When Smart People Do Dumb Things, Or Maybe Not

Foreign.

You know, it's Susie Welch here with the Becoming you podcast. I am so happy you're here. And what's crazy as this podcast grows, and it's crazy great is I am meeting people randomly who are listening to the podcast, who I don't know, and I'm so delighted to find out that they're listening to the podcast. And so all of. I just actually met a person from Dubai who reached out to me for a completely different reason who, who mentioned something from the podcast. And she said, well, I heard in your podcast, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, whoa, you are listening to my podcast in Dubai. And it made me feel warm and fuzzy all over. So thank you. It's been a very, very busy week at Becoming youg Media because I keep on talking about this tool that I have created to help people identify their values, and we are bearing down into the creation of that tool with developers. And as I've said before, I was the CEO of a music tech startup, and one of the things that I swore after I sold that company was I was never, never, never ever going to get involved with technology again. And even though it was exciting and we almost. We almost built something insanely great, in fact, while it was up and running, Quadio was insanely great. It just. We could not sustain it for a million reasons. And those million reasons were generally mistakes I made. But here I am once again involved in making a digital tool that I think has the power to change lives in all sorts of insanely great ways. And. And I'm doing it. And so, as I said, we just constantly reinvent. And I talk a lot about reinvention, and I'm the poster child for it. All right, in my rant this morning, I just have to go off, go off, because big news in the world of business school education. And I mean, that's not everybody's world, but in some ways, a lot of us who aren't in business touch business school education. Huge news. Harvard Business School has changed its essays from for application. And as you know, with Harvard Business School, four jillion people apply and four people get in. I mean, it's. It is really. That is. It is an incredibly hard school to get into it, just as Stanford also and all the really, really good schools NYU is also hard to get into. We're number seven on the US News and World Report list. And but Harvard is usually number one or two. So they, for many years have had the exact same essay questions and they changed them up. And I was very excited to see These questions because it's a window into what kind of leaders it's trying to create and what it thinks it's important. And I think we should pay attention to that as they pretty much set a lot of the conversation in business. What goes on in the top business schools? Not exclusively, because in many businesses business school is completely irrelevant. Okay. And it's an open question these days whether you should even get an MBA or what an MBA is actually worth since the world of work is changing so much. But there's three essay questions and I just want to, well, frankly, I want to rant about them. Okay. And so I'm just going to read the first one. This is called the business Minded essay. Okay, here's the question. I'm just going to read it to you. Please reflect on how your experiences have influenced your career choices and aspirations and the impact you will have on the businesses, organizations and communities you plan to serve. And they're asking you to do that in 300 words. Okay, I'm just going to read it again. Please reflect on how your experiences have influenced your career choices and aspirations and the impact you will have on the businesses, organizations and communities you plan to serve. You know, my dear friends, I am a business writer. I have a great business education. I've been a business practitioner. I've been a CEO. I am a CEO. And on top of all of that, I teach management. I actually teach a large management class along with becoming you. And I don't mention it that often, but I love it. It's called Developing Managerial Skills. I've written three massive Business School, A Business, three massive business bestsellers. And here's my reaction to this question. I have no freaking idea what it means. I don't understand it. I don't know how I would answer it. I don't know what it means. I can't understand it for the life of me. And I wonder, they must have done this at Harvard on purpose. There's two explanations to me. One is this question is so vague and so ridiculous, it's basically like, eh, here's 300 words. Just fill us in on what's important. That's one option. The other, and I think knowing organizations, that the much more likely reason for this ridiculously vague and nebulous and ding dongy question, sorry hbs, because you know I'm fond of you. But I think the other is, this is an example my friends, is when there's too many cooks in the kitchen. I think that what happened was all the smart people all got together. They all had different agendas. And they said, we, this is clean slate. Let's come up with a new question. And what you have in here is 10 people at a meeting coming up with a solution. And this happens in life and in business. The worst thing you can do in a family setting, I will tell you as a mother, is ask the family where you should go on vacation, okay? Because one, Johnny wants to go to the desert and Sally wants to go to. Wants to go to Mississippi and Tim wants to go surfing, and you end up having a crappy vacation. That every is a big fat compromise. And so I'm going to guess that's what happened here, because I want to give them the benefit of the doubt. If this was one person coming up with this question, this one person needs to go back to school themselves for clarity, okay? Needs to go get a degree in clarity. Okay? I'm going to pretend to try to answer this question and I'm going to read you the other two, which are equally bad. Please reflect on how your experiences have influenced your career choices. Okay, I can begin to answer that. I can begin to answer that. For me, my experiences was. I was a Miami Herald reporter. I covered crime, and I learned that it was not aligned with my values, okay? I had high aptitudes to be a reporter. I was a very good writer. I have a lot of urgency. I have an aptitude of being able to talk to people. I'm extremely extroverted. I had extremely aligned aptitudes to be a reporter. It's a gigantic values clash because reporters are generally mean, cynical, snarky haters, okay? Sorry. They do great work for society and we need them. I would defend the free and open press till the day I die, but as a values choice, okay? I don't have that. I'm sincere and optimistic, and I'm. It's just my personality, okay? And so I had a gigantic values clash with. With that, okay? So that affected my choice to go into business. Okay? That's sort of, I guess how I would explain it then, the impact I will have on the businesses, organizations and communities I plan to serve. Totally unrelated. Totally unrelated. I don't even know how these two things go together in 300 words. Okay? I'm done picking on that question. Let's move on. But, hey, I just want to back up for a second and say that little piece I just did on aligning your values and your aptitudes with your work, that's key and that's a becoming you, you know, pillar. All right? Are your values and your aptitudes aligned with the work you're doing. And if not, how can we help you move along? Okay, here's the leadership focused essay. What experiences have shaped who you are? Okay, here's where it goes completely off the rails, babe. How you invest in others and what kind of leader you want to become.250 words. What were they thinking again? I'm just going to say this was a committee. God bless you, little committee. But you. Okay, what experience has shaped who you are? Okay, well, I would say let's just throw it out there and say one of the big experiences that shaped me is that I didn't have parenting. Okay? Love my parents, 97 and 96. Right now, they were from old school hippie dippies. They just didn't believe in parenting, okay? It was not their interest. God bless them, was never harmed. They were loving. They just were not interested in parenting and they were not interested in parenting me. As I like to tell the story, when I got into Harvard, okay, that's kind of a big deal. My mother said to me, sue, you applied. Okay? That's how involved they were. For those who've not heard that story before, which I love to tell, and when I repeat that story to my mother, who's got all of her marbles, by the way, and I say, mom, remember when I got into Harvard and you didn't know I applied? And she says, she goes like this, okay? Thinks it's funny. All right, what experience? So here's an experience that shaped me. I didn't have parents. I had to raise myself. Okay, now here it goes off the rails. How I invest in others. What does that have to do with it? Okay, how do I invest in others? Well, I definitely over invested in parenting my children, as they will tell you, as they all felt my hot breath on their necks as they were applying to college, okay? I mean, literally, I'm not joking around. I mean, I was sitting right next to the breathing on them and what kind of leader you want to become? I'm sorry, unrelated. God bless. God bless the applicants who find a way to write a cogent essay about those three completely unrelated thoughts. I couldn't do it and I am an award winning writer. Okay, here's the last one. Can you tell that I've got a little bee in my bonnet about this? Curiosity can be seen in many ways. Hmm. Okay. They just start that out. That's how they start off this essay. Curiosity can be seen in many ways. Not sure I even agree with that. Please share an example of how you've demonstrated curiosity and how that has influenced your growth.

