Melody Wilding
Executive Coach to Sensitive Strivers® and HBR Contributor
Trust Yourself as a Leader
Episode Summary
Brene Brown gave readers the courage to be vulnerable. Susan Cain reminded introverts of the power of being quiet. In 2021, Melody Wilding has emerged as the expert reframing the intersection of ambition and sensitivity as a strength! Listen to this episode to learn how to Trust yourself!
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Bio
Melody Wilding, LMSW, is an executive coach, human behavior expert, and author of Trust Yourself: Stop Overthinking and Channel Your Emotions for Success at Work. She has coached hundreds of private clients, from CEOs and Fortune 500 executives to leaders from the US Department of Education, the Federal Reserve, and the United Nations. She teaches graduate-level human behavior and psychology at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College in New York. Her writing is regularly featured on Medium and in Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Forbes, Business Insider, and Quartz. Her advice has been featured in the New York Times, The Cut, Oprah Magazine, NBC News, US News, and World Report, and more.
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Transcript
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This podcast is part of the C Suite Radio Network, turning the volume up on business.
Welcome to the Keep Leading!® Podcast, the podcast dedicated to promoting leadership development and sharing leadership insights. Here’s your host, The Leadership Excelerator®, Eddie Turner.
Eddie Turner:
Hello, everyone! Welcome to the Keep Leading!® Podcast, the podcast dedicated to leadership development and insights. I’m your host Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator®. I work with leaders to accelerate performance and drive impact through the power of executive coaching, masterful facilitation, and motivational speaking.
Brené Brown gave readers the courage to be vulnerable. Susan Kane reminded introverts of the power of being quiet. In 2021, Melody Wilding has emerged as the expert reframing the intersection of ambition and sensitivity as a strength. I am excited to delve into that with Melody Wilding. Melody Wilding is an executive coach and human behavior expert. She is the author of Trust Yourself: Stop Overthinking and Channel Your Emotions for Success at Work. She’s been featured in the Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Forbes, Business Insider, New York Times, NBC News, and Oprah Magazine, just to name a few.
Melody, welcome to the Keep Leading!® Podcast.
Melody Wilding:
It’s a pleasure to be here with you. Thank you so much for having me.
Eddie Turner:
Oh, I am just delighted to have you, Melody. Melody, It’s not often that I have a guest or have someone who listens to the show approach me and say “Listen, you’ve got to interview someone who I am interested in having you talk to” and that is Fred Amador. He’s a friend of the Keep Leading!® Podcast and typically, I’m really picky about who I have on the show and when I looked at your materials, I was fascinated and I said “Yes, I must interview her.” So, Melody, tell our listeners a few things about you that I did not mention in the opening.
Melody Wilding:
Yes. So, you covered some of the biggest hits in terms of my professional background but where a lot of my work intersects, as you were talking about the intersection of ambition and sensitivity, in my new book Trust Yourself what I’ve done is put a label on that personality and talk about what I call a sensitive striver. And that moniker comes as much from my professional experience as it does from my personal experiences. So, I am this sensitive striver personality myself. I am someone who all my life has been very driven, career oriented, wanted to check all of the boxes and make sure I was doing everything right and be successful but also highly sensitive in that I am a deep thinker and feeler and always have been. And that combination of traits, when leveraged correctly, can be our superpower, makes us observant, perceptive, deep thinkers and contributors but many of us are not given the right tools to understand our sensitivity and ambition, especially not leverage it in the workplace and as leaders. And so, this work I am doing today with sensitive strivers is as much a product of my personal background as it is my professional background.
Eddie Turner:
So, the two have collided.
Melody Wilding:
Absolutely.
Eddie Turner:
Wonderful. Yeah, when you use that phrase sensitive strivers, which you own, it’s your registered trademark, what’s the reaction, especially of men?
Melody Wilding:
That’s an interesting question. I have to say what’s been something I did not expect as I’ve talked more about sensitivity over the past few years is that the number of men in my community, especially male leaders, has grown substantially. And I think that’s because I think we’re starting to see a shift overall in the culture of leadership in our workplaces where we are starting to embrace more emotionality and taking more of a human-centered approach to work but, I think, talk talking about sensitivity, writing about it for places like Forbes and Harvard Business Review gave a lot of men permission to say “Actually, you know what, I am a very compassionate, heart-led deep-feeling leader. That’s who I am.” And so, that has been a really interesting side effect of talking about sensitivity that I did not anticipate in the slightest.
