Katelin Holloway, HOST: You're listening to All Hands, a podcast brought to you by Lattice, where people strategy is business strategy. I'm your host, Katelin Holloway.

Liz Fosslien, GUEST: How do I invest in growth when things are uncertain? When I can't often guarantee a promotion, I can't guarantee a lot of things that I would like to. So how do I support without over-promising? And I really think it's investing in this coaching

Katelin Holloway: Piece. One of the biggest movements I'm seeing in 2023 is doubling down on retaining and developing our existing talent. Now this involves so many elements from employee engagement to creating a better employee experience. And many times this actually boils down to the role of the manager. We've all heard the saying, people don't leave bad companies, they leave bad managers. But according to a recent report in HR Drive, about half a manager's report that they don't have any training at all. So how do we train new managers and how do we help train existing managers to become better managers and more empathetic managers?Mollie West Duffy, GUEST:So if you have a leader who is not showing any emotion in 2023, most people are gonna feel like, wow, that person is a calculating robot. I don't trust them because they never express any emotions. And if a leader is expressing all of their emotions all the time, it is also hard to trust them cuz it's like, wow, that's a little bit too much information leader. You have to sort of figure out that balance.

Katelin Holloway: This week on All Hands, I'm joined by Mollie West Duffy and Liz Foley. They're the authors of the bestselling book, Big Feelings: How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay. The book is full of powerful anecdotes, illustrations and research back tips. Now, in addition to authoring two books together, Mollie is the head of learning and development at Lattice. And as I mentioned at the top of the episode, lattice is close to my heart and the company that puts on this podcast. Now, Liz Foley regularly works with leaders at the Fortune 500 to help them build high performing cultures of belonging. You may also recognize Liz's clever illustrations about big emotions in the workplace. I see him all the time on LinkedIn and Instagram and every single time I smile. Liz and Mollie, welcome to All Hands.

Mollie West Duffy: Thank you so much. Yeah,

Liz Fosslien: I'm very excited to be here.

Katelin Holloway: Am so thrilled to have you both on the show for so many reasons. Let's talk about managers. Managers, as we all know, are a cornerstone to how we build great company cultures. If you have great managers, it can set your world on fire in the best possible way. If you maybe haven't invested in your management layer, we've got problems. Why are managers so pivotal to the employee experience? Mollie, I'd like for you to take up the first stab at this.

Mollie West Duffy: So Gallup, who has spent years and years studying what great managers do, their research shows that managers account for at least 70% of variance in employee engagement, which is a huge percent <laugh>. And yeah, this research has been backed up by Google and McKinsey. You know that that teams with great managers are happier and more productive and that the relationships with management is one of the top factors in in job satisfaction. So the research really backs us up and I think all of us know this intuitively when we think about what it feels like to have a great manager and what it feels like to have a value manager. Right?

Katelin Holloway: Absolutely. I, I've been on both seats of that table. Liz, what say you,

Liz Fosslien: I agree. I also think especially in a hybrid world or a world where people aren't together in person as much, the manager really becomes the culture creator for their employees. So when you're not as embedded in an organization because there's posters on the wall and you can easily see everyone on your team sitting next to you, the manager really is the touchstone of this is the person that informs how your day-to-day works. They're the one that is responsible for if the team has a fun connection moment in team meetings, if there's one-on-ones for often sharing really difficult news. And so to Mollie's point, yeah, we see huge variants. Some of our research at Humu also shows that if a manager is very supportive, the team performance and sentiment, so how people feel in the team does not go down as much, even when things are really hard. So in the wake of layoffs, in the wake of a big reorg and if the manager is not offering support, every metric you care about drops significantly. And so they really are both culture creators but also a buffer against stress. I always say that the best managers make work and specifically their team a place of support as opposed to a place of additional stress,

Katelin Holloway: Truly. But the reality is is that as many as half of our managers out in the workforce report that they don't have any training at all. Now Mollie, you're head of learning and development over at Lattice. I would love to hear how your team approaches manager training. Are y'all doing anything different? Anything interesting? Anything that you find particularly effective?

