How to stand up for yourself at work (Transcript)

[00:00:00] Anne Morriss:
What is the best advice you've ever received in the workplace?

[00:00:05] Frances Frei:
So the best advice I receive on a regular basis is when you and I are working in the kitchen, and it's time for us to get on a call and then you peel off to go take the call on the first floor in your very colorful office. I turn the corner to go upstairs to Frei-Morris north, which is my very tech-centric office, and halfway up the stairs—

[00:00:28] Anne Morriss:
Very, very witness protection program-y.

[00:00:31] Frances Frei:
Very witness protection chic, I like to say. Halfway up the stairs, you say, “Honey, why don't you come take this call with me?” And so I of course do and I come and sit next to you. And the call goes great. And what's going on behind the scenes is that you are afraid that my empathy might wobble during that call. That is, you're afraid that I might be a little sharp edged, but you know that your smooth edges are contagious. And when I sit next to you, I, I am never sharp-edged. That is the best, uh, advice that I get in the workplace.

[00:01:09] Anne Morriss:
And it’s non-verbal, essentially. Why don't you sit here, honey?

[00:01:14] Frances Frei:
That's it. Yeah. Alright.

[00:01:16] Anne Morriss:
I love it.

[00:01:17] Frances Frei:
How about for you?

[00:01:20] Anne Morriss:
I think, um, the, the, the best advice as measured by the advice I return to most frequently, was, uh, from the chair of my board when I had built my own company and we, we hit a snag in, in Plan A as happens in early stage companies.

And I was frustrated, and my chair looked at me. Um, this was Mara Aspinall, the wonderful Mara Aspinall, and she said, “What matters is what happens next, and what happens next needs all of your emotional energy. And so I need you to take it out of regret for what has occurred and place it in the present and future where it is most needed.” And I think about that at least once a week. I.

[00:02:12] Frances Frei:
Wow.

[00:02:21] Anne Morriss:
I’m Anne Morris. I'm a company builder and leadership coach.

[00:02:24] Frances Frei:
And I’m Frances Frei. I'm a professor at the Harvard Business School. And I'm Anne's wife.

[00:02:29] Anne Morriss:
And this is Fixable from the TED Audio Collective. On this show, we believe that meaningful change happens fast, anything is fixable, and good solutions are often just a single conversation away.

[00:02:41] Frances Frei:
Who do we have today, Anne?

[00:02:42] Anne Morriss:
Frances, today we're talking to a caller who we're calling Rachel. That's not her real name. So, let's hear from her.

[00:02:50] Rachel:
Hey, this is Rachel. I'm a resource manager who works in the pharmaceutical advertising space. Uh, what I'd like help with today is stonewalling and gaslighting that I've been dealing with on a very consistent basis for the last year from one of my, uh, ops leads who I work with on a day-to-day basis.

[00:03:06] Anne Morriss:
Frances, immediate reactions.

[00:03:07] Frances Frei:
Ooh, stonewall and gaslighting are not small words.

[00:03:12] Anne Morriss:
These are big, these are really big words.

[00:03:13] Frances Frei:
And that it's, uh, it's quite, uh, emotional to experience that someone may be getting in your way purposefully and may be saying one thing happened and versus another, and you were there and know which one, and it starts to make you feel crazy.

[00:03:32] Anne Morriss:
And Frances, even particularly relevant for her role, which as a research manager in pharmaceutical advertising, so I suspect she's overseeing budgets and workloads and staffing, but she is dependent on other people in order to get her job done. And so I think in those circumstances, this kind of friction is particularly difficult.

[BREAK]

[00:04:01] Anne Morriss:
Rachel, welcome to Fixable.

[00:04:03] Rachel:
Thank you for having me.

[00:04:04] Anne Morriss:
So, um, my opening question is what do you do all day?

[00:04:08] Rachel:
Oh my goodness. I feel like the TL;DR is that I am the conduit for communication between people and panic all the time. Um, but the nitty gritty of what that means is I work with the various teams and groups to make sure that, um, we have the resources we need, whether those be full-time employees, whether those be independent contractors or freelancers.

So we are constantly shifting things around, playing referee, little bit of therapist thrown in there. Um, lots and lots of communication, uh, throughout the business from, you know, your highest level of executive leadership all the way down to your most entry level. So we touch pretty much every aspect of the business.

[00:04:56] Frances Frei:
Got it.

