Navigating Career Turbulence Transcript

Sharon Preszler: [00:00:00] When I was a little, little kid, I was a four years old on my first airplane ride. And we got to go up front in the cockpit, you know, cause you could kind of do that back then. It was totally dark, no moon over the Atlantic ocean. There is like a billion stars in the sky. And I went back and told my mom, I wanted to be a stewardess and my mom to her credit, she left me, "Honey, you might want to think about being a pilot," and there you go. That's what I wanted to do from then on

Adam Grant: [00:00:28] Sharon Preszler has flown lots of different kinds of airplanes since then, including fighter jets. She was the first woman in the U S air force to fly the F-16.

Sharon: [00:00:38] It's always just been the coolest looking airplane, that bubble canopy and the big engine inlet. [00:00:42] It has the highest G tolerance, which is nine times the force of gravity on the earth, which is significant. It can do anything.

Adam: [00:00:51] Sharon's had an extraordinary career spanning more than three decades, but recently after 14 years as a pilot with Southwest airlines, she hit a particularly bad [00:01:00] patch of turbulence. Her whole industry did.

Sharon: [00:01:03] Yeah. I was the captain who always brought like chocolate for the flight attendants and I'd go give them some chocolate, even if it's breakfast time. "It's okay to have chocolate for breakfast. Here you go!" And that changed my first flight after we kind of really understood what was going on with COVID. [00:01:19] We had a bunch of those Clorox wipes. So I took those to the flight attendants instead I'm like, "Hey, anybody wants some Clorox Wipes?"

Adam: [00:01:26] The pandemic had a catastrophic impact on the airline industry. And Southwest eventually offered buyouts.

Sharon: [00:01:33] I hadn't even really thought about my retirement moment yet because I had ten more years to fly and I wasn't planning on leaving.

Adam: [00:01:38] But after some serious reflection, she chose to retire.

Sharon: [00:01:42] There were a couple of hundred that retired in the same two week period, which is unheard of.

Adam: [00:01:46] Despite all the turbulence, Sharon knows she's lucky. She looked beyond the horizon to a new career. More on that later, but for now, buckle up

Sharon: [00:02:01] ladies, gentlemen, this is Captain Preszler speaking. I know it's been a little bit turbulent, especially in the economy, but it's going to smooth out. Thanks for listening with us today.

Adam: [00:02:12] I'm Adam Grant. And this is WorkLife my podcast with the TED audio collective. I'm an organizational psychologist. I study how to make work, not suck in this show, I take you inside the minds of fascinating people to help us rethink how we work lead and live today: Navigating career turbulence. Thanks to Morgan Stanley for sponsoring this episode.
[00:02:43] You know, a turbulence feels like on an airplane, you hit some nasty wind and everything is out of your control. You've probably faced that kind of turbulence in your career too. When your job, your workplace, or your industry is changing dramatically around you and you feel powerless to shape it. [00:03:00] The current pandemic has compounded that disturbance on a massive scale. In the face of uncertainty, we often freeze up. Researchers call it a threat rigidity response.
[00:03:11] When we feel powerless to counter the threats around us, our thinking becomes constrained. We hang on for dear life, stop taking risks and play it safe. The past year has left us all reacting to dramatic change. But psychologists find that when we encounter turbulence, instead of pushing harder against the headwinds, we're generally better off tilting our rudder and charting a new course.
[00:03:34] In other words, expanding your thinking at exactly the moment when all your instincts are telling you to lock it down tightly.

Aaron Scott: [00:03:46] I was in my forties and I worked in the mortgage division. When all of this mortgage business hit, and they laid off the entire division in Jacksonville

Adam: [00:03:56] In 2009, Aaron Scott had been working for a bank in [00:04:00] Florida for 14 years when he lost his job during the recession, he started looking for a new job in finance.

Aaron: [00:04:06] I would estimate that surely I applied for at least 200 jobs. I think I had like three interviews in that whole time.

