Elevating the Human Experience at Work
Guest Speaker Amelia DunlopIn this episode of WiseTalk, CEO and Executive Leadership Coach Sue Bethanis interviews Amelia Dunlop, author of Elevating the Human Experience: Three Paths to Love and Worth at Work. Amelia is the chief experience officer at Deloitte Digital and leader of the US Customer Strategy and Applied Design practice for Deloitte Consulting. Amelia speaks and publishes frequently on the topic of the human experience, strategy, and innovation. She received consulting Magazine’s Top woman in Technology Award for Excellence in Innovation in 2020 and she holds a degree in sociology from Harvard, a master’s in theology from Boston College, and an MBA from Cambridge University. She is enthusiastic about elevating the human experience and exploring how organizations can connect with the humans whom they call customers and employees.
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INTERVIEW SUMMARY AND KEY TAKEAWAYS
Working from home makes it difficult to stay connected and Amelia brings forward a larger conversation around how we need to connect on a deeper and more human level, going beyond strict professionalism, in any work setting. She advocates for promoting love and worth through creating positive work cultures that allow individuals to find meaning within their role and feel confident in their work.
Amelia offers three paths to creating this elevated human experience through Self, Others, and Community. She believes that love and worth have to begin at a personal level before they can be extended to those around you. She highlights the ways in which we can improve our own self-love and worth on an individual level through practices such as eliminating negative self-talk and speaking and taking action from a place of security rather than insecurity. The second path includes extending love and worthiness to others. The third path involves creating a safe space for everyone to show up as their authentic self and promote deeper human connection within a larger community.
Companies returning to in-person are still facing problems with connection because of masks and social distancing. Amelia offers that whether remote or hybrid, the main way to combat the lack of connection is to move forward with intention. To intentionally make new connections and maintain old ones by reaching out and checking in with those around you. Find ways to be more human and be more vulnerable within the workplace. Leadership plays a huge role in setting the tone for the rest of a company when it comes to connection. When leading from a place of authenticity, vulnerability, and humanness, others within the community will be able to show up as their authentic self and feel more valued.
Key takeaways from this talk include:
- Reflect on your inner dialogue and weed out the negative self-talk as a first step towards self-love. We would never speak to others as harshly as we speak to ourselves and eliminating that constant stream of negativity is something that can be learned and applied. (9:51) (33:50)
- Showing up authentically. Settings boundaries, and respecting others’ boundaries is a form of acknowledging their worth outside of their role. (20:31)
- Lead with vulnerability and humanize yourself as a leader. This sets the tone for those around you to show up in the same way, creating more worth, meaning, and connection in the workplace. (23:40)
- Extend kindness and compassion to those who may even be hard to work with. Humanize experiences and look at situations from a place of security where you can empathize with others. (38:28)
Through increased dialogue of love and worth, we can create a stronger sense of connection within our work community. Whether remote, hybrid, or in office, take simple steps to increase a sense of meaning and worthiness. It starts with showing up as authentic humans who all desire the same level of love and value in our work.
FAVORITE QUOTES
“I think we also have to be deliberately a little bit more human. So I often think about the idea that now is not all circumstances do we have to wear this professional mask anymore. We’ve seen into each other’s homes so, let’s not have that professional façade. Let’s actually acknowledge we’re human beings, you know, a kid could walk by at any point. Because that’s actually more normal than to think of people as the sort of robot workers in a corporate environment.” (16:15)
“Are there characteristics that lead to greater flourishing, greater love, or greater ability to show up at the heart? My hunch is that this is the kind of thing that does start at the top with the kind of leaders that are setting the tone. And that’s why I do believe a lot in humanizing leadership, and kind of leading with vulnerability, because I think if you set that tone, then you’re much more likely to get it back.” (23:40)
“Particularly for folks who are in those leadership positions, there’s a lot of power in leading with vulnerability and humanizing ourselves as leaders.” (23:40)
RESOURCES
Amelia Dunlop
Book: Elevating the Human Experience: Three Paths to Love and Worth at Work
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Sue Bethanis 0:01
Hi everybody, welcome to WiseTalk. This is Mariposa’s monthly podcast we provide perspectives on leadership. Today we’re excited to welcome Amelia Dunlop. She’s the author of the new book: Elevating the Human Experience: Three Paths to Love and Worth at Work. Amelia is the chief experience officer at Deloitte Digital and leader of the US Customer Strategy and Applied Design practice for Deloitte Consulting. She helps companies developing strategies that combine innovation, creativity, and digital strategy. She’s passionate about elevating the human experience and exploring how organizations can connect with the humans whom they call customers and employees. Amelia speaks and publishes frequently on the topic of the human experience, strategy, and innovation. She received consulting Magazine’s Top woman in Technology Award for Excellence in Innovation in 2020. She holds a degree in sociology from Harvard, a master’s in theology from Boston College and an MBA from Cambridge University. So gosh, thanks for being here. I know you’re doing a lot of these and to promote your book and it’s a pleasure to have you. And so I read your bio, tell us a little bit how you came to writing the book and how you came to this work?
