Turns Out, You’re Not Oversharing. You’re Undersharing with Harvard Professor Leslie John

Well, I woke up this morning, and I had what our guest today would call a disclosure hangover, in that I felt like I had committed the cardinal sin of tmi. And what had happened was the night before, I had been teaching online at NYU Stern. I'd been teaching online because we had a massive snowstorm here in New York. And so they moved us to remote. And. And as I was teaching online to make a point, make an important point, as part of my lecture, this is my management class, I told the story of a time that I, early in my career, where I playfully, or so I thought, mimicked a client, a client who actually spoke to his plans. Then when I went into work the next day, my boss was waiting for me, and he said, I want to fire you because we don't do that with our clients. And I don't care about how good your performance is, Susie. You've got to live by the values of this firm. So I told this story to my students to make the point about how important it is for a company to be clear about their values and how important it is once you know those values, to live by them. And as I told this story to teach my students, I noticed that my students were completely stricken. Now, had we been in the classroom, it might have been a different dynamic because I would have also felt their body language. But all I got were their faces. And their faces were all saying, like, why is Professor Welch telling us this incredible, incredibly humiliating story about a gigantic failure she had in her life? And the answer was that I have discovered that oversharing is usually for the good, that when we reveal ourselves and when we're vulnerable and when we tell our truth, that it ends up working out for us. Today we have a show all about over sharing or undersharing and which is better for you in life and which is worse for you. And it all circles back to one of the most important values that we talk about on this podcast, which is voice. The desire, the impulse, the drive to self express, to show our inner lives on the outside how much of that is good for you and how much of that is bad for you. And we have literally the world's leading expert and actually happens to be a friend of mine as well, Professor Leslie John of the Harvard Business School, who has a new book about it, which actually I truly read. You saw all my stickums in it. It's called Revealing. And we're gonna talk about it today on Becoming youg. I'm Susie Welch and Leslie, welcome to you.

Thank you so much. It's such a delight to be here.

You know, when we first met, we immediately started oversharing together. I'm a huge oversharer. I don't know, I just. I guess maybe by definition, podcast hosts are over sharers, but I love it. I love intimacy with people, and I don't like people who don't sort of talk about their inner lives. And so when I heard about your book and what you're working on and your research, which is really about how much oversharing is too much and how much is too little, I was like this. We got to get you on, because one of the top values that we talk about on this podcast is the value voice. So let us just stop before we go on and just do some housekeeping here for a moment. The podcast is based on the class that I teach at nyu, which is a methodology about how to help you figure out what to do with your life. And you do that by excavating three data sets. Your authentic values, your aptitudes, what you're good at, and your economically viable interests. And as part of excavating your values, we've developed a tool called the Values Bridge. And it's because of this test, which has been now taken by 150,000 people since May, that we found out what the top values are for every different demographic. And, you know, men have different values than women in some cases, different income groups have different values in some cases. But almost universally, this value of voice, this value of speaking your truth, if you will, of. Of sharing, of self disclosing is a top value for most people. And I see it so much with my students when we test people's values, and we see so often that voice, self expression, self disclosure, this desire to share our inner truth with others is a top value. We also test for how much you're actually living that value. And we call that calculation the authenticity gap, because our premise is that you should be living your values fully in if you're not hurting anybody. And the authenticity gap on voice, how much people feel they're actually living the value of self expression and self disclosure, It's a pretty big gap. It's the third highest gap. It's almost 30%, meaning the people who have this as a top value, they feel like they're 30% away from living how much they want to live this value. So, first of all, before you answer my burning question, which is, why don't we say what we want to say? Why don't we use our voices? And I'm dying to hear the answer to that, because the number of times students will come down to me with their scores, and they'll say, voice is my number one value, Professor Welch. But I've got a 60% gap. What's going on? And can I close it now? From now on, I'm going to say, you got to read this book. But before we do that, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself. What do you teach technically?