Eddie Turner:
That’s really good to hear. Would you say, Melody, that you’ve seen, you talked about this change and how people are responding to the phrase and how they’re responding to that quality, would you say that perhaps we’ve rewarded the wrong qualities for far too long and people are just ready for this and it’s the right time that your work is coming out?
Melody Wilding:
Yeah, I think what we saw was an emphasis on qualities in the workplace that lead to quick results, right? Being harsh, being mean, that sort of “I say jump and you ask how high” command and control mentality tends to get results quickly but I think what we’ve seen especially in the last 10-15 years or so is that the long-term consequence of that is that it leads to disengagement, burnout among your people, low retention and high turnover. And so, now, I think we’re starting to see that sea change where we see those consequences and now we’re starting to embrace this different view of what leadership can be being much more sensitive and empathetic and human-centered but I also think it’s colliding with some of the trends of technology and certainly the pandemic has accelerated so much of that where we bring all of ourselves to work now because there is no separation between work and life anymore, there’s such a blend between the two.
Eddie Turner:
Indeed, now more than ever. As you said, the pandemic has allowed qualities to come out that we perhaps would not have allowed to come out pre-pandemic or would have taken far longer to emerge and we’re more accepting of it.
Melody Wilding:
Exactly. We’re seeing people now taking Zoom calls from their bedrooms or having their little kids or their pets barge in. And so, yes, and we’re seeing people at their best and at their worst.
Eddie Turner:
Now, people have said that being sensitive is a bad trait. What do you say about that in your book?
Melody Wilding:
I say that we need to reclaim the word ‘sensitive’ and that is one reason why I termed it ‘Sensitive Striver’ and not ‘Empathetic High Achiever’ or something else. I didn’t want to dance around the word ‘sensitive’. And also, what I think people misunderstand about sensitivity, you use the word ‘trait’ which is very accurate, that sensitivity is a biological disposition and we don’t often realize that. We think it’s just a quality. We don’t see it and respect it as a personality trait just like introversion or extroversion. And so, people who are sensitive actually have different neurological wiring. Their brain lights up in different areas that are related to things like attention, planning for action, making connections and synthesizing information. And what I found really remarkable is if any of our listeners out there are sensitive, you may feel like you are a person who is a sponge. You can feel the feelings of people around you. And the neuroscience points to why that is a fact, which is because sensitive people have more active mirror neurons which are our empathy neurons. So, we are scanning the environment we are attuning to and noticing the nuances in people’s behavior which can be a tremendous asset. And so, I want to sort of correct that misunderstanding that sensitivity is a flaw when actually it’s an evolutionary advantage that has persisted because it helped a certain amount of the population, about 15% to 20% or one in five people, survive and really come out ahead in situations.
Eddie Turner:
And by using this phrase ‘Sensitive Strivers’, you’re saying it’s not just about owning it and being happy to accept it but it’s something to strive for. I love that. Do you have any tips for people who want to start to be more sensitive in a positive way?
Melody Wilding:
Yes. I think especially now what we can focus on is active listening. So often so many of us think we’re listening but we’re not. We’re in our own heads thinking about that email we have to send or that to-do we need to check off our list and we’re not actually paying attention to what is happening right in front of us and really attuning to and being present with that person. So, better active listening means asking more informed questions, what and how questions – “How did that make you feel? How did this come about? What is your perspective on this situation?” – taking the conversation deeper. And many times, active listening sounds like saying nothing at all, sounds like being silent, letting there be dead air instead of anxiously talking over them. And I see this a lot with managers and leaders with their direct reports that perhaps they’ll be in a one-on-one and they will just be talking, talking, talking, talking, talking and not leaving a moment of pause for their direct report to jump in or if their direct report shares something difficult or a challenge that they’re having, the manager automatically jumps in to help and try to fix the situation and “Let me figure out how to solve this” rather than leaving a moment of pause where the person could go deeper, where they may start coming up with solutions and ideas themselves. And so, that type of active listening is one way we can be much more sensitive and present with everyone around us.
Eddie Turner:
Active listening, step one. If we listen better, we will ask better questions. Thank you for explaining that. And if a person is not really sure how to listen better so that they can ask those better questions and not monopolize and dominate the conversation, where could they learn more about that?