I'm just pondering it. I think some people are going to get very, very creative about ways they've demonstrated curiosity and curiosity. By the way, I'll just say this about curiosity. There's so much social science research on which traits affect your career success. Iq. I'm sorry, it's a very, very politicized, It's a very controversial thing to talk about. Iq. Why? Because IQ data has been grossly misrepresented and misdiscussed in the popular discourse. And so people just generally stop talking about the connection between IQ and success. Okay. Because it was misused for political reasons and iq. I understand why it's not talked about that much. But there is a link between IQ and success generally. Then what happened was EQ became very popular, popularized by the great social scientist Dan Goleman, where he was able to have incredibly powerful research that showed actually equal to IQ in your ultimate success and achievement is your emotional intelligence, your self awareness, your maturity, your empathy. These are all the components of emotional intelligence. I am honored to be one of the first editors of Dan Goldman's work on emotional intelligence. I'm deeply familiar with it and it was proven. But there's other research that shows that two other factors are enormously related to long term and sustained success. And one is curiosity. The other, which we won't discuss today, is grit, which is perseverance. And my belief, perseverance plus forgiveness. We'll talk about that another time. And I think I've already talked about it here on this podcast. But curiosity is very linked. Here's the problem with curiosity as I've talked about on this podcast before. Social scientists and social psychologists believe that it's pretty much born into you. You have a level of it now. You can express that full level of it, or you can develop that level of it. But if you don't have curiosity in you, it's sort of like not writing with your dominant hand and you have to really work on it. Other people are naturally very curious and still others are too freaking curious and they're just annoying. And that doesn't help you at work at all. So you've got to have that kind of exact level. So here they're asking you, give us an example of your curiosity. And I actually just put this question. This is the best of the three questions. I think it's easy to game this question, but I would also say this, but all questions are easy to game on essays. What I would put out to you is just again, that gut check on yourself about whether or not how curious you are and how much you're actually leaning into it. Because if you've got it, it's a good thing to show at work. It's just a good thing to show in life. You got to be careful not to over express it because there is, you know, there's sort of an appropriateness line with curiosity. I can overstep it because I am a hyper curious person and I do have a tendency when people say things that I don't agree with because I also have a high countercultural tendency in me to sort of say, when something is described to me as the way it is, I say, why is it that way? Why is it that way? I've definitely irritated people with that. But I've also made things better, I must say so myself, by pushing thinking.

