Transcript of Episode 531: Leslie John: Oversharing as a Competitive Advantage in Leadership and Negotiation New

Hi, guys. It's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits & Hustle. Crush it.

All right, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Habits & Hustle. We have a very special guest. Number one, she's Canadian.

All that matters.

All that matters. She lived in Winnipeg for many years. But really, she's exceptionally impressive. Not only is she a professional dancer, which, of course, is her background when she was younger, this woman is a professor at Harvard. She She's a behavioral scientist, and she is an expert in decision making. Also, she's a new book called... Her new book is called The Underrated Power of Oversharing. Actually, Revealing is the title, and then the underrated power of oversharing. So I guess we're going to talk all about the power of oversharing on this episode and everything in between. So thank you for being on the show.

Thank you for having me.

This is exciting. First of all, I love anything when I see the word behavior You're a behavioral psychologist, scientist. I'm fascinated by how the human psyche works, the brain works. And given that your background is, I was saying before we started, you're a dancer plus the Harvard. I mean, your attention to detail and discipline must be off the charts.

I drive myself crazy sometimes.

Well, listen, then I love it. So I'm here for it. So before we start, we do this thing on here. We basically take a shot. It's a mental performance shot to keep you super, I guess, basically very focused. You don't need it, though. I would highly doubt someone with your background, but let's do it anyway.

Yeah, I'm excited.

Okay, cheers. Cheers. Yours actually has no Caffeine. Mine has caffeine. Okay. Are you okay with caffeine?

Not right. That's too late. Yeah, that's a good choice. Thank you.

You're welcome. I'm going to have to only just take a little. I'm going to be up all night. Not like there's so much of it, but I better be careful. I literally had four today, so I'm not going to have any more. It's good, though, right?

That's delicious. I know.

Isn't that delicious? And it's all very good quality ingredients. It's like ashwagandha. And it's sugar-free. Yes, of course.

That one, yes. It's great. It's like natural sweetness. What is it?

It's like, blinds me.

You were complaining about your eyes. I know.

I'm literally blind, by the way, now. Literally. I don't know. Whatever it is, it's good. It's very good. One day, I can see the next day, I'm blind. All right, let's get into it because I have so many questions for you, and I want to start the obvious, okay? So I have to use my phone here. But the real... Let's start at the beginning. Why is oversharing actually underrated? Yes. And then we'll go down the rabbit hole. Great, great, great.

I love rabbit holes. So it's something that I think we feel... I mean, the word oversharing, it's a very loaded term. We feel a lot of shame about, and we shouldn't because there's so much redemption in even our most outrageous cringy blurt often. I know. Yes, so do I. And I think that once... We live in fear of TMI, right? Which sucks. We've all felt that disclosure hangover of like, Oh, my God, What did I do last night? Where they say last night.

Exactly.

But what we often don't appreciate is that there's so many wonderful benefits of being a little more open. Like sharing your most embarrassing story, which I once did to some very senior people, definitely had a disclosure hangover. But then those two people became some of my closest friends and strongest mentors. Like there's opening up gets us so much. It gets us better relationships, better well-being, even influence when you're thinking of leaders and persuasion.

Well, let me start with saying this. Okay, so first of all, the TMI, I think because also we're living in a society and culture where social media is so prevalent and oversharing is just at its all time high, right? What is the difference between, I guess, emotionally just vomiting on somebody and just oversharing in a very positive way?

Oh, I love that. What do you mean by oversharing in a positive way?

Because I think, and even after reading your book and my own personal experience and opinion, I think there is a real benefit to being vulnerable and being open because it makes people feel closer to you. It makes them feel like you're not hiding as much and all those things. But there is a very fine line between doing that and then, I think, giving people too much information where it becomes uncomfortable and awkward for the other people. And in your experience, when you became very close with your seniors, a lot of times it could be the opposite, where people feel like actually they're like, they recoil because it's too much information.

Yes, totally. And I think, yeah, TMI is a thing. I think we worry too much about it and not enough about TLI, too little information. But there's a lot of rules or norms of disclosure. So this vomiting of emotions is too much too soon. It's like when you're forging a new friendship with someone and the person never asks you a question, they never pass the torch to you. And so the sequencing, especially when we don't know someone well in early relationships, it's really important that we reveal, but together, slowly, gradually deepening. If someone does it out of turn and vomits everything, then it's TMI and it's off-putting, and it can signal a lot of things about the person that they might not be available, so to speak, to be a friend or a colleague or a partner.

What are some parameters that people can learn and work through or strategies? Because if you're not self-aware enough to know where that boundary is, you can get yourself into trouble. Completely.

I loved the term you use, the positive oversharing. So something that I think we chronically under share. And it's a very easy thing for people who are like, I don't know how to share more. What does this mean? I'm suspicious, which is fair. Praise. So think of all the positive thoughts you have. Look at this gorgeous window in the beautiful backyard and the lush foliage, right? You think of all these lovely thoughts during the day, and we often keep them to ourselves. But what if if you are bonding with someone, you're starting to like them, if you just say, Hey, I like you. I did that once when I was at dinner with close friends and then a couple of acquaintances. And the one woman I said to her, I'm like, Yeah, I like you. And she was a little caught off guard because it's a little odd, but it's pretty safe. Praising someone is not vomiting all of your innermost thoughts and feelings. It's a positive thing. And so you will find... I mean, and I've been experimenting. This book is like an experiment in life where I've been trying new things. And one of the things I've been trying is just saying the positive thing out loud.

Like someone I love their haircut walking down the street. I I love your haircut.

So that's different. So when I think of oversharing, right? And when I first saw the title of your book, I initially thought it was like oversharing private details about one's life. I never thought about being outwardly complementary. So before you came here, I was actually doing another podcast with someone else, and I was talking about the idea that naturally, I like that. I'm very blunt, and I blur things out. But if I notice something positive about somebody, no matter what, I don't care if they're a guy or a girl, whatever, I will just tell them what it is. It could be like, I like your shoes, I like your haircut, you have a good laugh. I think that that disarms people. Completely. And it's being genuine. It's not being contrived. That's core. That's core. It's not being contrived. And that can connect people because you're disarming someone and you're allowing them the ability to then feel like, Oh, wow, in their head like, Oh, they like me. I can be myself. It gives a positive feeling. That's different than oversharing.

Yeah. No, totally. So when we think of oversharing, you exactly hit the nail on the head. We think of sharing your deepest, darkest, insecurities, vulnerabilities, feelings. Fears. Right. Taboo things, all kinds of things. So even then, when you think of oversharing in that classic form, I think we're too scared of it. Because it can do so many things. You would ask me as we were coming to the studio about how I got here, this idea. Actually, I I did a 180, where the first part of my career, I call myself a recovering privacy expert because what I studied was so narrow the way academics do. I can make fun of academics as one. I studied, I saw all It was the early 2000s, and you see people posting things on Facebook, which sounds so old to say now, but like, Virgin Atlantic, flight attendants venting about their company, and then they get fired. Like all of these classic stupid sharing. And so I had all the tinkering and was doing all these studies showing, oh, we share when it's dangerous and at the wrong time, and we're duped by companies, and stop, stop, stop, stop doing that.

Which wasn't wrong, but it wasn't right either, because over the years, I had this growing disconnect that I couldn't suppress anymore. They came into consciousness, which was there was my professional life, and then my personal life. I'm super blurtacious. I have spoiled three surprise parties. It's very hard. I think I have a really high quality of life, and I'm very happy, and I have close friends, and there's just something more to this. There's something deeply right about what we're doing, about sharing a lot. Now, it's not to say we should always tell everyone our deepest, Darkest Secrets. But then as I was thinking about this more, you just become obsessed with the idea, and it made me realize how Every day we have disclosure. We decide every day what to share, what not to share. And so often we decide, maybe not you because you're wonderfully unusual, but to not say, like someone asked how you are and you feel like, Shit, you don't say that.

We never tell the honest truth.

When you think about it... We shouldn't always tell the honest truth. That's problematic in the other way, but there just is so much hiding and under-sharing. And what if we shared a bit more? And then I noticed, how can you write a book without revealing yourself. And so there were times in my life when I thought, in my Harvard interview, I insult it. And this was inadvertent, not strategic at all, but one of these blurtatious things, and I inserted my interviewer. I basically called him fat.

