The Price of Nice: Why Comfort Keeps Us Stuck and Growing up in Guam with Amira Barger

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Www.betterhelp.com difference to get 10% off your first month today. Welcome to the A World of Difference podcast. I'm Lori Adams Brown, and this is a podcast for those who are different and want to make a difference. You know that feeling when you're in a meeting and something just doesn't sit right with you? Maybe it's unfair, maybe it's exclusionary, or maybe it's just wrong.

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But you don't say anything. You smile, you nod, you stay quiet. Because speaking up feels risky. Because you don't want to make waves. Because you've been taught that being nice is more important than being honest.

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Yeah, we need to talk about that. Welcome to A World of Difference. I'm Laurie Adams Brown, and today we're having a conversation that might make you a little uncomfortable. Which is exactly the point. Because that point of being uncomfortable is where learning can take place.

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We open our minds and our hearts to this new thing that's coming our way. My guest is Amira Barger, and she spent two decades counseling Fortune 500 companies, teaching the next generation of leaders, and asking one deceptively simple question. What is all this niceness actually costing us? Amira grew up on the island of Guam, and she'll tell you that gave her a different lens on American workplace culture. Not just because she grew up swimming without shoes, but one where she could see that many of us can't see, that our obsession with comfort, with not rocking the boat, with being nice instead of being real, it's not just holding us back.

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It's causing harm. And it comes at a cost to humans, to business, to organizations, to governments. In her forthcoming book, the Price of Nice, Amira doesn't just critique this culture. She gives us a roadmap out of it. And Today she's going to share stories that will make you see your own workplace differently.

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Stories about sacred cows no one dares to question. About lunch tables where power is traded like currency, and about vacation hair. That moment that taught her what it really costs to play along. This conversation is for anyone who's ever felt that tension between fitting in and standing up, between being liked and being honest, between comfort and change. So take a deep breath, get comfortable or uncomfortable.

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Either way, let's dive in.

00:03:19
Hi, Amira. I'm really so excited, excited for this conversation. I've really been looking forward to it. I'm excited to get to know you better. And just the way your perspective has been brought into the work that you do.

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And so many times when we have people on the podcast who've lived in multiple places, just that transition to a new culture gives you this sort of outside perspective. And it's such a valuable perspective that we all need. And so I'm really excited to get to know you. So a very warm welcome to the show today. Thank you for having me.

00:03:49
I appreciate it and I love these conversations. It's so interesting, all the people you meet and the conversations, where they go. So thanks for having me. Yeah, well, I'm excited to see where this goes. You know, you were raised on Guam.

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You're not the first person on the show to have ever lived in Guam. Love that. But I know, but I really, I just have an appreciation for just the island life and the way it can be so different from a very fast paced Bay Area where we both are now. But I'd love to know, you know, being raised on Guam, what brought, and you brought some, you know, some global perspective into the Bay Area, which already has that, but it doesn't always have some of the nuances. And it's, I mean, my experience has been, I've been a little bit surprised how still there's a lot of assimilation type culture here.

00:04:34
So you bring this, what you call a global perspective, some people might say global mindset to the work that you do. And so how is that island upbringing, this very warm culture, shaped the way you see this mainland American workplace culture, especially one of the extreme versions of it here in Silicon Valley, especially particularly around niceness and conflict avoidance. Yeah, you know, I grew up in a very small place. Guam is 30 miles long, 8 miles wide, and at the time I was there is about a hundred thousand people. And so I think it's 150 now.

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I always go back to even being here in the, in big California to how to build community. Because that's exactly what I grew up around, is you're in relationship with people, and there is a lot of reciprocity and mutuality. And that's built and baked into the culture that I grew up knowing in Guam is, you know, everybody takes care of everyone and cares for one another, even if you're not technically family or related. There's just a different way of moving through the world and care. And sometimes I think that just comes with being in a small place.

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And so I try to bring that into the work that I do even now is as I'm working with clients or moving through a corporation is how do I build community and relationship with the person who's right in front of me. There are things I want to know about you so I know how to interact with you, how to lead with you. It might change the context of how I ask questions of you and how we conduct the work that we're doing in communications or in healthcare. And so I will often, you know, try to start with relationship building. And there are some people who are a little more, like, task oriented and they want to get straight to the brass task of the project and the work.