Questions in the community. This is actually, I don't know about you, but this is my absolute, not just my favorite part of the show, but it's sort of my favorite part of life. Because when I wake up in the morning, I'm often filled with DMs on my Instagram generally. But also yesterday I got a great question on my TikTok. Generally don't have life on TikTok. God knows we try. And I'm just not TikTok. Nobody has fallen into the Suzy trap on TikTok, but on Instagram I usually get wonderful, wonderful questions and then people find me all different other ways they write my website. Hello, hello, susiewelch.com Great questions come in that way. And also LinkedIn. So we got some questions from the community. I welcome these. And actually I want to say somebody tracked me down. I mentioned this the other day. I mean, earlier in the podcast somebody tracked me down through LinkedIn and we ended up actually, because her plight was so dire, it felt to me we ended up on a zoom call. I want to point out that I don't end up on zoom calls very often because this would be kind of complicated to do. But I felt like she was in a place that felt unsafe and so I wanted to speak to her. And she'd been let go from her company in a way that was very devastating to her after a long relationship and a lot of tears were shed. And I really had a heart for her. And I do think that this leads me to a point that I like to make all the time. And that is when you need help, ask for it. When you need help, you have to ask for it. I'm not good at this. Why? Because of lack of humility. You have to be in a very humble place to say, I need help. And even for a person who's spent her whole life praying, and I really do believe in prayer, where you do humble yourself and you say, I can't do this. I need help from something bigger than me that goes over into life and there's no shame in it. And in fact, it often makes people love you more and want to help you. People do like to help, generally, of course. Like with everything. There's boundaries to this. There's a line to be stay inside in terms of neediness and first trying to do things on your own. I definitely have this situation with my children where I'm like their auxiliary brain and they will go to me straight for the help before they even try to do it themselves. And now I'm better at saying, please go try to do that yourself first. And they are damn good at things and they should just do them. Kids, are you listening? My children don't listen to this podcast, by the way. They feel that. They feel like they've got a full time podcast just living with me. All right, so when you need help, ask for help. It sounds so simple, doesn't it? It's so hard. It's a discipline. And the good thing about it is it's a virtuous circle because you ask for help, you get it. And then next time when you see someone needs help or someone asks you for help, your heart is softened to them. And it's how the world should work. So don't be afraid to ask and really don't be afraid to give. Okay? Because that's how we all get along and that is how we all move forward. And that is how we make this hard world, this harsh world, a softer world and a gentler world, which we all need to be doing our part in. Oh. Woo. I just took a step off my soapbox. That feels better. Okay, Ari, what is the question from the community?