Amelia Dunlop 1:12
Well, first of all, thanks for having me. So, let’s see, I guess maybe I would start by saying about four years ago, we set an aspiration to elevate the human experience. And I’ll tell you Sue, we didn’t really know what that meant at the time. But we had this, this sense that it was more than just about showing up as a customer, or showing up as an employee, that there was a much more human way to show up. And that a lot of organizations that somehow kind of forgotten that. So, we just had this idea of really focusing on what would better look like, what could we do to make each experience a little bit more human, a little bit better. And that’s kind of what started this whole role around, sort of being a chief experience officer, and then led to the book of the same name, Elevating the Human Experience. But I would say that, as you probably know that there’s a lot of me in this book, because I felt like if we’re going to talk about what it means to have a human experience, not only do I want it to be well researched, but I felt like it had to be a bit more personal and a bit more. I feel like I put a lot of my own sort of vulnerability and life story in the book as well.
Sue Bethanis 2:17
That’s great. Yeah, there’s definitely some great stories in there. So the book is called Elevating the Human Experience: Three Paths to Love and Worth at Work. I want to hear from you a little bit about how you define love and how you define worth. And as you’re talking about that, I just want to say I think it’s great you’re talking about it. I think that talking about love at work is not something we normally do and if there’s ever a time in our lifetimes, we should be talking about it…It’s probably right now. So, talk to us a bit how you just start defining those two terms, and we’ll move from there.
Amelia Dunlop 2:57
Yeah, no, I’d be happy to. So, I mean, I agree that even just using the word love and worth at work feels a little bit risky, a little bit provocative. But I felt like, first of all, I wanted to be deliberately provocative and talk about love and worth. Because when I thought about writing a book, I wanted to make sure it’s a topic that I would want to spend that much time with and would be that meaningful. I mean, I’m a strategist, I’m an innovator. I’m a marketer, but I thought about, what would I actually want to spend 200 pages with. And for me, that felt like the fundamental human need to feel loved and to feel worthy, even when we show up at work, I felt like it was really important. So that’s a little bit about the why, in terms of how I think about the definition of love, I feel like it goes back to the Greek word eudaimonia, where the Greeks have seven different words to our one for the word love. And eudaemonia really means flourishing, and who wouldn’t want to flourish in the context of our work. And so, then for the definition that I use in the book, also built on Erich Fromm back in the 1950s, he talked in The Art of Loving. So, I define love as the choice that we make to extend ourselves for either our own or another’s growth. It’s very kind of growth oriented towards this idea of flourishing. So that’s how I think about love. And the reason, one of the things I like about it is with that definition, you can go like oh, right, love is present at work, right? We don’t necessarily talk about it as much, but what would it look like for us to make it more present and kind of more kind of part of our normal discourse? And the worth part of that, I did some research with 6000 people in the United States across all different sort of walks of life and all different types of employment. And there’s many things that we learned, but the thing that most surprised me was that 9 out of 10 people said to them, that it mattered to feel worthy, but about half, myself included, so struggle at times to feel worthy, particularly in the work context. So, you’re kind of like, wait a second, if it’s so important to us, and it matters so much, why are we struggling? And so, I call that gap, the worthiness gap. It’s really just the this idea of intrinsic worth, which is before we do or say anything, that we have that fundamental kind of human need to feel like we are seen, we are valued, and we are heard.
Sue Bethanis 5:24
Mm hmm. Yeah, I mean, feeling worthy at work, it’s got to be top one or two or three, for sure, in terms of why people stay or go.
Amelia Dunlop 5:40
Actually, the reason I’m nodding and smiling, because we all know that whether you want to call it the great resignation, or the great reflection or whatever it is, we are all really thinking pretty hard. Yeah, right, about the fact that we work now more than any other culture and more than any other time in history. And now it seems like, you know, not just working from home, but living at work. And so, we want our work to mean something and we want to feel like it’s a place where we can feel loved and worthy. I do think it’s a timely conversation.
Sue Bethanis 6:13
I think, having meaning at work, and it’s certainly different from worthy, but I think they’re tied. Finding meaning is going to be tied to being feeling worthy. Yes or No?
