Episoder
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Clayton Lord breaks the mold of what you might expect someone’s career to look like if they are on the autism spectrum. He’s Director of Programs at the SHRM Foundation and channels his strengths to create insight and order out of complex and messy problems. He also balances that with the fact that he isn’t always first to notice interpersonal issues at work. But he’s developed a tool kit - which includes keeping Post-it notes by his desk with reminders - that helps him achieve success as a leader, a partner, and a father. Lord shares his story of how he moves through a neurotypical world.
Learn more about SHRM: https://www.shrm.org/front-door -
Shirley Leung is a columnist at the Boston Globe and host of the podcast Say More, and in 2020, she hit “rock bottom.”Being stretched on all sides for years finally took its toll and she realized her work life balance needed a change. Four years later, Shirley went on a quest to better understand how to deal with and prevent burnout at work. In this episode, she talks with host Morra Aarons-Mele about how working from home no longer works for many people, the mental health challenges we still feel post pandemic, and being realistic about our priorities.
Listen to Shirley’s burnout series on Say More: https://link.chtbl.com/saymore?sid=anxiousachiever
The No Club Book: https://www.amazon.com/No-Club-Putting-Womens-Dead-End/dp/1982152338 -
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Craig Robinson, brother of former First Lady Michelle Obama, is a basketball legend, former NBA executive, coach, and Executive Director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches. But he wasn’t always on that path: after playing basketball at Princeton, he ended up spending much of his career in finance before following his true passion. Robinson shares lessons he learned from his family, his insights on getting high performers to stay at their best, and how to keep going in the face of negativity and criticism.
Listen to Craig’s podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ways-to-win/id1733309040 -
Starting June 5th, the Anxious Achiever is back to celebrate its tenth season. We’ll be diving into the topics and challenges you’ve asked about most:
How to manage anxiety around AI and your job
What is is like crafting a career while living with Tourette’s syndrome
How to identify if you are a people pleaser (and how to change)
Why your boss is or isn’t toxic
Manage emotions through difficult situations
And much, much more. The new season launches next week - be sure to let us know what you think! -
Leaders of organizations have a large responsibility when it comes to their own mental health, and of those in their organization. When they speak up about mental health, others can too. But vulnerability comes with risks. How can leaders model openness around mental health without bumping up against stereotypes and judgment?
In this roundtable conversation, host Morra Aarons-Mele speaks with Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmonson – the pioneer of the concept of psychological safety at work; entrepreneur and best-selling author Peter Sims; and Megan Reitz of Oxford University and Hult International Business School about the leader’s role in speaking up and fighting mental health stigma.
Learn more about Amy: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=6451
Learn more about Peter: https://petersims.com/
Learn more about Megan: https://www.meganreitz.com/
Learn more about Thinkers50: https://thinkers50.com/ -
Burnout doesn’t come on because of weakness, and it doesn’t come about overnight. Many of us are walking around with some degree of burnout! On the flip side, it takes more than a vacation or loving your job to solve the problem. In this special Thinkers50 episode, host Morra Aarons-Mele explores some of the ways companies and individuals can more effectively avoid burnout and put in place more mentally healthy systems. She speaks with Alyson Meister, a professor at IMD Business School, Jon Jachimowicz, assistant professor at Harvard Business School, and Basima Tewfik, assistant professor at MIT Sloan School of Management.
Learn more about Alyson: https://www.imd.org/faculty/professors/alyson-meister/
Learn more about Jon: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=1175257
Learn more about Basima: https://mitsloan.mit.edu/faculty/directory/basima-tewfik
Learn more about Thinkers50: https://thinkers50.com/ -
As part of a month long series with Thinkers50 and The Silicon Guild, in this episode host Morra Aarons-Mele explores constructive ways we can improve our relationship with ourselves, instead of always being our harshest critic. She’s joined by Duke Professor Sanyin Siang, Lenny Mendoca, Senior Partner Emeritus at McKinsey, and Palo Alto City Council Member Julie Lythcott-Haims to talk about ways to change your self talk and your work.
