Andrea Hollingsworth
Appearances
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
What is it that makes people transform for the better? What is it that fuels positive healing and change in human lives?
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
But it's this maladaptive perfectionism, that's what researchers call it, that really, it ruined me. It also, you know, it really impacted the way that I showed up for my students. for my colleagues, for my research assistants. I was just, I had this inner criticality and like constant anxiety and stress about performance and it was impacting everybody.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
I'm great. Minnesota's own.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
And so to get back to your question of what hinders leaders showing up for others, I think we have to start really close to home and help leaders realize like, A, you need to be aware. You need to be curious about what is, you know, when you make a mistake or when you feel insecure about something What are you telling yourself? What is your inner critic saying to you, right?
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
And just be curious about that. And then to try to connect with other people and try to say like, look, you know, I need to talk this through. Like, am I overblowing this? Are my standards like, you know, you have to have people you can talk to about your perfectionism and about your anxiety so that they can go like, oh, sweetheart, I've made that mistake a million times. You are doing awesome.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
So you can get some perspective. And then you have to learn to talk to yourself differently and say like, you know, I made a mistake. I'm a human. Mistakes are a part of life. I'm going to choose kindness, you know, and if there's accountability needed, I'm going to choose accountability too and move on.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
It's OK. I don't expect you to. I'm going to do it for you.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
Because if we can't be aware of that inner critic and soften it with some kindness and with some, hey, you know, I can support myself and learn and grow, but I'm not going to be hard on myself. If we can't do that, we stay in this very kind of amped up, anxious, hypercritical mode. And I don't know, Mick, have you ever been around somebody who just oozes criticality?
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
Like you can tell they're hard on themselves and other people?
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
Yeah.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
It's in their energy, right?
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
And I used to be that person. And so... What I do is I start out by helping leaders work on themselves. And what that does then is it frees them up. All of a sudden, they get rid of a lot of mental noise and they learn to bounce back more quickly. And then they can be more aware of other people. Like, hey, what are you going through? How can I support you?
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
Hey, are you down on yourself for whatever mistake? It does so many wonders. It just calms us down so that we can truly be present in the ways that we want to and need to as leaders.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
We all want to lead ourselves through our lives.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
Can you send me a shirt that says that too?
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
Yeah, it's wonderful to be here. Thanks for the invite.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
Yeah, that the power of vulnerability, the power of authenticity, being real, being you is so critical. You know, it's critical in every area. You mentioned maybe a lot of listeners, maybe they're not a business leader, but maybe they're a leader in their households.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
You know, what is it like when maybe you're you're having maybe a tense moment with your partner, with your child, and you just take a deep breath and you say, I got to be honest with you now. Right now, I just here's what I'm feeling, you know, or maybe make a mistake and take a deep breath and say, you know, I got to be honest with you.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
I need to apologize, you know, instead of like we put up these masks and it distances us from ourselves and from other people. But in organizational context, it's really powerful when leaders are vulnerable, when they choose to just show up as themselves and they're not putting on anything.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
That's actually another big element of healing, especially when you've got work contexts where there's a lot of tension going on, maybe around, you know, really sensitive subjects. I actually have a story there. So a number of years ago, I was working with a leader in a key division of the city of Minneapolis. I'm not going to say which one, but in his team.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
And in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, a member of his team responded publicly to that event, like made a public statement about that event that ended up really wounding and hurting some other members of his team. So you got the context? Somebody made a public statement. It was just like other people were just like, oh, hell no, right?
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
And so he found himself then on a Zoom meeting shortly after that. And everybody was there. You know, the people who were pissed off about the public statement and also the folks who had crafted the public statement were on the call. Everybody's there. This is what we're going to address. And really all these tensions around inclusion and race and privilege, it's all there.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
And people are feeling all the feels. And he gets on and he says, he takes a deep breath and he goes... Everybody, I need to start out with by taking a deep breath. He said, I can feel my heart pounding. I can feel myself, you know, I can feel my body. He said, I just, I'm feeling a lot right now. I'm feeling a lot of grief. I'm sad about the pain in our city.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
Yeah.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
I'm sad about the pain here on this call. And then he led everybody in just taking a few deep breaths together. And then he said, he said, I want you to know that whatever you're feeling here today, before we get started, maybe you're grieved as well. Maybe you're angry. Maybe you're confused. He said, all of those feelings are welcome.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
He said, if you didn't feel them like I'm feeling them, you wouldn't be human. And more than anything, we here in this division need to hold on to our humanity. And so he gave everyone a minute to kind of connect with themselves and what they're feeling. He laid down some ground rules for safe dialogue, and then they dived in or dove in.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
And it was really a turning point in this group starting to heal some of these deep divisions around... culture, race, inclusion, privilege that had been, you know, like, of course, the George Floyd murder, like brought everything to the fore and for, you know, for so many of us.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
And so, but that conversation just by him being vulnerable and real, not coming in with like, all right, I'm going to fix this. And here's how it's going to go. And hiding behind some kind of mask of like, I've got it all figured out. He didn't have it all figured out. He was feeling just as you know, amped up and grieved and probably angry and confused as everybody else.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
And just by giving people permission to be human, it opened the way for actual deep healing in the team. So that is so powerful.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
It's true, isn't it?