Amelia Dunlop 6:27
No, it’s true. I reflected a lot on that in the book, too. And there’s a little anecdote that I love that I can share with you, which is my daughter, who at the time was eight years old, I was putting her to bed one night, and she said, you know, Mama, what is the meaning of life? My first thought was like, okay, hold on, what shows are people watching on Netflix, that you have these like big life questions when you’re eight years old? Right? Like, clearly, I gotta monitor your consumption of media at this point. And then my other thought was like, okay, well, you know, this is one of those parenting moments, right? This really matters, don’t F this one up, right. But I just said to her that I feel like the question of a meaningful life is, you know, worth living your life to answer, but I can tell you my answer is the meaning is found through connecting with people who we love, who love us.
Sue Bethanis 7:33
Oh, my god, that’s exactly my answer too. I just say my answer is connection. That’s my answer. Yeah, I love it. Okay, great.
Amelia Dunlop 7:39
And so, we can find connection to ourselves, we can find connection to another being to a higher purpose to meaningful work, yeah, there’s something about connectedness that is where I think we find meaning. And so we can find absolutely a lot of meaning in the work that we do.
Sue Bethanis 7:53
Right? So your book, you mentioned, there’s 6,000 people that you interviewed, or did research with?
Amelia Dunlop 8:02
It was a quantitative study of 6,000. And then we also did ethnographic interviews for about 30 people in depth.
Sue Bethanis 8:07
Ok great. So tell us about the data. We can start with self-love and self-worth modeling. I’m gonna start with those. And what does the data tell us?
Amelia Dunlop 8:19
Well, I had hypotheses going in about what I expected to find in terms of differences between men and women and differences between different kind of intersecting identities. One of the things I was surprised by, is that there wasn’t actually that big a difference in the need to feel loved, or the need to feel worthy between men and women, for example. So I had anticipated there might have been, but there really wasn’t. But the places where the data did show some things that I thought were pretty interesting were in the ability to speak to ourselves with words of kindness, and the self-love as you talked about it. And that’s where I was definitely surprised that people who identified as Black or African American were far more likely to have this language of self-love and this language of sort of self-kindness than any other kind of racial identity groups. And you know, I had to dig into that one, because it was a little counterintuitive. And so when I did the ethnographic interviews, and I spoke to a number of people, they told me that in a world that may not be reinforcing that you are lovable, and you are worthy, and kind of handing you more and more and more privileges. If you don’t have that voice of self-love and self-kindness. You’re not going to get it from anywhere else. I feel like we can learn a lot.
Sue Bethanis 9:36
I mean, you could write a whole book on that. That people who are more self-loathing is almost a privileged position to do that. Yeah, I see. I see that. That’s actually really interesting.
Amelia Dunlop 9:51
But it’s also I think, for me, it demonstrated that it’s learnable, right? I mean, so even having this conversation, I say this at some point in my book that the idea that you would say, “Hey Sue, how was your weekend?” And you’d say, “Well, you know, it was good. I spent some time figuring out how to love myself.” It’s like, no, that’s weird, right? We don’t talk about that. We don’t talk about teaching our children, what does it mean to love yourself? What does it mean to be proud of yourself and not need all these external validations? In order to feel okay, right.
Sue Bethanis 10:22
Great. That’s awesome. Um, before we get into how this is related to COVID, and the pandemic, and hybrid and the great resignation, and all those things. I want to just give the foundation for you if you talk about three paths to love, and worth. And so talk about those three paths, self, another, and community. And then we’ll get into how it’s applied to the now.
Amelia Dunlop 10:48
Absolutely. So I will say, what my training – I have a master’s in theology – and I did a lot of work with Hegel, and his whole sort of school of thought, but so it’s three paths. Because I really, truly believe that the first path is when we walk alone, right, we live inside our heads, we have the voice inside our heads that may or may not be kind to us and may or may not be loving. And so there’s actually a lot of work I know, I had to do, I continue to do, and many of us have to do about the narratives that we tell and the stories that we tell ourselves before anyone shows up and says something negatively or positively on our behalf. So it’s the work we do for ourselves to feel loved and worthy. Then the second path is that journey of another where we have friends, mentors, sponsors, and benefactors, and we are those things to other people. And how can we more consciously build those connections so that we see in another, the worth that they see in themselves, and that I talk about as mirrored worth, where we can play it back to another person very consciously as an ally. And then that third path is the whole community of work, where we’re going to come across hundreds of thousands of people who we may or may not have deep interactions with every day, but how do we create those spaces where people feel like they can show up with our authentic selves.
