Panic Attacks and Anxiety Help Reframe Challenges into Opportunity

✅ Navigating Anxiety and Envy in Leadership

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Key Highlights: 📌

🧠 Leading with Vulnerability: the importance of leaders embracing vulnerability and authenticity, setting the tone for a more transparent workplace culture.
🌟 Envy and Scarcity in Success: address the complexities of envy and scarcity mentality among leaders, providing strategies to foster a more inclusive and supportive environment for all team members.
🔗 From Anxiety to Action: the strength found in acknowledging and confronting challenges head-on.

Join us in this deep dive on the Anxiety at Work podcast, where we welcome Nihar Chhaya, an executive coach with an impressive background in talent development for major global companies. Nihar brings his unique perspective on managing anxiety and envy in the competitive world of corporate leadership.

With wisdom gleaned from personal experiences and his professional practice, Nihar offers a roadmap for leaders to cultivate a culture of openness, where the human condition is acknowledged, and imperfections are viewed as pathways to connection and growth.

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#Leadership #EmotionalIntelligence #WorkplaceCulture #ExecutiveCoaching #NiharChhaya #AnxietyInLeadership #EnvyInSuccess #CareerGrowth #AnxietyatWorkPodcast

Transcript

0:00:00
 Welcome to the Anxiety at Work podcast. I'm Chester Elton and this is my co-author and dear friend, Adrian Gostic. We hope the time you're going to spend with us is going to help remove the stigma of anxiety and mental health in the workplace and in your life. And with experts from around the globe, we want to provide ideas and tools to deal with anxiety in your world. And our guest today is Nihar Chayak. Nihar is an executive coach to leaders at global companies including American Airlines, Coca-Cola, GE and Dell.

0:00:47
 As a former Fortune 200 corporate head of talent and development, he is president of Partner Exec, which helps executives master interpersonal savvy for superior business and strategic outcomes. His work has been featured in publications such as the Harvard Business Review and Fast Company, and he writes regularly on leadership for Forbes. He holds an MBA from the Wharton School. Welcome to our show, Nihar,

0:01:11
 we're delighted to have you on our Humble Podcast. Thank you so much, Adrian and Chester, for having me. I'm really excited and congratulations on your podcast. Well, thanks, Nihar. And you speak a lot in your work about anxiety and envy. That's really why we, I mean, not only your amazing background, but we wanted to have you come on and talk a little bit about this. So how, as leaders, do we create a culture

0:01:38
 maybe where we embrace the human condition with all its imperfections, envy, anxiety, and maybe help us understand why it's good to acknowledge those challenges as well. Yeah, great question, Adrian. I think that in my work, and probably you will agree, is that culture oftentimes starts at the top. And so how leaders at the top behave really sets the tone

0:02:01
 for how people in organizations will also act in certain situations and also manage their own, as you said, human condition. And I think that when you see leaders not acting in a vulnerable way or kind of the facade of everything is perfect and they never experience any kind of struggles or fears, we can see through that nowadays. We all kind of have more of a sense of what authenticity looks like. Maybe it's because we have social media and we're more interconnected

0:02:29
 and we have more access to information about what the leaders we work for are like. I feel like there's a move towards being more honest and open. And what I find with my clients is that there's a real win-win situation that can come from being vulnerable and embracing those imperfections.

0:02:48
 One is that I think it enables people to start following you as opposed to fearing you. So there's a lot more followership. But I think also there's a sense that you don't have to be so perfect. And so the pressure is off of you as a leader also. I had a recent client that I was working with at a Fortune 50 corporation where, you know, as you probably know with a lot of these big companies, they kind of set like high potentials on a succession plan to prepare them and stretch them

0:03:15
 for future leadership roles. And I had a client that was quite young, but really had a lot of potential. And he was moved over to a different business unit to become their vice president. But the reality was that there were several people on his new team that wanted that role. And they had way more experience,

0:03:34
 in many ways, more tenure as well. And there was two really stark different personalities here. One was the young executive who was feeling like, wow, I'm excited but I'm also a little bit insecure because I don't have as much experience. Then there's these people in his team that felt a lot of envy around, wow, why didn't I get that job?