Melody Wilding:
I have some resources on my website in terms of listening more effectively, questions that you can ask people. One of my favorite books on this topic that I think is so underestimated in the leadership world is Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg, I believe. Fantastic game-changing book about communication, about listening. It will change the way that you communicate with people.
Eddie Turner:
Thank you. And some people feel like “I’m really not showing up the way that I should or the way that I want to.” They feel like an imposter. What does your work reveal about that?
Melody Wilding:
Yes, imposter syndrome is the number one challenge that sensitive stivers come to me with and is particularly common the higher you rise and the further you advance because the pressure that you’re under tends to increase as does the ambiguity and uncertainty. The path is not as clear anymore. So, it’s much easier to read into situations and think “Oh my gosh, I have no idea what I’m doing here and everyone’s going to find that out” which is the core of imposter syndrome. So, very common for sensitive strivers because we tend to have a really deep thought. We are so self-aware that we tend to become self-conscious. So, whenever I’m working with clients around this, the first place we always have to start is by interrupting the negative self-talk that comes along with imposter syndrome, the self-talk that says you’re not good enough, you have no idea what you’re doing, everyone’s going to find out and they’re going to fire you, all of that negative self-talk that our mind automatically defaults to. One really powerful way to interrupt that is by naming your inner critic, giving that imposter syndrome a voice a name a moniker, an identity that is separate from you. So, personifying it. You can call it The Little Monster. Mine is called Bozo. I have one client who calls it his Darth Vader and he got a Darth Vader lego action figure to sit on his desk and it was just a helpful reminder that every time his negative chatter would start up in a board meeting or in all-hands meeting, he would be able to look at it and say “Not today, Darth” and put it in its place. So, that is first and foremost, really being able to recognize and interrupt the negative talk track of imposter syndrome.
Eddie Turner:
Wonderful. Wonderful example.
I’m talking to Melody Wilding. She is the coach to sensitive strivers and the author of Trust Yourself: Stop Overthinking and Channel Your Emotions for Success at Work. We’ll have more with Melody right after this.
This podcast is sponsored by Eddie Turner LLC. Organizations who need to accelerate the development of their leaders call Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator®. Eddie works with leaders to accelerate performance and drive impact. Call Eddie Turner to help your leaders one on one as their coach or to inspire them as a group through the power of facilitation or a keynote address. Visit EddieTurnerLLC.com to learn more.
This is Dave Sanderson. You may know me from the last passenger off US Airways Flight 1549, The Miracle on the Hudson from the movie Sully and you’re listening to the Keep Leading!® Podcast with Eddie Turner.
Eddie Turner:
I’m back talking to the amazing Melody Wilding. She’s the coach to sensitive strivers. Her book Trust Yourself: Stop Overthinking and Channel Your Emotions for Success at Work is the foundation of our conversation today and we want leaders to trust themselves. They second guess themselves too often as we discover as coaches. So, Melody, can you tell us how does being a sensitive striver, as we discussed before the break, relate to trusting yourself as a leader?
Melody Wilding:
Sensitive strivers, if any listeners are sensitive, you like me have probably been told your entire life that you take things too personally, you need to grow a thicker skin. And so, from a very young age, people who are sensitive high achievers, sensitive strivers internalize messages that “We’re not okay as we are. We can’t trust our own thinking and judgments.” And this further gets compounded by the ambition piece – “We want to succeed” – that sometimes we become so addicted and so dependent on external validation, on praise from other people, on pleasing others and doing things that will make us look likable in their eyes. So, many times sensitive strivers can be so spread thin and so led astray in their professional lives because they’re trying to please everyone else and make everybody else happy. And so, that is exactly why the book is called Trust Yourself because that is the outcome, that is the results I want for every person in this book. And every sensitive striver I have worked with over the past 10 years, the number one skill that helps them achieve what they want to achieve is greater self-trust, hands down.
Eddie Turner:
Greater self-trust. And when we don’t trust ourselves, is that where the overthinking comes in?
Melody Wilding:
100%. Second guessing, rumination or worse, going back on your decisions, letting louder, more dominant aggressive voices dominate and drown out yours.
Eddie Turner:
That’s one I don’t think about often but you’re right. I often think about being afraid to make a decision or paralysis through analysis and decision making but you’re right – “Okay, I finally made the decision but I’m not sure I made the right one. Let me go back and redo it.”