Sue Bethanis 12:15
In thinking about those three paths, let’s really focus. We’ll get people to participate here in a second. But I want to talk a little bit about hybrid and remote work. And I mean, any of it really we can talk about, but there’s sort of two things going on right now there’s a lot of people that are in my world, in tech, that aren’t going back to work yet. And there’s this, this waiting thing, like things are gonna be going back to normal at some point, we keep pushing back the dates, which we’re gonna keep pushing back the dates for a long time, I think. Because it’s going to be a pandemic for a while, it’s going to become an epidemic, and it’s not going to go away, because we can’t get enough herd immunity essentially. So given that, we’re going to be in what you’re in, a lot of us, where you can go into the office sometimes. And in your case, at Deloitte, you’ve got to be vaccinated in New York, and there’s still gonna be some of that going on. There’s also the connection issues with that, because even if you’re in the office, you still have your mask on some of the times and some people don’t, you’re still on Zoom. So there’s that situation, then there’s also the situation of people just going to be on zoom all the time, or whatever video, all the time. So both those situations are problematic as far as connection. So talk about this, here we are trying to talk about love and worth. And they were talking about like, the ways we were connecting human to human in real life have now been essentially thrown out. So talk a little bit about that phenomenon.
Amelia Dunlop 13:58
Well, what I’ll say is I actually, a couple of years ago, Sue, I actually wrote an article on something that I called, at the time human experience debt. And it was this idea that we have technical debt, in our organizations where we have these old legacy systems, and we have to pay down that debt. Or we have financial debt, where we all know what that’s like, both as a country and as an individual. But I think we have also been developing this human experience debt where we create a piece of technology, we use an AI because we can. And it takes a little while to think through like, “Oh, what’s the fullness of the implications of the experience of what it means to be human when we use all this technology?” And the example I like to give is a very simple one, but when we all have these virtual assistants in our homes, and our children are barking orders to this device, and I’m kind of pointing are they learning what it means to say please and thank you? Do they have a more human interaction in terms of how they get there needs satisfied? And so there’s very subtle ways in which really thinking about how are we creating more or less human connectedness. Then you kind of flash forward to kind of where we are now. And you’re not asking me to predict the future, but if I do kind of look ahead about it, I think what we’re all in right now is just a period of intentionality, right? Where if you want to see a loved one, if you want to see a friend, if you want to see a colleague, you have to be pretty intentional about it. Where you’re going to meet, where do they feel safe meeting? What are the protocols? So I think we have to be very intentional. And I think the hardest part with the intentionality is the new relationships. It’s much easier to maintain a relationship digitally or by phone than it is to make a new one. And so I found particularly in the workplace, actually just I did three just today, very short 20 or 30 minute conversations where it would have been a hallway chat, it would have been a kitchen chat, it would have been coffee chat, where I just try to kind of connect with and get to know people, even though we’re not going to bump into each other ever. Right. So I think we do have to be more intentional is one thing.
Sue Bethanis 16:14
I think that’s a great point. Yeah.
Amelia Dunlop 16:15
We play it forward. I think we also have to be deliberately a little bit more human. So I often think about the idea that now in not all circumstances do we have to wear this professional mask anymore. So we’ve seen into each other’s homes. So, let’s not have that professional facade, let’s actually acknowledge we’re human beings, you know, a kid could walk by at any point. Because that’s actually more normal than to think of people as the sort of robot workers in a corporate environment.
Sue Bethanis 16:46
Right, people’s humanity, like the Amazon person is gonna come any minute here, right?
Amelia Dunlop 16:50
Yeah, no, exactly. So we have a lot more empathy for that. Yeah. And then I guess my final thing is just that if I pay it forward, I do think that this format, where we can see each other digitally is just one of the variations of what we’ll have. I mean, the next one, obviously, is we’re going to have this conversation in the metaverse right? Where my avatar will be speaking to your avatar. What’s that human experience gonna look like? And I hope we don’t have all of our meetings in the metaverse. But it’ll be an option. Right? And what does that look like?
Sue Bethanis 17:17
I think it’s gonna be here, before we know it two years will be in virtual. Yeah.
Amelia Dunlop 17:22
So that’s my predicting the future. But the kind of the video aspect as well as the metaverse will be just other modes and other channels, but they won’t entirely replace the need to get together in person on occasion.
Sue Bethanis 17:35
Right? So we can talk about the kids because you have a 15 year old and 13 and I have a15. So we’re in the same boat as far as like, what’s happening with them. But I want to talk about this idea of not bumping into each other. So we’ve written and we’ve spent a lot of time talking about the virtual water cooler. And the idea of lingering and like being intentional about like picking up the phone, or even slacking somebody right after a big meeting. So you’re trying to walk your person to the next meeting, even though you can’t, right, this idea of lingering. I’d like you to comment on that in terms of in terms of how we, as a way to stay connected, and what are some other ways we can be intentional, and how do we get people to be intentional?