0:03:52
 And really there's a scarcity element there. There's only so many VP roles. And so what we found was that when he was able to be more open and vulnerable about his own insecurity, but also inviting people to be more open about their envy or their perhaps disappointment in being selected, there was a lot more connection and collaboration. Otherwise, they were going to be stuck in their own corners and retreating into their

0:04:14
 own mindsets. I love when you talk about that vulnerability and authenticity. One of the things that Adrian and I are trying to do with this podcast and our new book, Anxiety at Work, is to create that safe place to talk about that, where people can be vulnerable. In fact, it's really been interesting, our online community, which is wethrivetogether.global, dot global, because we couldn't get dot com,

0:04:39
 we'll be up front on that, is to create those safe spaces. Now, you talk about envy and scarcity and how it guides the perception, which many have, that they aren't taking on enough, aren't winning enough, aren't doing enough, et cetera. How does scarcity create that view, and do you think this perspective drives anxiety?

0:04:58
 Yeah, I really do think it drives a sense of anxiety in many situations, I will say for myself it has, but I think even with my clients. And I think there's, you know, to your question about like how does scarcity create that view, I think the truth is that in many ways we are brought up in a society and in the real world where there is just limited spots for things that you want. I mean, I think at a young age, for instance, many of us start recognizing that there's only so many people that can get the A's

0:05:28
 in the class or so many people that can make the football team. And I see the contrast right now where we have an 18-month-old daughter at home. She doesn't really know what rejection is. She sees everything available to her. You know, and then I look at my niece who is 14 and she's now like, you know, swamped with that mindset of how am I gonna get into college and I gotta have all these activities and there's that competitive mindset that's starting to brew

0:05:54
 and it only gets worse, I think, when you get into the workplace and then when you wanna become a CEO, et cetera. But I think that what you find is that when you can see that the anxiety that that mindset of scarcity causes, there are ways to at least be mindful of it. And at the end of the day, you can at least say to yourself that, well, let me be creative here and let me make sure that, for instance, maybe I can change the playing field. I know you both talk a lot about reframing.

0:06:17
 So, for instance, reframing the sense that I am rejected and maybe look at it like well hey there's a longer game involved here. Yeah I just wanted to expand on that a little bit. Isn't it interesting that that scarcity mentality is something that we learn over time. You know little kids they don't they don't think they're scarcity they just are transparent and having fun and I love your perspective the difference between 18 months and 14 years that all of the sudden we've taught our kids, we teach our teams, we breed that into the workplace. Is there something that we should be doing differently to open that up? I mean is it teach our people to be more like little

0:07:02
 kids again? Help me with that. Yeah I think that's a brilliant idea. You know, in many ways it's setting the tone for the children, similar to how I was saying that the boss sets the tone for the for the employee. You know, if you are someone who is deeply insecure or perhaps triggered by the constant, you know, rat race, I think our children see that. And you know, I know for myself, like I've gone through a lifetime of wondering whether I was doing the right things and looking over at my peers, et cetera. But I've also, as we'll talk about with my coaching practice

0:07:42
 I really decided to also at some point leave the herd. I don't do what most people from Wharton do. I'm not an investment banker, I'm not a McKinsey consultant but I found a way to kind of pave my own lane and still work with them in a way that I felt was credible and fulfilling. And so I think with children, to the extent that you can teach them to be strong

0:08:03
 enough to deal with rejection and hey, it's not going to go away and be resilient. I think that's really valuable, but also enable them to be creative enough to think that just because I, for instance, I grew up in a family of Indian immigrants, where there really were limited jobs that you would think about mostly engineering, medicine, maybe law, things like that. But there really was a linear way in those 60s and 70s to think about how to make a living.

0:08:29
 There really is a lot of opportunity now for people. And so I think with children, if you can kind of get them to think about the fact that there's many different paths to success, perhaps that takes away a little bit of the pain about rejection and scarcity. I love that idea, Nihar, the many paths to success. I want to come back to something you said a minute ago. I probably have a couple of questions in a row for you because I want to talk about your experience in a minute.

0:08:55
 But first, I had a young executive call me who could never afford your services right now, Nihar. But he wants to grow. He's just starting out in the world of leadership. And he asked me, how do I become authentic? And I thought, wow, big question. But here we are with one of the world's best leadership coaches.