Adam: [00:04:17] As more time passed without any callbacks, Aaron became more open to exploring other roles and for lower pay, as long as they were in state.

Aaron: [00:04:26] You're fishing for one particular kind of fish, But in time, man, you start casting your net a whole lot wider.

Adam: [00:04:32] Feeling dejected. Aaron finally started looking out of state, which would have meant leaving his entire family behind

Aaron: [00:04:40] My brother, my sister, my mom and dad. They're all right there. When you talk about moving to California from Florida, that's, you know, that's a desperate move. But somethings, you know, something's gotta give here. [00:04:52] I couldn't find another job to save my life.

Adam: [00:04:54] Aaron spent two and a half years looking for full-time work. He had a newborn [00:05:00] son, so his financial responsibilities were growing. And just when he thought things couldn't get any worse, his wife had a stroke.

Aaron: [00:05:07] This is the most driven woman I know. And when you see that kind of person sitting in a wheelchair, I just felt the weight of the world had this little boy.
[00:05:16] You're thinking "my wife looks to me, my son looks to me, what am I going to do?" I just, finally, I went into another room and I was closed door and I just kinda had little pity party

Adam: [00:05:27]. What is a pity party?

Aaron: [00:05:28] Well, I didn't want to say I cried, but that's what I did.

Adam: [00:05:33] With so much out of his control in that moment, Aaron found a way to take some of the control back instead of focusing narrowly on the mortgage industry.
[00:05:41] Aaron brought into his lens. He found a part-time job as a substitute teacher to pay the bills, which was a resourceful move. An example of what psychologists called being proactive. "Be proactive" can be really annoying advice. It isn't about working harder or taking the bull by the horns or [00:06:00] whatever your nagging uncle keeps telling you to do. [00:06:02] You're probably doing that already. It means doing what you can to change a circumstance, rather than grinding against it. Identifying the ways, large or small, that you can exert some control in an out of control situation. It turned out that Aaron loved teaching. A few years later, he ended up pivoting it into his current career where he's helping others learn from his earlier setback.

Aaron: [00:06:26] I work at a nearby prison, Hamilton Correctional Institution.

Adam: [00:06:30] Aaron now helps people navigate one of the biggest headwinds imaginable: time in prison. What Aaron's learned about how formerly incarcerated people reenter society has implications for adapting to all kinds of turbulence from being downsized, to being demoted, to having a gap on your resume.
[00:06:47] People who've spent time in prison face major obstacles. When they're trying to land a job, employers are often hesitant to give them an opportunity.

Aaron: [00:06:56] if they look you up and they find out that you were really into some bad [00:07:00] stuff, sometimes that's the end of it. They're just going to pass on you.

Adam: [00:07:03] Aaron coaches, his students to call out the elephant in the room.

Aaron: [00:07:08] "I made some very poor decisions I've paid for that. I've made a lot of changes in my life, uh, but uh, really appreciate the opportunity."

Adam: [00:07:15] Why do you think it's important, Aaron, to address the elephant in the room and actually talk about it directly?

Aaron: [00:07:22] The number one thing is you control the narrative to some degree when you do that.

Adam: [00:07:29] Controlling the narrative. This is a key strategy for being proactive in the face of career turbulence -- crafting a story about how a headwind has made you stronger, or better. Research demonstrates that in the job search ex-offenders are better off owning their mistakes than making excuses. Your headwinds may be lighter than time behind bars.
[00:07:50] Maybe you lost a job that was a bad fit. Or you took time off to care for a child or a sick family member, or maybe you have a physical or psychological disability that perspective [00:08:00] employers wrongly judge. And although it's illegal to discriminate against people with disabilities, employers have biases.
[00:08:07] In a series of studies, people with disabilities were rated more favorably if they brought them up at the beginning of an interview, rather than waiting until the end or concealing them altogether. Psychologists find that in the face of setbacks, taking charge of the narrative doesn't just signal to others that you're in control.
[00:08:24] Forming a story can also boost your own motivation and build your confidence to overcome past struggles and move forward in the future.
[00:08:34] When Aaron was searching for a job, he decided to take this principle a step further. He started proactively asking interviewers to call out the elephant in the room — to tell him what his disadvantages.