What did you say?

So he was trying to make me feel comfortable because I was super nervous. I walk into this, it's in a hotel suite, it's very bizarre, but normal for academia.

For a Harvard interview?

Yeah. So it's at a big- It's a hotel room. Nerd jambry? I know. It's so weird and sketchy. Anyways, all of the universities interview in hotel rooms.

It's named Harvey Weinstein. I know.

This was 2010. So I don't... Oh. They might still do it, though.

Really? They would interview in a hotel room? Yeah.

So every university gets their little hotel room, and the candidates come in one by one, and it's usually mostly men. Once I went to... I won't say the name of the university, but I go into the room, it's a normal room, two senior academics lounging on the beds with the shoes off. They were close. Really? It was just so...

Yeah. And you were in for an interview. That's so weird. I know.

So, so many things, right? That's so awkward. But the Harvard one, they had a suite, so that was lovely. It was a a little more professed because it was less lounging on beds.

More elevated. On the so fun set. All men. Okay. Were they wearing clothing?

They were all suited up. And it was a lot of men. It was a lot of men. It was like overpower. It was like nine men. It was like, there's a lot of men. I was nervous. And because one of the mentors who I told a very embarrassing story to a long time ago, and we became close, he was there. And I know he used social capital. So I felt like this was like I actually had a chance. And so when I get nervous, I get even more unfiltered. It's terrible. I think everyone, though, does.

Maybe.

I don't know. My husband's the opposite. But anyway, so I sit down and who became a beloved colleague, he's valiantly trying to make me feel more comfortable. So he looks at my resume and he's like, Oh, you're a ballet dancer. I used to be one, too. And then in that moment, I don't know why I decided to do it. It's like some primal weird... Maybe I am a jerk down inside? I don't know. But I just went, I looked him up and down, I cocked my head and I said, Clearly. Like the most sassy. And he's portly. So it was like, oh, and then I faced her in bright red, and I'm just like, oh, my God, get me out of here. What are you saying? It was like, I just poured gasoline on myself and lit it. I'm like, this is... Please, I want to leave. There was awkward laughter, and then someone got me a drink, unfortunately, Unfortunately, it was non-alcoholic, but we got through it. And then they hired me. And the colleague, and he became a super close dear friend of mine, he just retired, and he would love whenever there were new candidates, he would love telling the story.

He's like, When she assaulted me like that, we thought, She'll fit in. She'll fit right in here. She's a jerk, too. She can.

That's hilarious. Well, that's also to your point, when you're like, You never really know how people are going to react to how you reveal what you reveal. I guess you would think that that would have had a negative response. For sure. And he actually liked it and thought it was funny, and it made you guys bond.

I mean, in the moment, I think he was a little bit jarred and maybe a little offended because it's a lot. But then it was like, oh, my God, this was hilarious.

But also you did have social capital with the other guy who brought you in.

I did. So that was a good extenuating circumstance, too.

Exactly.

But yeah, so episodes like that, I was reflecting a lot, and I thought... And that's part of it, too, that if you never experiment, the answer isn't like, say jerky things to people. But if you don't experiment saying the thing, then you can't falsify the overblowns fears you have of TMI.

But I think that maybe it's not really oversharing, though. It's more about being open and receptive to a back and forth, to be having an earnest way of communicating.

Right. And being open, open-minded. I think it's about open or being vulnerable, not to overuse that word.

I know that word has been very overplayed, vulnerability. But at the same time, it is about that because I think, again, it's about when you let your guard down, you're allowing other people to let their guard down. But I still push back on the fact that that's not so much... Like, literally, when I think of oversharing, it's like saying... It's not even saying that comment that you said to the professor. It's more about saying make something really just has zero to do with what the circumstances is and talking about something and you're like, Oh, yeah, when that guy dumped me after we had sex, whatever it was. You know what I mean?

That's not good sharing. Tmi He's alive and well. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But there is, and you talk about this, you talk about revealers and concealers. And I would imagine people who are revealers are people who people gravitate to versus And this is concealing because, again, when you feel like people are hiding something or they're not forthright, it doesn't bring you close to them.

Yes, yes. But at the same time, to your point, you also avoid the person who trauma dumps. It just is all about me all the time. And so I think the most healthy way to be and the most desirable in terms of people wanting to be friends with you and most fulfilling are the people that have a lot of disclosure flexibility, which Which is to say people that modulate between the extremes, they go super, super deep with their partners. They tell their partners all their fears, their thoughts and feelings, and then they're very reserved in context, like super competitive professional context, when it behooves you to be really reserved. So it's not like one size fits all. We should be revealers all the time or concealers. Most of us would benefit from opening up a little bit more, but we need to practice reveals revealing and not revealing in lots of contexts so that we can get a better feel for what's the right amount in which situation. That's why it's not so simple, right?

Okay, so give us some examples of when to be a revealer and when to be a concealer.

So as I was writing the book, it's interesting because your point about what is oversharing, and I have always thought of myself as an oversharer. And then as I was writing the book, I thought, oh, I love sharing. It's fun. I don't know. Maybe this is my messed up psychology, but it's fun sharing self-deprecating jokes about myself and funny stories. I enjoy that. I thought of myself as an oversharer because of that. But then as I got really into it, I thought, wow, I'm not sharing the really important stuff. I think when I say the underrated power of oversharing, that's what I mean. I mean, most of us stand to to really open ourselves up, be vulnerable in the right time with the right person. There's been some... One really sad, but it's writing this. I know it's cheesy to say, It has changed my life. It has improved my marriage. It was great to begin with. But it's one of the things I learned as I was writing the book is that long-term relationships, marriages, most of the time, they don't break down because of some dramatic affair, which is horrible. A lot of the time, what What happens is that people grow further apart.

And then I'm, rabbit hole, rabbit hole. Why? Why? Will they stop sharing? Why do they stop sharing? It's the easiest person to share with. It's your spouse. Super safe person. And I realized what happens is, it's a cognitive bias. When you are with someone for a long time, you know them really well. And the longer you're with them, the more you know them. But the problem is that your confidence that you know them outsizes your actual knowledge. So the longer Whenever you're with someone, you think you know them better than you do. And that's where the problem begins, right? Because then you're like, I don't need to ask questions. I don't need to learn. I can read their mind. They can read my mind. Saying it out loud is ridiculous. No, people can't read my mind. But it's this implicit belief And then you stop sharing. And then as soon as I... There's even a scale. Right. I went lots of rabbit holes. There's a scale. Psychologists have a scale for everything that measures how strong of a mind reader, how much you believe in mind reading. So the belief that this overly romanticized belief that your partner should just know what you want all the time.

And then I took that myself, and I'm super high in it. And as soon as I learned that about myself, I'm like, Oh, wow. I am not telling Colin that I feel anxious about something. He can't read my mind. It's not that he's a jerk. He just doesn't know what I'm feeling. And so I realized all these things where I thought he was being insensitive and empathic failures was just because he can't read my mind. And we're not different than studies. They've had studies of couples who have loved each other for 12 years longer than either of my marriages. And even couples who've loved each other for at least 12 years, when they do exercises where they try to intuit what their partner is thinking and feeling, they get it wrong 80 % of the time. That high. Yes. And so it's like that completely was a paradigm shift for me. It was like, what feels like overcommunicating is just communicating.

That is really incredible. I didn't realize that number is so high. I know, me neither. And it's so true. It's like you become, not necessarily taking them for granted, but you're so accustomed and used to them being around that you feel like you know every step of what they're going to do, how they're going to do it. And you actually don't.

Yeah, especially their feelings.

The feelings, yes.

You know their values, you know their personality traits, the things that are pretty- Or their daily habits. Yeah, the stable things about the person. But when you think of the day in the life of my feelings, well, they don't go up and down that much, but there's a lot of It's a variation, right? Yeah, absolutely. And they're so internal and private.

Okay, so this is still interesting because you're saying you started off as being an expert in decision making and privacy.

Yeah, and decision making mistakes and how we suck. Yeah, I know So it's so negative.

All these things have nothing really to do with oversharing.

Where is the bridge between- It's interesting. That's so fascinating. So I think of privacy as what I had done for the first was like, look at these people online oversharing. They're saying things they shouldn't be saying. They're making mistakes. They're sharing all their- But how did you begin to that?