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And I'm like, no, we need to visit and talk story first. Like, let's visit. I want to know who you are. And so I try to bring that into everything that I do. And I find that more times than not, people are open to it.

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People want connection and they want to know who they're working with and too. And so it's often very much welcome. And sometimes I get the surprised, like when you ask me how I was like, you, you actually meant it. Or we're, you know, we're starting with, you know, just friendly niceties and talking about life and each other's families. I'm like, yeah, that's.

00:06:48
That's how we should always start as. Oh, I totally relate to that. You know, I think years ago, I don't know how old I was when somebody sort of described the differences between these warm cultures and cold cultures of the world. And having grown up in the Caribbean, I certainly grew up warm culture collectivist, all that. And yet in my international school, my friends and teachers were from all over the world.

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And that language helped me understand. Oh, okay. That's why some people are so time oriented and other people are more laid back. You know, in the cold cultures of the world, you kind of have to prepare your land for food for the winter and put things in jars or whatever you do. And then there's always a mango on the tree in Venezuela and in Indonesia, where I lived or Singapore.

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Singapore is one of those odd places where Singapore has a cold culture, warm culture mix. So the Malay are the indigenous island people. And then you have immigration from years ago that came down from north up in China. So it's more cold culture. So those, those clashes happened all the time.

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They're funny sometimes, and then sometimes they get very heated because it's a phrase I was raised with, which is part of the title of the podcast for me is it's not weird or wrong. It's just different people. People live differently. And sometimes there are things in certain cultures that we could start to say, is that morally wrong? Generally speaking.

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But for the most part, it's not that way. It's just they live differently. So the warm greetings, the taking more time for that, it's just, it's my preferred way. But I've had to also be in culture shock and adjust. So let's talk about some of that.

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You say that every workplace has sacred cows. What do you mean by that? And why is it so important to challenge those sacred cows? Yeah, so I'm gonna do a lot of talking story with you as I grew up in the islands learning to do. But sacred cows, a less insensitive term would be darling systems.

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But sacred cows is the one we know. It's the colloquial term for rules, leaders, habits that we are told not to touch. You don't challenge, you don't disrupt. This is how it's always been. This is how it has to be.

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So for those who may not have heard the phrase, that's what it's referring to. And every workplace has them. And for me, way back when in our organization, I was with. We had one and it was our CEO. He was the whole sacred cow, the darling system in our organization.

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And he was beloved in the community. He was considered this visionary by many people who didn't know him well. But inside of our organization, for those of us who did know him well, he was a leader who dismissed feedback. You couldn't critique him. He would bristle at it.

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He surrounded himself with a lot of yes people. And where we failed as an executive team and also as our board of directors, who really had the power. We tiptoed around our CEO's ego for years. And it went so far as we would edit meeting notes so that they didn't sound too critical, because he would read back the recaps. I mean, it was a little ridiculous, the.

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The heavy lifting we were doing to protect this man's ego and feelings. And we would joke about it in private instead of addressing it directly. And we would tell ourselves, you know, pick your battles, stay in your lane, keep things comfortable. Just, just don't rock the boat. And then we had this big shot meeting coming up.

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So we were going to Jet Set from San Francisco to Washington D.C. and we had a meeting set up with several congresspeople, in particular Congresswoman Jackie Speier, who's our representative here. And this was one of those make or break kind of meetings and moments. And we were going there to make the rounds and try to secure $9 million in funding. And so our CEO, our executive team were in the congressperson's office. He finishes our pitch and our story and then he decides to drop this favorite catchphrase that he was known for.

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Like it was funny in events and speeches everywhere he could, he would find a way to work this in. And so he finishes our pitch and he says, well, Jackie, I don't know if I'm just sipping my own Kool Aid and I swear that the congresswomen, staff, people, their jaws were on the floor. My eyes were definitely bulging out of my head. And Marty, who was often someone who had the self awareness of a brick, did not realize this tidal wave of discomfort that he had just unleashed. And the congresswoman looks at him calmly and she just says, you know, you really shouldn't say that to me.

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And by the way, it was Flavor Aid, not Kool Aid. And so for any listeners who may not be familiar with Jackie Sphere, I see you nodding, so I know that you are. That phrase sipping my own Kool Aid is in reference to the Jonestown Massacre. And in the 70s called. Congresswoman Speier was an aide to her congressperson and she was there.