Learn more about Sanyin: https://centers.fuqua.duke.edu/cole/team_profiles/sanyin-siang/
Hear our past episode with Lenny: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-the-stigma-of-mental-health-for-men-in-business/id1480904163?i=1000601243370
Hear our past episode with Julie: https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/how-to-stop-the-cycle-of-overachieving/id1480904163?i=1000479076732
Learn more about Thinkers50: https://thinkers50.com/ -
What are some of the most important management ideas out there in today’s world? Thinkers50 is an organization that aims to identify and share these important ideas day in and day out, and all month long host Morra Aarons-Mele is partnering with Thinkers50 and The Silicon Guild for a series of roundtable talks about mental health and work. In this episode, she speaks with Columbia Business School’s Rita McGrath, Copenhagen Business School’s Poornima Luthra, and entrepreneur Andrew Barnes, founder of the Four Day Week Movement, about rethinking how we work to improve mental health for everyone.
Learn more about Rita: https://www.ritamcgrath.com/
Learn more about Poornima: https://www.talented.dk/
Learn more about Andrew: https://www.4dayweek.com/andrew-barnes
Learn more about Thinkers50: https://thinkers50.com/ -
Imagine you are having an anxious moment at work. Instead of letting yourself slip into old patterns of negative thoughts or self-criticisms, today’s guest says you can take a step back and try something new: maybe moving around, going out for lunch, drinking some water - but definitely not doom scrolling.
Emma Seppala is a lecturer at Yale and author of the book Sovereign: Reclaim Your Freedom, Energy, and Power in a Time of Distraction, Uncertainty, and Chaos. In this episode, she explains behavior changes that can make a big difference in your career.
Check out Emma’s book here: https://www.amazon.com/Sovereign-Reclaim-Freedom-Distraction-Uncertainty/dp/1401975062 -
Burnout culture is everywhere - case in point, a lawsuit brought against Goldman Sachs earlier this year by a former employee claiming that the relentless workload required by the firm led to heart problems and depression. The firm’s response was of particular note to Sarah Green Carmichael, a Bloomberg Opinion columnist.
In this LinkedIn Live, Sarah joins Morra as well as Cali Williams Yost, founder and CEO of Flex+Strategy Group, to discuss the interplay between company culture and individual experience and behavior, as it relates to our mental health.
For further reading, check out Cali’s book: https://www.amazon.com/Work-Life-Cali-Williams-Yost-ebook/dp/B001R9DHXK?ref_=ast_author_dp
And Sarah Green Carmichael’s columns: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/authors/AUKfbdj7jH8/sarah-green-carmichael -
There was a time when everyone masked their mental and emotional struggles at work; or worse, didn’t even know that what they were experiencing might be anxiety, depression, or something similar. In this episode, host Morra Aarons-Mele first speaks with Kent Coules, co-publisher at Hawaii Business Magazine, about his long career in media, his path to sobriety, and what he learned about drinking and anxiety along the way. Then, she speaks with Donna Volpitta, co-founder of The Mental Health Literacy Collaborative, about how important it is for adults - and kids K-12 - to better understand mental health.
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Just as members of a family have different roles to play and different patterns of behavior they keep, so too can our family dynamics play out in the workplace. We bring with us to work our feelings about how we should assert ourselves, ask for help, deal with failure and more - all behaviors we learn in our family system growing up.
Deborah Ancona, a Professor of Organization Studies, and the Founder of the MIT Leadership Center at the MIT Sloan School of Management, calls these behaviors “ghosts,”and they’re not all bad. Ancona shares her research and experience on how family systems affect us at work.
Check out our previous episode on family systems theory: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5ZNknArKLeGB9JATPFZkJb
Read Deborah's Artile: https://hbr.org/2022/01/family-ghosts-in-the-executive-suite -
Anxiety rarely feels good, so it might feel counterintuitive to think about it as a positive thing. But in this episode, we revisit a conversation with Wendy Suzuki, an NYU neuroscientist who studies neuroplasticity. Anxiety can bring benefits to performance and work, and we can reframe our relationship with this challenging but necessary emotion. Suzuki is the author of the book “Good Anxiety: Harnessing the Power of the Most Misunderstood Emotion.”
Learn more about Wendy here: https://www.wendysuzuki.com/ -
In the quest to be a more empathetic and effective leader or manager, the lens of trauma-informed leadership might be helpful for you. It’s the idea that all people have various forms of trauma that they carry with them to the workplace, and that leaders should approach situations at work accordingly.
Matthew Cooke, partner at the coaching, consulting and investment firm Evolution, is a big proponent of this kind of thinking. He explains how a trauma-informed leader might view or act in situations differently, the skills and resources used for managing through tough moments, and how you can apply the concepts to your own work.