How does that even become an area?

I know.

Where did you Where did you go to school?

In Canada. Of course. But where in Canada? University of Waterloo. And that's where I learned. I just gravitated towards psychology. It's amazing how some professors, they're just... I don't even know if it's the topic. I wonder if it's the quality of the instructor, right? They're just so passionate about it. So I got really into it. And then I went to grad school. Where did you go to grad school? In Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon. And I remember. I remember. So it was like, I want to say it was like 2006. And I remember sitting in the lab doing my statistical analysis And my friend beside me, she's like, look, this is Facebook. And I'm like, what? It was like this totally strange alien thing. I'm like, I don't understand this. What's a wall? Why are you doing that? I did not get it. And so I'm like, this So then I was like, I need to understand this. And because I was so unfamiliar, the frame is a negative frame. And isn't it amazing how the frame that you approach something with has such a profound effect on how you interpret it? It's all about framing and reframing.

Framing is so powerful.

But that's why they say, how you behave is all about the frame. You got to reframe- It's so powerful.

Right.

It's true.

It's all about reframing. It's so true.

Okay, so you see this crazy Facebook. What is this whole thing? People are posting their children and all their private things on this crazy wall for the world to see. This is weird. I'm going to go into being a privacy expert. Exactly.

And then there were people, scholars there, who studied it from a purely economics lens, and I was the weird psychology person. And so we fused our minds together and started doing all kinds of experiments.

But then how did you end up in Harvard besides this guy that was a social- Yeah. You know, lubricant for you.

Yeah. No. I mean, and we did research together, and so I was a known entity. I started doing research with them early on. But then, yeah. So I feel like I worked very hard. I also got lucky. There's so many qualified people for these jobs.

But what were you teaching? What was your class? Oh, yeah.

So I actually taught marketing. I know. I'm like, you're never going to be able to compute my strength. This whole episode- It's like a completely jagged- I know. It's a very jagged path. Okay.

Marketing.

But I think in hindsight, it may seem less jagged to me, at least, because this fundamental thing about making yourself known, knowing others is so core to so many things in life. It's core to marketing, like Knowing your customers is really core. How do you know them? How do you communicate with them? What do you tell them that you know about them? And so we did all kinds of studies on that, too. And when companies reveal, when companies overshare by... We did these big experiments with banks where they were selling their credit cards. They had credit card web pages, and in one study, we said, what if you actually made the downsides really salient? Normally, credit card, when you're buying a credit card, it's like, oh, this is an amazing low rate or great points. And the fine print is, but what if you were more transparent? What if you made it super salient that, hey, the fees suck? And so we convinced this, my colleague Ryan Buhl and I, convinced this company, a large Australian company, to do an experiment. And it turned out when they were forthcoming, When they overshared, I would think that would be like a company oversharing.

That's like information on... You're basically saying, Don't buy this. Yeah, exactly. And when they did that, the customers trust them more, and then they actually are more likely to step day on. It's a really powerful customer retention tool. This is all to say that I know it's a very jagged path, but there is this thread of like, and then you like, I teach negotiation, and what's negotiation? The people that are the best negotiators are the people that can understand what they value and what their counterparts value. And that requires strategic sharing, managing what to share, what not to share. And teaching that, or I've been teaching that for 10 years now, the single most common mistake in negotiation is that people don't share enough because they're scared of it, because they're like, I think this person is going to rip me off. And that's true sometimes, but so often it's not true. And if you start by being concealy, very technical term, it gets concealment, and then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you start by saying, look, this is what I want in this deal, and these are my values, these are the things I care about, these are the things I care about less.

Now you're off to the races because then they can say, oh, you don't care about that. I care a lot, and I care less about the thing you want. We can trade.

So you're saying being straightforward in a negotiation and not be concealy, as you put it, is actually more beneficial to the deal?

Nine times out of 10, yes. For sure, I'm not saying we should reveal everything in a negotiation, far from it. But the default we have of wall, that's what I see again.

Holding your cars close to the vest. Right.

Executives, they're top of their game, and they come to the first session, and they're guns are blazing, They're like, Okay, it's a competition, and guard up. Then I tell them, Well, what if you ask and answer questions? Because I like data and numbers, we put the results on the board. The people that are more forthcoming, they don't get ripped off. They actually get better deals because they figure out what each other wants. And then they realize they can both have what they want in many cases. Not all cases, for sure. Not all cases.

Well, it was interesting also. What I noticed also besides the negotiation is, I was going to say this earlier about, and I don't know why this came up when I was researching you, but how companies who market, though, to only women actually repel women. Oh, yeah.

Where's that from? So that's a paper we did. It's called... Well, I don't know if the publisher let us use the name we wanted to use. It was like beer for Chicks or something. And this idea of... There was a pen, Pilot had a purple pen, especially for women's hands or something, and people rejected it, right? So it was like, it's because it took this idea of knowing your customers, knowing what they care about, and it massively oversimplified it, and it made people feel like they were reduced to a single category of membership, right? And like so many research ideas, this came from my childhood, where I had an ax to grind. Research is therapy for me. It's for everybody.

If you can't do, you teach.

Yeah, I know. It's so true. Well, I had a babysitter when I was seven or something, and she would always say, your favorite color is pink. You're a girl, your favorite color is pink. And I, no, it's not pink. I actually really like pink, but I was so stubbornly hated that, that I always blue is my favorite color, right? And so this idea, this reactance of when you feel reduced to a single category of membership, it's very off-putting. And again, it speaks to this point about how being known for who you really are is so calming and so trust building and so bonding. And in couples, you see this as well, where there have been studies of people who... So there's one scenario where, suppose I have low self-esteem and my spouse, he says, Oh, you're a god, you never have low self-esteem. You're super confident all the time. So that's an idealized version of me. So that's one version. Or in the other version, he says, Oh, Les, I know you have low self-esteem. And It turns out that it's the people who feel like their partners know them, warts and all. I would rather my partner know my sucky qualities and admit to them than some fantasy.

It's being known for who you are that really, really is such a powerful base This is for relationships and trust and influence and all good things.

Well, I think that's 100% true. When you say to someone, I'm really down, or I'm super, I'm down, or I'm not feeling great, and they're like, What do you mean? You're such a superstar. You can handle anything. I hate that. I hate that, too. It's like you feel so, I hate this word, unseen. You don't know me.

You don't know me.

You don't know me at all. What do you mean? You're so tough. You're so strong. You I can get through anything. I don't know what you call it. It just brushes over everything.

It's like a dismissal and a denial.

God forbid, you have real emotions or feelings. I know what you're saying. It's the worst. It's the worst. I'd rather the person say, Yeah, I know that you struggle with this. It's okay, but you're going to get through it. You are a hot match, but that's okay.

I love you still. Or whatever it is. It's so much more meaningful when someone loves you then, right?

Well, yeah, because you feel, like you said, You feel like someone actually is getting under the hood and understands and knows you, right? Yeah. Today's episode is Powered by Amp. You know those days when you're just done? I mean, the meetings, the kids, the to-do list, and you still want to move your body, but the gym feels a million miles away? That's exactly why I love my Amp. Amp is a smart, AI-powered strength training device. Device that sits right in your home. It's super sleek, literally looks like you got it at the Apple Store, and it also counts your reps, adjusts your weights for you, and you're always training under the perfect amount of tension. So whether you've got 15 minutes or 45, Amp adapts in real-time to make every workout simple, effective, and completely personal. And the app is super cool, too. It has hundreds of different workouts, strength, Pilates, mobility mobility, recovery, and it's so easy to use. It's literally been a game changer for me. I don't have to plan my workouts or wonder what I'm going to do. I just turn on my amp and it takes care of the rest.

And as a mom and a business owner and a podcaster, that convenience means I stay consistent. And strength training, especially for women, is so key for my hormone balance, longevity, and of course, confidence. So you can see why I'm obsessed. Go Go to joinamp. Com/jen to learn more. That's joinamp. Com/jen because strength should fit your life. We talked a little bit about, obviously, why oversharing can be powerful and where the lines are. We actually haven't really delved as deep as I'd like into this, where the cross. We know that when you complement people in a genuine way, it's very, very... It brings people... It's disarming. It brings people into a nicer space and all the other things. What about leaders?