Mollie West Duffy: It is really disheartening to hear that stat that half of managers don't get any training at all because what that assumes is that this is an innate skill, which I really believe that it's not. And again, there's great research around this. You're not born a great manager. Um, you learn how to become one and the learning curve is quite steep. If we can give training, it just means that those folks who are reporting into a first time manager are going to have a much better experience <laugh> than if we don't give that training. So what we're doing at Lattice, there's the more structured things that we're doing, then there's the more organic things that we're doing. Both are important because our goal for, for Lattice in general is creating what I call a deliberately developmental culture. Which means that training doesn't just happen in like you go to an offsite and you do learning for a day and then you come back and you forget everything that you learned.But that in every moment of doing the work and the cadence of our weeks and the way that we meet, there are moments for learning and growth like automatically built in. So a great example of this is retros and we see teams doing this all the time and and that's a moment where learning is built into the cadence of whatever cycle they're in. So when we think about the more structured thing that we're doing, we created something called Manager Blueprint, which is a bespoke manager training program for all of our managers up to the senior leadership level. And we take a different approach with very senior leaders and we can talk more about that, but it doesn't make sense to put them through quite as time consuming of a program. But for our first time managers all the way up through our mid and sort of mid senior level managers, everyone is going through this program.It's a six month program, starts off with a in-person kickoff session, it's a day long. And then we go into eight weeks of content and then four months of follow on more like practicum sessions. And it's cohort based. So we have about 15 people in each cohort that are about the same level, but a mix of disciplines and geographies. So people are, you know, okay if I'm a first time manager, I'm gonna be in a cohort with other first time managers who are dealing with similar challenges, but I'm gonna be with people from different parts of the org and different geographies. And so we've been really intentional about that. And the other thing that we're doing is we're doing a a 360 assessment of our managers before the program and then at the six month mark after the program. So that helps managers know what are the, their specific growth areas that they need to work on. And I feel like that's a, a principle of adult learning, which is like, okay, there's lots of things that I could learn as a manager, but where do I individually really need to focus? What are my goals for this program makes you more engaged in that program.

Katelin Holloway: Right. I'm so curious to learn a little bit more about the manager blueprint program. I love that you're cohorting it. I think that those shared experiences really create that deeper sense of belongingness but also helps from like a, a group coaching standpoint, which is something I firmly believe in within organizations, especially if you have an organization large enough to be able to, to manage that effectively where you are getting that different perspectives throughout the organization. Now you said something that I, I wanna double click on a little bit and maybe Liz you can help take this one for me, but I believe that there's a growing perspective that managers should be acting as coaches with their direct reports versus I am your manager and I'm going to manage your workload. I'm going to actually coach you. So for you, what is the difference between managing and coaching?

Liz Fosslien: Yeah, kind of as you hinted at, I would like there to not be a big difference between the two, but traditionally management is about task delegation, you know, clarifying roles and responsibility. It's really about, as you said, managing how the team works together and what they're working on. I would say more what they're working on even than how they work together. And coaching is about growth. So managing tends to be, again, in the traditional sense, here's what you should do. And coaching is a two-way conversation of what are you interested in? How can we boost your effectiveness? And so I fully agree, I think the best managers act as coaches and one thing that I've been hearing a lot from managers is this question around how do I act as a coach? How do I invest in growth when things are uncertain? When I can't often guarantee a promotion, I can't guarantee a lot of things that I would like to.So how do I support without over promising? And I really think it's investing in this coaching piece. So one thing that I did with my team at the beginning of the year was, you know, it's, it's an uncertain forecast. So I was like, what I can promise you is that I'll help you find growth opportunities that get you to where you wanna be. So I had them go and find job listings for jobs that they really wanted in like three to five years and they brought those back for me. And then we went through the responsibilities and I said, which of these responsibilities do you feel like you do not have a story to tell? So like you've never done brand management, you've never done client presentations, whatever it might be. And then I said, I can commit to you this is something that I have control over that when these opportunities come up or if I can create them, I will do that for you.And what's really lovely about that is it's really motivational for them and I'm not over promising, like I really commit to do that. And so that's what I think it's, it's this coaching element of like let's have a discussion about where you wanna go and then I will do the managing piece where I will sort of fit the management to meet what gets you excited, what's gonna get you motivated and also what's really gonna help you see that this is an investment in your career in you as an individual, not just as like the content marketing manager on my team that I need this stuff out of. Um, and so I think it's, it's really the shift around relationships and the long term versus just outcomes and let's like drive the team hard to get to something but then you were in the relationship in the process.