Amelia Dunlop 18:26
Yeah, well, first of all, I love the idea of lingering, right. And it’s a great way to put it because does it imply a certain kind of human aspect of, the meeting is over, right? Like the content or the show or whatever it was has happened. So first of all, just I love the idea of lingering and what does it mean to kind of create more lingering in our lives. So that’s a good thing to reflect on. I’m trying to think. I don’t know, I feel like lingering is the hardest thing to do digitally, right? Because your eyes hurt. Like your voice hurts, speaking at a computer all day, like you don’t actually want to linger. So I don’t know if there’s a way that kind of, as you pointed out, sometimes you’d like to keep the chat going and you’d just drop two words in the chat for how you’re feeling right now. Right? Like, it’s better than nothing. Right? But it’s not the exact same, you know, as grabbing a coffee and walk into the next meeting together. Right?
Sue Bethanis 19:30
Yeah, or I think that people need to start thinking about the phone more. Like literally a hey, let me catch on the phone, can you call me right before we are going to the next meeting? I mean, I’m doing that a lot. Like I’m in the car, I’m always on the phone and just catching up with people. I have one client who said hey, in anticipating this idea of phone can we do our calls while I walk in my backyard, and she’s got a forest. And yeah, walking meetings and on the phone, of course, you know, so she asked for it. I’m like, of course we can. And so that’s a little bit different. I’m just wondering about whether people would do the pick up the phone after the Zoom meeting? I don’t think they do, because they’re on to the next meeting. So you have to have the, you know, 10 to 10:50 kind of meeting so you do have a little bit of time between.
Amelia Dunlop 20:31
Well, there’s that I mean I wonder if others have this experience of at some point, there’s the side chat overload, right. So like, let’s say, you know, you and I are in this very important meeting, there might be Skype going, there might be the Zoom chat going, there might be texts going, there’s still emails going. And at some point, as humans, it’s literally too much to process. Yeah, we’ve gotten to like peak efficiency or maximum efficiency, and we can’t sustain it. So I feel like both in this conversation about digital, but also in the conversation about showing up authentically and with love, we need to also talk about a conversation about boundaries. So I feel like it’s really important to, you know, to acknowledge that love in the workplace doesn’t mean you give things that you can’t afford to give, right. And it also means creating kind of clarity around
Sue Bethanis 21:20
Reciprocity too.
Amelia Dunlop 21:23
Yeah and also just boundaries around, I find, you know, with the working from home and the digital, being really clear about when you will or won’t take meetings, and actually following through with it, right. People might be surprised like, Well, no, no, actually not available. This is the time I spend with my children, or I’m not available, this is when I’m working out. And I think we have to honor each other’s boundaries. But also be clear about what they are.
Sue Bethanis 21:48
Yeah well I think part of the issue is that, one of the main reasons why this has been so difficult for people to transition, and they’re so burned out from Zoom is because there weren’t boundaries in the first place. So now, there were no boundaries at first, so now we’re trying to have boundaries around. I had six zoom meetings yesterday. And it was like, Oh, I could tell how burnt out I was from it. And that’s just six, which is by far the most I would do per day. I’m going on vacation days so I’m like, trying to get everything in, right. And like most people we work with have 8-10 hours of zoom.
Amelia Dunlop 22:25
Yeah, 10 hours of zoom about 16 different calls a day.
Sue Bethanis 22:29
Yeah, being able to process that is just is mind blowing. So yeah, there is boundaries. I was interviewing someone the other day, she’s sitting down getting texts, and I’m getting things from the boss at, you know, 10 o’clock at night. And you know, they shouldn’t feel obligated to answer it, but they do. So I mean, I don’t think we could do what Portugal does. I don’t think we’ll ever be able to do that. You know, they just instituted like, you can’t hear from your work after like eight o’clock or something. Yeah. And I was like, wow, that’s pretty cool. That’s pretty interesting. Let me stop a second. We’re about halfway. And we have a couple people on the call, who might want to ask a few questions, or just be involved in the conversation. Okay, so the people that are on the call, anybody want to jump in here?
Guest 1 23:14
Hi Sue, Amelia, thanks so much for all this great information. And you know, kind of love or I think sometimes people talk about heart. Right, kind of revealing their heart or even noticing that themselves have a heart? Are there some cultures that make that easier or harder? Some company or organizational culture that makes it harder or easier?
Amelia Dunlop 23:40
Oh, wow. I mean, I feel like that would be like a good research question for another book about comparing the two. But I would definitely affirm, Michael, the point around equal parts head and heart. And I felt like that was something for me, that was a really big learning that I kind of shared in the book that it’s almost like if you’re just engaging people’s heads, they’re running at half speed. But only when we kind of engage people’s hearts, with whatever it is that they might be passionate about, do we have that full potential to flourish. So I definitely believe that, I guess I’m trying to think about are there characteristics that lead to greater flourishing or greater love, greater ability to kind of show up at the heart? My hunch is that this is the kind of thing that does start at the top with the kind of the leaders that are setting the tone. And that’s why I do believe a lot in humanizing leadership, and kind of leading with vulnerability, because I think if you set that tone, then you’re much more likely to get it back then, you know, leaders who make it seem like they’re perfect, and everything that everything around them is perfect. It’s much harder to measure up to that right. So then we feel like we can’t show up with our authentic selves. So I think, particularly for folks who might be listening who are in those leadership positions, there’s a lot of power in leading with vulnerability and humanizing ourselves as leaders.