Hi, Susie. Question. I just got a promotion, but only a 6% increase in salary. How can I go about negotiating this without seeming ungrateful?

Okay, I am was stunned by this question. Very lovingly. Almost fell out of my bed. You know, I've got this time in the morning that's kind of episod epic, where I get up, I get the dogs, we go outside, they do their business, I get my coffee, and we get back in bed. Why, for cuddles with my dogs? Is that just. That's. That's my Morning. I just love it. And I was reading this during my cuddles with the dogs and I was like, what? You got a 6% raise and you want to negotiate it up? Are you kidding? That's a huge raise. Now, okay? If you are hitting the ball out of the park and you are making the bottom line for your company and they couldn't live without you and you are the source of their revenue, if you are the, what's called in business the key man and really should be the key person. But you know, in legal, there's like legal clauses for key men and so forth and so on. And that's sexist and it shouldn't be that way. But if you are that person, the key person. Yeah. Ask for 20% because you make it. But you, you know, if you are not making your company buy your performance, 6% more a year coming from you, then why would your raise be above that? I'm just playing devil's advocate here through your boss's eyes. Why? I've been a boss. You are managing the P and L by the hair on your chinny chin chin. You are trying to make the business work so you can pay other people. So if you feel like your performance was outsized above 6%, then by all means go back and say, hey, you know, I brought in that client last year and I doubled our revenues. I think I need 20% here because I've earned it for us. But I don't know why randomly you would say 6% was not an okay raise. It seems okay to me. So what I would ask is, hey, write me back and tell me the context in which 6% is not a pretty good raise. You know, But I want to turn to my own team because they're hard working people and ask them what they think about 6%. What do you guys think about 6%? Yeah.

I feel like for this one the context is important because if they were starting at a really low number.

Yeah.

That then like got a promotion or something, then yeah, I feel like the amount.

Yeah. And I think the point here is context. I think memo to bosses. To give somebody a raise without explaining why is stupid and dumb and you should go slap yourself if you do it. When you give a raise, this is a moment where you say, this is why you're getting the raise. Okay. This is why I decided this raise. You did an amazing job. Something amazing happened. Here's the reason and this is the number. Okay. That's what you got.

Also, just based off of the way that she's Saying it. She's clearly unhappy with how much she's. She does. She feels like she deserves more.

That's right.

And I feel like you would never want your employees to feel that way. You would want to get ahead of the game.

Yes. I mean, in a good company, you want your employees to say, I'm staying here forever because the combination of the money and the work is so good to me. Okay? That's what you want in a. In a good company, that's what a boss is constantly trying to think about. The work has purpose and meaning, and they are. They're living in a way that's comfortable to them within their values. Right. You also have to make payroll and pay taxes and other things that also comes into account. Okay. But I would say that you need to be telling your people how much they're making and why. I'd also say that the worst thing you can do as an employee. Okay, not the worst, but one of the worst things you can do as an employee. Employee. Is to go into your boss. This has happened to me more times than I can count and say, I need a raise because I just got a mortgage. I need a raise because we have a baby on the way, and I need a raise. And it's absolutely unrelated to the work. Okay? So my feel, I actually had this person when I worked at HVR come in and say, we just bought a new car. I need a raise. And I was like, I didn't ask you to buy the new car. You were making top dollar here. You couldn't go out and get this at any other company for the work you're doing, and you got a big bonus. I'm sorry about the car situation. It's not my problem, okay? And that's. I'm just being brutally honest here, all right? You are, as a boss, calculating what your people make based on what everyone else is making, how much money you have to spend, what the market would pay them, and it doesn't have anything to do with what's going on in their personal life. And of course you want to help out and you want them to be comfortable in all those things. Okay. If you're a good boss, but it is unrelated. If you go and ask for a raise based on something you've done in your personal life and not based on your performance, this is a fool's errand. Okay? Go ahead and at me if you don't agree with that. But those people who've been bosses, you get this. You get this. But literally, what you pay your people at the end of the day, what you pay your people is like the ultimate decision as a boss. If you want them to stay and be engaged. Money, money matters, purpose matters, and money matters they do. Cannot have one without the other and have people stick around. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Do we have another question from the audience?