Technically, I teach negotiation, which is relevant. When I teach negotiation, you know, people come to negotiation with this default of, like, I can't show them anything. Like, if I reveal, it's going to be a weakness. And. And that's so such a, like, metaphor in a way, for how we get it wrong in real life. We think of it as zero sum. Like, if I share this thing, it's like giving up a piece of me. And so often it's not like that. And so when I teach negotiation, I'm like, you got to share your values. You got to share what you want. Yeah.

You know, actually, when we met that night in Copenhagen when we were both at this big conference and I found out you're a professor of negotiation, and we started talking about it as professors are want to do, and you actually said, the more you personally reveal, the better the negotiation goes. And it's, in a way, intuitively, I remember thinking to myself, oh, yeah, that's right, because you start to develop. It's like when hostage negotiators start negotiating. They say, you know, tell me about your kid, or I've got a son at home also. And they start trying to develop this rapport. But, you know, I want to just have you relate a story about a time that you overshared and then had a disclosure hangover. But it actually worked out incredibly well for you in a lot of different ways. And I mean, I asked you before we started making this podcast, do you mind if we tell the peeing story? Okay, so if you're. If you're of the faint of heart, just skip this part. But why don't you tell us that story and what it taught you?

Yeah, right. So, I mean, we can all relate to the disclosure hangover. The tricky thing is that we live in fear of the disclosure hangover. So we self censor. But people can cringe and admire your guts. Right? We see the cringe on their face. The admiration that we don't see, it comes later when they ask us for advice and they trust us and they like us and they want to hang with us. So my Peeing story.

Do tell.

The most elegant story ever.

I love this story. Go ahead.

So when I was a baby academic, I was at a conference, and it was late in the night, sitting around in a circle, mostly junior people. There were two very fancy scholars there who did not yet know of my existence. And someone had the great idea of saying, let's go around the circle and tell our most embarrassing story ever. And so most of the people, the junior people, my fellow baby academics, were saying, you know, like, humble, braggy things. Like, there's a typo in the abstract of my journal publication. Oh, no, the horror. Right? These, like. Yeah, those are actually cringy things to me. And so maybe it was because I just dislike it so much when people do that. But for whatever reason, it wasn't strategic. I went for the kill. And I just went ahead and told my actually most embarrassing story, which entailed. When I was in college, I was acting in a play. And in. There's one scene in the play, so I played a very strict German school teacher, and I was wearing a dress. And this is relevant with thin pantyhose. But in one scene of the play, she just goes crazy and gets wasted and lets loose, right? And I got. And I'm holding a big jug of vodka, I. E. Water. And I'm like, method. I'm just, like, getting right into it. And I'm laughing so hard. The audience is laughing so hard that I.

You don't have to whisper. Okay, okay.

Everyone can hear me. I know. The world knows.

I know

that I just start peeing my pants.

You peed your pants on stage?

And it wasn't paying my dress. So it's like.

It's.

No, I'm like, gesturing. It's bad gest. But, like, thin pantyhose. And like, it's like a waterfall between my legs. And then. And then in this. The things you do in desperation, then I'm like, oh, I gotta hide this.

And, you know, you realize you're peeing on stage.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I realize it. But I'm like, maybe they won't notice if I pretend to. And so I'm dousing. I'm throwing the water everywhere to kind of dilute or distract.

Okay, and then what happened?

And then the play went on, and my family was in attendance. We never spoke of it. So I told this story, and then after I told it, I just was like, oh, my God. It's like I poured gasoline all over my body and lit a match.

Like, because you were saying this in front of Fancy scholars.

Exactly.

Who actually could control your future.

Totally.

Totally.

So then I woke, but people also were laughing, but then probably at me. And then I woke up the next day, gut wrenching. Oh, my gosh, what did I do? Like career suicide.

Right.

But it turned out that long game, those two fancy scholars became two of my closest mentors. Right. And it's not. And I don't think it's in spite of that. It's. I know because I've talked to them about it. It's like, oh, you're fun. Like, you're not a robot. You're real. You know, you're a person. You took a social risk. We respect that. Like, it has risk. But that's the thing. So much risk in self disclosure. But that's, of course, where the reward is.