Guest 1 25:01
Yeah, if I can just follow up to your talk about worth really struck me, there’s a woman that I work with that’s in a very tough culture I would say, a company I hadn’t heard of before, but turns out is a global zillion dollar real estate type of company. And I don’t want to overgeneralize, obviously, but I think real estate is kind of tough.
Amelia Dunlop 25:22
In terms of specific cultures, I mean, I imagine Financial Services is particularly or yeah.
Guest 1 25:27
And so she feels unworthy some days, and I just really wanted to appreciate you highlighting, kind of saying to me, or to other coaches or consultants, yes, worthiness, let’s really be okay about talking about that and focusing on that. I think sometimes people get a message in some cultures; we pay you a lot of money. That’s enough. Now, back to work.
Sue Bethanis 25:54
A lot of people like, suck it up, because they’ve been getting paid so much.
Amelia Dunlop 25:58
Yeah, I mean, one thing that you kind of put your finger on too, is the role and value that a coach or a mentor could have in helping people to feel worthy, but also to cultivate their own sense of worthiness, right, particularly when you’re in an environment that is really not supportive, because we’ve all been there, right? And we can talk about it from also from the perspective of different intersecting identities, if you are in an environment where you are black, brown, gay, you know, fill in the blank, and you feel like that is not supported.
Guest 1 26:31
She’s an Asian American female, born outside the states with an accent.
Amelia Dunlop 26:38
Right. Right. And I think just making it more discussable, that if you’re not sort of measuring up to what is considered to be the kind of normal and the kind of corporate environment that there’s always going to be those questions of, am I worthy? Do I belong here? One of the things also in the research that we found was really interesting about the extent to which people feel like they’re spoken over in meetings, and how the interesting thing there was for men and women, it was actually about the same, the more junior they were, you know, 18 to 24. It was about the same, like, okay, that’s interesting. It’s not just a female thing, right? It’s not men and women would have it equally. But what was interesting is that the likelihood to be spoken over for men dropped around age 35. But for women, it doesn’t drop until age 55.
Sue Bethanis 27:26
That’s interesting. That’s really interesting data.
Amelia Dunlop 27:29
And it goes back to you want to be heard. Yeah. To what extent do you feel like, in particular with an accent, do you feel like your voice is heard or not?
Guest 1 27:36
Thank you so much.
Guest 2 27:38
Boy, um, I’ve got so many thoughts about all of this, gettin older and reflecting on life. And here’s just some thoughts whether you agree with that or not, you know, again, I’m a corporate psychologist, I believe, over the years working with a lot of people that most people don’t have high self-worth. You know, they don’t, and I think a lot of that is because of what we’re talking about in this because you don’t have time to kind of catch your breath and just be with yourself, you know. So what I talked in my own life, okay, I feel sometimes I’m kind of the gentle provocateur. I’m not in people’s faces, but I come up with, some, maybe some different take on things. And so a lot of my clients, I’m not seeing that many people right now. But I’m really talking mostly about love. And I bring it into almost every conversation, you know, hopefully, appropriately, and so many people are receptive to it. And I have had CEOs, because our relationship and the trust, tell me that they love me. And I don’t frame it so much is like, you know, it’s almost like it’s got to be caring, or it’s got to be empathy. I did a workshop in the wine country one time, and someone said, Oh, the L word. You know, like, somehow it was the F word.
Amelia Dunlop 28:53
It feels like it can be very loaded. I get that.
Guest 2 28:58
Yeah. And a couple other real brief thoughts, too, is years ago, again, I was doing these stress workshops all over the world. And I got invited to Sorbonne, Paris to do this workshop on how to overcome insomnia, the workshop guaranteed to put you to sleep because I was working with so many clients, you know, who still had a huge problem sleeping. After the workshop, I went to this restaurant, I think it was before I was married. And I just observed and I thought this is really amazing. People are sitting and savoring their meal. Nobody’s running off to the next the next gig, you know, the waiters not coming up and we need the seat. It was a time of what’s called the French paradox was but the wine is curative for people. So I won’t go into all of this. But what I’ve come up with, you know, is basically that other cultures and certainly when I was in France that time is people work to live and we live to work here. I mean, that is what this whole conversation seems to.