[00:04:56] Anne Morriss:
What would success look like if this conversation were wildly helpful to you?

[00:05:03] Rachel:
I think for me, success would look like potentially expanding my like toolbox repertoire of just like how to deal with being a human and deal with other humans. Um, so that is one piece.

[00:05:14] Anne Morriss:
I love that.

[00:05:16] Rachel:
And then I think another really big thing for me is also being able to identify areas where I could have potentially approached things differently or I had opportunity myself to have been either more confident, more assertive. Um, I fall into a space personally a lot, just very much about me, where I'm like a Labrador retriever. I just want everybody to be happy all of the time. Um, which is really great in a lot of contexts. But when it comes to my career, I think that prevents me from being able to acknowledge that I'm not being treated in a way that is mutually respectful.

[00:05:58] Anne Morriss:
Awesome. This feels achievable.

[00:06:01] Frances Frei:
It sure does.

[00:06:01] Rachel:
That's what I like to hear. That's great news.

[00:06:05] Anne Morriss:
And so, Rachel, you, you called in today because there was a particular colleague that you were struggling with. Can you tell us more about that?

[00:06:11] Rachel:
So, the nature of how we're structured within our organization, just for some context, is that the resource managers all work within a different office or portfolio group. All of those groups are headed up by a, um, an operations lead. They all have a great deal of autonomy in between the offices, so every single one of our ops leads kind of works as they please.

Um, and it, the group I was assigned in particular, I had an ops lead who had been given a great deal of freedom to just kind of run whatever process she would like to run and not have to answer to anyone about that. Basically was, was bogarting me at every level of trying to do even like the basic functions of my job.

[00:07:04] Anne Morriss:
And can you give us an example of that?

[00:07:06] Rachel:
Yeah, certainly. So we were trying to move into a state where we could better understand exactly how people's time was being allocated on a project by project basis. So we initiated a software tool to help us where project managers as part of their, um, project plans, could assign hours to individuals so that we could basically see an aggregate of what their time looked like at a given day, week, or period of time.

Um, but to do that, the PMs actually had to go through the process of entering all this in, transitioning everything over, and as we were trying to implement this, um, she basically actively circumvented me and told PMs to ignore the mandate and not do it so that my reporting was consistently astronomically off because we just weren't being given inputs. And it basically created an environment where I felt like constantly gaslit.

[00:08:05] Anne Morriss:
Mm-hmm. Wow. First of all, I'm sorry.

[00:08:08] Rachel:
Thank you.

[00:08:09] Anne Morriss:
Um, and so I just, I'm just mapping the power dynamics a little bit. Do you just report into her org?

[00:08:15] Rachel:
So I don't report into her, but because of the seniority, I have to abide by that.

[00:08:26] Anne Morriss:
But, but this relationship is a big part of your daily experience.

[00:08:30] Rachel:
Yes, very much so. Very much so.

[00:08:32] Anne Morriss:
Okay.

[00:08:33] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:08:33] Anne Morriss:
What have conversations with your, uh, with your direct supervisor been like around this issue?

[00:08:42] Rachel:
They’ve been good, but challenging in the sense that she isn't even in a position to be able to force this person to adapt as the entire rest of the organization is. I was really starting to question, like, my own abilities to do the job. Um, and I was asking for feedback and trying to figure out what that looked like, and she is a much more assertive, aggressive person than I am. Uh, so for her it's a little bit more cut and dry with how to handle it, and I struggle with that a little bit more because while yes, I want to be more assertive, I also don't want to sacrifice who I know myself to be.

And I don't feel like the end all be all answer is, well, just get in her face and be rude back. Uh, so it's been just kind of a, it, it really has been pretty nebulous because, um, we're also relying on this ops lead receiving a mandates from someone above her to actually change this behavior versus us trying to get her to change this behavior.

[00:09:57] Frances Frei:
And she, you're saying she is receiving that mandate from above to change.

[00:10:01] Rachel:
She has received the mandate that this is the way the company is moving, but then there is nothing to back up that messaging. Um.

[00:10:12] Anne Morriss:
Right. And then did I understand what you just said about the feedback you've received from your own supervisor has been to change your own tone or defend yourself or…?

[00:10:25] Rachel:
Yeah, like g—

[00:10:26] Anne Morriss:
Or how, how you've experienced her counsel has been to show up differently in those conversations?