I think you kind of. There's so much reward in it. People actually like you more. They relate to you because they know all their own secrets and they think, oh, my God, this person is so real. And you realize pretty early on, once you've done it, once you get over yourself and you use your voice.

Okay, well, and that's the thing doing is believing. We get so caught up in our mind of this chess game and we're so scared of the disclosure hangover that we suppress.

Yes.

And so you really. You need to do it. And once you do it, then you feel the benefits, then you. And then you keep doing it.

Yes. I mean, I myself have experienced. Look, on this podcast, I tell all sorts of stories. And there I was in class last night telling this story about how I got fired and shootout. And it was funny how hard it was online because when I do it in person, I can see their faces and people are softening. As you're revealing. I want to talk about why people don't do this because I want to get back a little bit to talking about voice value. I can't wait for you to take the values bridge.

Me too.

@thevaluesbridge.com by the way. Okay. Because I bet you voice is one of your top values. It's actually not that high for me. And it doesn't mean I don't want to self express, but I also think I just have higher values. Like my top values cosmos. And I mean, there's just higher values for me ratings.

What does that value mean?

That means that's about faith. It's about my faith, which I'm a very religious person, and so my top value is faith. Beautiful. Yeah. Thank you. Voice struck me as such a high value because for many different reasons. Generationally, it's quite high. It's higher, slightly higher for Gen Z than it is for other generations, probably not surprisingly. And I think it says something about the Zeitgeist in many ways. But the thing that strikes me much more about voice is this authenticity gap that I talked about earlier, that people are not self expressing as much as their values which suggest they want to. So why don't you. There's fantastic research and thinking. Your book, which I'm going to start to recommend to my students when they ask me, why don't I express my voice? It's clearly a top value for me. Why don't I disclose more? I clearly want to let my inner life out. So what are some of the reasons we struggle with expressing our voice?

Yeah, we really do. I think one of the things that goes wrong in implementing this value is that the thought of sharing does not even occur to us so many times when it applies. Okay, so I'll give you an example. A day in the life, a boring day in the life of Leslie John. I wake up in the morning, I roll over on bed. I say to Kali, my husband, I say, I love you. And then so I'm gonna. I'm gonna. This is real data collection I'm gonna do. I'm writing a column here. One that says said and the other that says unsaid. Okay, So I say, good morning, Collie. And then what I don't say is. And I'm gonna just keep track. I said, I slept really badly. When I don't sleep well, I'm really dysregulated. We get to the bathroom, we in front of the mirror, we're brushing our teeth silently. What I think is I feel older than I thought I would at this age. And how. How come I still have acne in my 40s. So what's up with that? I just think these things. I don't say them. I don't even think of saying them. We go down to the kitchen, the kids are frolicking. Colin starts packing the lunches and he says, les, what do the kids want for? Want for snack? I say, I don't know. Stop asking me. I can't answer another question. But what I don't say is, I just need a hug because I'm exhausted and I'm stressed and I have a big day. So we're not even at breakfast yet. Okay. And this is five to two. Five things unsaid. I could go on and on. Five things unsaid. Two things said, right? And My point is, is that, like, before, like, writing this book, really, you know, it's one thing to know the research in the abstract, but writing it forced me to do it and, like, really internalize the things. So I would do these daily audits. And, like, my point is not all we should say all of the things we think. Not at all. Right. But rather, I think that we should consider sharing them more. And the problem is it doesn't even register the thought of sharing them. And I know that if we did share them more, we'd be so much better off, like, and more values aligned. Of course.

Right.

And that's. I think one of the reasons why there's a misalignment is it's like, you

want to share, but it doesn't even dawn on you. Right. And, like, doesn't it dawn on you? Professor JOHN Why?