Amelia Dunlop 29:56
Oh, absolutely. I mean, it’s there. It is absolutely true that we do. Probably the US labor statistics, we work more than any other culture and more than any other time in history. What is that doing?
Guest 2 30:07
On the happiness scale we are way on the bottom. You know, right?
Amelia Dunlop 30:09
Yeah. So that’s why I feel like taking the time to, you know, cultivate self-love, cultivate self-worth, understand the difference between self-love and self-care. Even like, there’s the whole industry around self-care, you can get yourself a haircut, take a bubble bath, and still not feel self-love, right? Like self-care is not the same thing as self-love.
Guest 1 30:33
Can I ask about what’s the main way that they’re different? I’m sorry, what’s the one main way that self-love and self-care are different?
Amelia Dunlop 30:41
So self-care the way I think about it, this is my perspective and I share it in the book, the way I think about self-care is these are the acts you do to look after sort of the necessities, right, whether it’s grooming, haircut, exercise, nutrition, these are sort of things that you can do, but that actually cultivating self-love is consciously speaking to yourself with words of kindness. And, and so it’s more than just the kind of those acts of self-care. It’s that conscious, you’re loving yourself like you would a friend.
Sue Bethanis 31:16
I want to pick up on that. When I was reading, talking about self-care, I was including emotional and, and physical. I think that when you’re talking about your emotional self-care, you have to be talking to yourself. Just like there’s that’s part of it. Right? I like the distinction that there’s a there is a difference. I like it. Do you have anything else you want to share?
Guest 2 31:38
Yeah, I was gonna say the most important conversation, everybody talks about all these conversations with other people. But I really believe that the most important conversation, which is exactly what Amelia said, is the loving, kind, compassionate conversation that you have with yourself each day. And most people don’t do this. So how could you have self-worth if you think you’re a schlep? Everybody’s better, comparing yourself to everybody else? Yeah, I wake up each day, and just a mirror. “It’s a great day, I love you,” you know, I don’t go to bed going, “Oh, my God, you know, your life sucks or something?” So I think a lot of it has to do with your self-talk. And what I talk about, you talk about lingering, in my own being with clients, or whoever I talk about a sacred pause, and I talk about, it’s not this thing: I don’t have time, I don’t have time. Well, I have a one-minute meditation, you can take a breath. Don’t get into these arguments, about I don’t have time I’m running off to the next meeting. You can close your eyes for a second. And you can take a breath. Yeah.
Sue Bethanis 32:38
Very cool. Thank you. I’m, it’s great to see you. And thank you for your contributions and questions. So alright, so I want to pick up on this, Amelia about the self-love and self-talk. So I mean, we’ve been talking this whole time, gosh it’s been 40 minutes, about these concepts, and we’re pretty much in the same in the same boat on it. I want us to be more specific, even tactical around, alright, so somebody should be more kind to themselves. A lot of people get caught up in being an imposter. The imposter syndrome is alive and well, especially now. Let’s counter that and talk about how do we be kind to ourselves? What do we say to ourselves and not feel weird about it? How do we show that compassion, and sometimes it’s a reframe of the negative, we’re talking about the negative self-talk. And sometimes it’s a what I tell my clients is neutralizing the con, it’s neutralizing things. So that it’s like whatever is right now. And it’s okay, that that’s not really positive or negative. It’s more like just that’s what’s going on right now. That’s a very Buddhist way of doing it. So I do accept. Yeah, it’s acceptance. So I’d like to hear from you on some ideas around that.
Amelia Dunlop 33:50
I would say a couple of things. And I want to come back to this idea of the imposter syndrome. So let’s come back to that. But so I think, in terms of very practically, from a self-love and self-talk perspective, this the idea of the inner critic, and we all, I think, talk to ourselves in a way that’s way more critical than we would ever to a colleague, somebody we didn’t even really like, when you add like a child and somebody or someone who love and you just think like my inner critic still used to call me foolish girl. And I don’t think I would ever say that to another woman at work or any other any person. But like, why is it acceptable for my self-talk to be that negative? So I feel like that one of the first things we can do is really tackle that, like just listen to how you’re talking to yourself what tone you use, write it down even. Yeah, is this how your inner voice sound like? And the other thing I find is really funny is if you think about it, the words that we should tell ourselves, we think that they’re true, just because we recognize our own voice, right? It’s like “Oh, like that must be true because I thought it” and so one of the things I often try to do is challenge myself almost deliberately and you always have to feel this kind of grinding the gears What if the exact opposite is also possibly true? And so I find that one of the things I try to do is I know exactly what insecurity sounds like and feels like inside my head. But what might the opposite start to sound like? What would I sound like? What would I say? What would I think? What would I do if I was acting out of security, not insecurity? And it’s been kind of a fascinating little like, personal like science experiment, Sue, because when I act out of security, even if I don’t necessarily feel it in that moment, it’s like, oh, well, security would sound like this, the results I get back are way better than if I acted out of insecurity.