Aaron: [00:08:45] "Right, well, first of all, thank you for allowing me to come in and speak with you. I'm very interested in this position. Is there anything in this interview or perhaps on my resume that might give you pause about considering me for [00:09:00] the position?"

Adam: [00:09:01] Part of what I think is so clever about asking that question is even if it doesn't get you the job today, you learn something potentially for the next interview.

Aaron: [00:09:09] That's exactly right. I did learn from that interview. Sometimes when I learn it helps me get the job that is the right job for me. Hearing advice doesn't mean you have to take it, but it does mean you can weigh it. Sometimes there's a little nugget in there that I help you.

Adam: [00:09:24] This is another form of proactivity in the face of turbulence: Seeking feedback. By asking what your limitations are and how you can improve, you don't just get to peek inside the black box of how to get that job, that connection, or that coveted project. You also get in a sense of control to address the issues that may be preventing you from getting an opportunity, but people won't always tell you what you can do better. And sometimes you can't even get your foot in the door to ask them.

Dallas McLaughlin: [00:09:53] You know, all those YouTube videos that you watch and all those things that interrupt you and jam their way into your face? I do those

Adam: [00:09:58] Dallas McLaughlin started building websites as a teenager and taught himself how to do SEO (search engine optimization.) You know, when you direct people doing Google searches to a particular website, like with those pop-up ads you're always avoiding. Dallas got so good at SEO marketing that he dropped out of music college to do it full-time. And for a few years, that's what he did. But when Dallas decided he wanted to work for a big agency, not having a formal degree became a major disadvantage. It meant nobody was looking at his resume

Dallas: [00:10:29] There's pre-screening tools and technology that just siphoned me or filtered me out. [00:10:34] I just wasn't even passing those checks and balances. Remember, I dropped out of college to go do this. I just knew that I could do that better than anybody stepping out of a college with a communications degree.

Adam: [00:10:47] When you face the headwind, you need support. If you're like most people, your instinct is to reach out to your strong ties -- the people you know well and trust to have your back. But research has long shown that you're more likely to get a [00:11:00] job through weak ties, your more distant acquaintances. They travel in different circles and have access to a broader pool of connections and ideas, which puts them in a better position to open up new opportunities. Sadly, the people who need those ties the most are the least likely to reach out to them. Research reveals that when their jobs are under threat, people with lower social class tend to narrow their networks while people with higher status tend to broaden their networks; they reach beyond the inner circle, which actually turns out to be a way of changing course when the going is rough, and is something we should support everyone to do.
[00:11:36] Or if you want to be really proactive, you can expand your network to include complete strangers. That's what Dallas did. He came up with a plan to recruit the recruiters into his network. He took the same SEO marketing skills he'd been using to attract customers. Except now, he targeted employers. First, he built a website for himself [00:12:00] Next, He made a list of every notable person in the Phoenix agency ecosystem; CEOs, CMOs, marketing directors, you name it. And then he made paid search ads targeting each of them. So let's say you're an executive named John Smith and you're Googling yourself because ... you have nothing better to do. You type your name into Google, and the very first result that pops up says ...

Dallas: [00:12:25] "Hey, John Smith, I'm Dallas McLaughlin. I'm a digital marketing expert, and I really want to work for your company. Click here to find out why." I basically turned the entire hiring process around, and I stopped sending resumes.

Adam: [00:12:40] This is so clever. So wait a minute, how many people actually follow it up and how many people ignored it?

Dallas: [00:12:47] I only targeted maybe 12. And I heard from four. The very first follow-up I got. they said "Please stop doing this. I don't like it."