0:09:18
 How would you answer that question? How does somebody gain a little bit more authenticity about them? It's a fantastic question. And in some ways it might be a little bit of a lifetime endeavor, but I do think there are certain things you can do to get more in touch with that.

0:09:33
 So one thing I'll say about being authentic, it really does require a certain amount of courage. And the courage to be more self-aware, but also be a little bit more aware of what you're measuring your success to. I think a lot of us try to find the balance between success on an outward basis, whether it's money or title or brand,

0:09:57
 and an inward basis, I would call it fulfillment. You know, am I really honoring my deep seated values? And am I kind of fulfilling the things that really are meaningful to me? And authenticity, I think the mistake a lot of people make with authenticity is that you just have to kind of be real. Like you have to just always say what's on your mind

0:10:16
 and you always have to, you never can, you know, struggle with it, it has to just be so blatantly honest. And I remember doing an interview with Frances Fry, who's a professor at Harvard Business School, where she said, you know, sometimes people can be too authentic. Sometimes it's like tone that down a little bit, you know, understand that there's a little bit of a balance between, you know, speaking your truth, but also not necessarily crowding out other people, you know, not necessarily doing the things that might later on hinder your job prospects or your advancement. So

0:10:48
 And so I would say to your friend that the idea of finding authenticity in many ways is becoming more self-aware, understand really what's important to you, what are some of the non-negotiables in your life, and then think about the field of play you want to be in. If you want to be in a corporate setting, and that can be very attractive to people, for instance, when they're younger and coming out of school or graduate school, be very clear that there might be some things you have, some prices you have to pay to, you know, you might not want to work 70, 80 hours a week

0:11:17
 when you're only 25 years old. But at the same time, if that's something you really are driven to do, then you're being authentic. At the same time, have the courage to look around and figure out whether the things you might be looking at your peers doing is either, you know, helping drive a determination for your success

0:11:36
 and your future, or is it really hindering you because you keep comparing yourself to them? Well, kind of building on that, you yourself have, I think, are a very self-aware person. You gave an interview recently which we listened to with the Harvard Business Review podcast where you were very vulnerable by talking about your experience with panic attacks and anxiety. One of the real reasons we wanted to get into a podcast with you and panic attacks are a much more common symptom of anxiety that I think many people realize. Now what I found interesting is is how you said you were successful at the time you were doing really well. You know you'd found a

0:12:12
 path. So if you could talk a little bit about your experience and what you learned from it. Yeah for sure and you know that was something that I I did hesitate about whether I should be open about it but I found that the more I could be honest about these struggles I think the more it might help people. And to give you a little bit of context, the first time I probably experienced panic symptoms was actually in 2004. So I was about 30 years old, this was a while ago,

0:12:37
 but I had just finished business school. And at a place like Wharton, you go there and it's pretty tough to get in. So when you get in, you're just focused on getting a job and you're focused on getting the top investment bank or consulting or whatever it might be and there's a lot of I guess competition for those roles but also I wasn't really even sure that that's what I wanted to do and all I found myself doing was getting consumed with I got a land a job when I graduate and what

0:13:03
 happened was I was interviewing for all these top firms but I didn't get one offer and it was it was pretty pretty heartbreaking because I was like what am I gonna do I this is expensive school I gotta pay back my loans. But also you kind of feel a little bit behind, you know, because after doing all that work, you feel like, wow, I'm no longer at that level. And what happened was I actually took an offer at a company that the writing was on the wall,

0:13:25
 this was a toxic place, the boss was very toxic, and unfortunately my desperation blinded me. And so I took the job in Manhattan, and within a couple months, I started experiencing lots of panic, and just anxiety symptoms I had never had before, but really feeling kind of bullied and just being a victim to this place, but not really sure if I could leave because I felt like I had to afford being here.

0:13:49
 And fast forward, so I had the courage to leave, which was good. However, it led to a little bit of a depression, stage of depression, because I really didn't know what to do next. Well, I stuck through it and I ended up, long story short, over the next 10 years or so, I really built up a career based on my own interests, which was leadership development and learning about how to coach from experts in the field. And by 2015, I had actually reached a pretty significant level of leadership and talent development at a Fortune 200 company and decided to start my own practice.