Katelin Holloway: Something I really appreciate about that approach is that not only is this something that you can do as a people leader in an organization with your own teams, it's also something you can do as an individual in the absence of having a strong manager who understands this approach or this, this notion that it's about providing skill building and it's about identifying opportunities or future opportunities and then giving them the tools to eventually ladder up to that place whether it's in your four walls or or otherwise. Right? In your book, big feelings you write about how there are seven big feelings that are a part of the modern world. It's uncertainty, comparison, anger, burnout, perfectionism, despair and regret. Those are some big feelings. <laugh>, even just reading them aloud gives me anxiety. And so the, the first question, Mollie, I'll, I'll direct this one to you first, but how can we help train managers to better understand these particular emotions in the workplace? These are certainly not ones that were talked about even five years ago.

Mollie West Duffy: I think you're hitting it exactly. And I have hope for the future because this is true that children now are getting much more education about this. I, I heard a story in a workshop, someone saying that their kid when they have conflict with another kid and this is like, I don't know, kindergarten, it's like okay, go over to the conflict zone and like name the feelings that you are experiencing. Yeah. And then work out the conflict. I was like that was not happening when I was in kindergarten. Certainly not. I think for generations that are, have already reached adulthood, there is an acknowledgement that we did not have training on this. And the expectation was that these emotions didn't exist when you entered the workplace. Now we're still human when we go to work. So we still have these emotions. So what do we do with them?And just recognizing that like you never were taught what to do about these things when you have them and when other people have them. How we can help train managers is, is to increase what we call their emotional fluency. And you used the word emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is very important but it doesn't go quite far enough. So what emotional intelligence is, is the ability to understand what you are feeling and what other people are feeling, but it doesn't tell you anything about what to do with those emotions. And so emotional fluency is understanding your emotions, when to express them, when not to express them and how to like sit with them and work through them and process them. When do you communicate them, when do you not communicate them? How do you deal with someone else communicating them to you? And so I think the first part of this is acceptance, whether it's for your own emotions or someone else's emotions, that these are not inherently bad.There's a reason biologically why we have all these emotions. So anger, even though it doesn't always feel good, helps us understand that maybe a boundary has been crossed, uh, or something that we care about as being threatened. Burnout is telling us we need to slow down. Um, regret is telling us to do something differently in the future. And so when we shut those emotions out, we are shutting out all of the information that they are giving to us. And so in the workplace it's like, okay, I do, I like feeling regret, no, but this is telling me something important in terms of what I did or didn't do in the past that I can do differently. So it's about sitting with them and trying to understand the deeper need behind that emotion. And that can take time, especially with the big emotion. So this is not like, oh I'm in a meeting and now I'm feeling a big emotion.I can immediately tell you what the need is. Sometimes it's about saying, I am having a strong reaction right now and I need some space and I'll get back to you on that and then you can, you know, leave the meeting or you know, go off camera or whatever you need to do. So a lot of times what Liz and I teach is what are those phrases that you can say to give yourself the space to do that emotional processing When you're in the middle of a work meeting <laugh>, which is really hard or you're crying or you know you're having a really strong reaction, I'm having a strong reaction, I need some space. Then it's about going and understanding what was the deeper need and then going back to if you were in a meeting with someone going back and explaining what was going on and maybe there's an ask that you have of them or you're just sort of explaining the need that you were feeling.And then when other people come to you with big emotions, it's kind of the same thing. So you need to like create the space. You know, it, it seems like there's a lot going on right now or, or you're having a strong reaction. You know, do you want some space before we continue talking about this? So offering that to other people as well. And then there can be a time when it is helpful to communicate once you have done the processing. And we see this with leaders a lot and talk about this as we want leaders to be selectively vulnerable. So if you have a leader who is not showing any emotion in 2023, most people are gonna feel like, wow, that person is a calculating robot. I don't trust them because they never express any emotions. On the other hand, if a leader is expressing all of their emotions all the time, it is also hard to trust them cuz it's like wow, that's a little bit too much information. So as a leader you have to sort of figure out that balance, but it still is that you are expressing some of your emotions some of the time and learning how to communicate those in an effective way.