Adam: [00:12:59] So, they didn't like the [00:13:00] fact that you were so effective in advertising that you were able to annoy them and creep them out a little?

Dallas: [00:13:06] Yeah. You know, it's also me screening them out. If they don't like what I'm doing, they clearly don't understand the value in what I just did. And they're not going to be able to properly utilize me within their organization. I don't want to work there anyway. The fourth one, they were just like, "Come into the office. You're hired, you're in. We didn't even - we don't even have a job opening."

Adam: [00:13:25] Wow. So you went from oh-for-one-hundred to four out of 12 interested in at least learning more about you, to a hundred percent success rate once you got an interview, and that was it. Dallas found a proactive way to showcase his skills specific to the field. Instead of going to the recruiters, he turned the tables and brought the recruiters to him. This kind of initiative can help you expand your network and access new opportunities too. A few years ago, I got a cold email from a web designer. She sent me a mock-up of how she thought my homepage should be redesigned. I wasn't even looking for a change, but she did such a great job that I hired her on the spot. Not everyone will have time to experiment like this, but if you can manage it, it's a promising way to proactively change the situation. There's evidence that side hustles can boost our engagement and performance in our full-time jobs. And sometimes, they even become a career.

Dallas: [00:14:22] Go do that thing that excites you. If you are an architect, go draw blueprints. If you're an auto mechanic, go fix everybody's cars. And if you do that long enough, and you do it well enough, somebody's going to notice.

Adam: [00:14:37] Captain Sharon Preszler could have chosen to stay in aviation, but ...

Sharon: [00:14:41] Once the airline industry starts furloughing, now there's a glut of pilots, right? Because everybody kind of tries to stay, take a step back and go, "Oh, so I'll go back to being an instructor." Well, guess what? Everybody else is trying to go back to being an instructor, and there's just not the demand.

Adam: [00:14:58] The more she thought about it, the more she started to reframe the disturbance as an opportunity to take off in an entirely new direction.

Sharon: [00:15:07] This whole COVID mess and the wreck that the airline industry has become right now, for me, was an unexpected opportunity. So I am back in school, I'm getting a master's in psychology with an emphasis in coaching young adults and help them successfully transition to adulthood. And it's just something I've wanted. I've been interested in for awhile, a mentoring kind of program. And although I will miss flying at Southwest, I'm excited about it. It's a big change, but I'm excited about it.

Adam: [00:15:34] In the face of the storm confronting the airline industry, Sharon changed course — something the pandemic and recession are forcing all of us to do in varying degrees. When we're grappling with uncertainty, we tend to focus on what's right in front of us, our strong ties and our next move.
[00:15:52] But what does turbulence mean in the long-term? To forecast what might happen to your future career, you can learn something from [00:16:00] looking to the past. More on that after the break.

[00:16:07] Okay, this is going to be a different kind of ad. I play a personal role in selecting the sponsors for this podcast, because they all have interesting cultures of their own. Today, e're going inside the workplace at Morgan Stanley.

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Adam: [00:20:23] Turbulence in an individual career is tough to navigate, but right now, literally millions of people are all struggling with a massive upheaval all at once — and one that inherently lasts a long time. Bad economic conditions make everything in our lives feel unstable and out of our control. Millions of jobs have been lost throughout the pandemic, and millions more are at risk. People of color, especially those in lower paid jobs and without college degrees, have suffered the most. Research shows that job loss doesn't just create financial strain. It also increases the risk of depression, anxiety, and [00:21:00] marital problems, and undermines our sense of control and confidence. If you haven't lost your job, you still may be feeling job insecurity, which has been linked to negative mental and physical health outcomes.

[00:21:12] There's even evidence that economic insecurity reduces our pain tolerance. But just as chaos doesn't mean we've lost all control, a moment of huge upheaval like this one doesn't mean all is lost.