Melody Wilding:
Right, exactly. Backtracking.
Eddie Turner:
Yes, and that costs leaders not only on a personal level but specifically in the organizational context, there’s a real financial cost to the organization.
Melody Wilding:
Absolutely, as is there not listening to sensitive strivers. And if I may, I can give you a short story about this that might drive that point home.
Eddie Turner:
Please.
Melody Wilding:
So, sensitive strivers, as I mentioned, are very observant, perceptive because of the way our minds process information. We tend to make connections before other people. So, my clients are those leaders in the room who tend to be one or two steps ahead of other people to see “Oh, here’s why this strategy is not going to work” which on the upside saves really valuable time and money. So, I’ll give you the example of one of my clients. I will call her Rebecca. She was a research and development director at a pharmaceutical company. Her company was seeking to acquire another smaller firm. And Rebecca saw instantly that this was not going to turn out. Well, it was going to be a debacle for their operations. It was going to completely back them up. And so, Rebecca went to the CEO and the COO and said “I want to give you a warning that I see this coming” and they blasted right past her and went through with the acquisition anyway. And exactly as she predicted, it was a disaster and actually led to the firing of the COO because it turned out so poorly. And the CEO came back to Rebecca and said “You know, if I had only listened to you, I would have saved my reputation” because it was a black mark on the company in the industry. And he specifically said to her “I wish I had more people like you who were so sensitive and observant of what was happening and perceptive and I should have listened to you.” And so, if that doesn’t underscore the business cost of not recognizing and valuing and listening to sensitive strivers, I don’t know what does.
Eddie Turner:
That underscores it quite nicely. Thank you for that story that lets it really stick with us a lot better than just the anecdote alone. Now, as I think about something else that you talk about in the book, we are often told to do what makes us happy. You argue we should do what we’re suited for. What’s the difference?
Melody Wilding:
In many ways, I think, one leads to the other. I think that doing what you’re suited for leads to greater happiness because what the research shows is that when we have a role that matches our personality, we experience greater job satisfaction, we are more effective, productive. We earn more because of all of that. And so, I think one leads to the other.
Eddie Turner:
Okay. And when I think about where we are in the stream of time, what we’ve gone through as a country, as a global community with the pandemic, how can sensitive strivers and those who are developing the ability to trust themselves as leaders, how can they improve in this specific area post pandemic?
Melody Wilding:
In terms of focusing on matching your professional life better with your personality, I think this is a great time to be reassessing what your needs are because we really have an opportunity. We’re in transition and transition always presents opportunity for change, right? So, it’s a great opportunity to reassess now that we’re coming out of the pandemic, what over the past year actually did work for you and what didn’t. So, for example, many of my clients actually found the switch to working from home to be very advantageous for them because as sensitive strivers, about 70% of sensitive people are also introverted, meaning they need time, they need downtime, they need concentrated time and sensitive strivers in general need more space to process. And so, being at home gave many people much more control over their surroundings to really dictate their day and where and how they were working. So, in the book, I actually have a chapter on finding the right fit. And in there, I take readers through different criteria to assess whether your job is the right fit for you now, the first one being that idea of physical needs, your workspace, what does it look like, how much stimulation is there, how quickly are things moving. The next would be relational needs – what types of relationships do you need to have in the workplace to feel like you are fulfilled and you are giving your best. Then we get on to organizational needs which is what type of company motivates you, their mission, their impact, the type of leaders that they have. Then we move on to health and lifestyle needs which touches on flexibility, how often do you need to take breaks, when would you start work, when would you end work. And then finally at the tippy top of the pyramid, we have learning and performance needs and this is looking at in your role, what are your special gifts and talents, what further competencies do you want to develop and how can you get better at applying those in your current role.
Eddie Turner:
Wonderful. And then when you think about the relationships, friendships, professional or otherwise, it makes me think about something I heard someone say recently and I can’t remember who said it or what context, so I can’t make proper attribution, but they said “Decide which relationships are post-pandemic worthy.”
Melody Wilding:
That’s a great way to put it. I love that idea.
Eddie Turner:
Yeah. Now, along the lines of what you said there, what about if I’ve had setbacks during the pandemic? What can I do to get my confidence back and trust in myself as a leader and be a sensitive striver?
