A New Year

By Elizabeth Fiting | Chief Learning Officer

You know that feeling, when you open a brand-new notebook? I love that feeling, because for me, that notebook represents possibility. It’s my opportunity to take my notes in a better and more organized way. “Maybe this time, I’ll finally stick to bullet journaling,” I think. “No more sticky-note murder wall for me!” 

(Side-note: My sticky note murder wall being my usual, regrettably wasteful, habit of writing sticky notes and slapping them on the wall next to my desk until I become overwhelmed by their number and cathartically purge them while blaring You Don’t Own Me through my office speaker. And all due respect to Lesley Gore, but I’m probably listening to the Blow Monkeys cover off the Dirty Dancing soundtrack because I’m an 80s baby and that’s where I first heard that song, and I like the growly subversiveness of that rendition. Honestly, pray for my neighbors.)

But I digress. For me, and I suspect for a lot of us, January is like a new notebook. And as I stand at the beginning of the year, excited for the possibilities and ready to write something new, I find myself not creating resolutions, but reflecting on the lessons that I’ve learned over the last few years and how I want to carry them forward in my life. So that’s what this post is about–the two biggest lessons I’m taking with me into 2022.

Accept. Take Responsibility. Learn. Move On.

Being a people manager has made me a better person. 

When I tell you that I have been blessed by getting the team I have, I am not being hyperbolic. Every single member of this team is a gift. They are bright, passionate, and hard-working to a fault. I love every one of my overachievers.

As an overachiever myself, being the manager of a team of overachievers is weird, though. Because my job is to protect my team and to ensure that they have what they need to be successful. Sometimes, that protection is simply more time. Sometimes it's more resources. Sometimes, it’s information, or support, or a shoulder to cry on. And sometimes, the protection that they need is from themselves and their own incredibly high standards.

Last year, one of my team members made a mistake on a project. It was the result of a little bit of inexperience and a little bit of misunderstanding. Ultimately, the mistake was course-corrected, but the damage was done: doubt had set in. In the coaching conversation that followed, this person spent a lot of emotional energy castigating themself for the mistake, and lamenting that they didn’t know enough to make the right decision. A lot of “if onlys,” and “I wishes” were thrown around. I watched this smart, capable, compassionate human take themselves to task for something that, in my view, was an honest mistake.

I coached this person to give themselves some grace. Mistakes happen, I reminded them. You will make mistakes again, and all of the classes, courses, and experience will not prevent it from happening, because somewhere, somehow, you will make another mistake. So accept it. Take responsibility for it. Glean every bit of learning that you can from it. And then move on with your life. That mistake was an opportunity for growth, not for self-recrimination.

So I have this conversation and walk away feeling pretty good about it. My team member was feeling better, and I was thinking about how I was actually excited for the next time this person made a mistake, so that I could see how they applied what they learned from this situation. 

And then….I had one of the loudest mental record-scratches of my life. Because I realized something: Why can’t I give myself the grace that I give to my team? Words I actually used in that conversation: “I will never be angry at you for making a mistake, as long as you own up to it and you learn from it.” When it comes to my team, I’ll die on that hill. 

And yet, I engage in self-recrimination all the time. The highlight reel of my mistakes runs through my head on sleepless nights and during quiet showers. I am still embarrassed about things that happened years ago, around people I never see now and who I know are not thinking about that event at all. I’m the queen of the 3:00 AM “If only I’d said…” conversational zinger. 

The grace that I offered and encouraged easily for my team was not what I extended to myself.

For the record, I have had great managers and mentors who have told me that I am too hard on myself. I’ve heard those words, reflected on them, and even thought, “Yep, yep. True. I should do better.” But it wasn’t until I was leading a team of people like me, watching them occasionally hurl themselves against a wall for things that, in the grand scheme of life, were not that big a deal, that I realized what those words truly meant. 

The Lesson I’m Taking into 2022: Self-recrimination is not productive. Plus, it hurts. Accept. Take Responsibility. Learn. Move On. If you can do even a little bit better the next time you eff up, you are doing great.

Don’t Apologize for Who You Are.

According to Meyers-Briggs, I am an INTJ. My Four Tendencies classification is Questioner. When I did StrengthsFinder, most of my strengths fell into Strategic Thinking and Execution. I share this to explain the following: I am not the person in the room that people immediately like and trust because of the force of our personality. 

