someone who works with that relationship and there are people in the workplace who can do it. I did this morning with members of my own team and I just thought, hmm, some tensions here. It's about switching polarization into complementarity. You need each other. Your differences are good. You emphasize this, and by you constantly emphasizing one part of this story.
One part of the issue. It frees the other person of not having to think about that, but the issue itself needs both of your points of views. You're making this an either or when in fact, it's a both ends. And that mentality is very, very freeing and Trust building and your conflict resolving. What do you think? You've been most surprised by as a psychotherapist analyzing this?
Total societal shift. We've gone through in this pandemic environment, maybe two things. I would highlight and not in order of importance. One is, what does it mean to have? All your roles? Merge in one place? We are very localized people, you know, we get dressed to go to the gym. We get dressed to go and see friends. We take a transportation to go to work. We go to see our friends to visit with our families. We inhabit, a role we take on different clothes.
Different. Accoutrements different language different Expressions, when we go to work versus home all of that and suddenly the collapse of all of these temporal boundaries and spatial boundaries and role definitions into one place. This chair where I sit I am at the same time, a mother and a purse, and a supervisor, and a clinician and a podcaster and a speaker without getting up, you know, that is
Is doing a number on us, that I don't think we have yet fully fully understood. I agree. I mean, one thing that were grappling with like so many other employers is we're trying to do a lot of things to keep people, healthy and focus and fulfilled. And they're also just seems to be a realization to that. Sometimes, you can't get past burnout. How do you advise people when they are?
At that point, we're doing all of those things sitting in that chair and being all of those things just gets to feel like too much think. One of the first thing I would say is some responses are normal predictable, human responses to an abnormal situation. It's the situation that's abnormal. If you, it's not just the work in the tasks. It's the work in the task, in a
World, where you would getting to wonder? What for where is this going? You have a young staff that young staff is leaving, many of them, with a fair amount of climate despair at fair. Amount of there is no planning its enforced presentism. It's all happening in the now who can make plans for Christmas, you know, domestic gravity sitting in small tiny bedrooms the whole day. And those are social ills. These are not
Personal problems, you're wondering. Where is this? All going is the right question to ask, is nothing wrong with you. I feel so bad that to world is not giving you the opportunity to have an answer for that. And so, sometimes Collective, resilience strength. Hope is cultivated by allowing people to talk together about their worries and their concerns. Don't try to erase them. Don't try to make them artificially optimistic.
The relief will come from the permission of speaking out loud with your colleagues. Especially your Newsroom. You're you know, you're with people who dealing with the events of the world the coming together in a circle to tell stories of how your families. For example have dealt with adversity or war or natural disasters, or pandemics or social traumas or racism or structural inequality mean the
Big issues and what were the resources and the strengths that you can identify in your family across Generations that help them overcome famines in Ireland. You name it, poverty, economic Strife, that is a conversation that is anti burn out, you know, because you identify that this has happened throughout history and you mind the strengths and the resources collectively, so that you create a collective resilience for the times that we live in.
And then people want to come to work because they feel that the people they're working in as living in the same world as them as a manager. How do you think that I create that Forum or how do you think that I even start a conversation like that? Exactly, as we are doing, you just asked me a question. I share my thoughts with you in the moment on my Friday. In team meetings. I decided way back in April. Last year, that every time I was going to write a newsletter or a Blog about what's going on about love.
Last loneliness Collective grief and suddenly, I was going to have the conversation with my team over the very subjects that we were writing about. I couldn't just think that the audience was going to engage with those questions and not my own team. We cut the meeting in, half the weekly hands on deck meeting and we began to every week. Ask a question, the same questions. We were asking in the game. They have come to be part of the, where should we begin game? And the same questions that we were actually writing about or doing the YouTube Workshop.
Oops, on and it was unbelievable. You know, we went through all the different things together, The Gorge, Floyd, the baby, LM, the economic crisis, the uncertainty, the housing, the and we would just ask the team. So as a manager at your next meeting, you say this is a time where we can't just pretend it's business as usual.
We not going back to normal. So I want to introduce a moment where we are reflecting together about the world. We live in which explains the world. We work in, which is the background drop to the world. We work in. And this is my question for today, and then you don't sit and wait and see, 15 faces still. You just start talking and then you call people by their name. They can always say, not now pass etcetera, but you, you and you lead the conversation. So,
It doesn't, you know, I don't have anything to say and then you wait. And it's this uncomfortable Stillness. All the questions you started with me today. You can take to your meeting. You know, Danielle, when we did the questions in the beginning. And I think it's a very important thing. I would like to distinguish, you were asking me questions. We were asking each other, the same question and then we answered it. What I've been particularly? Because you asked in the workplace and how do you bring those people together? And how can the manager facilitate these things is to actually
Think of it as questions and answers. But as stories stories are the bridge that connect us? Where should we begin? Is actually a game of stories of unlocking the stories inside of you that you rarely tell or that you don't tell in that particular context and storytelling at work. Gives us context. And that is a context that at this moment is flattened in our Zoom calls. The context helps you better.
Gate, the moments of trust and conflict and connection. That is critical for the success at work. And if you try this with your team in the next few days, tell me about it. You know, I'm very curious to see how it will play out. I love that and I'm so happy that I'm literally staring at the game in front of me right now. I'm going to try it. It's got to be fascinating being a therapist in this environment. Right? Like you are seeing so many things that are going.
Studied for Generations. What is most interesting for you? Right now? It's such a, such a timely question. I have a training platform for coaches and therapists and every year. We have an annual conference for sessions life, the topic of this season. We just named. It is called the Great adaptation. How coaches? And therapists can stay grounded when the ground is moving. It's not a surface.
Fascinating time for therapist. It is an absolutely overwhelming draining time for therapists as well for one because we are living the parallel reality to the people that we were working with. It's not just happening to them. It's happening to me to yourself spending a session. Talking to me about, you know, the earthquake in Haiti and the floods in Germany and Belgium and what's going on in Afghanistan. And I at the end of the session can sometimes only say, I feel the same way. How do we straddle hope and anxiety?
At this moment, is the central question that comes up in in in my supervisions groups all the time. And how do we resource ourselves? So that we can continue to give people a sense of hope? How do we take them out of the notion that they have to deal with all of this alone? How do we help people with social connection? Because it is the most important resilience factor. And it's a very challenging time for mental health.
And there is not a therapist that has a slot open at this point. I hadn't thought about it from that perspective, but it's got to be so, so challenging. Okay, we're going to get to a listener question. Here's a question from Jamie, as a manager. How can I balance showing compassion for my team with the need to be productive? I think that the combustion question of the compassion statement says I understand what you're feeling. Tell me.
Or the production question says, what can I do or what is it that you need in order to do what you need to do? Despite or given how you're feeling?
What do we need to make available for you? So that you can do the work as well? And it's a both end. I understand that you living at home and that you have terrible Wi-Fi. How can we help you? Do we find another place for you that you can go. You basically take the situation and you turn it into the part of the situation that you can solve some of it. You need to manage and some of it you can actually solve.
Who is someone else we should have on the show? Ava? I lose is another extraordinary sociologist. She's a cultural anthropologists or a culture sociologists who has wonderful insights about the times. We live in us as so many women that I find. So I'll send it over. We do a lot of episodes. Thank you so much, Esther. Thank you. It's a pleasure.
Thanks for listening to this episode of nine to five ish. With the skim, a new episode will be in your feet again, next, Wednesday. In the meantime, check out our news podcast skim. This every Thursday we cover, what you need to know each week in 30 minutes or less.