0:14:21
 Well, I didn't have any entrepreneurial background, but by 2017, surprisingly, in two years, I'd actually done quite well, and I felt really successful. More importantly, I felt, I love what I do. I'm not working for a toxic boss or an environment. I love what I'm doing. And all of a sudden, I had a panic attack. And everything started coming again, these symptoms, you know, heart racing and feeling of doom.

0:14:43
 And it really scared me this time, because before I kind of knew what the reason was. This time I was like, what's going on? I feel like I'm doing great. And what I realized was panic and all its, you know, in all the ways it manifests itself is really about a belief in the fact that you don't have control over your life. You know, in some ways respects you don't, like you don't know if you're going to die tomorrow, you don't know if somebody's going to get sick, you don't know if you

0:15:05
 get a job or get fired, but at the same time, my belief was really strong that I always had to work for somebody else to value myself and now I was finally happy and what if I have to go back to work for somebody else or what if I get sick or whatever might be and what I learned from that was the more I was able to lean into the panic and let it be the more dissipated and that's really what I try to tell people is that if you can learn that panic makes you a little bit stronger or anxiety or whatever however it manifests itself it makes you stronger if you kind of sit with it and keep moving forward, then that's the only way to really get through

0:15:40
 it because you can't actually get away from it. You only have to work through it. Well I really appreciate your comments about you're not sure if you're going to die tomorrow as I'm really sick today. That really was reassuring. You know, I will tell you though that your story and Adrian, you and I can relate to this really very, very, very keenly in that we'd always worked for big companies. We had the luxury of an expense account

0:16:09
 and healthcare plan. And when we struck out on our own, it was really a dynamic that we had never thought about before. And we had a lot of days where it was scary. I'll tell you one piece of advice we got. I'd love your input on this, Nihar. A friend of ours said, hey, you guys are freaking out.

0:16:30
 Well, he wasn't talking to Adrian, he was talking to me, so I was freaking out. He said, listen, you guys have an amazing track record, you're amazingly talented. Enjoy the journey. As you were talking about that, I thought, that's kind of like leaning into it, isn't it? Saying, hey, there are hard days, look what we're learning, let's enjoy the journey so that, you know, now it's 11 years later,

0:16:54
 we can turn around and look back and say, hey, it turned out okay. Is that what you mean about leaning into it and letting it stew? I really do, yeah, that's exactly it. And it's so scary at times because you think that this is all there is, you know, it's never gonna get better.

0:17:09
 But ultimately it does. And I think when you get through to do the other side of that fear or that situation you look back you realize that Wow, you know, I'm probably better off for this You know, this is this has been such an interesting conversation the heart how can people learn a little bit more about you and your work Well, I'd love to have you know Continue to have them follow me on LinkedIn if they if they already are if they if they haven't please feel to follow me there You can visit my website at

0:17:36
 If they already are, if they haven't, please feel free to follow me there. You can visit my website at www.partnerexec.com. That's P-A-R-T-N-E-R-E-X-E-C.com. And yeah, I'm always happy to talk to folks who are interested in becoming better leaders and becoming better people. How often do you find anxieties coming up in your coaching practices? You're working with leaders. Is that something that you're seeing more of?

0:18:02
 I mean, 10 years ago, we would never have talked about this. But what do you think? Yeah, I agree. What I've noticed for a lot of people is that anxiety doesn't always come up as the main reason why we'll work together, because I think there's still obviously a field of therapy that really takes care of that,

0:18:23
 and people still feel like that's a therapist issue. But what I have found is that when we talk about the things that they react to, like the things that frustrate them and annoy them and burn them out and that they ruminate on, there really is a threat of anxiety that's underneath that. And I think also, you know, a lot of the coaching that I do is helping people develop a certain amount of emotional intelligence and self-awareness that enables them to courageously call that out and say, yes, I do have anxiety.

0:18:52
 I mean, even for me, there were times when I wasn't really able to tell people that I felt that. And even now, I don't want to make necessarily such a huge thing about it, even for my clients, because you don't want that to define you. I think as we're talking, anxiety in many ways is very natural and it's something that you actually, the more you experience it, the better you can deal with it.