I love you. Whose life I love? Why did she say I love you?

People say they love. People say they love me all the time. And you know, when I write back, I love you too. It's fine. No, people, I. Okay, say okay, they said it. That's fine. I love you too.

What should people do when they constantly feel like they have to use their non dominant hand? What is the difference between being challenged and being unfit or unnatural for a role?

Okay, let's just back up and talk about what this person who I also love back is, by the way, is. And I want to tell you something honestly, in all sincerity, when people write me with expressions of love, I'm incredibly touched. I have absolutely joy over it. Thank you. I'm glad that we are in a relationship where you feel like you can say that to me and I love you back. And I would say that what this person is referring to is a phrase that I use all the time. It's like when you are working within your aptitudes, like I was as a reporter, you know, when I was a Miami Herald reporter, I was playing exactly to my aptitudes. I was a fast writer, I was extremely inquisitive. I could make friends very quickly. I could develop sources very well. People trusted me. I remember my sister saying to me, when young people will tell you anything and I don't know what it is. Something about my cheekbones, I don't know what it is. Okay. My grandmother had the same trait. It's very. Comes in extremely handy as a reporter. Okay. People just tell me anything. Okay, whatever. And so my aptitudes were totally in place. And I was writing with my dominant hand, okay? Like if you were signing your signature with your dominant hand, you're writing with your dominant hand. And so oftentimes with aptitudes, if you're doing a job where you're not playing to your aptitudes, okay. Like when I went to become a management consultant, okay. I could get by, but I was getting by writing with my non dominant hand. I can sign my name with my, in my case, left hand. It's not very pretty. And if I practiced really hard and stayed up all night, I could do it. Okay. And that's what it's like to be writing with your non dominant hand. That's what it's like, like to be working not in alignment with your natural aptitudes. Now that we have that context straight, read the rest of the question again.

Sophia, what should people do when they constantly have to use their non dominant hand? What is the difference between being challenged and being unfit or unnatural?