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And they were doing a visit that day and several people were harmed, including her. She was shot several times and survived. And the Jonestown massacre, that was 900 people, a mass unaliving, and they drank a cyanide laced beverage. Flavor Aid, not Kool Aid. In that moment I was just thinking to myself, meeting over, funding lost.

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Please get me out of here. This is the height of embarrassment. I've never experienced a moment like this in my career. I cannot believe this is happening. Please tell me I am being punked or I'm in a movie because what just happened?

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And so it wasn't just his mistake, it was ours as I think back on it. And our board of directors, we hadn't corrected him for years, built a culture and a set of norms and behaviors. We didn't coach him to drop the phrase. We prioritized our comfort and playing nice over the kind of accountability and truth telling that you need in a leadership team when you're responsible for so many people and things in the world. And that's what happens when comfort becomes the culture, when safety is silence, not honesty, and when everyone is performing instead of practicing candor.

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And I think as leaders, it behooves us to practice truth telling and not being silent or letting things fall to the wayside because it feels too risky or too much conflict or this is how we've always done it, or whatever the catchphrase of the day is. That doesn't serve progress and change that we need, and it doesn't serve our people and it doesn't serve us. That is a wild story. I just was there, right there with you in my mind. The way you painted the picture, it's just.

00:13:20
It's just honestly how. But I think that, you know, you experienced that in the past, and we're sitting here today under the geopolitical shifts that we have experienced in just this year alone. And the connection between D.C. and Silicon Valley is as strong or stronger than it's ever been in some very troubling ways. And we do have leaders that, you know, even though they may have boards and executive teams that are doing the exact same thing, it's a little more. With our social media, some of it's getting a little more obvious.

00:13:53
It's a little more out there for people who are sort of that way. And I. And they are. Obviously not everyone is that way in Silicon Valley. And I think that's one of the stereotypes that I really try hard to help people understand.

00:14:04
There are people like you and I sitting here. There's. There is diversity here. I mean, not everybody has these strong egos, and no one's keeping them in check. That's not true.

00:14:13
But it is true that there are those people. And I just recently left a role that I had been in for about two years and seven months in Fremont, the Fremont part of the Bay Area, which is right across the road from Tesla. And we know who has led that company. And the connection between him, Elon Musk, between Silicon Valley and D.C. is one of the prime examples of that. But we literally had cows behind our office, which is wild.

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I never imagined in Silicon Valley there would be cows, but when I brought my global team in last September, I just. I was like, okay, you're from Thailand and you're from the uk, But I'm going to take you behind our building and show you there's actual cows and a pasture here. And now that you say this, I'm never going to think of that without thinking of the sacred cows related to Tesla, related to everything here. Because it's so true. The connection, the visual.

00:15:03
Yes. These things get seared in your mind. And they do get seared in your mind. What a representation. Okay, well, I'd love for you to share, and I love stories too.

00:15:12
I. I feel like the art of storytelling is how I learned some of the warm culture languages that I learned. Indonesian in particular. Very storytelling oriented culture. I'd love for you to share the story of the Ladies who Lunch and what it revealed to you about how power and influence really operate in organizations. Yes.

00:15:30
So what people don't know is before I came back to, I was in corporate first, then I went to nonprofit. So I'm back in corporate now. But I spent about a decade in the nonprofit non governmental world as a professional communicator and fundraiser, trying to capture the resources that we needed to work with people in community, for healthcare and all the things that they needed. And so part of the disillusionment with leadership and organizations for me started when I encountered the Ladies who lunch, which at the time was a new phrase to me. I was like, what, what does that mean?

00:16:04
Everybody eats lunch. What's a lady who lunches? Am I a lady who lunches? And so unbeknownst to me, that phrase represented this sort of rarefied species. And at the time, I was working in Orange County, California, which is a very small place, a lot of dollars and wealth and a lot of new money.

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So there's definitely sort of a way of being in a type of people that I was experiencing with my fundraising, going to people, people who had money to give back to the community. And this was the sort of breed of philanthropists who live in country clubs and dining rooms and gala circuits. Some of them, their job is like being a chair of a gala. That's their regular. Like they're full time volunteers and they just put on parties and invite their friends and that's their gig.