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
Yeah. Well, that's the question, isn't it? You know, my my stepfather, who had such an influence on me, used to talk about. the burn in the belly. What's the burn in the belly? And that has stuck with me. And so I try to keep sight of that. For so long, for several decades, I have had this burn in the belly question in me of what is it that makes people transform for the better?
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
I love everything you just said, Mick. I just, I don't know that I have a whole lot to add to it. I... Just like we're built to care and connect with other people, we're also built to have meaning in our lives. And I think there's this dearth of meaning in work lately. People just go and they don't even know why they're there. And so when leaders can say...
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
as you said, work with teams to say, this is our because, this is what, you know, this is the reason that we're all doing what we're doing. And to keep that top of mind, it meets this deep, almost spiritual need in people to have meaning in the work that they do. And when people don't have that, when they don't have shared meaning, I really think it's a key driver for a lot of the
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
the alienation, the isolation, the irritability, the conflict, the exhaustion and disengagement that we see in teams. And so I think culture is built in those really small moments of true, genuine human interaction where people are building relationships of trust and connection and where they're reminding one another, whether it's a small, like, hey, here's a story of a
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
An interaction I had yesterday with a client where, you know, let's say your because is because you, I don't know, maybe you're in the financial industry and because you want to help your clients have confidence in a strong, secure financial future for themselves and their children. I don't know. I just made that up.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
You know, maybe you tell a story about someone who's on the verge of retirement and that you've been working with and like who they had a really emotional moment with you where they were like, Oh my gosh, like I did it. I think I can retire. And sharing little things like that, that exemplify whatever your because is with your colleagues is so important.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
Those stories, those human connections that remind everybody like, oh, right, you know, right. This is what it's all about. And that's such a gift, not just for the company. Obviously, the organization is going to do better when people feel that deep, authentic motivation to show up with all of themselves, right? But it's also such a gift just on a human level. We spend so much time at work.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
And when we can feel that sense of like, wow, my life matters here at work. It goes way beyond business goals. It goes into like human blessing is what I want to say.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
Sure. So I am so excited. I do quite a bit of keynote speaking. So I love to get in front of audiences and inspire them to be more radically self-compassionate because we all need that, but also more compassionate leaders. And so, yeah, keynote speaking is something I love to do. I have workshops where I work with groups of leaders on
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
Things like becoming more aware, becoming more self-compassionate, becoming more empathetic, becoming more resilient, doing hard things with heart, having difficult conversations, making difficult business decisions while still being compassionate. Whole workshop on that. But then I also do coaching. So I am trained as a therapist, but I also, you know, have coaching skills.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
And so I kind of blend them. I do something kind of interesting called therapeutic coaching. And so I work with leaders who feel like maybe they need some healing, but they also want to keep track of, you know, what are the goals that I'm working towards as well in my professional career? So that's a little bit of what I've got going on.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
I also published a book this year, just a couple months ago, called The Compassion Advantage, How Top Leaders Build More Humanizing Workplaces. And that's available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, anywhere you could, anywhere you want to get a book. It's, you can, you can find it.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
What is it that fuels positive healing and change in human lives? And I know that's a huge question. But I first started thinking about it in my master's program in my early 20s. My whole career has been really a winding road of exploring that question of healing from different angles.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
Nice.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
Oh, that's fantastic.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
I love it. I love it. That's fantastic.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
Yeah. So if you're on the interweb, you can just type in HollingsworthConsulting.com and that's my website. And then LinkedIn is my main social handle. You can just search Andrea Hollingsworth PhD and I'll hopefully I'll come right up. I don't think there's another Andrea Hollingsworth PhD, but maybe there is.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
So, yeah, I'd love to connect with any of your listeners if they, you know, if they're interested in working on their inner critic, if they're interested in becoming a more compassionate leader, shifting some culture stuff in their organization, would love to talk to them.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
It's been such a joy, Mick, to talk with you. We have so many shared passions, and so it's been an honor. Thank you.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
And really early on, what I landed on was that the power of human empathy, of human care, human compassion, and trusting connection is absolutely at the core of positive transformation and healing in human life in pretty much every domain.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