[00:21:29] Recessions can shape careers in ways that are profound, and profoundly surprising. We don't yet know the outcome of this recession because we're still in it, but we can look to past recessions for wisdom to guide us through our current journey. Just ask Emily Bianchi.

Emily Bianchi: [00:21:45] I would submit job after job after application, after application and ... would hear nothing. Occasionally, I get an interview and I'd find out eight other people were being interviewed and it was really nerve wracking. It took an entire [00:22:00] year to get a full time job.

Adam: [00:22:02] In 2001, Emily had just graduated with her bachelor's degree in psychology when she lived through her first of three recessions: The dot-com bust.

Emily: [00:22:11] During the boom of the late-nineties, there was just an incredible sense of entitlement, of "What's the world going to offer me? Should I start my own company? Will I be a millionaire by 25?" Expectations that were insane ... and you fast forward two years to my class and it just, it had completely changed. You know, you go to college, you spend all this money and you think when you come out, "I'm going to have some options." And then that historical moment, I really didn't.
[00:22:41] That was true for many, many other people graduating at that time, and certainly true for many people graduating right now.

Adam: [00:22:49] Emily knows it's true now because she studied it. As an organizational behavior professor at Emory university, Emily is one of the world's foremost experts on the psychology of recessions.

Adam: [00:22:59] [To Emily] Do you ever have these horrible moments given what you study, where you say, "Well, you know, when bad things happen, I get good research out of it"?

Emily: [00:23:10] [Laughs] Haha, Well, you know, certainly during the great recession I thought that, but not now, now I'm like "enough."

Adam: [00:23:15] Good. Okay. So you're not a bad person anymore.

Emily: [00:23:18] No, I was In graduate school, but I've reformed.

Adam: [00:23:22] Emily had a front row seat to the dot-com fallout of 2001. And she observed similar patterns in new graduates during the great recession of 2009.

Emily: [00:23:31] That was when the world fell apart. And you could feel it everywhere. You could feel it walking around New York. And when all those folks started graduating in the class of 2009, there were so many articles about how they were just doomed. [00:23:43] This was a generation that it completely had the rug pulled out from under them.

Adam: [00:23:48] The research that was available about recessions was ominous. A setback at the start of a career casts a long shadow. People who graduated in recessions continued to earn less a decade later.

Emily: [00:24:00] It's not only that you suffer now, but that you will also continue to suffer, at least financially, for a long time to come.

Adam: [00:24:06] But it isn't all bad news is Emily looked around her in 2009. She saw a strange pattern.

Emily: [00:24:13] One thing that really struck me was that so many people were expressing gratitude. These people had just been dealt this really tough hand, and yet, again, and again, I kept hearing people say, "You know what, I'm so grateful. I got this job that stopped what I hoped for, but you know, it's a place to start."
[00:24:32] And there was very little data on it. At least from a psych perspective.

Adam: [00:24:34] She was familiar with the classic study of Olympic athletes. On the podium, bronze medalists looked happier than silver medalists. The poor silver medalists were disappointed; "I almost want to gold!" The bronze medalists felt lucky; "At least I got a medal!"
[00:24:53] Emily wondered if something similar would hold for recession graduates.

Emily: [00:24:57] I found that people who graduated when the economy was doing [00:25:00] worse, even though they were 10 or 15 or even 20 years out of those initial experiences, they were more satisfied with their current job than people who graduated in good economic times.

Adam: [00:25:12] At some level that sounds like good news, provided we can get reemployed, It seems like your data would suggest we're going to be happier with our jobs and more likely to appreciate them.

Emily: Yeah.

Adam: This is the first surprise. People who start their careers into recession may feel less entitled to the perfect job, and more grateful to be employed.

Emily: [00:25:31] I don't mean to diminish the very serious and real obstacles that people who are graduating, but any recession, face, but that there may be sort of this longterm silver lining.