Melody Wilding:
Sure. And you know what was interesting is the pandemic hit just as I was finishing this manuscript and actually pretty much around the time when I was working on the chapter in the book on bouncing back from setbacks. So, it was this really unique timing where I actually went back through the book several times and looked at it for how can we reframe and offer strategies that are going to work in this new world. And so, this idea of coming back from setbacks, in the book I offer a three-step process that really builds on a lot of the other learnings from the book. So, first is to rest. I think many times as sensitive strivers we want to fix. We want to keep doing. We think we can act and think our way through problems. And many times, we need to just separate ourselves from the problems. We need to take a break and ground ourselves, reset our nervous system, manage and pay attention to our thinking because our thinking is going to guide our actions. So, that’s the first step is rest, take a step back. Next would be reflect. And I think we’re seeing a lot of people do that now where they are thinking about, as we re-emerge from the pandemic, reflecting on “What are the lessons that I’ve learned? How have I grown? How do I want to be different in this new phase?” So, specifically, in the book, I touch a lot on the idea of giving yourself permission, where do you need to give yourself more permission to succeed, to fail, for example, where do you need to be listening and consulting your intuition, how can you return back to your core values and how are those guiding your life and the decisions you’re making about your work going forward. And then, finally, we have Recalibrate. This is where you take action. So, now that you have rested, you have reflected, now with different insights, you can take different steps forward. So, recommitting to reassessing our goals, adjusting them as needed. I think the pandemic has really taken people off autopilot and made people realize that “Maybe I don’t want to be doing as much as I have been. Maybe I want to be doing less but better” and rebuilding our boundaries. You were talking about which people in our life are post-pandemic worthy and I have seen people become so much more … they respect their own time much more and are much more willing to say “No, I’m sorry. I can’t commit to that right now.” And I think people have also become much more understanding of that. So, really recommitting to reassessing your boundaries. The last point under Recalibrate would be thinking about changing the game, thinking about if you want to make a bigger switch, how can you adjust, how can you take those criteria that I mentioned in terms of finding work that’s a better fit and start to make some incremental changes to make your work life be a better fit for who you are and your needs as a sensitive striver.
Eddie Turner:
Wonderful. And so, if anyone is wondering, in the book, that is under the section Sustained Self-Growth: Bounce Back from Setbacks. What a fascinating chapter. What is the main message you would like to make sure our listeners leave our conversation with today, Melody?
Melody Wilding:
That sensitivity when managed correctly can be your greatest strength and asset.
Eddie Turner:
Thank you. And I’d love to know on the Keep Leading!® Podcast, what’s the best piece of advice or quote that you use that helps you, Melody, to keep leading.
Melody Wilding:
Never put off once-in-a-lifetime moments for work that can be done tomorrow.
Eddie Turner:
I love that. Thank you. Where can my listeners learn more about you?
Melody Wilding:
You can find me at MelodyWilding.com. There you can learn more about the book. You can also find the book wherever books are sold.
Eddie Turner:
Wonderful. And what I will do is make sure there are links to your social media profiles to your book, your main website of course, in the show notes to make it easy for people to connect with you, follow you, read your book and stay connected. You’re so fascinating and I am so happy that you have come on the Keep Leading!® Podcast to share your knowledge with our listeners.
Melody Wilding:
It was so much fun. Thank you for having me.
Eddie Turner:
Thank you, Melody.
And thank you for listening. That concludes this episode, everyone. I’m Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator®, reminding you that leadership is not about our title or our position. Leadership is an activity. Leadership is action. It’s not the case of once a leader, always a leader. It’s not a garment we put on and take off. We must be a leader at our core and allow it to emanate in all we do. So, whatever you’re doing, always keep leading.
Thank you for listening to your host Eddie Turner on the Keep Leading!® Podcast. Please remember to subscribe to the Keep Leading!® Podcast on iTunes or wherever you listen. For more information about Eddie Turner’s work, please visit EddieTurnerLLC.com.
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The Keep Leading!® podcast is for people passionate about leadership. It is dedicated to leadership development and insights. Join your host Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator® as he speaks with accomplished leaders and people of influence across the globe as they share their journey to leadership excellence. Listen as they share leadership strategies, techniques and insights. For more information visit eddieturnerllc.com or follow Eddie Turner on Twitter and Instagram at @eddieturnerjr. Like Eddie Turner LLC on Facebook. Connect with Eddie Turner on LinkedIn.