Katelin Holloway: Yeah, I mean it makes all the sense in the world. And I think that over the years I have tried to give that advice to many of my managers and many of the executives that that I've worked with. But what I was lacking, to be honest, was one consistent language, right? Like that shared language set that we've talked about, but also I was missing Liz's incredible illustrations and drawings that that takes the air out of the balloon just enough to be like, oh that's funny. Oh I get that. Oh I felt that. Oh there it is. And that's something I really appreciate about the work and the work that you two do together is the way you're bringing it to life in a way that is not, does not feel heavy or, or daunting or too much. I wanna dig into too of what feel like, again, feel like maybe two of the darker feelings that are on the list for alliteration purposes, they both start with D despair and depression. So depression specifically, in addition to having very intense personal consequences, can also have a very significant impact on the workplace and performance. So this is gonna impact your focus decision making, time management. How can managers support the recovery of someone with depression or another mental health condition? Mollie, I know, I know we've been talking about this, so would you mind leading?

Mollie West Duffy: Yes and and I have personal experience with both despair and depression while I was working. And it is really hard as somebody who, when I'm not experiencing depression tends to have a lot of motivation. It's, it's quite shocking to sort of realize like, oh all I wanna do is lay in bed today, well <laugh> mm-hmm <affirmative>, I do also have to do some work. Um, and like navigating that is really tough. So I think the first thing the managers can do, and this goes for any sort of mental health concerns, is to be open about their own mental health issues. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, because that creates space for other people too. Doesn't mean that you have to have the exact same thing. So if you haven't experienced depression, don't say that you've experienced depression. Right? But please don't, many of us have experienced some kind of mental health thing, whether it's anxiety or depression or anything else.And again, this was, there's a big stigma around this for a long time. There still is, but it is so powerful when leaders and managers share that. And it is something that again, we have to learn how to do in a professional way. So I'm not gonna be like telling everyone the details of my therapy conversations, but I can be open that I went through a very deep depression and it took me a long time to get out of it and that I am in therapy and that I am on medication and I do have to balance all of that with the work that I do. And that does create mm-hmm <affirmative> space for, for people to do that. Now is that's not authentic for you or you haven't experienced that? That's okay. You know, one thing that managers can do is if there is some kind of mention of that by one of their reports cuz sometimes there isn't and that's okay too. And if a report hasn't been open with you about it, it's not appropriate to be like, are you to breaths? You know, to dig in like they have to

Katelin Holloway: <laugh>, yes

Mollie West Duffy: They have to come forward with that. So it's about you creating the space for them to do that and feel safe, but they have to do it. But if they do that, then I think it's about asking what they need and that that can change. So what kind of flexibility do you need right now? You know, if, assuming that you're going to therapy appointments or assuming that like maybe you need to take a mid-afternoon nap, like what kind of flexibility can we provide for you that's reasonable. And in the case of, of a lot of these things, these are diagnosable conditions and so these are things that like a doctor could provide a note for. And so if a manager has questions about that, they can also turn to their HR VP’s, the people and their people team for some advice on like what would a reasonable accommodation look like and how to set that up.There's a whole process for that. And then I think it, again, it's just following the employee's lead, creating the space for how much they want to open up and, and talk about it moving forward once that initial disclosure has happened or not. For some people experiencing depression work can be a really nice escape from like what else is going on? And so maybe they don't wanna talk about it at work cuz it's like, well at least here I feel really valued and like in the rest of my life things are falling apart and so I'm, I'm showing up here. And then I think generally within a workplace, also creating support groups, so like employee resource groups that are specifically around mental health can be a nice way so you don't have to go directly to your manager, but there can be peers that you can check in with additionally.