Adam: [00:25:39] If you take your silver lining of people being more satisfied with their jobs, I worry that that's going to open the door for leaders to explain them. That people who might have exited a completely abusive or toxic workplace will stay because they say, "Hey, I'm lucky to have a job." Is that a risk?

Emily: [00:25:58] Absolutely. I worry about that too. [00:26:00] You may be at risk of tolerating circumstances, which you wouldn't tolerate. If you had come of age in a better economic times.

Adam: [00:26:07] And why does it last? I'm thinking about the common finding that we adapt pretty quickly to our circumstances and start to get used to them. So why in ten or 15 or 20 years after the recession is over am I still thankful for having a job?

Emily: [00:26:22] Usually when people get their first jobs, it's in this period of life called the impressionable years. Most people are beginning to forge an identity outside of their families and their communities, and trying to figure out their place in the world. [00:26:34] And attitudes tend to be quite malleable during this period. What's going on in the world, whether economically, politically, culturally, tends to help shape those attitudes in ways that mirror what's happening at that moment. And after this critical period, attitudes don't tend to change that much.

Adam: [00:26:56] The indelible mark of the recession, doesn't just affect us individually. It can have a meaningful impact on leaders and end up shaping entire organizations.

Emily: [00:27:08] It's very difficult for people who are graduating recessions to avoid kind of the humbling adversity that that type of environment presents.

Adam: [00:27:16] This brings us to a second surprise and some more long-term good news, despite the short-term headwinds.

Emily: [00:27:23] In my data, I find that people who come of age and recessions tend to be less narcissistic in terms of how they pay themselves versus how their top leaders within their company are paid.

Adam: [00:27:34] Those who come of age in recessions, and then become leaders of organizations, are less entitled. Knowing what it's like to struggle, these CEOs seem to care more for employees and behave less selfishly. They become proactive about taking responsibility. In one study, Emily discovered that CEOs who launched their careers in a recession were less likely to backdate their stock options to maximize their value. In other words, [00:28:00] they were less likely to cheat, which is possibly the opposite of what you'd expect from a person who came of age while struggling.

Emily: [00:28:07] The people who tend to cheat are actually the people who are doing really well. A lot of cheating comes from entitlement or belief that somebody deserves a better outcome, or that nobody will notice and I'll get away with it.

Adam: [00:28:19] So when you look into your crystal ball, then-

Emily: [Laughs] I don't have one of those!

Adam: I beg to differ — based on your findings, in 20 or 30 years, when people who are just starting out their career become CEOs, does that mean we're going to see more servant leaders; more givers than takers?

Emily: [00:28:35] I would certainly hope so based on what we've seen in the past.

Adam: [00:28:39] So there are some reasons for optimism in the long run. The chaos we live through can make people stronger and better in a very real way.

Emily: [00:28:47] In terms of how they mitigate the uncertainty associated with bad economic times. One, I think, very positive way is through connecting with other people.

Adam: [00:28:57] This tendency for connectivity brings us to [00:29:00] one last surprise from Emily's studies. During moments of uncertainty, but especially economic uncertainty, we tend to rethink our relationships with others. We become less individualistic and more civically minded. Emily has found an ingenious way to measure that: Through pop music! When we're struggling through bad economic times, we're drawn to different lyrics.

Emily: [00:29:27] In popular American music, you're more likely to see first person plural pronouns, like "we, us ours," whereas in really good economic times, you see a lot of first person pronouns, like "me, mine, I." When you think of what's often called "the greatest generation," the generation that came of age, either in the great depression or World War II, that's been argued, again and again, that this is the most civically-minded generation. I do think we will see that going forward in the current generation.

Adam: [00:29:57] Another way Emily measured [00:30:00] individualism was by looking at social security data to see what parents named their kids during good and bad economic times. Emily found that when the economy is doing well, parents are more likely to give their kids unique names. [00:30:13] I'm looking at you, Blue Ivy. When the economy is struggling, parents choose from a smaller set of more common names, which are often biblical names.