Sue Bethanis 35:34
What are some actual self-talks of security that you that you use?
Amelia Dunlop 35:37
So insecurity is this person hasn’t texted me back in two days. They must not like me. Security is “hey, I haven’t heard back from you, I guess you don’t have time to connect right now.” Right? And you have empathy for the fact that like, you don’t know, like, that person could have lost their phone, they could be, you know, suddenly, caught up in a huge kind of work commitment. So at least for me, the first reaction is like, they’re not responding, right? Or, you know my email got lost like that. And so I think security has to do with the…you know what, maybe it’s okay to extend the grace, that your email, may have gotten lost, or the text may not have gotten responded to, and to almost just to kind of flip it to invert it, as opposed to, they’re not responding to me, or taking it really personally.
Sue Bethanis 36:34
I was just going through all my books last week, and there’s an affirmation book, so this self-love and self-talk that’s positive is a lot about affirmation. Do you have a particular practice that you do, or you teach others? I mean, so this is part of affirmations, part meditation. I mean, I don’t really care what we call it. Yeah, just sit in the actual content of like, what is it that we’re saying to each other?
Amelia Dunlop 37:05
Yeah, I mean, the thing that I do, and I share in my book is just it’s you mentioned a Buddhist, it’s the loving kindness prayer. And it’s just the meditation. May you be happy, may you be at peace, may your heart be full of love. So if there’s any tweaks or variations on it, but the idea of some practice around loving kindness is important.
Sue Bethanis 37:33
You say your version? And I’ll say mine, it’s almost similar.
Amelia Dunlop 37:38
So it’s May you be happy, May you be safe, may you be at peace, and may your heart be full of love.
Sue Bethanis 37:44
Nice. Mine is May you be happy, may you be healthy, may you be safe. May you live with ease, and may you be free. And the free one is, the last one is, you know, the hardest, especially right now. With our pandemic that’s creating lots of boundaries. But there’s some formula, there’s no right answer here. It’s like, it’s, it’s the idea of May I be happy. May I be safe. And then and then I say it for others. Yeah, I’ll say May Allison be happy. May Allison be safe. And then I say it with the people that I’m having a hard time with. Right? It’s not just the people that are my, you know, my go to’s.
Amelia Dunlop 38:28
No, and I think you’re right. I mean, that’s absolutely important, because it’s easy to love the people who are easy to love. And it takes a cultivated practice to love people. And also to acknowledge that, even if you’re in a sort of a challenging situation, you know, with someone at work, they are, you know, son to some father, father to some son, and it just humanizes people to be like, Okay, well, they might not deliberately be trying to be annoying to you personally. So that humanizes, and I love your reminder that we can extend loving kindness to them as well.
Sue Bethanis 39:05
Right? You said you wanted to come back to the imposter syndrome. So what did you want to say about that?
Amelia Dunlop 39:09
Oh, what I want to say about that is I sometimes I get asked about that and the relationship to kind of worth and I do not believe in the imposter syndrome. And there’s a really wonderful article that was written in Harvard Business Review, and I should, at this point, know the name of the of the author’s, but I think they just really brilliant job of pointing out that first of all it’s not a syndrome, it’s not medical. So like, let’s stop calling it that. Second of all, it was a completely manufactured mostly or to make for women. And, and just my, my one, my objective would be to just like, eradicate that from the dialogue and say, instead of talking about, “oh, Sue, I think you’re suffering from the imposter syndrome.” Like, why don’t we flip that and say, “Hey, what would it look like for you to feel more worthy and more loved? What can you do for you to develop that practice? Who were the allies around you to help cultivate to kind of help mirror back your worth, and feel like you’re in an environment that was, you know, let you show up authentically” like it’s just a different conversation then say you suffer from the imposter syndrome.
Sue Bethanis 40:11
Right? Right. I think that’s great. I think that I just love this idea of how we can find more love, more worth and more meaning in the workplace. Because it’s not like the workplace is over here. And then life’s over here. I mean, everything’s integrated, especially now. So I really, really appreciate you being here. There’s a lot of great overarching concepts. And also, certainly specifics about loving kindness, I think are really important. So appreciate you a lot for being here and for taking the time. Thank you. Yeah. And you can get a hold of Amelia with her website, ameliadunlop.com. Her book is: Elevating the Human Experience: Three Paths to Love and Worth at Work. You can also find her LinkedIn and you can also find her at Deloitte. Thank you again.
Amelia Dunlop 41:00
Thank you so much.