Katelin Holloway: I think all of that is incredibly stage advice. I personally feel that our capacity to share what we are experiencing can have a very profound impact on others. Just by simply putting yourself out there and saying, Hey, I went through this thing, or I, I'm currently experiencing this thing. Not all of us are comfortable doing that in a, in an incredibly public setting. Sometimes that's better reserved for one-on-one. But as I was reading the book, big Feelings, I recognize that I was having big feelings myself in reading the perfectionism section, which is something that is hugely viewed as something that is lighter and like self-inflicted. And so it's, it's dismissed, you know, the the roll your eye in recruiting when someone says like, oh what's what's your biggest flaw? And you're like, I'm a perfectionist when in reality people who do experience perfectionism and how debilitating it can be in their own lives is is pretty meaningful.And yeah, I think that it is more prevalent in the workplace than we give it credit for, especially in a world of remote and distributed work where it is harder to be seen and recognized. And so people who are high performers or are really wired for that gold star, uh, in, in terms of, you know, what they view as being recognized in their work. I wanna talk about it a little bit. Like I said, something that I personally have struggled with, I I still struggle with it today and I'm trying to manage a team that also has very, very, very high standards for themselves. And so Liz, I'm hoping you can help us unpack this one a little bit. How do you think perfectionism is different from simply striving for excellence or just having high ambition?

Liz Fosslien: Yeah, it's a great question and the reason we included that chapter in the book is that Mollie and I both deal with it and we always say about any of these big feelings, it's a recovery process. You're never going to stumble across a phrase or a practice that immediately transforms your life and you never deal with it again. So don't be a perfectionist about recovery <laugh> from perfectionism. But yeah, I would say the difference cause a lot of people they worry that if they lose these tendencies they will become a couch potato or they will lose their ambition. And so the fundamental difference is a high achiever can get a 95% on a test and say, I missed a question but I did great. My work paid off, I studied hard, I'm gonna see what I missed and I'll get it next time. The perfectionist will obsess over that last question and they will see having missed one thing as like a, I never get anything right?I always mess things up, I can never hit a hundred percent and it becomes this really horrible feeling thing over something that someone who doesn't have those tendencies would say is a great score <laugh>. And so because they're so driven, they do end up in positions that are prestigious or from the outside in it looks like their lives are great but they are riddled with anxiety and riddled with this, I'm not enough, it's not enough, I need to be doing more. And so that's really, perfectionism is fear-based and it's driven by anxiety versus driven by the joy of learning or the joy of achieving. We need to shed the notion that your perfectionism helps you. The sort of most extreme example I have of this from my own life was much earlier in my career I was very sick and I ended up in the hospital, um, one night I was in the ER and you know, you wait forever and then you go in and it's just this endless process and I was discharged at four 30 in the morning and I went to work the next day.Like I, I had no sleep and I showed up at the office because what I had in my head is that great employees never miss a day of work and to get promoted I can never be sick. And I was very out of it. I'm sure I looked like a disaster and at some point, because I was not that lucid, it came out that I'd been in the hospital and my boss was horrified and he actually later had a conversation with me where he was just like, have I created a work environment in which you felt like you needed to come to the office? To his credit. So that was great on him.

Katelin Holloway: Great question. Yeah.

Liz Fosslien: And that conversation was actually really valuable for me hearing from him that he just took this assumption that I had, I can never take a sick day and said that is ridiculous and you are performing very well and you should take a week off. Like get out of the office, go home, I do not wanna hear from you. And so that's what leaders can do. I think it's so important to take some of these assumptions that people might have and break them apart. I think we underestimate the power of positive feedback of just making sure, you know, like, hey, you're doing a great job. And I think that can combat this inner monologue of like, I'm not doing good enough, I'm gonna get fired, I'm not doing well. So a lot of it, similar to what Mollie was saying is, is just sharing and then really also explicitly and even seemingly small ways making it okay, I don't wanna say to fail but to learn.So even saying things like we're gonna run this experiment, tell me what didn't work out, what did you learn from that? Great, right? I think that creates this culture of it's normal to fall on your face <laugh> and it's just about picking yourself up again and not doing that again. So I vividly remember just how terrible I felt and dragging myself to the office and I think that is, I'm guessing that people with perfectionist tendencies have had some kind of similar experience. Yeah. So some people might have experienced something similar to a lesser extent, to a greater extent, but I've shared that story as an example of perfectionism harms you, it is standing in the way of you achieving your full potential. I was not a great employee that day. I was not a great employee the next day cuz I hadn't gotten the rest that I needed. And so I should have taken the sick day, sick days and then showed up and gotten right back to it.

