Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Henna Pryor on How to Get Good at Being Awkward | EP 701
11 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Coming up next on Passion Struck.
A lot of us in the last five years got thrown into these hybrid workspaces, virtual workspaces. We may not see our colleagues anymore. We tend to have this tendency to magnify or create a story around what it means to ask someone for help. We're not talking to them as often. So the muscle feels underdeveloped.
We are not clear on what they think our capabilities are, what we think their bandwidth is to help us. So we tell ourself a whole story about what that represents. And because of all these factors, it's harder than ever to ask for help.
Chapter 2: How has hybrid work affected our social skills?
But amongst all of those, the biggest one is we're just not doing it as much and we've gotten out of practice.
Welcome to PassionStruck. I'm your host, John Miles. This is the show where we explore the art of human flourishing and what it truly means to live like it matters.
Each week, I sit down with changemakers, creators, scientists, and everyday heroes to decode the human experience and uncover the tools that help us lead with meaning, heal what hurts, and pursue the fullest expression of who we're capable of becoming.
Whether you're designing your future, developing as a leader, or seeking deeper alignment in your life, this show is your invitation to grow with purpose and act with intention. Because the secret to a life of deep purpose, connection, and impact is choosing to live like you matter. Hey friends, welcome back to Passion Struck. We're fresh off episode 700, and I just want to say it again.
Thank you. You are the reason this movement continues to grow. You listen, you share, you invite others in. And because of you, Passion Struck reached number one in health and wellness worldwide on Apple Podcasts for the first time. I am incredibly grateful.
Now, we're continuing our series, The Season of Becoming, this very real transition between the life we've known and the fuller, braver life calling us forward. Last Tuesday, Susan Grau walked us through Rebirth and The Voice of Intuition After Loss. Last Thursday, Ann Libera showed us how letting go of the script unlocks new identity. And on Tuesday, Brent Gleason reminded us
that comfort can become the slow fade away from who we're meant to be. Today, we focus on what that discomfort actually looks like in everyday life, not in a combat zone or a life crisis, but in the moments where growth feels clumsy, where you question yourself, where you want to shrink back because something feels awkward. And that right there is why I wanted this conversation for you.
Because most people don't quit on their dreams at the point of failure. They quit at the point of awkwardness. They don't want to look inexperienced or imperfect or human. My guest is Henna Pryor, workplace performance expert and author of Good Awkward. Her mission is simple, to help you get comfortable being uncomfortable so your potential isn't limited by self-consciousness.
In today's discussion, we talk about why awkwardness isn't a flaw, it's the front edge of growth. How your nervous system mislabels stretching as danger. The hidden cost of trying to get it right before you begin. Why confidence is the reward for going through awkward, not the prerequisite, and a simple practical way to build courage through small, uncomfortable reps.
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Chapter 3: What is Social Muscle Atrophy and why is it a crisis?
Before we start, a quick favor. If today's episode helps you take one brave step, share it with someone who needs the courage to take theirs. Also, consider leaving a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It makes a bigger difference than you might realize. And lastly, watch our full episodes on YouTube on our channels, PassionStruck Clips and John R. Miles.
All right, here we go. Episode 701. Let's dive into this powerful conversation with Hannah Pryor. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin. I still remember the moment I realized something was off. I was drinking more water, trying to be healthier, but I kept feeling off.
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Welcome, Hannah. How are you today?
Thank you for having me, John. Excited to be here.
As you and I were discussing before we got on the show, we both got our start in big four consulting firms, audit firms. I just wanted to ask, what was the biggest thing you learned from that environment?
Oh, gosh, work ethic, work ethic. So I joined in 2003. And at that time for any accountants or finance folks, that was when Sarbanes-Oxley first came out. So all public companies had to become Sarbanes-Oxley compliant, which was this whole new set of regulations. And so all of that to say for about two years straight, I worked a year round busy season.
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Chapter 4: How can embracing awkwardness lead to personal growth?
We are not clear on what they think our capabilities are, what we think their bandwidth is to help us. So we tell ourself a whole story about what that represents. And because of all these factors, It's harder than ever to ask for help. But amongst all of those, the biggest one is we're just not doing it as much and we've gotten out of practice.
Not only do I think we've gotten out of practice there, I think we've gotten out of practice across all of humanity in how we're connecting with each other. So the workplace to me is a micro environment of a greater epidemic I think that's happening across communities everywhere that you look.
Even to the point with the younger generations of even wanting to get on a phone call with you instead of taking the easier path of emailing or doing a chat with you.
Yes, I think that generational bit is so important. And I always like to start here. When it comes to generations, I think it's very easy. So I'm almost 44. I'm squarely, I think what they refer to as elder millennial at this point. With generations, I think it's very easy. I've got teenagers, 15 and 13, but they're not yet in the workforce, but they're not that far from it.