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And these women, it was all women at the time, are as essential to the charity ecosystem of Orange County, California as bees are to pollination. They flutter from one luncheon to the next. They spread gossip, glitter, and this gospel of giving that is their life. And so I'm attending one of the first luncheons there, and it was unforgettable. I was like A deer in headlights.

00:17:13
I'd never experienced this culture. I grew up in a small place on an island, barefoot, swimming, like my. Yeah, it was so different to anything I had known. And so there were all these Chanel clad women around me with their Birkin bags and a lot of stuff. Steely determination.

00:17:31
And there were a lot of things that happened in that first luncheon. I remember just the phrases of like, oh, darling, you look fabulous, but did you finally get that Botox? Or your new Jaguar is divine. But isn't it a bit much? After the divorce, every compliment was this double edged sword as sharp as their Jimmy Choo shoes.

00:17:52
And that's what I was imagining. And the lunch was held at this venue where, you know, the salads. I felt like at the time, I was like, this costs more than my gas in my tank, more than my car payment probably. And so, you know, I was very much out of place. And all these, you know, pearls perfectly matched and hair that defied gravity, and these women, you know, it was all about this performance.

00:18:17
You know, at the time, the organization I was with was a hunger organization. We were trying to mitigate hunger and food justice for people in the community. And instead we were spending these dollars on this great big gala and we weren't even breaking even. And that was sort of my issue that I had with it, of, we're spending these dollars for charity, but very little is actually going back into the community for the people that need these things. And we're putting on this party for them.

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So we are this mission driven organization, but constantly bending to the egos of wealth. And we rationalized it, right? We believed that their approval and their involvement would fund our work, but it came at a cost. And that cost was chasing their comfort. And we compromised our clarity.

00:19:05
And they were very unkind people to us. You know, we were these poor little nonprofit staff, sort of in their eyes. And I learned in that moment, that niceness, the instinct to please those who had the power, they had the dollars they had the power. That instinct to please and to keep peace wasn't actually helping anyone. It was protecting power.

00:19:25
And looking back, I wish that we had had the nerve as an organization, as a community to say that, you know, your image and these parties you're putting on with dollars that are supposed to feed people isn't the priority. You know, impact is most of those glittering events raised, like I said, less for the programs than they spent on the centerpieces for these fancy events. It was performative philanthropy dressed up as progress, right? And so the ladies who lunch, to me it's a funny story, look back on now, but it's also, I think, a parable. It taught me that sometimes the real villain in the work of change isn't greed or ignorance, it's the niceness that we play as leaders.

00:20:06
And that niceness avoids tension, it confuses comfort with kindness and it rewards our complaint for the courage that we need to actually move forward with change. And I think that's how too many leaders operate today. And what I want us to do, step out of it, away from so. Many mic drop, just quotes from that. And it resonates with some of the capitulation.

00:20:31
We're seeing those same connections between Silicon Valley, not ladies, but maybe bros, Silicon Valley tech bros. And the potus. Right. And so, and it is true. I mean, I think, you know, there's larger systemic issues going on. We could go in a conversation around fascism and how that happened in Europe and various countries, whether it was Spain, Italy, you know, Germany and even South America.

00:20:55
Yeah, two examples. Or we could go the direction of just American cultural values and how that has unfortunately uniquely positioned us for this world of don't question the leader that it is. It's only something I've recently really understood from Dr. Erin Meyer's work and she has a book called the Culture Map that's sort of like, I think is the bible and the work that we do and you know, these global teams. But she had a 2017 HBR article where she compared the Japanese culture and the US culture and the difference between hierarchy and leadership. So Japan's very hierarchical and the US is more flat.

00:21:33
You know, these Silicon Valley companies that are more flat. So it seems approachable. You don't have to email 15 people to talk to the CEO or the President or any on the executive suite. But when it comes to decision making, Japan is more consensus driven and therefore coming to the U.S. they get confused because the U.S. tends to be the boss makes a decision, there's no consensus and you fall in line or you're out. And so that's where I think some of this niceness comes in.

00:22:01
Because it's confusing. It's like, wait, you're not hierarchical. And so I think when we have a president, especially when you have a two party system and business and capitalism gets mixed in there, when a president makes a decision and people just say no, get in line, fall in line, get behind him, you do have a country that is at risk for a narcissistic type leader to come in and you know, and it's not just Guyana. It's not just, you know, it's anywhere in the US that could happen in a corporation or in government, and in some cases, both. So this is why the niceness is such a key conversation.