And so for many years, I've been studying various aspects of human relationships, healthy human relationships, relationships that foster wholeness and inclusion and people feeling seen, safe and supported because that really is the spot where folks learn to live into the best of themselves, whether they're a business leader,
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
Always start with self-compassion. We have to hustle and grind all the time and we have to overperform. And if we don't, at any point, our worth is under threat.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
whether they're a parent or whether they're just a human being trying to get by in this extremely wounding and confusing and conflicted world that we're all navigating. So that's the high level, I would say.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
Absolutely. Yeah, he's actually a lot of the reason why I talk about compassionate leadership, because compassionate leadership is made a big difference in his life. And then he became a compassionate leader to many people. I call it compassion contagion. So back in the 60s, so he passed away in 2016. And so he's been gone for a while.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
But back in the 1960s, he was a young man navigating his way in the world. He grew up on a farm in rural Minnesota, and he kind of tried college, but that wasn't for him. And around the age of 20, he got a job working at a manufacturing plant in Anoka, Minnesota, which is where I'm from. And at the time, he was dating a girl named Tess. And Tess got pregnant unexpectedly.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
And back in those days, what people often did is they just got married. And so that's what they did. They got married. And by the time my stepdad was 24, he found himself a family man, the father of three young children. And he had a job working on the floor of a manufacturing plant. Life was going along okay until Tess was diagnosed with a fatal liver disorder.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
And so then at the tender age of 24, my stepdad found himself a widower with three young children under the age of five. And it was devastating. Now, my stepdad, I'll just I'll call him Jerry. That was his name, Jerry. His boss at Federal Cartridge, where he worked, was a guy named R.B., old R.B. I grew up hearing stories of old R.B. because R.B. saw Jerry struggling. He observed Jerry.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
He started coming in late to work. He was clearly hungover from another night of closing out the bars in Anoka, Minnesota. He knew that Jerry was dropping his three kids off at Ma and Pa's for long stretches and just really, really struggling to hold on to himself. And old RB, he believed in Jerry. He had been the one to hire him. Here's a kid who knows how to work hard.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
Yeah, that the power of vulnerability, the power of authenticity, being real, being you.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
Here's a kid who cares about other people. Here's a kid who's got promise, who's got that burn in the belly. You know, he gave it some time. He was compassionate. But after a while, after enough, you know, late late showing up to work, he was kind of frustrated. So he pulled my stepdad aside and he said, look, kid, I know I can't even begin to understand what you must be going through right now.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
And I feel for you. I really, really do feel for you. But you're coming in late to work. Everybody here knows you're drinking too much. You're dropping your kids off at your parents for long straight. Your kids need you right now. And you got to pull yourself together. And if you don't, you've got a pink slip coming. But here's the other thing, kiddo. I care about you.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
And say, I've been going to the local AA group at the local parish for a long time. And if you'd ever like to come, we'd love to have you. And so that was a turning point for my dad in a moment of deep struggle and of deep trauma. My dad did indeed start to go to the AA group.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
And with the sort of the tough love, compassionate leadership support of RB and others in his workplace, he was able to really find healing and to really find himself again in the lowest moment of his life. And, you know, he went on actually to become vice president of Federal Cartridge. You know, later in life, mentored so many people who were going through hard things.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
He was one of the first to advocate for hiring people. women and promoting women, you know, back in the 60s and 70s at federal. And, you know, I'll be vulnerable and share even me myself when I in my late 20s and early 30s realized, you know, I think I have a problem, you know, relying too much on alcohol in my own, you know, work life and personal life. This is impacting me.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
I sat down, I talked to my stepdad and I said, you know, what can you tell me? And he said, Annie, he always called me Annie. He said, you know, why don't you come with me to that AA? He was still going to that same AA group. Wow. And so that's a personal story of just how compassionate leadership has made a difference. But my mom also extremely compassionate person.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
And so those are some of the stories that have really driven me.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
Well, thank you. I truly, you know, we're in a unique moment right now, societally, you know, at least here in the United States, it's tense right now. People are, there's a lot going on, you know, economically, politically, socially. We have a mental health crisis on our hands. We have, you know, employees, still record numbers of burnout and exhaustion and, you
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
This whole quiet quitting thing, it gets called different things, but it's just basically workers feeling like I can't even anymore. And I'm going to show up physically, but be checked out mentally. And so it's really my joy to go in and say, how can we...