Good. I'm glad you went there. Yes. So that is an area where this may qualify, but we'll see. So when leaders are vulnerable, I also don't like the word vulnerable because I'm like, what does that mean? My skin's It's vulnerable. When they share a work-related weakness that they are working on or a difficult feeling related to work. So something that is vulnerable in the sense it has risk to it, sharing your feelings, sharing your weaknesses. We have found in study after study that when leaders, high status people, share some of their weaknesses. For example, if they said to a group of new recruits, gave their introduction, and they also added in their self-description, I'll admit that sometimes I get nervous public speaking. That's something that you would not expect a leader to share. What we find is when leaders do this, it makes their employees trust them. It makes their employees more motivated to work for them relative to when they don't... It's more of a façade. A leader then is not relatable, and you can't trust someone who is never vulnerable or has no flaws, no apparent flaws. Then we did more studies where We were like, Well, how much vulnerability?

What's the tipping point? Because surely, if you say something extremely vulnerable, that can't be good. What we did, I love my job, is we had employees watch different versions of a leader introducing himself, and we did it with a woman leader, too. We just varied how deep the disclosure was. We would start with, Sometimes I get nervous public speaking, and then another would Sometimes I get nervous public speaking so much so that my mouth gets dry sometimes. There's the Canadian accent, mouth. Then another one, All of that, I get nervous public speaking so much so that my mouth gets dry, and sometimes I have full-blown panic attacks. We wondered at what point. We asked leaders, we're like, Are any of these safe or are they all undermining? They're like, Oh, my God, those are all undermining. I would never do that. No, sharing that you're nervous public speaking, it erodes. Your company won't have faith in you. They'll think you're incompetent. And so then we actually got employees to tell us what they thought. And it actually, the first one, it enhanced trust, and it did not make you think the leader is incompetent. The second level, same thing.

The one, so I'm nervous public speaking, and sometimes my mouth gets dry. That was not a career limiting disclosure. In fact, it built trust. The third one was like, okay, now this person is like, I don't know if they can do their job. And so that's the pattern we see again and again. And is that the line is often a little bit further than you think it is.

Right. I believe that the line is further than you think. But again, I'm always going to go back to- There's still a line. There's still a line. A hundred %. And so if we're not in some petri dish where you're doing an experiment, right? What do we doing? What are we supposed to do? Because I think that there's also a piece of this where there are different degrees of people's self-awareness and emotional intelligence. Yes. Some people can feel innately like, Okay, there's a line here. I know exactly how to push it, how to come back at it. There are other people have zero social skills, and they'll have no idea, and it will be TMI. So again, where is the middle ground between TLI, too little information, and TMI?

That is the fundamental question. And I can't say it's here because it's always shifting. But what I can say is, one, knowing where the line is, is it a skill. It's a learnable skill. So people with self-awareness, that gives you a huge advantage. And in fact, getting this right enhances your self-awareness, too. So one of the best ways to learn the skill is to practice by being... So we have this general finding of it's often a little further than you think. Okay, well, you can implement that in real life. Go a little bit further than you think. Observe what happens. See what happens. Experiment, test, learn. It's not something... If you never try it, you will never know. You'll never learn. The other thing is there's There's also some pretty tried and true cues that you can use or rules of thumb. And one of those rules of thumb is reciprocity. So if you are in, I don't know, we could talk about it in dating, we could talk about it in friendship. Suppose you're looking for a new friend and you're in a social situation with new potential friends. Reciprocity is really your number one tool here.

What that means is that you want to share something something. So the goal is find a point of commonality that you can both relate to because friendship is made on mutuality and finding things in common and liking. Well, how do you do that? You need to reveal and find these things. So start with something casual, not a big reveal, a question even, and then they'll share something. And then the key thing is when you respond, you want to meet them and maybe raise them a bit. So you want to share something that's just as vulnerable or not vulnerable as them and go a little bit further. And then What they'll do is it's such a natural instinct to reciprocate. They'll do the same thing, and then you're off to the races. So the sequencing really matters. So the way you can implement it, if you're saying, I'm an alien from outer space, how do I do this? Is you look, are they reciprocating Or am I talking the whole time? Am I not letting them reciprocate? Maybe I should ask them a question to get them, to get that back and forth.

So is authenticity a good thing or a bad thing?

That's a good question. I bet you have a view. I would love your view, but do you want me to go first?

Sure. You go first, and then I'll tell you my view.

The question is, is authenticity ever a bad thing?

No. Is authenticity a good thing or a bad thing in your opinion?

I think it is generally a good thing. I think that, to me, one of the core things is, not to be pedantic, but how you define authenticity. To me, authenticity does not mean saying everything that is on my mind at all times. That is not authenticity to To me, authenticity means being genuine, saying the sincere things that I mean that are appropriate for the context at hand. And there, I mean, what's not to like about that? I think that's amazing. It's hard to do.

Yeah. I would say, in my opinion, what I think, I think authenticity is good 80 % of the time. Because the other times, I think when you're speaking to someone and you're telling the truth, that can be sometimes not so great. Being authentic is like, I don't feel like getting out of bed today, so I'm not going to do these things that I have to do. But I'm being authentic.

Oh, that's not good.

You can't just not be a grown up. You can't be a grown up. But there's all this chitter-chatter about being authentic and authenticity. And I'm one of those people who really believe in being authentic and genuine and real.

Genuine and real.

Genuine and real, which sometimes gets very crowded with the word authenticity, because if authenticity is you just being an asshole, then maybe being authentic isn't so great. Completely. I think, again, I think everything comes down to emotional intelligence and having the self-aware awareness or the self intelligence and social intelligence.

And situational awareness, completely.

And situational awareness. But with why I say this is what I've learned is common sense isn't so common. I know. Most people don't have it. It's Academics, right? And I sit here- I sit here...

Use your noodle, people. Use your noodle. But you know what?

I sit here all day with some of the most smartest- I know.

We, academics, are the worst for common sense, aren't we? We're like, We get it all contorted.

Unbelievable. I've had these conversations and they're like, Use your noodle. Or just not picking up on basics. Yeah, completely. Where these people, like I said, who are the smartest, most successful. And I'm like, You are a moron. Are you not picking up on the social situation, the circumstance? You can be very, very smart in one area- IQ. Or in one area of your life, but be a complete moron in everything else. Yes, completely.

I agree.

And I believe, you know what? In my opinion, I think it's actually better to be smart in be street smart than being school smart.

I totally agree. And I did not always think that.

Well, you're an academic.

I know. It's like, blasphemous for me to say that. But, yeah, IQ is great and all. But I take What you're calling realness, street smarts, I think of it as EQ, like being able to read the worm, self-awareness, emotional intelligence, all of those things I think are way more important than IQ. Way more important, way more important for achievement in life. We often think it's IQ, but I don't think so. These things are way more important for achievement, but also for well-being and relationships and joy.

You said it there, joy. I think that's one thing. If you're trying to be a professor or a surgeon, you need to have really great grades, have them off the charts, right? But how about for being happy in life and being successful personally or having deep relationships or all these other things? Exactly. Super important to be more emotionally aware and emotionally intelligent.

It's interesting how times have changed because I'm thinking to my parents, and they both, especially my mom, super smart woman, skipped two or three grades. And nowadays, so we have a five-year-old, and we just held him back, which to my mom, if you're listening, my mother's chagrin, she's like, not so subtle. He's so smart. I'm like, I know he's smart, but EQ, like his ability to deal with difficult emotions, understand himself, that's so much more important. And the data show unequivocally, boys are much less good at that. Why? Because of the way we socialize them and all these things. And so I want him to... And so now we do the opposite, right? And I think about my mom and how, in some ways, she really struggled in school, not academically, grades, but I think this old school way of people would skip grades all the time, and now we do the opposite. I think it makes so much more sense that I'm all on board. If anything, I'm over-correcting. You're over-correcting. I'm like, How do you feel? Really? Let's talk about that feeling. And they're just like, I just want to play it off.