Okay, great. All right, so now I understand and I can sort of answer this question more fully, is that here's a person who is constantly working in a role it sounds like, or a job where they're not playing to their aptitudes. So let's just say this person ended up by hook or crook because of identity issues or because of opportunity issues. Becoming a nurse, okay? Because there's a gigantic demand for nurse. And it used to be very hard to get into nursing school, okay? Very, very hard. Almost as hard as getting into medical school. But because of the wild demand for nurses in this day and age with an aging population, a lot of nursing programs have A popped up and B, have opened up their funnel. And people who previously could not go to nursing school because of their aptitudes are getting into nursing school and guess what, they're graduating and they're getting RNs and then they're going out into the workforce. And the reason why this is top of mind, I just wrote a story about this in my book, so this is why I'm thinking about nursing is a person who became a nurse with very limited aptitudes to become nurse. And then because of the demand ended up in a very big teaching hospital in Philadelphia where there were actually, you know, sort of killer nurses, nurses who are incredibly talented, okay? The sort of, you know, the chest thumping nurses, nurses whose aptitudes are off the charts, who could have been doctors, okay, if they decided to make different life choices. And those are the nurses in these big teaching hospitals. And in comes this influx of new nurses, some of whom's aptitudes are not as heightened as the very, very the nurses from a previous generation who had to have different aptitudes. And some of these nurses make it and some of them don't. But if you're one of these nurses just using this example, and you're there trying to do what the job requires and it's not coming naturally to you, but say you want to stay because the money is excellent, the job flexibility is excellent, the identity issues are excellent. You like to tell people you're a nurse, okay? And again, this is just an example. Fill in the blanks for your job. What do you do? And my answer to you is surrender because it's not sustainable. It's not sustainable long term. To work in a world where you are writing with your non dominant hand, where you are working against your aptitudes, it's going to wear you out. And when the economy contracts or when they have to lay people off, you're going to be the first to go because everyone else knows about your aptitudes misalignment. And so I would say it might be very painful and you may be in a role that you love for a lot of different reasons, but I would start the transition over to work that is a match with your aptitudes. If you don't know what your aptitudes are, there's excellent testing. The one I like is you science. It does cost about $40 to take. It's very important information to get about yourself. It's so it's a worthwhile investment in yourself. When my book comes out, keep on mentioning it. When it comes out. I actually have a aptitudes test that involves no money whatsoever where I sort of describe how you can figure out your aptitudes just by asking yourself some questions. That's coming. I bet I don't have it for you now. So I would say if you can get the $40 together, take that you science test. I have no skin in that game. Youscience.com I don't. They should pay me for how much business I've thrown them. But they don't. But, but I think they're very good. Good luck to you and I love you back. All right, that's our questions from the community.

All right, in today's listen up, I want to introduce listeners to a musician that if they do not know, they should know. And sometimes it blows my mind that young people do not know Moby. And let's just ask our young team here today. Jorge, you know Moby?

Yeah.

Okay, well I think my other team members know Moby because of me. How about Aliza? Did you know Moby before you started working here at Lisa Zen?

I did not. I did.

You did?

I did. My mom loves them.

So look, Moby invented edm and I don't actually listen to a lot of EDM myself right now, but when he came onto the scene when I was young, we're about the same age, Moby and I. He's probably a little younger than I am and he came onto the scene and we just played a clip of his song Porcelain and I want to say this. He's just great music. And the reason why I mention it is the music, especially from his earlier albums, is extremely beautiful, extremely layered. But the thing I would suggest beyond all that is to read his autobiography, Porcelain. He has an amazing life story, a person who I can kind of relate to because he also had to parent himself. And we are very aligned in that we're both animal activists, and he's done more for the movement than almost any other star who has taken on animal activism as their cause. He's a true believer. And Namobi went through a little period where. I'm just gonna say this outright, where he got canceled because of some stupid comments he made about an actress that he worked with. He abjectly apologized, and they were dumb comments, and it was a dumb thing that he did, and he admits it, and he changed and learned. I don't think we should cancel people forever and ever. He did nothing to actually physically harm the individual in question. He did hurt her feelings, and he apologized, and she accepted his apology. I'm aware all that stuff happened, but life is long, and we've all made terrible mistakes. And if we were all just to be thrown out, without the chance of redemption, none of us would be walking this earth. Okay? So, myself included. And so I love him for his apology, but I love him also for the contributions he's made to the animal movement and his beautiful music. And I would say my books. None of my books would have existed without Moby. He doesn't know that. He also has a podcast, by the way. Hey, Moby, you can invite me on your podcast anytime. And I think that my books would not have been written without the beautiful inspiration of his music. And Jack loved him, too. I mean, Jack was not a person who really knew a lot about music. When I met him, he had just. His sort of entertainment had always just been sports, sports, sports, and we kind of made a trade. He taught me a lot about sports. I mean, I was a person who went to, like, season. We had seasons tickets to the Red Sox, okay? And I dug it, and I introduced him to music. And I remember the first time he heard Moby, he said, what is this beautiful sound? And I said, that is Moby. And I invite you to listen to his beautiful sound. I will also say that some of the first music I introduced him to is Lucinda Williams. And, man, if you've not heard Lucinda Williams, who is kind of indie country, just do yourself a gigantic favor, get alone, put your ear pods in, and listen to Lucinda Williams music. As well. Okay, so that was a twofer. Moby and Lucinda Williams on the Listen up again. You know, as we are business people in the world and working people in the world and professionals in the world, we are better at everything we do by reading books and listening to music and reading poetry and going to movies. That's just. That's my theory. I'm sticking to it. It's made me the business person I am. Because actually you're good at what you do as a business person if you know people. And you can't just know people by doing business. You know people by going to a beautiful show, by swimming in theater, for instance. I actually went to go see an incredible show that was written by an upcoming playwright who's a friend of my daughter's. It was called I Love youe so Much I Could Die. It was opened and then after a little while, it closed. And it's a very provocative, cutting edge story of her reaction to something dreadful that happened to her sister. It was experimental. It was off Broadway. And I'm still thinking about it. I saw months ago, this Is Important. It asked me to enter another person's experience of grief that was different than my own experience of grief. And I've had my own experiences with grief. Haven't we all? I have to believe it's made me a better boss and a better mentor and advisor to other people because I've had an experience I never would have had had I not engaged with art. So engage with art because it's gonna make you better things. It's not optional, actually. Go to a museum. I have this dream of bringing my entire Becoming youg class to the Met to go look at a painting that I really love. I actually just show it to them on the Joan of Arc at the moment that she realizes she's called to another life. I love that painting so freaking much that every time I go to the museum, I pose in front of it in a different outfit. And my life's dream is to get my baby granddaughter posing in front of it in the exact same way that's going to happen. So do art. That's the bottom line.