Katelin Holloway: I I cannot tell you how deeply that resonates personally. We actually have an open dialogue at my own firm around, uh, this notion of perfection. The mantra I used to have was perfect will be just fine. That is not okay. That is, that is a very unhealthy thought. But I thought for me that it was, it was driving my success, right? And, and I was being rewarded for it. I thought I was be, I was tying to things that were unrelated together because I, I was getting the promotions, I was getting access, I was, I was building a career that I was very, very proud of. But it was, it was harming me from a, a mental health perspective and to your point, it was actually impacting the quality of my work. And so when I find myself getting in those cycles and when I start having that, that negative thought process, cuz trust me, it's your, to your point, this is a recovery, it's a practice. And I remind myself with a counter mantra, which is done is better than perfect, where it's okay to produce something at 80% and then put it out and actually solicit feedback from colleagues. What's one piece of advice you'd give to people, leaders to better support their managers? Liz, we'll start with you. Yeah,

Liz Fosslien: I'm gonna share a quick story for this one and my advice is create an environment that allows people to be great managers. And here's what I mean by that. Three years ago now, I guess I was losing my father-in-law to his tenure battle with cancer and I showed up to a meeting with my manager and she asked me how I was doing and I, it was one of those things where I just like couldn't even speak because I was crying so much and I had not even known that that was inside me cuz it, you know, I was doing so much caretaking that I hadn't processed what was happening. And she said, turn your camera off, leave the meeting, shoot me a message when you're ready, but I want you to take the rest of the day off and when you need it just let me know and I will figure out everything so you can take two weeks off for bereavement leave.Like she's a phenomenal manager. I would follow her to any company <laugh>, like I just, in that moment she built such loyalty and like I will always go above and beyond for her because of that. And she was able to do that because she knew that our c e o would back her up. Like she knew she didn't have to fight for it. The policy was clear, it was very easy for her to put everything into place. Like the company, like everyone was just gonna support her in that decision. It's so hard to be a good manager if that environment does not exist. Like you can do a lot, but it's gonna be a slog. And I think that if the organization does not support great management does not support managers helping their people, especially in those really hard moments, they're gonna lose that great manager. Like I think people just aren't gonna wanna stay there.

Katelin Holloway: I could not agree more. Mollie, what's your advice?

Mollie West Duffy: So something that people, teams can do, people leaders can do is to help managers create the space to talk about emotions and team dynamics. So there's a new team coming together or a team is kicking off a new project, doing like a meeting on that kickoff where everyone goes around and talks about what are their individual goals, what are their working styles, what agreements and norms are we gonna set as a team and then checking in midway through. It's hard as a manager to feel like you have the permission to do that and it's also nice to have like an external structure and facilitation or facilitator to join and that can help so much with team dynamics and team effectiveness.

Katelin Holloway: I love that. Thank you for sharing. Okay gang, are you ready for rapid fire?

Mollie West Duffy: Yes.

Katelin Holloway: We are going to start kind of where we left off when we were talking about big feelings. Mollie, we'll start with you. What's the one big feeling you personally feel you need to embrace more

Mollie West Duffy: Anger. Ooh,

Katelin Holloway: That's a good one. Get fired up.

Mollie West Duffy: I think, um, I was not taught that that was an acceptable emotion to feel as a female growing up in our society and yet there's so much information in anger.

