Description

You know we love talking about feelings, and we love talking about work. So when we saw that a new book was hitting stores this month called No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Embracing Emotion at Work, we just knew we had to talk about it.

We’re joined today by one of the book’s coauthors, Liz Fosslien. She’s an information designer, an illustrator, and a woman on a mission to help people understand that feelings aren’t just normal, they’re crucial—even on the job.

> You’re not the only person that is feeling anxiety, that is feeling joy, that is feeling frustration. There’s this really traditional view that you should check your feelings at the door when you enter an office. And research shows that we are emotional creatures, regardless of circumstance. So, it’s actually biologically impossible to feel nothing.

> —Liz Fosslien, coauthor, No Hard Feelings

We talk about:

• Why you shouldn’t “check your feelings at the door”
• How listening to your feelings can make you smarter
• The problem with suppressing emotions to be “successful”
• Why our love affair with “rational thinking” at work is failing us
• When and how to start talking about your feelings with colleagues

Links:

• The book: No Hard Feelings
• Liz and Mollie’s website
• Names drops from the interview: Pat Wadors, the CHRO of ServiceNow; Mellody Hobson and her TED Talk, “Color Brave or Colorblind”; sociology professor Adia Harvey Wingfield; psychology professor Kira Hudson Banks; and Gregory M. Walton, the Stanford professor behind The Belonging Guide

Plus:

• Everybody’s winging it all the time, not just you
• The worst part of feeling like an imposter is the loneliness
• Fuck yeah to boss women—like Emilie Aries and her podcast, Bossed Up—Sara’s latest binge

> I think most of us feel like we’re winging it in life in general...and we just don’t talk about it enough. And so then what happens is people who are struggling feel like everybody else has it all together. But no, we totally don’t have it all together.

> —Sara