0:19:12
 So in some ways, it's like you should have it or at least embrace it. But I do think that leaders who are able to own the fact that that's a reaction that they're feeling, that's where we were able to do some deep work. And I think also, you know, this idea that like I see, there's a study that was done that I read about how leaders, I mean, people at work oftentimes mimic the dynamics of their family. So sometimes we'll actually start looking at our boss

0:19:41
 as our parent, you know, or we'll look at, we'll start like thinking, you know, wow, the boss likes my colleague more than me and that's kind of the sibling rivalry that you might have in family. It's very common. And this kind of anxiety that might be at home or underlying, you know, insecurity

0:19:58
 can really manifest itself into the way they lead people and collaborate at work. And so I think the idea that, because I work mostly with leaders around how to collaborate better, influence better, it's not uncommon that we can see some of those family origin stories playing into our work as well. You know, I want to jump into, you know, you say,

0:20:16
 look, I don't want it to define me, and yet I've got to own it, and I've got to lean into it, I've got to sit in it and marinate and so on. What are some of the rituals that you use for yourself or that you teach your executives so that when they have those panic attacks, when they're feeling anxious, when they've got that feeling of doom and gloom, what do you coach them to do to snap them out of that or to deal with that? Yeah, so this is interesting because I can relate personally, but also I did a lot of

0:20:42
 researching and reading about it, maybe because I was looking for answers. And I'll tell you something, there's a very obscure book that I came across. It was actually written in 1962 by an Australian doctor named Claire Weeks, and it's called Hope and Help for Your Nerves. And it really changed me, changed my life, because one of the things that I find, you know, we talk about reframing, for instance, is a fantastic tool, and cognitive behavioral therapy, many people have come across that, for instance, where they're taught to know that it's our thoughts that create our feelings. And so therefore if you can change your thoughts, you can change how you feel.

0:21:22
 Well, for me what I found was the feelings came so fast and so in an uncontrollable way that I couldn't even separate my thoughts from them. I couldn't even have the time to get distance from that to then be mindful about it and release them. And what Claire Weeks and some of that school of thought talks about is, you know, dealing with anxiety is really about looking at the, parsing out the two different fears that we're actually going through in our mind and our body. The first fear. And Buddha actually talks about this as the first arrow. The world is attacking you in some way, that's that first arrow. But then there's a second fear, or what Buddha calls a second arrow, which is the

0:22:14
 story we tell ourselves about that. It's the bewilderment about this. It's like, oh my God, what's happening to me? This will never end. What should I do? I'm going to die, whatever it might be, or I'm gonna lose my job. And if you can actually not let yourself get into that bewildering stage, the first fear actually starts dissipating. And so what I've taught many of my clients who are kind of in the grips of that stuff,

0:22:38
 whether it's they're so nervous about doing a speech at work, and they feel like they need to take a beta blocker or something, or they're just in, it's a chronic anxiety that's more like, hey, am I ever gonna get promoted, or am I ever gonna be able to deal with this really difficult person at work?

0:22:53
 Either way, the idea is to actually parse out the stimulus and then, of course, the story we tell ourselves about it. And if you can let yourself not fall too much into that shameful aspect or the doom and gloom of it, usually that initial stimulus will pass away. You know, I've been doing a lot of thinking, too, about that inner voice, which is kind of what you're talking about right the story you tell yourself and You got to be really careful about that self-talk Because you can tell you think some horrible stories right with horrible outcomes

0:23:25
 And then sometimes you just open your eyes and go oh wait a minute. I'm still here. You know Not get to that second arrow. I really appreciate that Don't get to that story, and if you can prevent getting there the first part will dissipate. Adrian. One of the things I wanted to ask you, Nihar, was sometimes I want to come back to this idea of envy because it's so interesting with anxiety. And I love that you've really tapped into something of vein here that's so interesting. So we have leaders that we do executive coaching as well. well and sometimes we'll find an environment if a leader is honest where they have rising stars within the organization. If they're hiring great

0:24:06
 people, they will have some people who work for them who are coming up who are doing extremely well. You know, you yourself, you've been in an environment like a warden, you've been in other Ivy League schools, you've been in investment banking, so you have you have been in environments where there was a lot of competition. So what would you say, what are some of the lessons that you would offer to a manager who is feeling overshadowed by their team members? Yeah, it's a topic that was really interesting. It came from some of my clients that were in that situation.