Emily: [00:30:23] It used to be, um, in the 1950s, one out of 15 boys would receive the most common name. Fast forward to 2013, and now it's one out of 75 boys receive the most common name of their birth year.

Adam: [00:30:44] If you take this idea of increasing communal orientation, decreasing individualism, seriously, would you also anticipate that we're going to see more caring and more supportive work relationships in the next couple of decades?

Emily: [00:30:59] The findings that I have looked at suggest that, yes, right, to the extent that people are less narcissistic, they would also be manifest in positive ways in the interpersonal level.

Adam: [00:31:09] We can all agree that recessions are terrible in the short-term for so many reasons, but in the long-term having experienced their own struggles, leaders in the future may be less entitled, more honest, and more caring toward employees. And in the meantime, we all may be more community focused. But during a recession, there's a darker side to this. [00:31:32] It really depends on who your community is.

Emily: [00:31:36] There tends to be greater fondness for people within one's in-group, and often, not always, but often that comes at the expense of how people perceive and treat people who are not a part of their in-group. Xenophobia is higher. Treatment of immigrants is worse. All these different manifestations of, of prejudice.

Adam: [00:32:04] Evidence shows that recessions have unequal effects along racial lines. You know the wage gap between black and white workers? Well, Emily found that it grows during recessions. She also discovered that recessions changed people's attitudes about race. Her research shows that white people are more likely to report that inequality between races is natural and normal. In the wake of a recession, we need to understand how to overcome this in-group bias and broaden people's circles of concern to motivate them to care about helping those who have been most disadvantaged. Dismantling these biases is so important that we will be devoting two episodes to it this season, so stay tuned.

Adam: [00:32:53] When you hit turbulence, it can be hard to see the way forward. It can help to look backward. What we see when we [00:33:00] do that is that the lessons we learn in these hard times will shape our jobs, and our cultures, for the long haul. Some of those effects are negative and we have to be vigilant to counteract them. Some of them are surprisingly positive, a glimmer of light up ahead. We also see that in the bumpiest or most chaotic moments, our connections with each other are more important than ever. And it's up to us to be proactive about not only reaching out to our networks, but expanding them. If we're thoughtful about it, we have the opportunity to stick the landing, to come through turbulence, more, open, more honest, and more connected than before.

Next time on WorkLife ...

Clip from guest: [00:33:49] "And also it's exhausting. God, sometimes I just want to agree to disagree"

Adam: Ooor don't agree to disagree. The keys to solving conflict at work and [00:34:00] at home, are often hiding in plain sight,

WorkLife is hosted by me, Adam Grant. The show is produced by TED with Transmitter Media. Our team includes Colin Helms, Gretta Cohn, Dan O’Donnell, Constanza Gallardo, Grace Rubenstein, Michelle Quint, Banban Cheng, and Anna Phelan. This episode was produced by JoAnn DeLuna. Our show is mixed by Rick Kwan. Our fact checker is Paul Durbin. Original music by Hansdale Hsu and Allison Leyton-Brown. Ad stories produced by Pineapple Street Studios.

Special thanks to our sponsors: LinkedIn, Logitech, Morgan Stanley, SAP and Verizon.
For their research, thanks to teams including Barry Staw on threat rigidity, Sharon Parker on proactivity, Connie Wanberg on the job search, Brent Lyons on disclosing stigmatized identities, Jamie Pennebaker on forming a story, Sue Ashford on proactive feedback-seeking and job insecurity, Mark Granovetter on weak ties, Tanya Menon on narrowing vs. broadening networks, Hudson Sessions on side hustles, Rick Price on job loss, and Lisa Kahn on how recessions affect careers.

Adam: [00:35:15] Dallas is brilliant as this is, I think you're slipping because I just Googled myself and there was not an ad placed by you to be on my podcast.

Dallas: Oh man. Maybe I'm getting complacent.