00:22:39
Because niceness, capitulation, bringing gifts to somebody who's not only not a good businessman, but definitely not a good leader and definitely not a good president. That. Yeah, that's where it is. So if leaders or listeners take away one thing from these stories, what shift do you hope they'll make in their organizations or their lives? I want people to question the stories that we've been told.

00:23:02
So much of what I write about in the book and the work that I do of storytelling is that, you know, I learned as a communications practitioner years ago, and this is the science of how we communicate, is that what people will do at any given moment in time is determined by how they see and experience the world. And how you see and experience the world is determined by the stories you are told or not told. That's why I harp on the communication. It's how we connect. It's the words build worlds is not just a quick saying.

00:23:31
It's accurate. And so I want people to think, what are the stories you've been told? You know, the first time it happened for me, as I was sitting there and I journal a lot, and I was thinking about something. Stories and Goldilocks and the Three bears. And I was sitting there, I was like, wait a minute.

00:23:47
Goldilocks is a thief and a trespasser. She is not an innocent little lost girl. Wait a minute. Like, there's one side of the story I've been told. There's another side.

00:23:56
And then I started thinking about all the stories I loved as a child. And then I went back to the Giving Tree. That was another favorite of mine. And the Giving Tree is billed to us as a story about generosity. And really, it's a story about toxic relationships and manipulation.

00:24:14
And so I tell people that because I'm like, the danger of a single story has to be something we're constantly thinking about. Think about the stories you've been told and socialized with and ask yourself, what's the other side of this story? You know, how am I behaving? Because this is what's been handed to me. That's what I want people to do, is to ask more and bigger questions and to sit with the stories that you know and determine what are the other sides of this story and the other experiences that I maybe haven't thought about.

00:24:48
I love that. That's, it's really kind of the core of this podcast is bringing in our perspectives, hearing people's journeys, what they've learned, what they're doing, how they're working, their calls to action, all of it just gives us new wrinkles in our brain and it helps us open up our minds. That learning agility and that self awareness that it does for us, it helps us go through whatever this future looks like in work and in life. You know, there's a lot of changing with the AI revolution and how we move forward as humans. These are how, these are the conversations that are going to matter.

00:25:19
And you talk about in the, in the preface of your book, you talk about your vacation hair, a moment as your first lesson and the cost of being nice. So tell us, tell us your story and what it taught you. Yes. So I'm an 80s baby, but the 90s raised me. I would love to go back.

00:25:32
I miss the 90s deeply and desperately. But I mentioned we did not have cell phones yet, like just barely. We had pagers, but the only way, and we didn't have Instagram, there was no social media. And so the only way for somebody to know that you just gone on a fabulous vacation when we were kids was vacation hair. And it's seared in my mind.

00:25:54
It's like the little braids with the little beads at the end, you know, that click clack together. And so way back when, my sisters and I, we had these two best friends. They were twins, they were blonde haired, hazel eyed. We were always at their house, they were always at ours. We grew up as sisters, my two sisters and them.

00:26:12
So all five of us, we were quite the crew. And every summer they would come back, the twins with their vacation hair, the beads clacking, but also very sunburnt scalps. And within days those braids would be these messy, tangled nests of hair. And they'd be sitting at our house begging my mom to fix it and, you know, asking, can you please braid it like theirs? And they wanted hair that looked just like my sisters and I.

00:26:38
And so there my mom was, patiently every year, sort of parting their very fine blonde hair while they squirmed and winced. And to me, there was this one year where I was nine years old and I remember it as this sort of Broadway production that was put on and they were sort of wincing like, ouch, that's too tight. Why does it hurt so much? Does your hair hurt like this? Is my hair falling out?

00:27:01
I think my hair is falling out. And Little Amira, this one time, was just standing there in the doorway watching the dramatics unfold. And there was something in me that just snapped that day. And before I could stop myself, which happens often, even today, I just blurted out, well, it's because your hair isn't made for those kinds of braids. And there was just silence.

00:27:23
Like, my mom and my sisters and the twins, everybody froze. And I swear to this day, I remember one of the twins whipping her head around to look at me, and her beads flew everywhere. And my mom just said, amira, that's not nice. And I was sent off to the other room. And for me, there it was, right?