Katelin Holloway: Liz, what is the big feeling you need to embrace more

Liz Fosslien: Uncertainty driven anxiety. I really like to have a plan. I like to control things and the older I get the more I realize you just can't. And so I think I just need to learn to sit with that discomfort and not frantically clean my apartment and do the laundry and send out emails and like create this frenzy of activity. <laugh>

Katelin Holloway: Yes, I too have those mechanisms to help me cope. Um, awesome. Okay, next question. What is your favorite go-to self-care habit? If you're having a bad day, and I swear to goodness, if either one of you say a bubble bath, I'm hanging up on you, <laugh> Mollie, go

Mollie West Duffy: Reading a romance novel.

Katelin Holloway: Oh, ooh,

Liz Fosslien: I like that. <laugh><laugh> for me. I've eaten the same breakfast for 10 years in a row. So just somehow having that ritual, like even I'll travel with my breakfast, Mollie here's, has heard me talk about it for almost 10 years now, <laugh>. But like, it's just so comforting to me. Um, so yeah, and I also just really look quickly, you wanna put it out there? I cannot meditate for the life of me. I cannot. So if like the traditional quote unquote self-care things don't work for you, that's fine. Do whatever works.

Katelin Holloway: I really appreciate you saying that. Wait, Liz, hold on. I need to know what this breakfast is. Tell

Liz Fosslien: Us. It's Greek yogurt with almond butter, a Luna bar and then a cup of coffee and I travel with Luna bars. I like, I'll go to extremes to make this breakfast happen for myself. <laugh>,

Katelin Holloway: I appreciate this. I I also appreciate your commitment to high protein first thing in the morning. And if you're reading a Roman novel while you're eating your Greek yogurt and Luna Bar, uh, I'm sure that that's a good day. That sounds like a great day actually. <laugh>, I'm, I'm here for this

Liz Fosslien: <laugh>.

Katelin Holloway: Alright, last and final question. Uh, Liz, we will start with you this time. When was the last time you were deeply proud of something you have accomplished?

Liz Fosslien: Um, I guess so. I'm a nine month old and I always had a lot of anxieties around pregnancy and being a parent, being responsible for a human being. And so I think every day I just feel proud of that. Also, just as a woman where I think we're often, especially when it comes to emotions been made to feel like the weaker sex and that is just so far from the truth. And I think that the experience has really, I just feel very proud that I'm like, was able to do that and that I think just like setting a good example, that kind of thing.

Katelin Holloway: I couldn't agree more. And as one mama to another, it is a profoundly huge accomplishment. Profoundly huge and nine months old, you were getting to the good stuff. You're getting smiles, you're getting laughs, you're getting the rolling around, but not dangerous enough yet. Uh, so congratulations, <laugh>.

Liz Fosslien: Thanks

Katelin Holloway: Mollie. Same question to you. When was the last time you were deeply proud of something you've accomplished?

Mollie West Duffy: I think it's been building this manager blueprint program from scratch and I love the moment when I, it's been launched and we have our cohorts going and people are making changes. They're having tough conversations, they're giving feedback, they are talking about growth and development and I feel like in some small part the training has helped with that and that makes me very proud.

Katelin Holloway: I think that you should also be very proud. Thank you. And we are proud of you for that. So congratulations. Well gang, that's it. That's a wrap. We, we've taken it all the way around. We've talked about our big feelings and we've shared, uh, some things that have helped give us a greater platform to, to teach others. So Liz and Mollie, thank you so much for joining us on all Hands.

Mollie West Duffy: Thank you. Really

Liz Fosslien: Appreciate it. Yeah, thanks so much for having us

Katelin Holloway: And to you Dear listeners, thank you so very much for joining me on this week's episode of All Hands. I'm your host, Katelin Holloway. Follow all hands wherever you get your podcast so you never miss an episode. And if you like the show, tell a friend about us or give us a shout on social. This podcast is brought to you by Lattice. Learn more about how Lattice helps companies deliver great business results with smart people. [email protected]. Find us on Twitter at Lattice hq. All Hands is produced by Lattice in partnership with pod people. Special thanks to our production team, Christine Swor, Annette Cardwell, Rachael King, Amy Machado, Hannah Pedersen, Danielle Roth, David Zwick, and Carter Wogan. I'll see you next time on All Hands. Until then, my friends, please keep leading authentically.