Right. And there's too much of that, I think, too. But you said It was something earlier that I thought was really interesting because you're a Harvard professor. And when I was asking you about your evolution of how you got here, you took it to the wrong direction that I was thinking. But when you said that you revealed something that I was super interested in, and that is you said that it was like this and luck. So you mentioned that luck was a part of it. I want to talk about that because someone who has the pedigree, I guess, that you have, and here we are talking about street smarts versus academic and emotional intelligence versus IQ. Here you are, people listening, if they want to get into Harvard or teach at Harvard, you said it was luck. So what played on your team besides you? Because you also said you had social equity over there, too.

Yes. I mean, it's a combination of things, right? I do think for sure, luck. There are so many people that could be in my job that there There is a certain point where... And I see it now being on this side of it where we interview people and someone's having a... One really influential prof is having a really grouchy day and is asking grouchy questions that are making the person stumble And then all the junior people, nobody wants to hire them because of this. Because someone had a bad day. So fluky things like that. So that's a real thing. But now that I'm a senior person, I'm like, how do I assert myself and stop that from happening? But that's a whole other topic. But I think... So that's what I mean. There is a certain element of luck. But I also think when I think more deeply about what you're pointing out, I think that you can create your own luck, too. And I've been lucky like the gene luck. I'm lucky. My parents are healthy. My parents, that's lucky. I don't know. I couldn't control my gene. So that's luck for sure. I don't take for granted.

But then there's also reading the room, the street smarts of how you get people to do things, how you get people to help. That sounds Machiavallian. I don't mean it that way. No, but it's actually...

But to be honest, it's the truth.

How do you get to be able to do stuff?

How did you do it? I want to be honest. Right. So there's lots of- Overshare. Yeah, there's lots of- Here we are. I'm asking you to overshare.

For sure. If we go back to grad school, my PhD advisor was just a fat... He's alive, so he was. I don't really like his reason in the past. He's fat? Did you say? No, he was as if he's dead. He's not dead. Hi, George. But he is A brilliant and super creative person, I would say this to his face, he's extremely difficult to work with. So many students that are epically genius, way higher IQ than me, have failed with him. I knew this. And small things can make a big difference. For example, I stuck my neck out or insisted or assertively asked to have the office that was right beside his office. There was two possible offices I could have been in. And so when I needed a take on him, I'm not going to email him. I go into, Hey, George, I have a question for you. Quick question, right? And so you learn how this person works. And it's reading the room. It's like, okay, he doesn't like being interrupted at this time, but this time is a great time. He hated being interrupted if he was walking on the way to something, but if he was settling in the morning after he biked it.

Now, I just sound creepy that I know all this about him.

No, but you're learning these things.

Yeah, learning, being observant, and helping people to help you in a way at the right times, and understanding that you're not their... He has a family, he's got much more important research, and it's not about you. But if you want something to happen, you have to make it happen.

I love that. So then what happens? So then you got to know George because you were at your desk beside you. Right.

Got to know him. Office beside you.

And you learned his quirks and personality. Right. Love it? Right. Then what?

I worked super hard. I worked my hiney off.

I'm taking that like that's an obvious. That goes. That's a given.

But what is the cheat sheet, the Cole's notes?

What makes you who work super hard different than the other person who works super hard?

Savviness, I think, is really... I never thought of myself as savvy, but I have these very dear girlfriends, Pittsburgh sisters, grad school friends. We live all over the place now. And they said, Les, you're the savvy one. And I'm like, I'm not strategic so negative and schemey. They're like, no, you're not schemey. You're just like, you have street smarts. I don't know where I got it from, but I'm trying to now digest some other ways of...

You know what's interesting?

Oh, another one would be, which is not comfortable. It's not comfortable at all. You have to do really uncomfortable things and force yourself to do them. So one of the things was when I was practicing basically my pitch on the job market, my pitch of what my research is about. I went to the meanest, grumpiest, most skeptical faculty members that I was most intimidated by, and I was like, Please grow me on this. And I probably even cried during a couple of them. But it was like, that's what you need. You need the practice to be harder than the performance, right?

You also trained your sofa this with ballet Right. That's why I find it's very interesting. I believe that how you do one thing is how you do everything.

A hundred %.

And you are primed in a different way to do this. So I did this talk Talk that is not out yet. Maybe by the time this podcast is out, it will be out. And it was about how when you have some type of physical activity that you take seriously, fitness of some form, ask for it, it propels you in success in every other way of your life because it teaches you these fundamental life skills that you can't get anywhere else. And so it teaches you this enormous amount of confidence, discipline- Self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is in the top two.

Completely, yeah.

The That to like, I can do hard things, and I'm going to work my ass off, and I don't care about... I know I can do it.

That gave me a good response.

The belief in yourself. And so right away, when I saw your bio, I knew When I saw more like, train ballet ballerina, I'm like, okay, no wonder she's going to be a Harvard professor. Was it because of your... Not because of your pedigree in school. I didn't even know where you went to school. But I knew right off the bat that what What you learned in that foundation was going to be propelling you and everything else. And like you said, you knew that you had it. You were going to figure it out and make it happen for yourself by doing whatever needed to be done.

Yeah, that's interesting. And I guess now reflecting on it, failure wasn't an option. It wasn't like some people drop out. It wasn't on top. I'm like, I'm going to do it. It's going to happen.

And also, if you failed, you had enough self-efficacy and confidence that you would pick yourself up again. Yeah.

I mean, there was a million failures along the way. Like, failure fest, for sure.

I'm sure. But where else did you apply besides Harvard?

Oh, yeah. So I applied super broadly. I applied to 80 schools.

But why?

I know. It's randomness. The academia is so weird on how people make decisions.

It's like the Wizard of Oz, though, right? I know.

It's like nobody sees the Wizard.

No, because people think, oh, it's going to be the hardest thing in the world to do. And probably whatever happened in path, you're probably like, Actually, this Joe Blow or the guy who made the decision wasn't that. You know what I mean? It wasn't what people expect.

I just find this very interesting because you're also a Canadian girl, went to Waterloo.

There's a lot of things that you're saying that I can resonate with.

Yeah, for sure. For you, what's it like? I mean, Canadian girl in LA, because you are super nice, agreeable, full-fledged Canadian, do you find it makes you vulnerable to being taken advantage of?

I'm partly agreeable, though. You're not agreeable. Well, I mean, I would say- You're comfortable with being contrarian, which is great. I'm comfortable about being contrarian, but it's because I have a lot... It's a self-efficacy. And I have a lot of confidence in who I am and what I'm saying because of experience. Not because I'm being pompous or arrogant in any way, but it's experience and Repetition has given me the confidence.

You also have a way of saying straight shooting. It's actually you show that you respect the person by straight shooting. Because you're like, I know you can take it that I don't buy this or whatever.

I also think with your oversharing message, I think it's really important if you really want to connect with somebody again. That's where I think authenticity is really important. When you're having a conversation and you're trying to connect to somebody in a real way, you got to be honest with where you stand. And you can do it in a kind and more polite way.

You don't have to be an asshole about doing it. Exactly. Being authentic is not... I have zero tolerance for jerks. Zero tolerance.

If I was being an asshole, maybe you would tell me I was, but I don't think just because I disagree with somebody that that makes me a bad person or rude. Not at all. No. I think it's rude if I just sit here and and nod, yes, yes, yes. And then this whole experience would be fake and phony.

Right. Totally. I don't want that. Nobody wants that.

But there are people who do want it. Right. Because it's hard, too. But then you know what? Then they're not my people, and I'm okay with that. Yeah, for sure. So I think the thing is I'm okay with not being liked by everybody.

That is, I think, a key life hack is once you're comfortable realizing... I mean, I only realized that probably three years ago that not everyone's going to like me, and I don't care, and that's fine, right? And that's fine. It's a problem if everyone likes me.

I think, exactly. I was going to say, if everyone likes me, I'm doing something wrong.

It's just like in a negotiation where if you always get what you want, then you're not asking for enough. You got to fail sometimes. It's like if you're doing push-ups and you never fail, you're not going to get stronger.

If you always do the same 20 push-up day in, day out, guess what happens? You're not getting any stronger. You're not really changing it. You're not growing. You're just doing the same thing because it's what you're comfortable doing. But there are a lot of people who are really afraid of conflict. But that's not even conflict. It's just like having a- It's being a grown-up. It's being a grown-up. But I feel like we're in a place in society where any type type of dynamic where there's disagreement, it ends up being extremely polarizing. Then automatically, I hate you, you hate me. It's personalized. Why?