00:27:42
The lesson that my mom did not intend that day that would follow me into adulthood is that even if you're saying something that's true, it is true. Their hair is not made for those kind of braids. Like, it's gonna rip your hair out of your head. Your hair is too thin for that. It's gonna hurt.

00:27:56
That is a true. That is true. But even if it's true, if what you say or do makes someone else uncomfortable, you are the problem, and you're gonna get in trouble. Little Amira wasn't intending to be unkind or mean in some way. And what I learned from Charles Duhigg in his great book this Super Communicators, it's up here.

00:28:17
That's why I'm looking over here, the Super Communicators, he talked about something called the matching principle, which little Amira really could have used back then. And so what he talks about is that at any given moment in time, we're usually having one of three types of conversations with each other. So the first one is a practical conversation, usually about solving problems. The second is an emotional conversation. We're seeking empathy.

00:28:40
And the third is a social conversation. We're building connection. That day, September, Virgo, Amira was in a practical conversation. Because I'm almost always in a practical conversation. Like, what are the steps we're going to take?

00:28:53
What's the solution? Where's the Excel sheet? Let's get down to business. And so I thought, you're in pain. Your hair hurts.

00:29:00
Your hair is not made for those kind of braids. Just don't get those braids. That was obvious to me. That's what I was trying to communicate. The twins, they were having an emotional conversation.

00:29:09
They wanted empathy, not logic. They wanted someone to say, I'm sorry that your head hurts, and to comfort them. And so I really could have used a tool like the matching principle. To know what kind of conversation am I in and how can I respond and show up in this conversation in a way that is empathetic, appropriate, or just gets us somewhere. And so today, what I know is true is that, you know, their discomfort wasn't my fault.

00:29:36
But knowing that truth isn't enough. Right. What I needed to learn and what I teach now is that nice often demands that we keep everything comfortable and we stay silent, even if nerve, the antithesis of nice, is what's needed for things to change. And so that was the very first moment I could think back to of where I felt and realized that nice, in many people's eyes, was a problem or that it would be a problem for me in this world. What a powerful story for little girls who are just innocent and making friends and vacation herring.

00:30:17
And then what a powerful message that it kept. Obviously, that's this childhood story that stuck with you. It got tied to a belief. And then when you're in a corporate world or you're with ladies who lunch or in a D.C. office with senators and somebody's mentioning the wrong beverage, that caused a lot of damage to a lot of people, then all of a sudden that's just very, very complicated. But I do believe, by and large, little girls get raised in various cultures of the world to not rock the boat.

00:30:50
And that, you know, it depends on where you grew up. And there's a lot of nuance there. But unless you've grown up in probably a matriarchal or matrilineal type culture, and even there, it can still be the same. Yeah. I'm wondering because we have so many opportunities in the US Especially when we think about some of the leadership culture that can get in the way of progress both for business and society.

00:31:14
When you have a leader who people just get in line and sort of coddle him if it's a man, and even the women will be involved in that, just be nice and don't rock the boat. That it's, you know, everybody's kind of doing it. And when they're making decisions that will both hurt the business and you're seeing where it's going, you can see around the corner. How would you advise somebody right now? Say, for example, there's a big decision, and we're seeing a lot of big decisions being made right now.

00:31:41
There's a lot being written about. Employees are not. I think it's like 40% of US employees, 46% or something like that, that don't feel like they even have just a. Generally, there's markers of a healthy workplace. Just.

00:31:58
And one of them is voice. Do you feel that you can express your voice? It was one of five things and it was a surprising number where people didn't feel that their voice mattered at all. And therefore listed with the other four categories of what it meant to just feel safe and in a healthy workplace that I think 40% of U.S. employment or employees don't feel that. So if we just take that voice part of it, it's bad for employees, it's bad for business.

00:32:24
So in light of all these cultural dynamics and where we're at as a nation right now, with a lot of capitulation, what would you say to somebody listening when they really feel that they want to say something that's going to harm people and harm the business? I think that you have to decide at what level you practice nerve. And context matters. I tell people sometimes that I'm at a 1 on the dial, sometimes I'm at a 10. And it's context specific.

00:32:49
You know, there are some spaces that are safer for me to speak up and not be silent. And there are some where silence is survival. And that's what I need to choose for a host of reasons. Right. I've gotta pay for this roof over me and my family's head.