All right, this is the part of the program where I decode corporate jargon. You know, actually, I just. You know, spoiler alert. All corporate jargon is just a fancy way of telling you to shut up. But let's. Let's go there. What's the corporate jargon you guys have for me today?

The first one is let's take this offline.

We don't Want you in the conversation. Okay, let's take this offline is when you're at a meeting and something very contentious comes up and people are disagreeing, and you're leading the meeting, and you want the conversation to not be opening wounds or bringing in stuff that you know is not gonna happen or is gonna ruin your agenda. And so you save the person who's either poking you with this different perspective. Let's take this offline. Now, what you're sort of saying is we're wasting other people's time by talking about something that's not relevant to all of them. And so, okay, you know, that sometimes is the case is that somebody brings up something that's really a sidebar, and you should not be wasting other people's time with it. But your job as a boss is to make everybody understand why a small conversation relates to everybody. That's good transparency. But typically what it means is, I want to shut you down, and I don't want to do it publicly. Okay? So yet another fancy way of telling you to shut up. Now, your job, as somebody is saying to you, let's take this offline, is you have to ask yourself, am I being inappropriate? Am I pushing in a way that I should not be doing in a public setting? What exactly is going on here? And your other job is to make sure it really is taken up offline. And when it's taken up off a line and you don't understand it, you may want to say to the person, why couldn't we discuss that in front of everybody? What could have I done differently? I mean, if you're a boss who uses this all the time, you're running your meetings incorrectly. And one more thing I'll say here is that your job as a boss is to be the chief meeting officer. Whether you have two people that you manage or 500 people you manage, you have to keep on making meaning of the work. This is why we do what we do. This is why we do it the way we do it, all those different things. And you can't keep taking those conversations offline. And you can't keep ever or actually should never really be burying disagreement by saying, we're taking this offline. If there are points of disagreement and meaning the person who's put it in your face is not the only person who's feeling it, and you should just address it. And it's very tempting to use this line. Very tempting. Everybody's conscious of each other's time and, you know, privacy and all those other things. But this is an overused and dangerous weapon, and you got to dig deep when it happens. And if you're using it, you got to ask yourself, am I? Am I am involved in the kind of subterfuge the corporate settings are well known for because you don't want to be. You lose people, you lose people, you lose their hearts, you lose their souls, and then they just walk right out the door. All right, we have time for maybe one more piece of jargon, do we? I think we do. Give me one more.

Okay, next one is, feel free to ping me.