It's easy to say that they don't like to talk on the phone. They like to hide behind their screens. And I always try to help leaders understand, first and foremost, they can't help when they were born. We have to start with that agreement. They can't help when they were born just the same way we can't help when we were born.
So we cannot pathologize them for growing up with all of this technology and for this being the default. But what we can do is start to better understand as leaders what is standing in the way of them trying to to adopt some of these techniques that for us feel very second nature.
I think if we can have a little more patience to acknowledge that truth, then we can start to discuss what we actually do about it and how we create that practice.
I think there's definitely something to be said with that. My kids are now 21 and 27, but I definitely lived through that moment that you're going through right now. And it is a huge paradigm shift from when you and I were back in school in the environments that they're being raised in and how they're communicating and how it's so much different than it was when we were that age.
I think where we sometimes have opportunity is just the recognition of, A, these things that were not hard for us do feel like a bigger lift. So I use the term in my research about social muscle. Social muscle is... Metaphorically similar to a physical muscle, a muscle in your body in that when it's underused, it weakens, it atrophies.
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Chapter 5: What are Henna Pryor's science-backed practices for leaders?
John, I kid you not. It sounds like I'm being dramatic, but he did it. He hung up the phone. He said...
oh mom i did it i did it and i'm just giggling to myself like this kid just feels like he ran a marathon but he did in his world it was the equivalent from a social standpoint at the naval academy where i graduated from we have something called the distinguished graduate award which is the highest honor an academy graduate can attain and
I have been submitting a classmate of mine now, this will be our third year, and I'm trying to make his package as robust as possible. But in order to do it, we need endorsements. So I have been calling secretaries of state, secretaries of the Navy, former admirals and generals and Medal of Honor winners. And it's tough even for me to make those phone calls, especially to that level of people.
I'm doing it because it's a lot easier to say no in electronic communication than when you get someone on the phone and you can express in your tone and your words, just how important it is that this endorsement is to a package. And I think that's something that we've grown to not realize.
Yeah, I think it's that. And then it goes back to what we talked about at the beginning about people being afraid to ask for help. Your illustration right now is a form of asking for help, right? You're leveraging these contacts in order to help this person that you're submitting. And often the narrative that goes through our head is, well, I don't want to bother people.
I don't want to bother people. Our being in community with others has now been reframed in our head as we're bothering people. So I want to be very crystal clear about this. You can bother people. Believe me, you can bother people. And it feels bothersome when the approach is wrong, right? When the approach feels like, well, I haven't talked to this person in ages.
And the only time I hear from them is when they need something from me. I have those people in my life, and I'll be honest, it bothers me a bit because I feel dehumanized. I feel that I'm only useful to them when they need something.
But if you can frame that differently, I'm not saying you need to talk to them all the time, but to say, hey, hope you've been great, been following your journey, been trying to support your work. And also, I couldn't help but think you would be such the perfect person. Feel free to say no, but I just wanted to ask. It's all in the framing. It's all in the approach.
And all of a sudden, it may feel awkward, but it stops being bothersome. And there's a difference between those two things.
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Chapter 6: How can leaders foster psychological safety in their teams?
I just desperately wanted to fit in and assimilate. rather than feeling like every one of my bumpy edges was sticking out. I felt awkward about it all. And then I got to high school, started to find a little bit of my sense of self, got to college. That's when I really started to find a little bit more of my personality and sense of self. But then I got to the workforce.
And every time I felt like I was in a new situation or at an inflection point or in transition, those little henna feelings of, oh my gosh, I feel so embarrassed. I should know better. I feel awkward about it all. They kept coming up. And Brene used to say in her podcasts and her interviews, stay awkward, brave, and kind. I love everything Brene says.
But every time she said that, I was like, okay, lady, stay kind. Yes. Stay brave. I know that's important, but stay awkward. No, thank you. I have been trying to fight this feeling off my entire life. And I got very curious about that and realized no one had studied this particular emotion in the workplace and the role that it plays in our collective performance.
Before we go to talking about your book, since you brought it up, I want to ask you another question. You said that you're a professional speaker. A number of months ago, we launched Passion Struck Speakers, our bureau, and speaking is something that comes easily to some people and more difficult to others. For sure. What's your biggest advice for an aspiring keynote speaker who's out there?
Rehearse, refine, and be relentless about your craft. I am, for as awkward as I felt, I will say transparently that I am an extrovert. I'm not shy. That said, I don't know many successful keynote speakers that get by on extroversion or charisma alone. That's not enough anymore. And so I have been obsessive
about refining my craft as a keynote speaker craft means the differentiation of your message in the age of ai why should someone listen to you when they can just put it into chat gpt or find a free youtube video right why are they going to pay money so there's the quality and differentiation of your message there's the quality of your delivery
Do you know how to specifically use your body, your arms, the inflection of your voice? These are all things that can be trained. And then the relentlessness is the world is changing fast. It requires a bit of constant reinvention. And so I think there's a lot of levers that successful long game keynote speakers prioritize that are not just personality and charisma alone.