[00:10:30] Rachel:
Yeah. It, it's been much more so like to your point, behavioral change or you just gotta, you just gotta push through and do it. Um…

[00:10:40] Anne Morriss:
Suck it up. This is the gig.

[00:10:42] Rachel: Yeah. Grab those bootstraps, pull 'em tight, you know?

[00:10:47] Anne Morriss:
Mm. Mm-hmm. So what do you think this person, the ops lead, would say if she were a part of this conversation to explain her behavior?

[00:10:57] Rachel:
That is a great question. I think, I think you would get a high degree of defensiveness, and I think you would get a lot of, “I have been in this industry for X, Y, Z number of years. I know what I'm doing. You don't know what you're talking about. I hear you, but also I'm going to brush you off.”

And I, I think it would be, based on my experience with this person, be basically reverted back as my own failing. Um, because when I had aired grievances with her in the past, that is, that is basically the reaction I've got.

[00:11:54] Anne Morriss:
“There's something wrong with you, Rachel.”

[00:11:56] Rachel:
Yeah.

[00:11:57] Anne Morriss:
“You’re too sensitive.” What's the, what's the story?

[00:11:59] Rachel:
Yeah, yeah. Actually, that's funny. I, you just kind of triggered a memory, but yes. In one of the conversations I had with her where I was basically trying to say, “I want to work well with you, you need to tell me how to work well with you, because clearly whatever we're doing isn’t.” And part of it was “You're taking this too personally.” Very dismissive, basically “don't be such a snowflake.”

[00:12:28] Anne Morriss:
And then do you think the fundamental tension is that if we give her the benefit of the doubt, which is we, she may not have earned here, but if we give her the benefit of the doubt, is it that she reads you as trying to change the way she works? And her response is “I know how to do this. Don't get in my way.”

[00:12:52] Rachel:
I think in some ways, yes. I think the way I would characterize it would be more akin to “you are a hurdle and inconvenience, and the role in which you play here is not necessary. so I am just going to circumvent you”.

[00:13:17] Anne Morriss:
Got it. Got it. Well, I'm going to, um, ask my beautiful wife to summarize what she's been hearing.

[00:13:25] Frances Frei:
So here's my summary of what's going on. You're interacting with someone who, uh, your role has been imposed on them and that their interpretation of the problem is your role's presence; your interpretation of the problem is their lack of acquiescence. So you have two different problems, and so what do we do when it's not that I'm the problem, but that my role is problematic to someone else who is much more senior in the organization? What can I do as a more junior person to do this?

Because the, you know, the quick answer is get other operations leads. Like abandon, abandon this. But I want, we learn at extremes. So I want us to figure out, if you stay here, what can you do? But my interpretation of it is that this is someone who doesn't want resource managers to have a, wants it to be a small r and a small m. And the organization has decided that resource managers are now capital R and capital M. Um, so I wanna just first check is, does that resonate?

[00:14:43] Rachel:
Very much so. That was so eloquent and beautiful.

[00:14:49] Frances Frei:
All right, so if we think about this in general, I can tell you what the classic, um, objectives are. One is to try to find a win-win. It's gonna be super hard here, but that's, but that's what it is. The other is, and I don't know how you're gonna react to this, it is for you to be more assertive, but not unpleasantly and not with conflict. In fact, you wanna think about it as neutral assertive in a non-combative way.

The reason for that is that she's super clear. She has deep clarity, and if you don't have crisp clarity to respond to, it's just gonna be a tidal wave, wave that's gonna overwhelm you. So I do think that asserting is gonna be part of your solution, but there's two things that are going on.

One is that she thinks that you're gonna go away. Like, I mean, that's how she's behaving. That you are very junior and you're gonna go away, um, or at, at, or be silent. Like one or the other. Um, that's one thing that's going on. The other thing that's going on is you're a, you're being asked to deliver the day-to-day version of a message that has not successfully been delivered to her at the top, which is putting you in a relatively impossible situation.

So I think one of the things that we wanna do is figure out the win-win, if we at all can, and how we, where to be assertive in a way that feels authentic to Rachel. So that's where I would begin.

[00:16:27] Anne Morriss:
Yeah, like there's so many awesome resources out there. I actually wanna start you, uh, with a book called the Gaslight Effect Recovery Guide. Because I think there is, there is something around just realizing that you're not crazy right now. That's important. Um, and it's, it's super practical. It's like, is this happening? Is this not happening? And then where do I find power in this relationship? You know, I, I do think this is a safe enough space, particularly now that you're in conversation with your direct supervisor about this, that you can run some experiments around, okay, if I approach it this way and approach it this way, you know, will I get a different result?