00:33:02
So sometimes I have to choose survival over anything else. But I think there are micro actions that people can take. Right. Depending on your organization, sometimes it's that you need the votes and the voices. So you might have to do some of the meeting before the meeting to let people know, hey, I'm going to bring this up.

00:33:21
I could really use some backup on this because I think many of us are feeling this and feeling the impacts of how we're moving right now as an organization. And we need to make a change. And so you don't go it alone. That's one thing that you can do, certainly. And control.

00:33:36
What you can control, I think is important within your department, your function, your team, and just how you choose to show up. And I think a lot of this comes down to the psychological safety, which is a big piece of the conversation in workplaces and employee engagement right now. And one of the challenges that I see for leaders, and I think for leaders who are listening in terms of what you can do, is that many people think of psychological safety as a feeling, but it's not. It's a system. And a system is something that needs to be built and engineered.

00:34:08
And so I think that until we have that understanding that it's not, you know, A soft skill. That psychological safety needs to be built into our policies and our practices and how we move as an organization that we won't get to. We won't get where we need to get until leaders and organizations realize that. Because that means that we have to build culture in a different way. And we also need to impart to people different skills and tools to be a part of engineering psychological safety, where speaking up is safe, it is expected, and it is rewarded.

00:34:45
That's the kind of culture I want to live in, where it's expected. Like, of course Amira's gonna have a question or push back on this. And you know what? That's a great thing. We love people who ask more questions and question everything.

00:34:57
We're not there yet, and I've not yet found that place, if someone has let me know. But that's what I think we need to build toward as well. And not to assume that leaders who are entrusted all of these teams and people to care for and to lead in organizations inherently understand how to build culture and psychological safety. That's just not true. Most leaders of people are there because they were great individual contributors, not because they've ever been imparted or equipped with the tools to lead.

00:35:28
And that's okay. But it's something we need to learn, which means as an organization, we need to be prepared to get give people. I was in a conference and they said that globally, on average, people managers receive two hours of training a year. And we're in California, and I was like, I'm required three hours of harassment training alone. So if that's what people's time is spent on, where's the training about how to lead people?

00:35:52
Where's the training about inclusion, about psychological safety? Because two hours is nothing in the grand scheme of things. So we're not imparting to our leaders and to our people the skills and tools that they need to build better cultures in our organizations. And so I think we have to go back to the drawing board and start there with how we're engineering the psychological safety. I just could not agree more with that.

00:36:16
It has been my lived experience. And all that being said, in the most recent role I was in, in this tech manufacturing company, I was brought in and the role was created for me to change the leadership and bring in. I developed this whole key leadership program, which at the core of it was in partnership with the center for Creative Leadership and developing some of our own curriculum and adapting some of the things they have. And then researching Google's project Aristotle, which identified psychological safety as the key to successful teams. I trained again and again on that.

00:36:44
But it was more than training people on how to listen, to understand each other and how to have these better conversations and how to sort of take the fraughtness out of feedback, even cross culturally. I mean all these, this took practice, these took tools. It took hours and hours of training in multiple languages. But at the end of the day, what I began to really notice the brick wall was, or maybe the sacred cow, I don't know, was this. The psychological safety needed to be embedded in the system.

00:37:13
It didn't need to be, oh, if something goes wrong, you can just report to hr. That didn't work. And many people were terrified of that and terrified of retaliation and all these very legitimate fears. And then you could be in a meeting and maybe one person really was great at allowing those questions, but another person would be so uncomfortable that they sort of the power, the dynamics of the workplace, what gets framed as I think office politics, sometimes it's much deeper. The system wasn't built for this.

00:37:46
And therefore. I love the title of your book, it's not the problem with nice or why Nice is bad, but it's the problem price. And so what's that price when people don't have this embedded in their systems? What's the price of that? I think it is attacks on opportunity and potential.

00:38:05
Whether it's your organization or the whole wide world doesn't have the opportunity to experience your full potential. When we shrink, when we self silence and self audit, that is the price. We're not living our greatest potential. Yeah. And then like you said, I think many people have worried it this way.

00:38:27
It's you point out the problem and then you are the problem and then you need to be eliminated as a threat. And we're seeing that again. I can't tell you how many people in the last couple of months, senior women leaders I know and they all have a very similar story. Not even inappropriately questioning, but just asking a question, simply very calm. And then yeah, and they get ousted in a sideline way and something gets made up about them.