Just because I disagree with you? I know. It's so many things, maddening, saddening, excruciating, frustrating. It impedes growth, and it makes life uninteresting, too.

It does. Why? I totally agree. But being Canadian, you're asking me, am I going to be taking advantage of- Yeah, that's what I want to know.

How do you... Asking for a friend.

Asking for a friend. I think that, to be honest with you, I think that I lead with how I can help someone and I give a lot of things. I give a lot of things for free, or I give people this, or I give them contacts, or I give them help. And it's probably not reciprocate. I would say it gets reciprocated maybe 10% of the time. But I'm not going to change my core value system and who I am because of other people and how they are. You're not doing it to reciprocate. I'm not even doing it. I'm just doing it because that's who I am.

So how do you then manage... I don't love the word boundary, but how do you manage... You also have to protect your nest and your family and your life. You can't just give everything.

A hundred %. But I am I have problems with boundaries in the sense that if I like you, I'll like... And I do take people too often. I guess I could be slightly naive at the beginning if I like somebody and then be disappointed. But I've learned that just to be the price of admission.

Because that way, I still am open to when I meet someone who's extraordinary and I have a great relationship with them.

I've met some extraordinary people. I've had extraordinary extraordinary opportunities because I didn't change the core essence of who I am by leading with how I played, even though I got, and I do get disappointed, very, very often. I also try to keep things in perspective. I don't really care. As long as my kids They're healthy.

I know. They are. This is not so grounding.

As long as they're fine, like an idiot who's dissing me or talk shit about me or doesn't help me or doesn't respond back to whatever it is or someone makes me an empty promise. All right. I'm used to I also live in LA, and I'm playing in a world that's a lot of bullshit and nonsense and pop and circumstance. So I'm used to a lot of this nonsense. I've been doing it for so long in different iterations. Now it's a podcast before it was a lot of different things. And it still is an entrepreneurship. I work a lot with founders, and I work a lot with brands, and I work a lot with entertainment things and books. Very cool. But at the same time, it's like people are people, and you're going to find all sorts. La or at this level, you're going to find all sorts. But I will say this. I think that water does find its level, and you do eventually gravitate to people that you're similar to.

Yeah, I'm with you.

And so I do have amongst all that stuff, like I said, I have a lot of great people around me who are really good and quality. And I tend to forget about all the shitty people I've met along the way. Because it just doesn't matter at the end of the day. Yeah, totally. You're asking because for a friend, of course. Is your friend having a problem with navigating a lot of this?

I think it's hard because the boundary of wanting to give now just sounds like an extended humble brain, which is not my intention. No, I understand. When I connect with someone, I'm like, yay. It just feels so good. You want to be besties. But I love I have learned, though, to—this is going to sound weird, but massively lower my expectations. I think the key to happiness is just having extremely low expectations. I know it sounds like DeVita's, but it's so helpful because it's like... And doing things also not to please people, because if you're doing something to please someone, then you're so vulnerable, because then if the person doesn't react, then you're crushed. But no, I'm helping you write this article. I'm mentoring you, doctoral student, my version of how I help. Because I like you and I want to nurture you and I enjoy this. And I do agree with you that the nicies find the nicies in the end.

Yeah, you do. I think there's a couple of things that you said that are really interesting. The first thing is the nicies find the nicies. That's a nice way of putting it. But I also think the low expectation is a massive one. A hundred %, yeah. Because I think that's where we get ourselves into trouble. When we expect others to be like you, to act like how I would. There's been a lot of scenarios. One very recent one that's gutterly killed me because I expected someone to act in the same way I would have acted, and they didn't, and it crushed me because I was not expecting that behavior.

It's so upsetting.

It's really hit me in my gut. Were they close to you? Very. And that was a surprise to me. And so I think that having unrealistic expectations, not knowing someone as well as you think you know them, or being like, you got to keep your eyes open and never just expect people to do what you would do, because that's when you become so disappointed.

Right. And that's where revealing, asking questions, learning about others, it's really made me appreciate that more, that we walk around the world thinking implicitly that everybody is like us. And then when you ask people and learn more, you're like, oh, no, they're And that's okay. They have a different set of goals and motives. And it's interesting. I had two salient experiences have come to mind of what you were saying, where one of them is this idea of how... This is a motto, my family motto. It's nice to be nice. Which my husband makes fun of me for because he's nice, but he's got an edge to him. And so I'm often having to... It's nice to be nice. Tip the Uber driver. What does he do, your husband?

He's a consultant. Okay. For who? Like McKinsey?

Pwc.

Okay. Close enough.

But he was a professional athlete, soccer player, so we're very simpatico. But I don't know. But also, he's super reserved. And the thing, after he read this, I was so nervous for him to read the book because it was stuff about us. And he's like, When we're at dinner, we'll be talking about something banal. And he's in hushed voices. He's super. And he said, I love this book so much. Don't change anything about it. I need to open up more. And he's been experimenting more. But yeah, so he's... And also being a little warmer. I know now that I've hated him as a total jerk, but he's not. He's amazing. Sometimes I wonder if he I know this is... I have asked him if he's a spy. And he did not... He dodged it. He's so observant. He always knows where everyone is, where everyone... He's super... It's like hypervigilance. But anyways, that's a weird But the thing I was going to... And now that I said it, he's... I better get home soon to protect him. He's out. His cover's blown. Sorry, Colleen. But- Spy. Yeah. So this idea about It's nice to be nice and you do nice things because you genuinely want to.

And so I think something that really gets in the way that people think is competing, like achievement and being nice, the idea of... I think people walk around implicitly often making like it's a zero-sum world, and my achievement is at your expense, especially at Harvard when I was starting and teaching is really grueling teaching there. I didn't know what I was doing, but I did not reveal that to my students. We'd have these meetings, these teaching group meetings. We were all teaching more or less the same thing to different students. There was another professor there who... The idea behind these meetings is to share ideas on how to do this because we all can get high teaching evaluations, right? If I get a high one, it doesn't mean you get a low one. It's not zero sum. But yet there was this one colleague who more frequently than chance, he would be tight-lipped during these meetings. And then beginning of the next meeting, when we'd review last week, he'd be like, Oh, my God, I came up with this amazing framework of how to make sense of this and how to teach this thing. But I literally came up with it on the way to class, so that's why I didn't share it.

And I think that is actually Even if he was purely interested in his own payout, which some people are, I think it's still misguided because when you share your ideas with five other smart people, you get even better, right? And you've had a rep of explaining it, which makes you a better teacher. And so it was the completely wrong mental model of, I need to hoard my ideas. It's a zero-sum world. I don't know for sure, but it was very suspicious, right? And so it's the wrong mental model. For sure, we get burned sometimes. For Right.

So this whole- I love that the cost of entry, though.

It's worth it.

It is the cost of entry. But I was going to say, competition is a whole other thing, right? Because people- I'm super competitive. So I'm super competitive, too. But, or and, as you'd like to say, God.

Yes, and.

Yes, and. I'm not competitive with women because they're women. I'm competitive against myself. I don't- Right.

Oh, for sure. Oh, my gosh. That put a light on. When I'm at the gym, I'm doing burpees, not because I want to do than you because I want to get the effing burpees. Exactly. I wanted to get a burpee.

I don't care what you're doing. How successful you are or how much of a failure you are doesn't change my life whatsoever. I've always felt that way. If I'm sitting with the most beautiful girl in the world, I'm not like, Oh, my God, I'm so this, and I feel this way. I don't. I'm like, great. I'm like, Wow, look how beautiful you are. Look how great your body is. I think it's much more of it, it's like, aspiring or inspiring or I don't care. Look how smart you're. I'm not that way. Why I'm bringing this up in the competitive state is, unfortunately, a lot of women are very competitive with other women. And I think there's this whole lie about women empowerment, like women helping women and all these things. Yeah. Women help women when they are basically not as great as them or not as smart as them or not as successful as them, not as threatening to them.

My theory on this is fundamental insecurity of if you are not fully comfortable in your shoes, in your skin, then you will be threatened by someone. There's always someone who is more beautiful, more smart, more...