Learn more about trauma-informed leadership:
https://healthadministrationdegree.usc.edu/blog/trauma-informed-leadership
https://accelerate.uofuhealth.utah.edu/leadership/five-ways-to-practice-trauma-informed-leadership
https://www.fastcompany.com/90836621/we-need-trauma-informed-leadership-in-the-workplace
https://evolution.team/matthew-cooke -
Heather Hansen challenges the notion of "good" and "bad" English. Good communication is about getting the message across. She’s based in Singapore and helps executives with their linguistic and communication skills. Hansen is helping us tackle a real problem in our increasingly globalized work world: accent bias. Hansen is on a mission to help increase awareness about our assumptions of what “perfect” English sounds like-- and what we think a good leader sounds like. She explains the negative impacts that accent bias can have, and how we can fight it.
To learn more about Heather, check out her TedTalk: https://www.ted.com/talks/heather_hansen_2_billion_voices_how_to_speak_bad_english_perfectly -
Uncertainty and anxiety are highly linked in our brains: when we aren’t sure what will happen, we often go into planning, defensive mode, trying to come up with every possible scenario and ensure a good outcome. Author Maggie Jackson looks at the ways that better managing uncertainty - like anxiety - is an essential skill. Reframing uncertainty helps us perform in challenging times. Jackson shares the latest brain science and shows being more comfortable in the unknown can help our careers and our success.
More about her book: https://www.maggie-jackson.com/uncertain -
We all have big moments that shift the course of our life - and our relationship with those moments also change over time. Dan Harris was a long time TV journalist when he had a panic attack on air in 2004. That set in motion a different course in his life - where he began meditating, finding healthier ways to manage his anxiety, and hosting the podcast 10 Percent Happier. On the tenth anniversary of his book 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Really Works – a True Story he speaks with Morra Aarons-Mele about how work and public discussions of mental health has changed, how he views his life changing moment now, and what he wants next.
Check out his book here: https://www.amazon.com/10-Happier-10th-Anniversary-Works-dp-0063356473/dp/0063356473/ref=dp_ob_title_bk
And listen to his podcast: https://pod.link/1087147821 -
You know the feeling when you know that something is off with a relationship at work, but feel like you can’t speak up? Many of us have felt this feeling but haven’t known how to describe it or work through it in a healthy way. Toxic bosses and coworkers are super common, and can send negative ripple effects throughout the organization, far beyond a one on one relationship.
Benish Shah was a trusted colleague of mine and she wrote the column “Is it Toxic?” to help workers navigate tricky situations in their jobs. In this episode, we get her expertise on how to deal with toxic bosses and coworkers in helpful and strategic ways.
We lost Benish suddenly in December, but I’m honored to share some of the work that was so important to her and to help continue her impact.
Read Benish’s column here: https://www.themuse.com/advice/is-it-toxic-column-supportive-manager-180-grilling-nitpicking-micromanaging -
We put so much of ourselves and our identity into our work; that’s especially true for entrepreneurs. It can be hard to deal with the emotions of selling the business you started, even when it’s the outcome you dreamed of.
In this episode, we speak with two very different entrepreneurs about how their lives and mental health have changed over time, as they’ve created and sold businesses and changed career paths.
Bob Glazer is the founder of Acceleration Partners as well as the author of several books. Michael Kaplan is former CEO of Fashion to Figure, and part of the family that started the company Lane Bryant. Both share the ups and downs of their entrepreneurial journeys.
Learn more about Bob: https://robertglazer.com/
Learn more about Michael: https://www.alumni.hbs.edu/stories/Pages/story-bulletin.aspx?num=2490
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-kaplan-7679828/ -
For many of us, anxiety is a partner on our journey of life: it is always there. But a helpful reframe could also be the idea that anxiety is a habit. And the good news is: habits are something we can break. We’ll learn about how to recognize these habits and change them, especially at work.
In this episode Morra speaks with Dr. Judson Brewer, author of “Unwinding Anxiety” and journalist Charles Duhigg, author of “The Power of Habit” as well as the new book “Supercommunicators.”
Check out Jud’s book here:
https://www.amazon.com/Unwinding-Anxiety-Science-Shows-Cycles/dp/0593330447
You can find Charles’ books here:
https://www.amazon.com/Supercommunicators-Unlock-Secret-Language-Connection/dp/0593243919
https://www.amazon.com/Power-Habit-What-Life-Business/dp/081298160X/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= - Se mer