That's where the true difference lies.
Okay. Well, I have one more question to ask you here. In order... for myself to practice. I got really involved with improv and I also got involved with Toastmasters. And I did both of them because I think as a speaker, there are a lot of times you hit awkward moments. You never know what is going to hit you.
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Chapter 7: What role does vulnerability play in leadership?
How much time do we have? Many. There has been times, especially towards the beginning, where I completely missed a main point from a slide. Like I completely skipped a section or I mispronounced something horrendously and something inappropriate came out of my mouth. More times than I can count. But John, I love what you said about the improv training.
So chapter eight of my book is about using improv principles to learn to get better at tolerating and embracing awkwardness. You cannot avoid an awkward moment. You cannot. To avoid an awkward moment means having a crystal ball and knowing exactly what the future is going to bring, knowing exactly how another person is going to react, knowing exactly how that day is going to unfold.
If someone has cracked that code, share it with the class. Good luck. We don't know that. What we can train, though, is the ability to, as improv would say, take what's handed to you. Yes. And right. Radical acceptance of reality. Here's the moment. What am I going to do next? How am I going to move this forward?
So when I have mispronounced something or if I was you and Will.i.am was doing this, I probably wouldn't have been able to resist stopping and going, Will.i.am is giving me one of these. So I'm either killing it like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer or whatever. I probably would have taken that moment and made something of it, if only to diffuse my own distraction, right?
And so there's lots of different strategies that are personality dependent for some people. It's using humor for others. It's having a reset strategy to be able to put that away and out of mind, move on to the next. But those improv principles are critical in those moments.
I hope you're enjoying my conversation with Hannah Pryor. Before we continue, I want to pause on something important. Listening to a podcast is one thing. Becoming the person you're listening for is another. Every single week, people tell me, John, I love these conversations, but how do I actually do this in my life? That's exactly why we create companion workbooks for each episode.
Simple, powerful tools to help you apply what you discover here. Because becoming isn't passive, it's a choice you repeat. You can download all our free workbooks in the sub-stack posts that go along with each episode. Just head to theignitedlife.net and join the community. Now, a quick break for our sponsors. Thank you for supporting those who support the show.
You're listening to Passion Struck on the Passion Struck Network. Now, back to my conversation with Henna Fryer. I want to make this real for people because even people we look up to or think get it right all the time have these awkward moments. I just recently saw Shakira was on stage in front of thousands at a concert when she slipped and fell in the middle of a song and had to recover from it.
which she did with Grace. But a person that you chronicle in your book is Jennifer Lawrence. And I remember there's this famous video of her where she's talking to someone else and all of a sudden someone comes up behind her and starts sharing his admiration for her. And it was Jack Nicholson. But she is known for tripping on the Oscar stage, fumbling modeling gigs.
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Chapter 8: How can individuals overcome the fear of awkwardness?
The thing that Jennifer Lawrence does beautifully and any of us can model is when those moments inevitably occur, rather than avoidance, she's quick to ownership. So this is what we mean by embracing an awkward moment. So again, they're not avoidable. What we can work on is our comeback rate. And Jennifer Lawrence has a beautiful ability to have a fast and intentional comeback rate.
So when she tripped on her dress at the Oscars, it was right as she was walking up the steps about to accept her award. We all saw it. There was no avoiding it. She could stay red, embarrassed, mortified, but she immediately, the first thing she said when she got us on stage is she made a joke about it. She said, you're all just clapping because you saw me trip and you feel bad for me.
She owned it. She took the power back because she took that situation and owned it. Similar in other situations, she's just very quick about taking the thing in the room and taking ownership of it. We can all do that. Ironically, Avoiding the awkwardness increases the awkwardness. It's the most counterintuitive truth about this emotion.
When there's an awkward moment that occurs and all of us are just doing the eyes darting sideways and no one's saying anything, that tension thickens. And all it takes is that one person to say, oh, okay, that was awkward. That was embarrassing. Let's flush that and move on. We look at that person and say, that's the confident person.
The person who named it, who diffused it, who owned it, that's the confident person. And so that is a muscle that any of us can build. The ability to get used to saying things like that in those moments and the perception of confidence shoots up.
So there's this performance psychologist you may know and might have been on a stage with them, Dr. Michael Gervais. And Michael always talks about FOPO, fear of other people's opinions.
Yes.
And when I think about FOPO, I think there's a direct correlation with awkwardness and also the hidden doubt that so many of us fear. What are your thoughts on that?
I love Michael Gervais' work on FOPO. And I think that is such a strong and succinct way to sum up what so many of us walk around with is our perceived lived experience. So there's a few pieces of psychology that really support this idea that FOPO is a phenomenon that we need to all work on. Number one is Elliot Aronson's work around the spotlight effect, right?
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