And we're happy to spend the rest of the conversation in that sandbox, but is this a space you wanna continue to be in? Is this a job you wanna continue to have? Because even if you don't know the answer, there is gonna be value to your subconscious to reminding yourself that this is optional, that you can leave, that you're choosing to be here. Uh, you know, when this happens to us, when we're little kids, we don't have a choice, and we, we just don't have a choice. We're stuck. But when this happens to us, when we're adults, we now have a choice, and sometimes we just have to be reminded of that. And so there are things we can do.

[00:17:55] Rachel:
It’s funny, I, I do think about that at times where I do remind myself like, this is employment. This is not the state I exist in always, right? Like you can always change that, but I also have this slightly obstinate streak where I don't want to leave a situation where there is still benefit to me just because something is mildly uncomfortable or mildly inconvenient, like I want to be successful.

I hate to, this is gonna maybe sound a little negative, but almost to spite her. I almost want, I almost want to be like, you know, “I'm here. People like working with me. You may not love it, but that's your loss. I could have been making your life a lot easier, a lot sooner if you would've just got on board.”

[00:18:43] Anne Morriss:
Okay. So we're gonna get into it. Uh, but I wanna, I just wanna ask that last person who showed up, who was a little swaggery, who was like, “You're lost honey. I’m good at my job!” You don’t want—

[00:18:56] Frances Frei:
What should we call her?

[00:18:59] Anne Morriss:
Yeah, like… we’re gonna call her Raquel.

[00:19:01] Rachel:
Oh, I like that. My French cousin.

[00:19:04] Anne Morriss:
Okay, so yeah. You’re gonna, your, like, sexy French cousin who doesn't care what people think, has a little bit of indifference. Um, how do we invite her into the workplace more often?

[00:19:14] Rachel:
Oh, that's a great question. I've been trying to figure that out for my whole life. Um…

[00:19:21] Anne Morriss:
‘Cause she's there, I mean, she just showed up.

[00:19:25] Rachel:
I, I truly don't have a great answer for how to invite her in more because I feel like within myself, I'm always a little bit at odds because I am someone who will openly admit that I struggle immensely with imposter syndrome and feeling like I deserve my seat at the table and the space that I take up in a room, and so there's that side of my brain constantly at odds with Raquel, who's like, “No, you work hard. People like you. Like, nothing is that hard to figure out. And most of our jobs are all made up anyway, so everyone needs to calm down. Let's just figure it out.”

[00:20:06] Frances Frei:
Okay. I’m gonna start by saying, um, I am your boss. Like I am this ops lead, or at least I have been this ops lead, which is that I do things somewhat unconventionally, um, and I am very successful at it. And if anyone came to me and said, “You have to do it in a more routine way,” it would be enormously difficult for me. My fear would be that it would be making me worse and I would push back like mad. So the, that's where I think she is. That's, that's sort of my connection. So, what—

[00:20:43] Anne Morriss:
Rachel, what's your reaction to that?

[00:20:45] Rachel:
No, that, that to me feels accurate. And actually even as you said that, it sort of triggered something that I almost find, like, funny in the whole situation is when we've interacted—this person and I—outside of strictly like business hours, work functions, we’ve had a lovely time.

[00:21:07] Frances Frei:
Yes.

[00:21:07] Rachel:
We’ve gotten on great. The conversation is fantastic.

[00:21:11] Frances Frei:
Yes. Yeah.

[00:21:11] Rachel:
I, um, I, I think the hardest part for me is I actually respect her immensely, and I think, I think that there is so much to be learned and so much opportunity for mutual benefit in our interactions that it just leaves me so frustrated so that, that resonates and it makes sense and it's, it sounds correct.

[00:21:40] Frances Frei:
So having the conversation, I, and you’re, you're professional. Um, and maybe not a peer, but you're professional, um, with it, which is, look, I represent resource management. My sense is you don't see resource management as making your life better. And I, who would I be to tell you one way or the other? But here's the thing, if you're not dealing with me, it's not that resource management goes away. There'll be another person that will do it. And I want you to know I respect you deeply and I would gnaw off a limb to find a way for us to work together. But knowing that if it's not me, it's gonna be someone else. And you might say, “You don't want to work with me, Rachel,” and that is your right.