There's always- More successful. There's enough to go. I think the mentality is there's enough success or there's enough whatever to go around. For everyone. You don't have to hoard it by just thinking that... That, to me, is a very, very myopic, terrible way to lose. Actually, you lose that way. I agree. But you can't change human nature. Right.

So I was curious as you were talking how... Because I think a lot of people are not like that, your idea of it's competitive about yourself and not again. And you've always been that. I'm curious how you developed in that way or if you have a theory on that. It's interesting.

Whose podcast is this?

Sorry.

I think it's like a... I think that I never really thought of myself as anything more than average, right? And so everything that I've achieved or got or became is because I feel like I worked really hard at it, right? I didn't think of myself as being exceptionally smart, exceptionally beautiful, whatever it is. So what I did was I took what I had and optimized it the best I knew how by working really freaking hard and executing and learning all these different strategies and habits and routines and whatever it is just to enhance whatever I have. And so it came from the same thing I said earlier, which was self-efficacy. Seeing myself, transform myself, not because someone else did it for me. It's because I did it for myself, and I didn't do any crazy thing. It wasn't like I went and got I'm plastic surgery. Anything I have is because it's hard work. I'm fit because I actually work out like a fiend, right? Not because I'm taking something and I'm doing this or I'm doing that, right? Whatever my face is, it's going to be what my face is. I'm not getting any crazy surgeries because I don't like...

I've learned to really love who I am and be happy with what it is, whatever, good and bad. And I've made a decision very early on that I'm going to do the Yes, I can with what I have, but I'm not going to force or fake or be something that I'm not. When you have a really strong sense of self, everything else coming into your life, I'm okay with it. I want everyone else to be the best version of themselves without feeling that they have to alter something in them. Exactly. I'm a big champion for guys and/or girls, whoever I think are good humans. But a lot of women just don't think that way. They see everybody as a threat or a competition. I've seen it all the time. Women always, like I said, say, Oh, I want a women champion. And then like, yeah, they're not helping. They help you until you surpass them, right? Until you become more successful or more fit or more this or more that. I see this daily, young people and old people. People are people. It doesn't change. You think because you mature, people change. They don't change.

In fact, actually, it gets worse. They just maybe hide it a a little bit better.

Yeah, you got to work with what you have for sure.

That's just the way it is. Does that make sense?

Yeah. No, it totally makes sense. Totally makes sense. One of my best friends is an identical twin, and she's a colleague at Harvard. We have all the ingredients of rivalry. We're a similar age. We're both competitive. We both have this amazing job, all these things. And she said to me once, and then we had this professor who was talking about rivalry, giving a talk, and we were just making eyes the whole time. We're like, Is this us? Is this us? Are we rival? Are we rivals? And then we talked about it afterwards, and she said, So good. She studies conversation. She said, Why aren't we rivals? Isn't that such a great way in? It's like presuming the good thing, right?

Totally. And? Yes.

And then we started talking about it because we have all the elements of it. And I said to her, I think You led this because you have this experience. It's so interesting talking about the experience of being an identical twin. She's like, I am a communal... I was born as a communal person, caring about this other human. And so she just doesn't see things like she views giving as it's core to wanting to help. And she's also extremely confident, extremely self-assured, right? Her mother is amazing. Her mother was a guidance counselor back in the day. Social worker? Back in the day, women, they didn't get amazing PhDs in psychology. It was a guidance counselor. She had the most EQ thing. You talked to her mom. She's amazing. She had a great upbringing and stuff, and she's super, super confident. She's so confident in her skin, and she's happy. She realizes that often success begets success. Helping someone feels good. Now, I just sound cheesy, but it's true. And you got to live it. No, no, no.

Success begets success. I totally understand what you're saying. I agree with everything about that stuff. I think that I think wanting other people to win helps you win. I really do believe that. I believe it, too. Because even if it doesn't happen, I think that life is long. It may not happen just right off the bat with that one person But everything's a ripple. It's a long game, and there's a ripple effect. So maybe it won't happen with this one. But I know you don't really probably know me very well, but I did a whole thing. I did my first TED Talk. I've done three. But my first one on being bold and asking for what you want in life. Oh, yeah.

I've watched that. Oh, you have? Yes.

Oh, okay. Well, this whole thing is this whole make 10 attempts of whatever you want most in life. And the thing is, what it teaches you is not just to get comfortable with failing, but you making those attempts, either you're going to get that thing you want or another opportunity will present itself. Yes. So stuff leads to stuff. Stuff leads to stuff, right? But you're just doing it, right? Like throwing a lot of shit at the wall. Eventually, something is going to stick. Completely. And there's nothing wrong with thinking that way, right? No opportunity is going to happen with you sitting on your couch watching Netflix, right? Do it. It's like making a shot, making a shot, making a shot. Completely.

Do it. So the Harvard version of this is as I get students who come in needing to do research, wanting to do research, that's how we succeed. And they're just perseverating. They're like, I don't know what... I'll start saying crazy ideas. Why don't you study this, this, to try to get them to be comfortable brainstorming from me, and they're like, But that's not in my wheelhouse. That's not my core.

And I'm like, Who cares?

Yeah, who cares? You don't even have it. I don't even have a core. What are you interested in? Just do it. Let's get some data. Let's get the survey up right now. Let's do it.

Not perfect progress.

Stop perseverating and do something.

See, but that's where people... So this is what my whole talk is about, is the fact that we are our own worst enemies, and over-thinking is analysis, paralysis.

And I use you- Welcome academia.

Well, I use you in my whole talk because I say the people who are the smartest- Yeah. Right? Exactly. Are not the ones who win. The people who win are the boldest.

Because they're like, but this is- They're thinking every outcome that can go wrong, their negativity, what happens if this?

What happens if that? It's paralyzing. It's paralyzing. But if you're just bold, which is what my whole thing is, is that you're just going to do it. If you fail, all right. If it doesn't work, okay. That's why I was saying earlier, me being average growing up worked to my advantage Because the more average I was, the more like, if I failed, no one cared.

Yeah, you're not threatening.

I could keep on trying. And as I kept on trying, I was sharpening my tool, and I was getting better and faster and stronger and smarter than all these people who were at the time so much more smarter, quicker, whatever it was, right? So that's my point. It's like, you can't count yourself out without even making the attempts. If you heard That thing, it's the C student or the A plus student is working for the C student.

Yeah. Because they don't have the grit.

They had to learn the resourcefulness and the grit to get through.

The wily resourcefulness. Yeah, totally. Another thing came to mind as it came to mind now and earlier about being average and when you're like, How did you get to where you are? I, on the first day of grad school, we did this exercise, and My naiveté, too, of like, We're all going to be friends and happy as a cohort. Let's cuddle. The professor, we are this cohort of six new students and small, and he slaps a $20 bill in front of each of us, and he has us all do... Puts us in a prisoner's dilemma, which essentially, basically, you're with someone else. I'm paired up with this person. We've just started. We've just met each other. And there's $20 in between us. And we each have to make a decision, split or steal. If we both say, and it's a simultaneous reveal, it's one, two, three. What are you going to say?

Yeah, I love that.

And so if we both play split, then we split it down, even Steven, 10 bucks each. So if we both cooperate. But the problem is there's a temptation to be selfish and defect, where by that I mean, if you play steal and the other person, you somehow manage to convince them to play split. So if I play steal and you play split, you're generous, trusting, and I'm not, I play steal, I get all 20 bucks. And then if both of us play steal, none of us get anything. So the thing that's tricky is you want to each get $10. That's a really nice outcome. But you've always got that if I know that you're going to play Split, then I'll be tempted to be like, backstab and play Steel so that I can get more money. And so this is like a very... It's been studied ad nauseam in economics and beyond. There's a correct answer to this, the correct rational rational in quotes, the correct answer is in this situation to play steal, which nobody gets anything. That's the correct answer. And I knew that. I did know this coming in, that that is the correct answer.

But in my mind, I'm like, But this is a bonding exercise. Yes, exactly. So what do I play? I play split. I cooperate. Everyone else plays split. I look like... Play steal. I look like such a loser. My classmate, Anne, was the only one to walk away with money because everyone else played I played Steel and I played Split, and I looked like a fool. I looked like a complete idiot on the first day of grad school. I felt I was ruminating afterwards, even though in the time, I'm like, We're doing this, right, guys? But my naiveté burned me. But then I was like, But did it burn me? Because when we were doing... I didn't get through grad school without help, right? I was disarming. Nobody was threatened by the dumb girl, right?