Why doesn't it dawn on you? For several reasons. One of the reasons it doesn't dawn on you is because of this. This differential reinforcement pattern. So when we do say the thing, we get like, that's. And we. If we go too far, we feel like we've gone too far. That's a sin of commission. Right? We do something, we act, we say something, someone reacts. We get a negative social feedback that's like, oh, my gosh, what did I do? What is not. What is the sin of omission? The sin of omission is not saying the thing. Well, what are the symptoms of not saying the thing? Nothing. Missed opportunities. Those don't even register into us. And so what I want to help people to do is to bring this to conscious awareness, the fact that these are decisions, because when we're not conscious about it, we are making it. Silence is a choice. It's not neutral. It often is costly and charges interest. So that kind of reframe has really helped me.

Yeah, we don't even. Okay, so what you're saying is we don't even realize what we're not saying completely. And, you know, look, I actually sort of, in my dotage, discovered that one of the things that helped me the most in my life is when there was something that nobody was talking about, that if you just named it and you just talked about it, you can do that. You have the power to say, do you feel like you're in a very awkward dinner? And you could actually stop the dinner and you could say, does anybody notice that this dinner is not very comfortable? Is anybody not. Is anybody feeling awkward like me?

They will thank you. Because everybody's thinking, you know, A dear friend of mine said a similar story to me. She was at this PTA meeting and like, they weren't making any progress and she was feeling super frustrated. And she's like, you know what? I'm just gonna say it. She said, I feel really frustrated right now.

Yeah.

And think of that. Like, we never share feelings like that. And she.

Well, the world tells us not to our parents. There's a fantastic children's book, which I wonder if you've ever read to your kids, called Martha Seymour Speaks.

No.

Okay, so Martha Speaks is about a dog. It's so adorable. It's about a. Of course it involves a dog. Children's. So it is so insightful. So it's about a. A dog that, given Alphabet soup, starts speaking and suddenly the dog just starts saying everything that is on his mind. So, like, they're at a stop sign with their dog and the dog, like looks at the person and says, why is that person so fat? And the family's like, martha, shut up. Right? And they, like, are constantly getting Martha the suppress, suppress. And so it's a wonderful book to start to talk to children about what you can say and can't say. But from Kim Scott, who's a brilliant, radical candor, brilliant thinker, has said that, like starting at 18 months, we're basically told, if you don't have something nice to say, don't say it at all. And we are kind of brought up not to say true stuff. But the power of saying true stuff, it's so self reinforcing. I know I didn't do it. I was very careful about expressing my feelings. And then I met my late husband Jack, who was a very big. First of all, oversharer. Talked about like nothing. Nothing stayed inside that man. Right. Everything that he was thinking came right out. And it kind of shook me to my core. And unlike our second or third date, we went to a really fancy restaurant in New York City. And the waitress comes over, really fancy pants. Not the kind of place I was typically going in those days. And he says to the waitress, well, what do you recommend on this menu? I've not been to this restaurant before. And she said, well, you've got to have this meal. The chef loves it. It's so fantastic. And so he goes, great. And I said, you've sold me. So we both order it and the meal comes out and it's inedible. It's disgusting. So bad. Like, very bad. Okay. And I'm like kind of moving it around on my plate. First of all, I'M not gonna say to Jack, this is terrible. Why? He just, obviously he's ordered it.

And it's also an early date, early date.