I would be, I would like go all the way there on it. 'cause she's, who's gonna say they don't wanna work with you? You’re terrific. And if she doesn't wanna work with you, why should you have to work with someone who, who you don't, who doesn't wanna work with you? Um, so I would be, and this is, I think, the assertive part of it, which is you have deep clarity about it and you are gonna seem in control and capable. And that's what I want you to show up as.

[00:22:55] Anne Morriss:
So, we're convinced. We think our idea’s great.

[00:22:58] Frances Frei:
We really often do.

[00:23:02] Anne Morriss:
So let’s check in with you, Rachel. What, what's your reaction to finding your way to some version of that emotional frequency tone content? How does that feel?

[00:23:14] Rachel:
No, it feels good, and it makes sense, um, because it feels like a happy medium for me to be able to come to the table with the things that I hold very dear to me, which are positivity, empathy, and having compassion for a situation, but also not allowing myself to be the coat that's being thrown in the puddle for somebody else to tramp over. Um.

[00:23:47] Anne Morriss:
Because that does require your consent.

[00:23:51] Rachel:
Yeah. Yeah.

[00:23:52] Anne Morriss:
And what you’re saying with this pivot is that that's no longer, okay.

[00:23:57] Frances Frei:
I have a question for you, Rachel. Do you now have a perhaps different interpretation of what she meant when she said, “Don’t take it personally”?

[00:24:06] Rachel:
I think maybe. I'm try, I try very hard to look at that expansively, but I also feel like, uh, some of that when she says it, and I don't agree with this from her side, is to be unemotional about things. Um, and again, that kind of speaks to that generational difference—

[00:24:29] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:24:29] Rachel:
Where when she came up in the industry, it was very like, you didn't show fear. You didn't like—

[00:24:34] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. Emotions were prohibited.

[00:24:36] Rachel:
Yeah, if, if there was blood—

[00:24:37] Anne Morriss:
Particularly for women. Yeah.

[00:24:38] Rachel:
Yes. So I get that. I have to say that I had a moment where, a few weeks ago, things came very much to a head where my frustration like absolutely just like boiled over, and our director of all operations caught wind of it and asked if I had a few minutes to chat. And in that conversation with her, it was exactly that, where the emotions boiled over.

And I just point blank was like, “I am having this reaction because I care. So if you doubt that I am not fully here to support the team and fully here to try to figure this out, then this should tell you that I'm taking it on.” Um, and I will say on a personal level, I was proud of myself for that because in the past I've just shut down.

But, um, it's, it's an area where I think that the emotional processing also hinders the relationship I have with this person because she is very like faucet off, dead to the world. Like, you cannot get a read on what she is feeling, which for me drives me nuts because I, I very much gauge on, like, what I can read from somebody to how I respond to them, and I can't get that with her. So personally, I think potentially maybe I was misinterpreting exactly what she meant by that.

[00:26:07] Anne Morriss:
I love that evolution. I also think—

[00:26:10] Frances Frei:
I love your emotions.

[00:26:12] Rachel:
Thank you.

[00:26:13] Frances Frei:
Don’t, don't, don't sublimate them. They're beautiful.

[00:26:16] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. And I think the, the, the opportunity here for you in this relationship is I think it is gonna be an accelerant for you when you do this work, and the reason that she's gonna be such a magnificent learning opportunity for you is she's giving you nothing. Just like, I mean, like the world has just delivered this magnificent little Petri dish because it's not like, is she giving you a little, and then if I work harder…

[00:26:44] Frances Frei:
No, you're never getting anything.

[00:26:47] Anne Morriss:
You’re never, you’re never getting anything, you're never getting any affirmation from this woman. So it is the perfect opportunity to run these experiments of like, how do you get in touch with your own value without that feedback loop?

[00:27:01] Frances Frei:
Um, and I have watched that when you are liberated from the validation of other people, you perform even higher.

[00:27:09] Anne Morriss:
That is the counterintuitive payoff here, is you will be more effective in your role. You'll be a more magnificent partner to this woman. She will rely on you more when you need her affirmation less, and that’s an inside journey.

[00:27:30] Rachel:
That rings very true. Like if my fiancé could hear you say that right now, he would just be vigorously shaking me and he'd be like, yeah. Uh-huh.

[00:27:42] Anne Morriss:
So Rachel, do you feel like there's a realistic path to having a different kind of conversation with this ops lead about how to make the relationship work better?