Exactly. That's 100 % true.

So it's like, they helped me. You disarmed them. Yeah, I helped them, too, I think. I taught them psychology.

And also, though, they weren't threatened by you.

Yeah. So I think there can be, not to be hyper strategic about it, but just reflecting back. I think there is something to that.

I think there's a lot to that. So I was going to include, when you were asking me earlier, I was super disarming, right? Yes. Because I wasn't a threat.

Yes.

And that worked to my advantage, right? Yes. And I think that I'm a big believer in using every tool you have in your toolbox to go after what you want. I just do. Completely. And I don't think that's taking away from someone else's toolbox, right? And so if you're disarming somebody and you're not threatening, God bless you. I also don't think it's a bad thing to be an opportunist.

No, not at all. As long as you're sincere and not- But what's wrong with it?

Why Why can't you seek and why can't you take advantage of an opportunity and seize the day or seize the opportunity? You'd be a fool not to. Right. If it's like, Oh, you're such an opportunist. Okay, you should be, too.

I think because sometimes when one says that, people hear at someone else's expense. That's not what you're saying at all.

No, exactly. And that's exactly, I had this whole back and forth with this person I had a falling out Not because of this, but one of the things that was what we're talking about is I believe that people should take advantage of every opportunity that comes their way. And they took it like, well, at who's expense? No expense. You're the one who's adding on to that sentence at someone else's expense, which makes me think that's your personality. Me, I'm just saying, it's basically a zero-zero game. Not It's not like a zero sum game. I'm not competing against you. I don't really care. But whatever opportunity is coming my way, I'm going to try to seize it, and you should, too. And that's what my point was earlier. You got to be resourceful. You got to be pretty. You got to make everything work for your advantage. Not at the expense of anybody else.

And a core of that is understanding you and what your secret capabilities are, unlocking your potential and trying. By doing things, you learn like, oh, I'm really savvy and really good at this, and I'm not so great at that. And I'm not so great at that. Right. So do more of the good thing and mitigate the bad thing.

And maybe not do so much of that thing. I don't even know what we're talking. We're so off. We're so off. How long has it been? Let me share my daily routine game changer with you. It's the Momentous 3. I've been using their protein, their creatine, and omega-3 combo for months now, and the results are undeniable. These nutrients are key for long-term health and performance, but hard to get enough of through diet alone. The CriaPure creatine boosts both physical and your mental performance. The grass-fed way tastes great with no weird aftertaste, and their omega 3 is a must for recovery. Since adding these, my energy, my recovery, and my overall well-being has really improved. So if you want better performance, this is the way to go. Visit live momentus. Com and use my code, Jenn, for 35% off your first subscription. That's live momentus. Com code, Jenn, for 35% off your first subscription. Trust me, you'll be happy you did. Okay, I wanted to ask you a couple of other questions, and we can wrap this. Although, I guess we We talked about leaders. We talked about, actually, confidence flexors. Did we talk about that?

Let's talk about confidence flexors really fast.

Confidence flexors, yeah.

I really like the Shark Tank example because I watch Shark Tank. I love Shark Tank. I love it, too.

I love Mr. Wonderful.

Oh, my God. They're all great. I love Rob Herson.

I know. They all have their unique, and they work so well together. I love them. They work really great together. I feel like it's so authentic. It's their... Maybe an exaggerated version, but it rings you.

They They're still authentic. They do. By the way, the ones I've had on, I think they're great. I love Rob. Rob's a Canadian. Well, he's more like... No, he's from somewhere else. Where's he from? Not Ukraine. No, no.

Gosh, I should stop talking. Croatia. No, no, no, no, no. That sounds closer. No, So- Bosnia or Tupacania? Not Bosnia. Not Bosnia.

Where is he from?

Tip of my tongue.

Croatia, it says. You got it. You nailed it. I don't think that's right. Is it? Okay, maybe it is. But then he immigrated Canada. So I feel he's one of us.

Yeah. And he has the Canadian... You can hear the about. Yeah.

So he can. So my point is, I really like that. I like the example that you use. And whenever I watch the show, I notice that the ones who are overly confident on the show- And dismissive.

Of these superstar experts.

But in general, I feel like they don't like the people who are overly confident. For sure. They want the people who are more have that feeling of they admit when they're wrong. What would you call that? Yeah.

Humility. Humility. Humility is the word. Humility. And that takes confidence. That's like, you have to actually be confident to admit that you don't know.

100 %. I think overly confident is really unattractive.

Yeah, I agree completely. Completely. And yet it is amazing in the classroom when people use, maybe not for, I don't know, for judging character, but what I see, maybe, I don't know why, maybe they're younger MBA students, but people People confuse confidence with competence and knowledge. Yeah, there's lots of studies on that. Right? So it's in the classroom all the time. There will be someone who says something like word salad, but eloquent and super confident, but zero substance. And people are enthralled. And then someone who's much less confident and puts up their hand and not in a loud voice, and they're like, crazy smart. And I'm like, So then I'm trying to, I try to in less overt ways, because if you're overt about it, then it's not good. But I try to echo the person who repeats. So what Suzanne is saying is it sounds like, and ignore the... But the It's frustrating to me that people confuse the two so much.

Well, confidence and confidence are... The people who are confident, I feel, are usually... They often go together. They usually go together. They're usually the most confident.

They often go together.

But A lot of times, the most confident... A lot I've seen in my own history that you could be a really good orator and fake confidence. Completely. And be a complete ninny in real life. Yes, 100 %. And I think that that happens a lot also. And so I think this goes under this whole umbrella of likeability, right? I think that the people who are the most likable may not necessarily be the most competent, but they have these other qualities that draw you in. And I was going to say there's a whole study that's on how VCs give money to the most likable, not necessarily the best business plan.

And that's not wrong, right?

Well, it's not wrong. But listen, if I'm giving someone $20 million- It can be wrong. They need to be competent. I would like them to be competent.

They need to be competent. But, yeah, I mean, surely it's wrong sometimes. But I would say you would probably agree it's also wrong. Likeability does matter. And when in terms of the person's ability to lead, being likable It does matter.

It matters more than anything else. It's the most underrated superpower I think that there is. Preach, girl. I do believe that to be true.

We're aggressively Canadian, right? Yeah, exactly.

We're super Canadian.

But the confidence Flexing. Sorry, I went on a tangent there. So the confidence flexing, it's like our instinct is often to project confidence when we are not actually, when we feel really weak, and it doesn't really work. A funny example of it. The thing is it's sneaky because it creeps up on us. When I was, I'm not a good driver. Don't ever get in a car with me. When I was- Go taking my...

Go back to your kids.

Yeah, I know. Well, my husband almost always drives. I know, he's like, the patriarchy, but definitely he's a good spy driver. But yeah, so when I was taking my driver's test, this is so absurd, but it illustrates the point, I took a left-hand turn and I neglected to look for a pedestrian. And the adjudicator said, Who had the right of way there? And I knew that the passenger, pedestrian did. But I just confidently was like, I did. As if that erases everything, right? It's like as if you... And so that's an absurd example, but it shows how wrong this is, but how we often default to it, right?

We all default because I think it's at our defensiveness.

Yeah, defensiveness. It's totally brought them on by defensiveness. Yeah.

And so what is your point, though? Was there a point?

I was just explaining what a conflict sex is. Okay.

Is there another point?

It's not effective. Conflict sex, no good. It's not effective. Not effective. Not effective. Not a good luck. I don't know.

It's late in the day.

I didn't have caffeine in mind. I know.

Well, no, exactly. I have way too much caffeine, but Okay, Leslie, we got to wrap this. Where do people find you?

Oh, they can find me online. My website is drlesleyjohn. Com or on Instagram or LinkedIn, proflesleyjohn.

Com. Okay. Proflesleyjohn. Okay. The book is called Revealing, and it is about the underrated power of oversharing. Yes.

Or is it the overrated power of oversharing? Is it actually overrated?

Exactly. I read it and find out. Thank you for being on the show. I appreciate it.

Thank you so much for having me. It's been so wonderful. So fun.

Yay.

Bye, guys. Bye.