I am an introvert. I am an analytical thinker. My neutral expression reads as RBF. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten better at being mindful about how I can come across in a world that is more friendly toward extroverts, but make no mistake–it usually requires effort. 

And our modern workplace has not, historically, been particularly kind to people like me. To be an introvert in a world where success is often measured by extroversion is a difficult thing. From the time we’re children, we are rewarded for participating–but not too much, and in the right ways. Which is how I spent the first half of my career trying to meet targets that felt unachievable.

A few years ago, during a “coaching” conversation, I had a manager who told me that I was too negative. It seemed like I did not value the opinions of others. Instead of poking holes in a solution, I should try to figure out ways to make the solution work, instead of tearing other people’s ideas down (that’s a direct quote). If I wanted to be successful, if I wanted to be listened to, I needed to be less assertive. I should smile more. 

I felt so small after this conversation, and spent a lot of time analyzing my interactions with others. And while I agreed that there were times I could adjust my communication style, something still felt off about the feedback.

What this manager identified as negative, I saw as identifying the stress points in a solution and trying to surface them for discussion. What was interpreted as “not valuing the opinion of others,” and tearing other people’s ideas down was, from my perspective, engaging in conversations where alternative perspectives are shared and debated in a safe place. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to support the idea at all. It was that I was trying to make the idea better. And when they said I should smile more…wait, what?

And the kicker is, I’d worked so hard for years trying to be what “they” wanted me to be. I tried to make small talk. I tried to be more likeable. I tried to find ways to make ideas work, even when I knew they wouldn’t. I tried to adjust my tone to be kinder, gentler, friendlier…only to be told over and over that my efforts weren’t good enough. Even more of a kicker? This feedback came, universally, from other women. 

I could write a lot more about these experiences, but they aren’t the purpose of this piece. What I’m trying to highlight is that at the start of 2021, I had been contending for years with a combination of internalized misogyny and our culture’s general lack of care for introverts. I’d been told I was wrong so often that my confidence was shattered. Plus, 2020 was awful for everyone in a once-in-a-lifetime way, so my self-doubt was amplified and my imposter syndrome was epic.

Alongside all of this, the Black Lives Matter movement was forcing a reckoning in our country, and as an Asian woman I found myself, for the first time in my life, engaging in critical self-analysis and self-reflection about what it means to be a woman of color and how that had impacted me throughout my life. I am half-white, but through the alchemy of my genetic make-up, I tend to read to others as Latina. My “otherness,” and a mis-labeling of that otherness, was like a thousand small paper cuts to my psyche. Did I suffer from the systemic racism that others have experienced in this country? Absolutely not. Did I suffer from racism that shaped the woman that I am today? Abso-effing-lutely.

My story isn’t unique. If The Great Resignation has shown us anything, it’s that a lot of people are tired of putting up with unreasonable expectations, inequitable work environments, toxic company cultures, and shitty, bullying, gaslighting managers. 

I was extraordinarily lucky in 2021. I got to work at Studio 5 Learning + Development, alongside people who are compassionate, empathetic, emotionally intelligent, and committed to trying to build a better workplace. Suddenly, I was being praised for things that I had been told to fix. In a consulting environment, my analytical skills are valued by my organization and by our Thought Partners. Instead of being viewed as someone out-of-touch with the way things have, or should, be done, I am seen as a strong woman and leader who is helping to forge a new path. 

The Lesson I’m Taking into 2022: Feedback is a gift–but not all feedback is created equal, and feedback that asks you to fundamentally change who you are is bullsh*t. I am not perfect, and I know that there are things that I have to work on to be a better manager, colleague, friend, wife…all of it. But feedback that demands that I change who I am, that asks me to be anything but my authentic unapologetic self, is not feedback that I’m going to entertain anymore. 

* * * * *

At the time that this blog post goes live, I have just come back from Studio 5’s 2022 leadership team offsite. During the offsite, Jesse, Marcus, and I did a lot of work around goal-setting for the year, and creating the KPIs and strategies that will allow us to achieve those goals. This work also led to the development of a new vision statement for the business:

To be the premiere learning and development firm in the Bay Area and beyond.

It is a vision statement that is both a target to achieve and a reflection of our team: high-achieving, globally-minded, and local in character. And while it may seem daunting, as I reflect on the lessons I’m carrying with me, I know we can do it. A new year is dawning, the possibilities are endless, and this team, quite frankly, kicks ass.