00:38:53
That's not even true. You know, in California we're in at will state, so you don't have to have a reason, but it's that you questioned and therefore you are the problem. You must go for whatever reason. And it's, it's retaliation and discrimination. But it's also a really sad thing for those of us who care about the organizations and the people and see the potential.

00:39:14
And that's where it's so painful because all it is is if you had just listened to understand and done, you know, checked yourself with some self awareness, whoever was in the room when that question happened to say, wow, maybe there's some value here instead of just scapegoating that person, the whole business suffers and the attrition will probably start. All of that is waste, right? It's expensive to replace people, especially those with tribal knowledge. And so, yeah, I see that price and I see the price of people in the future not saying something that really could prevent an embarrassing conversation in a D.C. government office. And that's why I wrote a whole book is what I hope is that as more people become aware of the tools for how to practice nerve, the antithesis of nice is that more people then become ready to receive nerve.

00:40:06
And I think that's why we see what we see happening of the retaliation, the ousted of women and people who dare to question is those people on the receiving end weren't ready to receive nerve. They don't have those tools and they're committed to comfort more than anything else. And it does take a expansive mind to be ready to be questioned. And not everyone shows up with that sort of growth, mindset and willingness to say there are some things I'm wrong about. Not everyone shows up that way.

00:40:36
And that is a skill, skill set and a mindset shift. It's a mental model. And I think I want people to understand that. I write a lot about mindset shifts and mental models in the book because that's where it has to start. There's a lot of individual work that has to begin as a leader in order for our institutions to change.

00:40:53
And when you practice nerve, you give someone else the blueprint and the permission to do it.

00:41:02
I just want to say everybody in Silicon Valley, especially you, want to invite Amira to come coach your leaders and train you and do a leadership offset or whatever, like you need her. So please find her information and read her book and bring her to your place because, oh wow, you could really change things around here. And I'm really excited that you've written this and you're speaking about it. How can people find you if they want to learn more? I amirabarger on all the socials, I keep it simple and then amirabarger.com where everything about speaking and upcoming moments where we can virtually engage or in person.

00:41:40
Since I've got a book, I've got a book tour, so I'll probably be coming to a city near you and I do a great communications and propaganda analysis class on TikTok. That's other than LinkedIn where I'm most active so people can find me there. Amira Barger, thank you for this light you're putting out into the world, for the way that you're challenging us and some of the best ways to work on our own self awareness so we can be the kind of leaders that are ready to receive the questions, the pushback because we all need it and, and to be the kind of people who, you know, get courageous and, and have that nerve instead of playing nice. Kindness and niceness are not the same thing. And it is truly kind to tell the truth and give clarity and really it needs both sides, both sides of that equation have some work to do.

00:42:26
So thank you for doing this great work. You are a gift to business, to organizations, to nonprofits, to NGOs. Whoever is going to hear you is going to really be in for a treat. So thank you for being on the show and I'm going to have you speak to our difference makers to ask you another question there about some of the teaching and the next generation of leaders that you're working with. So thank you everyone and thanks Amira for being here today.

00:42:47
Are you on Substack? Because I am and I'd love to connect with you there. I process things there over Saturdays and Sundays, days off, sometimes weeknights as I'm researching and reading other articles. And it inspires me to write things where I'm going deeper into the behind the scenes of what some of the episodes on A World of Difference are all about. I'd love to connect with you there.

00:43:06
So if you are on Substack, find me. You can go to loriadamsbrown.substack.com as a free or I would prefer a paid subscriber because then you get access to more of the in depth things that are exclusively for my paid subscribers. I keep my prices as low as they can be on Substack, as low as they allow. But I do believe in being paid for my work and I believe you should be paid for yours too. So join me there and let's make a difference together.

00:43:32
Okay, difference makers, I know you and I know when you hear something you really enjoyed and you learned from it, you want to share it. I am like that too, which is why I love to promote guests on this podcast for you to get to hear them yourself. Sometimes they write books, sometimes they write on substack, sometimes they podcast. Sometimes their voice is just every day in the workplace where they live and impact their communities in a variety of ways with all the hats that they wear. So if you enjoyed this episode, and I hope that you did, please share it with a friend, a parent, a neighbor, somebody you went to boarding school with back in the day, somebody at work, your boss, people on your team, because this is a message they needed to hear and it have impacted you.

00:44:15
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