I didn't want to, like, seem like a complaining, moaning complainer. And I'm kind of moving it around, like, can I hide it under the rice kind of thing. And he says to me immediately, this is disgusting. It tastes like paste. And I was like, love, yeah, yeah. Okay. Then what happens? Then the waitress walks over and he says to the waitress, this is terrible. I jumped out of my skin. But by this time, he'd already developed a relationship with the waitress. She was ready to run off with her. That's everybody he met became his best friend. Right? It is key. He had already, like found out about her kids and where they were going to school and everything. And he said, this is terrible. Why did you sell this to us? And I said, I literally said the words, jack, you can't say that. And she said, I. I'm so glad he said it. The chef has been forcing us to push this on people all night. I'm so glad you're not eating it here. Give me your plates uneaten. I'm going to bring it back and I'm going to shove it in the chef's face. And you deserve a good meal here. I'm going to bring you out the best meal in the house. And so she brings it back and she goes back, she goes, I wish everybody. And I thought, whoa, wait, he said what he was thinking. He self expressed. He said it to me, then he said it now. He had a good rapport. He was not an asshole about it at all. That was not his M.O. he was like, he said it in a way that. And basically what he said to her is, why do you. Interestingly, he said to her, why do you keep selling this meal? You're not gonna get any tips. So he made, he like presented to her, like why he had her best interest at heart. And he said, you know, like, this is like gonna hurt you to not tell this truth. And it's like we just are so enculturated and habitualized and then we wonder, why do I have this gap on my voice? Like, why do I, why do I feel like, why do I have a disclosure? Because your research would show it's not like you're just conjecturing. Your research would show that when we reveal, when we self disclose, it actually has a beneficial effect. Correct.

It's disarming. It's how we make trust. Because really when you Share something sensitive to someone that is a social risk. You are showing that you trust them like I'm modeling I trust you because otherwise I wouldn't be sharing this with you. And that begets trust. And that's like the fundamental thing of, of human relationships. And yet we suppress and the suppression. To your point, it starts so young. I recently came across this study that really shook me as a boy mom. So in the study what they did was they had like 3 and 4 year olds watch a scary video and they videotaped the kids faces to see how much they, how much the kids let express.

Right.

And then they also measured galvanic skin response like so their actual physiological stress levels, sweaty palms. And what they found is that the more expressive the face is, the less stressed out they were. However, they kept tracking them and you can see where I'm going with this. By kindergarten there was a gender difference. By kindergarten the boys were now masking and they were therefore more physiologically stressed. Yeah.

So the reasons we don't use our voice, the reason we don't look, we have this value and the reason we don't are because of what our society is telling us. Because we this, this sort of like, look, I could hurt myself by revealing, but I'll never hurt myself by not revealing. Right, Exactly.

It's like it feels safer. And I think we need to do the reframe of like silence is not always safe because what we need to connect the dots more. When you don't reveal what happens, friendships don't blossom.

Right.

Loves never spark. Colleagues never quite trust you.

But let's talk about it at work. Like I noticed, especially with my Gen Z students, they're like, they want boundaries at work. They don't want to talk to their co workers about what they did on the weekend. They're like that, you know, work is work and I'm. And so like what are they potentially missing?

Yeah. Workplace is a very tricky situation for self disclosure. But it's also one of those situations where the rewards can be really huge. I think people, it's small talk that people don't want. People don't want this shallow. What did you do on the weekend? That's like the boringest. But we're stuck in this.

Yeah.

And so then the question is like how do you get out of it? And, and I reject the bring your whole self to work because you know, some parts of yourself are, you know, maybe don't want your colleagues to know and that's fine too. So how do you get the balance well, one of the things that I suggest to people is try to go one level deeper. And I'll tell you what I mean by that. I'll give you an example. But I think again and again, what I found is that most people stand to benefit from being a little more open a lot of the time. Okay, so what does that mean? So, like, okay, you're at work, and you're standing beside the water cooler. And what we tend to do in these situations is we make small talk. We, like, look at what's happening around us, and maybe you see two people having a laugh, and you're like, oh, those people look like they're having fun. I don't know. This is the most boring thing ever, right? Okay. What would it mean to go one step further? What you can do is instead of commenting on the situation, share what it means to you. So if you see two people over there, like, howling with laughter, you could say, you know, I don't remember the last time I belly laugh. When's the last time you had a good belly laugh? That's a neat trick. And so that's like, I'm not saying tell your biggest life regrets, right? It's one step deeper, and then now you're off to the races. The person beside you is gonna be like, oh, my gosh, my friend told me this hilarious joke. Whatever.