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
Give leaders, you know, everyone from frontline managers to the very top, you know, the C-suite leaders, the tools and the skills, because compassion is a skill. There's a lot of research out there showing that, you know, it's not that you're either born compassionate or not.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
Everybody has the capacity to develop skills, interpersonal skills, to be more aware, to be more empathetic and to be more action oriented for others. And so to go in and just give leaders those skills that will make people feel seen, feel safe and supported at work. Because I believe work should be a place where at least we're not re-traumatized, you know.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
And, you know, I've also had many years of experience as a psychotherapist. And you would be amazed at the number of clients I have had who have come in and said, I have experienced verbal abuse by my manager, you know, outright yelling. A lot of times it's more insidious, you know, those microaggressions.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
that wear on you day after day after day, assuming that you don't know something, or you can't do something, or, you know, you're not included in this conversation or whatnot, because of some aspect of your identity. And that's there too. And that's just as destructive. But there's also this outright, you know, like verbal abuse that can happen in the workplace too. And
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
I think it's evidence of human pain. It's evidence that we all need reminders and we need helps for how can we care for one another. We're built to care for one another. We are created to care. It's in our DNA and we all need that permission to care and we need the skills to care.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
to do it in ways that are, you know, that certainly are professional and you have boundaries at work, but that really do build those humanizing connections that are going to help people heal and show up and do their best work.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
I love it. My favorite people call me Annie.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
There we go. Yeah.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
Yeah.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
How can I help you? Yeah.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
Yep, absolutely. So one of the things that really gets in the way of offering help is our own, like if you're a leader, sometimes your own either exhaustion and suffering yourself, or I've often seen your own inner critic or your own perfectionism really can get in the way of being aware of other people and supportive of other people.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
So when I work with leaders around compassionate leadership, I always start with self-compassion. Because, you know, so many of us have these muscled up inner critics that nobody else sees or hears. And we just feel harangued and oppressed by these perfectionistic standards. And we're so hard on ourselves.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
We've got shame and we've got all kinds of inner scripts going where like we have to hustle and grind all the time and we have to overperform. And if we don't, at any point, our worth is under threat. That's the society we live in, right? We've got this like, you're never enough thing going on everywhere for everybody. And so leaders, especially the research shows that leaders are often
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
very hard on themselves and that can impact the way they show up for others. And so I actually have a story about that, about that myself. One of the reasons I'm so passionate about self-compassion is that my inner critic basically ruined my academic career. I used to be a professor. I spent my twenties, my early thirties climbing the ranks of academia.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
And by the time I was 34, I had like arrived at the top of the mountain. I had gotten this tenure track job at Boston University and all my colleagues were like, how did you do it? And I was like, oh, you know, I love what I do and I work hard and I'm so passionate. All that was true. But what nobody else saw is that this inner critic was driving me all the time, all the time.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
spiritual practices in the medieval era and modern day neuroscience. All right. I was putting those two things together. That was what I did. And, and the presentation went really, really well. I thought, except that the whole time there was this, this gray haired scholar in the front row and he was scowling.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
And I remember I was thinking to myself, I don't think the Q and a is going to go very well because this guy, this guy, and I was right. He's at, when I was done, he stood up and he raised his hand and he said, excuse me, Did you consult the original Latin of the medieval text that you were referencing?
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
Because in the original Latin, it seems to indicate that, you know, and I don't even remember what he said, but he went on to undercut my entire argument based on the fact that I was relying on an English translation of this. I don't know Latin.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
Right.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
So I handled it okay in the moment, but my inner critic, she sprang into action. She was like, why didn't you consult the original Latin? Because you don't know Latin, do you? You better get your ass in gear, girl. Like in addition to all the teaching and publishing and research and mentoring and blah, blah, blah, you better learn Latin now. And so I found myself like 3.30 a.m.
Mick Unplugged
Andrea Hollingsworth | Building Inclusive Workspaces: Compassionate Leadership and Personal Growth
every single day, seven days a week, I'm up looking at my Latin flashcards. Mm-hmm. I burned out. I burned out at the age of 36. I walked away from my dream job at BU. And I sometimes wonder, you know, if I would have learned to give myself a little bit of grace. I mean, I'm all for high standards. Healthy striving is one thing.