Yeah. God, it's so bad. Okay, like, you know, this is sort of saying, like, I don't want to talk to you about it right now, but you can write me later. And therefore. And then I'll ghost you. Okay? And then I'll ghost you. Because if it was really a. If it was really serious, you wouldn't say, feel free to ping me. You would say, yeah, we really need to discuss this. Let's set up a zoom call. And I think it's a little bit of a. It's a shut up for now kind of thing. Ping is the giveaway word, and they don't want to talk to you about it. And it's just a delay tactic to get you out of there. There's a great term in medicine when that residents and interns. Actually, it's mainly residents in emergency rooms use with each other. It's gomer, get out of my emergency room. Okay? So when somebody who comes in who's got a do not resuscitate or is, like, keeps on doing dumb things, you've seen them 20 times, or they really should be in another kind of facility. Residents will say to each other, I don't know. Doctors know this will say to each other, we just got a gomer in. And that's a get out of my emergency room. They're the kind of cases they do not want to see, okay? Repeat addicts, old people who are disoriented, whose families have just abdicated on them and so forth. And so why don't you ping me as a gomer? Get out of my emergency room.

Let's just do some rapid fire questions. This is the part of the program where my staff tries to stump me, and they have stumped me. So I'm not gonna lie. But let's see if they can stump me this week. All right, what do you got?

Okay. Who would you pick to narrate your life, huh?

Can I do it?

No.

But who knows more about it? So Sort of tell the story of my life or narrate like.

Like as if it was a movie.

Well, if Jack was still living, he'd be the perfect person. He would, because nobody ever knew me better, so I think he'd be a good person. I think my sister Della would be another option because she really knows me and gets me, and we're different. She has just a totally different approach to life and possibly a better one. I mean, she really is not. She does not have any of the kind of pursuits I have. She's a fantastic mother and grandmother, and she's very present for her friends and a world, A global explorer. But she gets me because we grew up together raising each other. And our older sister was off into the world by that time because she was old enough from us that she was out the door while we were still growing up. And I think she might be a great person to do it. All right, one last one. Here we go.

What's the biggest risk you've ever taken?

When you go into a Lululemon dressing room, there's a sign on the wall that says, do something that makes you feel scared every day. And when I see that, I go, what the F? Every freaking thing I do scares me. Like, try to scare yourself. Are you kidding me? I can't stop scaring myself. I mean, what are they talking about? That's just life. Okay, so what's the biggest thing that's ever scared? I am a person who's taken risks again and again and again. Now, physically, I have walked into situations as a reporter that were absolutely terrifying. Wearing bulletproof vests and carrying a police issued gun. And I've done things where I felt like my life was at risk. I went into a shootout situation. Why? Because I was trying to make a name for myself as a reporter, and I thought, geez, I could die tonight. Okay. I've definitely had those situations. I had a time where I actually. Jack got caught in a riptide, and I thought, either he dies or I go save him. And I went in and we both could have died. And luckily, I was an extremely strong swimmer and I was able to rescue him. I mean, these were extremely scary things that I did. And as I was swimming out to him, because I could see him from shore, as I was swimming out to him, I thought, I could die right now. And so I've done those kind of scary things, but there's other huge scary things. Taking over quadio was terrifying because what in the world was I doing? Okay, with all that pressure and time and investors money and all this other stuff. And I think, actually, though, maybe one of the scariest things I ever did was step into the classroom at nyu. I had never taught. I had never stood in front of a class. I had never written curriculum, but I believed. I believed I had something to share. And I did it. And a little while later, when I decided to get my PhD, my very unbelievably amazing, brilliant daughter Eve said to me, why are you doing this? And I said, I guess I'm not scared enough right now. So I think it's a personality trait, for better or for worse. It's certainly not made it easy to be a kid of mine, and sometimes not easy to be me, but it's who I am, and you gotta know who you are. And. And so that's the. That's the answer to that question. All right, I will leave it there. Hey, I'm so glad you listened to this podcast. If. And if you've made it all the way to the end with us, I really do love you, even though I don't know you. And I look forward to just continuing. Continuing this long conversation with you. Please add me and we'll talk soon.