Yeah, let's just wrap up by talking about what is too much oversharing. Okay, where's the line? I know. Okay, everybody, look. According to our research, the majority of people have voice as a top value. And of those people who have it as a top value, the average authenticity gap is 30%, which is high. It's the third highest gap. And so they're afraid to or they're reluctant to express their voice. And we're here on this podcast and you are saying, look, it's better to go ahead and go deeper, but where's the line? How do you know how much is too much? Because what if you. Okay, I don't want to answer. I don't want to ask and answer the same question. You answer it.

Yes. Well, the line is always moving, and the line is often really thin. But the way I think of it is revealing is a skill. We can all get better at it. And the way we get better at it is practicing and being aware. So if you feel like you've crossed the line, that's not bad news. Because to know where the line is, you have to feel sometimes like you get to tmi. So not all TMI is Bad if you never hit, if you never feel that you're not revealing enough. It's like one of my favorite mentors, Linda Babcock, she said, leslie, if you, if you always get what you want in a negotiation, you're not asking for enough. Well, it's the same thing here, right? So it's not necessarily you're learning. And so it's like a. It's a skill campaign where you try, you experiment, you think about it, you reflect. The other thing too is if you think you've gone too far, you can talk to that person. I've just. I've realized that oftentimes the answer to revealing, to overshares is sharing. More like, if you feel you've offended someone at work, if you looked at their face and you feel like that didn't sit right, you can go talk to them. You can say, how are you doing? And you'll also find if you do that, you're gonna learn. Because nine times out of the 10, they'll be like, what are you talking about? Like, your example of oversharing on the zoom thing. I don't know that it was tmi. Like, I think what you shared was something like someone who is a high status person being vulnerable, saying a time they failed is enormously powerful for trust. It's enormously motivating. We found that in research. And I think it's. You might have seen their faces, but that could have just been engagement.

Yeah. And I think that, look, I do a lot of oversharing in class. I think the difference was it was online and I could see them all be stricken simultaneously. I will say this. When I first started teaching Becoming youg, I showed up as an adjunct at nyu. I had an idea for a class that was going to help people answer the question, what should I do with my life? When I showed up in the dean's office, he said, have you ever taught before? And I was like, well, no. He said, well, let's give it a little tiny try. And it ended up working out. But I had no idea how to teach. I really didn't. So I just showed up and I thought, well, in a way, here goes nothing. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. I gave it a try. And so I got up and I said to the class something that was kind of unplanned, but I said to them, look, so here I'm standing up the authority figure in the class. It was 40 students. And I said, look, thank you for being here. I've never taught before and I'm going to need your grace and forbearance this semester. I said I hope you can co create this class with me. I'm going to make mistakes after every class. I'm going to ask you in a required way to give me feedback. I won't hold it against you. You can do it. And I did this thing that was like. I remember looking at the students with their jaws on the desktops because like later one of the students said to me, came up to me and said thank you for being so vulnerable. And I said oh, is that what it was? I didn't get it. I mean I was sincerely needed their help.

No, that's the word that came to my mind. Sincere, like the sincerity. People can smell insincerity a mile away. And you were sincere. You really did.

I was. I was sincere and I was letting myself be vulnerable because life has taught me. But it took a long time in your research. The beautiful thing about research is it saves time for us because it tells us what we need to know. And what your research has found is that this allowing ourselves to express our voice, that this allowing ourselves to self disclose it takes practice. It is a but it's for the good. I want everybody to close their gaps on all of their values because I think we living fuller, more authentic lives when we do that. When you are not expressing your voice, you can be in pain for sure.

And there are studies on when you're suppressing you have worse mental and physical health.

That's right. You're holding your breath. The voice is such a part of your authentic self expression. And your research just confirms something. I am going to be recommending your book to absolutely everybody. I am so glad to see you again. I can't wait to go out and overshare with you more. But the message here today is that you almost can't overshare too much. And if you do, it's not a fatal. It actually is for the good. You go back and you work on it and you learn how to do it in a way that allows you to fully express this incredibly important value of voice. I love that our work has found a way to overlap with each other and that you were able to come into the Becoming youg studios. Leslie, thank you so much for being on Becoming youg.

Thank you so much.