0:24:42
 They wanted to be really ideal, great leaders as we try to teach them to be, where they would raise up their direct reports and really celebrate them. But then what they found in some cases was the audacity of many of their direct reports, the boldness for them to go and create their own brand and kind of network around their boss and things like that made them feel a little bit like, wow, is this gonna hurt my own career advancement?

0:25:07
 And what I'll say is that it's something that also struck a nerve for me because growing up, so I grew up first generation American, born here, and my parents from India. And, you know, the idea was that as immigrants, they kind of came to this country trying to make sure that we didn't miss any opportunities and really were always instilling in us, like, make sure that you keep integrating and acclimating. At the same time, though, in our culture, and I think a lot of Asian people might be

0:25:35
 able to resonate with this, is you're taught to be more humble. You're taught to kind of slip into the background. Don't make a lot of noise. Don't make people feel inferior around you. Don't toot your own horn. And for me as an American-born guy, I was struggling with that conflict. In many ways, it was a conflict

0:25:52
 of two very important values, which was one, be humble, but also go out there and be ambitious and self-promote and get what you need to get done to be successful. I really struggle with that. And so I think as a result in my career, I found myself being muted a lot. There were times when I really wanted

0:26:13
 to be more outwardly assertive and really express about what I want or what I wasn't gonna put up with, and I didn't. And it really, I struggle with it. I think that is actually might be a cause of some of the anxiety that I felt. And I feel like now with you have, when you have leaders who are in that situation, whether they felt that way growing up or not, uh, they are stuck in

0:26:32
 the same dynamic. They don't want to look like they are being competitive. They don't want to look like they're all about me, but in some ways they have to be, I mean, there's only so many people that get promoted. And by the way, we don't promote teams. We promote individuals. So that's, that's one of the struggles I feel people deal with. And what I'd say to them is a few things.

0:26:52
 One is let go of the shame that you might feel for feeling that way. I think it's very natural that you would feel that, hey, this scarcity is in front of me or this person is competing against me and I feel weird about it. Let go of that feeling. That's kind of like the first arrow we talked about.

0:27:08
 But the second thing is, can you actually learn from that person's behavior? It may be at first seem a little bit unpleasant or even a little bit audacious, but at the same time, you could say, well, is there behavior triggering me because actually there's something that I want to do, but I'm being muted or I'm unwilling or lacking the courage to actually go and do it. That might be a sign. And lastly, I would say that envy in some respects can create like a malignant type of envy, which we don't want to do where you wanna put people down. But for many of the leaders I work with that are really great leaders

0:27:43
 and have such great intentions for their team, if they feel envy, it's really a benign type of envy in the sense that I want everybody to succeed. But what I tell them to think about is what is this telling you about your values? Maybe you envying that person's ability to get out on stage and build their own kind of more visible brand while you've been worried about that is telling you that you value more recognition, for instance.

0:28:10
 Well, how can we help you go get that? So I think that's where it's important to look at envy as something that is going to be somewhat unpleasant and maybe not looked at well in society, but something you can also navigate in a way that's more productive for you. We've really found in our work that so few employees really know if they're doing a good job or not. Because they get so little feedback from their managers and from their supervisors. So how should managers encourage that psychological safety for team members, especially if they're unclear about, hey, am I doing great? Am I just getting by?

0:28:49
 What would your advice on that be? Yeah, I see this a lot and it's interesting because I don't even know that it's necessarily the fault of some of these leaders who don't give feedback on time or they're just creating a lot of, I guess like you said, lack of psychological safety and even lack of clarity. Sometimes it's they don't have the time or they believe they don't have the time or they oftentimes are worried about giving feedback to people because they worry that that's going to affect their work, uh, their productivity. And for many people, this is where I would say, this is actually very common.