[00:27:54] Rachel:
I do, but I think a piece of it for me is that I have to acknowledge that the only part of this scenario that I actually have control over is my approach and my reaction.

[00:28:07] Frances Frei:
Yes.

[00:28:07] Rachel:
And I can come to the table as best I can, and if she wants to be part of that, that is certainly her choice and I would welcome it. But if she doesn't, then I'm just gonna take that elsewhere and try to not view that as a failure on my part, but more so as somebody who's just decided to say “No thank you.”

[00:28:30] Anne Morriss:
Rachel. That's the, that's the pivot. That's the—

[00:28:33] Frances Frei:
I want you to hear the beginning of this call and the end of this call.

[00:28:37] Anne Morriss:
—that's the power. I just wanna underscore that. That's the power. The power is you showing up differently in that conversation and not giving a fuck what happens next on a fundamental level.

[00:28:52] Frances Frei:
Yeah, and I would label what I just heard from you as professionally assertive.

[00:28:55] Anne Morriss:
So we'll close it out there. We're huge fans.

[00:28:59] Frances Frei:
We really are. We really are. Such a privilege to meet you. You are exceptional.

[00:29:02] Anne Morriss:
And, um, will you let us know how it goes out there?

[00:29:06] Rachel:
I’ll absolutely keep you posted. And I just wanna also, um, echo that thanks and appreciation. I can't express to you the goodness that this has done my heart and mind today. So thank you very much for your time, your thoughtfulness, um, and all of your help.

[00:29:37] Anne Morriss:
You know the, I've been thinking about that line. “It's not personal,” you know, which we throw out all the time, but it, it, it feels personal.

[00:29:45] Frances Frei:
Oh my gosh.

[00:29:45] Anne Morriss:
It is personal. We ha—we show up in these systems as persons with our personhood.

[00:29:54] Frances Frei:
Well, there's a better way of saying it. Like, “I'm not reacting to you. I'm reacting to your, you know, to resource management.” Like you could take it the extra step for someone.

[00:30:07] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. And sometimes we can get in the way because it feels personal. Is this about me and my performance? And, but there's something under, underneath this, the friction of this relationship that this entire organization has to learn, and—

[00:30:21] Frances Frei:
I agree.

[00:30:21] Anne Morriss:
She’s not the messenger.

[00:30:22] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:30:23] Anne Morriss:
Uh, but somebody else is observing the friction.

[00:30:25] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:30:26] Anne Morriss:
And certainly the ops lead is observing the friction and is, is observing it from a position of power. And this system would dramatically improve if that became discussable.

[00:30:35] Frances Frei:
I really enjoyed that conversation. Because I'm an eternal optimist, I put it at 75% that she's gonna end up being on the lifeline of this ops lead. That, that when she has that direct conversation, the ops lead is gonna be like, “Oh goodness, alright.” This is like, she's gonna realize this is here to stay and you're a pretty cool person for me to optimize with this external constraint.

[00:31:00] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. Yeah. We often say that solutions are sometimes just one brave conversation away.

[00:31:07] Frances Frei:
That’s her brave conversation. Yeah.

[00:31:09] Anne Morriss:
The, the beautiful thing is that two people's lives could be changed in that conversation.

[00:31:13] Frances Frei:
Yes.

[00:31:13] Anne Morriss:
Her life is just gonna be changed by showing up differently.

[00:31:15] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:31:16] Anne Morriss:
But the opportunity for this woman on the other side is to receive it in a way that opens up her life to a different possibility as well.

Thanks for listening, and listen, we wanna hear from you as well. If you wanna figure out your workplace problem together, send us a message. Email us fixable@ted.com or call us at 234-FIXABLE. That’s 234-349-2253.

[00:31:48] Frances Frei:
If you're enjoying the show, please consider giving it a rating. The ratings and the algorithm from the ratings help serve the show up to more people who might, uh, who might benefit from it.

Fixable is brought to you by the TED Audio Collective. It's hosted by me, Frances Frei.

[00:32:07] Anne Morriss:
And me, Anne Morris. Our team includes Isabel Carter, Constanza Gallardo, Lidia Jean Kott, Sarah Nics, Jimmy Gutierrez, Michelle Quint, Corey Hajim, Alejandra Salazar, Banban Cheng, and Roxanne Hai Lash. Jake Gorski is our mix engineer.

[00:32:26] Frances Frei:
If you're enjoying the show, make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and tell a friend to check us out.