0:29:20
 A lot of leaders who are obviously working in certain types of business domains, maybe their GM or P and L leader, they're not necessarily versed in talent development. So they don't even know how to really measure and calibrate what good looks like and great looks like when it comes to leadership behaviors. They might know about, Hey, I need you to do X, Y, and Z in this in this product review, but it's not really about the behavior because that's not really what they're

0:29:44
 they're taught doing. And so what I find is that the more you can create objective, shared criteria and expectations, based on a shared vision, that enables people on your team to feel like they're being evaluated based on a on a consistent, consistent bar, not your own subjective whims, that's when you can create that safety. People don't feel like, oh, my boss is treating me badly because he likes my colleague over here better than me. It's because we're all trying to create a certain level of performance based on this

0:30:15
 objectivity, and that's actually quite rare in my experience, but it's something that you can definitely build. And the other thing that I would say is, aside from evaluating performance, there are some things that really do hinder psychological safety things like toxic behavior and It was interesting because recently I'd say I've been thinking a lot about this and talking to my clients about it where? Like Olivia Wilde is is a actress who is now a movie director And there's a story that came out of him last week where she she decided to fire

0:30:43
 Shia LaBeouf this actor from her movie who was really supposed to be in this role, but she decided to fire him because she said, I have a no A-holes rule on set. So she said, I don't care that he's the best for this role. I'm not going to tolerate any of this stuff. And what she said was that creates a level playing field for us. And similarly, as you probably saw when President Biden, on his inauguration day, when he was speaking to his new virtual team, he said, in no uncertain terms, if I see people treating people badly, you're gone. And I think that kind of consistency and integrity is critical to create that safety.

0:31:23
 And the more leaders can actually have the courage to do that, I think the more they find that it's actually a win-win for everybody. And thank you, by the way, for not swearing. We've had such salty guests on. It's been really fun, but it's nice to see you. You have such decorum, Nihar. Yeah, yeah.

0:31:41
 Thank you. You know, I do want to piggyback on that, though, because it's one thing to say it. It's another thing to do it. I mean, she could have said, look, here's the rule and then worked around it, and it would have eroded her credibility and the psychological safety. So I love leaders that will put that rule out there. What's even more impressive is when they follow through, right? Absolutely.

0:32:05
 And, you know, hopefully, like I said, culture and leadership starts at the top. And so the more you have a boss, I think, holding them accountable, hopefully the more that leader is going to casket it down. This has been such a wonderful discussion, Nihar, so thoughtful and practical too. So if you had to summarize maybe for our audience today a couple of takeaways you'd like us to take away, what would they be? How would you help us maybe get through

0:32:36
 some of these ideas of envy and anxiety, et cetera, in the workplace? Well, I think first off, we talked a lot about how unpleasant anxiety and envy are, but there's a lot of hopefulness behind it that I wanna leave the audience with which is anxiety really is a broad topic and it comes up in so many different ways. You know, how it comes up for me might be different for

0:33:00
 somebody else in different situations and as a result, there are many different ways to get through it. So, that's that should be a like an optimistic bent on it and I think that, you know, in some respects, it's important to recognize that it's natural. It's a physiological reaction. It's actually part of our evolutionary brain. And without some level of anxiety and worry, we really wouldn't be able to survive.

0:33:24
 And so the more we can actually, again, control how the story we tell ourselves about it, the better, the more actually agile we'll be when it comes up. Here's one thing that I really would love more of the world to do, and particularly people that we work with. I want leaders to understand more,

0:33:43
 I mean, share more about how anxiety might play a part in their ascent to success, not just after they got through it. One of the things that I think we see a lot of is people are much more comfortable talking about their success after they've become quite, I mean, about their anxiety, after they've really achieved all those goals

0:34:01
 and really had some kind of renowned or memorable level of achievement. But the reality is there's a lot of people suffering in silence. And the more leaders I think that can invite that discussion, not necessarily to say that they're gonna solve it or they wanna fix anybody, but just to say, hey, I've been there

0:34:19
 and I might even be there right now. But it really creates a little bit of willingness, I think, for people to be self-aware and also treat other people better as well. Great advice. You know, you're right. That suffering in silence, boy, how many times have we heard that, Adrian? That if we just ignore it, if we just deny it, if we hide it, if we lie about it, it'll get better. And never has that been the solution, right, this authenticity. Well, listen, great discussion. His name is Nii Harchaya. Follow him on LinkedIn. Follow him on give us your website again one more time So people can really get to know your work

0:34:56
 partner exec comm par t and er Execom exit. Thanks so much my friend. It's been a delight to have you on the podcast Thank you so much. Tessar and Adrian. It's been an immense pleasure for me, and I love your work. Thanks again for having me So, Adrian, what a good guy. What a calming voice you and I were talking off mic. You're just so reassuring. My anxiety levels came down just listening to his voice. Yeah, not Morgan Freeman, but close.

0:35:23
 Great voice. And, you know, what I loved what he said was that, you know, anxiety is very natural, you know, embrace it. You know, and I noticed you'd, I'll pick on you for a minute here, you'd call yourself, because you said, how do you snap out of it? Then you said, how do you live with it? And I think that was, that's really important

0:35:45
 for us to all remember is that, look, this is not something that we just, you know, snap out of. No, how do we live with it? And more importantly, he said, embrace it. Yeah, sit in it, stew in it, you know, and I love too, right at the end, he said how it helped. Leaders need to talk about how that anxiety helped them to their success, not the avoidance of

0:36:05
 but you know, he says we often talk about our success in the past tense rather than along the journey and I thought that was very insightful. You know we talked in there about you know the envy idea which I thought was so fascinating that he brought up that we really haven't talked about a lot before and he said look, he says, he said a couple of things, first off you know reframe when you're feeling this, which we've talked a lot about. But the second thing he said was, there are many paths to success.

0:36:32
 Don't feel like because you're not gonna become the next VP, that's the only path. Right, right, right. You know, he got very emotional about leaders being authentic and getting in touch with their emotions. He talked about letting go of the shame, which I thought was really interesting. Don't be ashamed of it.

0:36:51
 You've got to let go of that, the different arrows, the stories we tell ourselves. Really interesting that his coaching style and what not is, if you're going to be a great leader, if you want people to follow you, if you want to grow and develop, you've got to tap into your inner emotions and you can't be ashamed of that.

0:37:10
 You really need to embrace it. And I love that. Yeah, because he was talking too about, you know, what if you have a superstar employee, which if you're a good leader, you're going to have a lot of those in your career. And so I loved what he said, his very practical advice is, first off, you know, what can you learn from it? I guess first off was let go of your shame, of your envy, you know, it's okay. Secondly, what can you learn from their success?

0:37:34
 Because he said, there's probably something that's that's brought to you about your values that are important. If they're being recognized, well, maybe that's more important than you're giving it credit. If they're terrific on stage in front of other executives, maybe there's something there that you feel like you want to emulate. So learn and again, live with it, embrace it. Yeah. A couple of other lessons really quick as we wrap up, but I love what he said, don't

0:38:01
 let desperation drive your decisions. You know, he'd interviewed at all these places and he didn't get one job offer. And so in his desperation, he took a bad job. And I think we often let that, you know, govern our decisions. And it comes back to what we've heard a lot of leaders say, you know, it's really important to love what you do.

0:38:20
 And then lastly, he said, even though things were going really well, all of a sudden I was like, yeah, but what about tomorrow? Isn't it interesting? We often think of anxiety as being in bad times and yet he said, yeah, no, in good times too. You know, be aware of it and be careful about where it takes you. And again, people ask us, you know, what's your definition of anxiety?

0:38:44
 And I think Nihar really hit the nail on the head is that it's a belief you don't have control of your life. And you're exactly right. It can happen in good times and bad. It can happen with life changes. You have a baby. You go through a divorce. There are so many times in our lives where people can feel this or as he said, in a pretty good time.

0:39:07
 And so my last thought too was that I just loved how he said that leaders set the tone and we sense what authenticity looks like. You know, I think this is really interesting because I think some people have lost that ability to sense authenticity because you see people being led down the garden path by people who probably are not very good for them nowadays. And so I think that's an interesting question is,

0:39:34
 can we really sense it or not? You know, back in the old days, you know, the anchor on the evening news would be the epitome of authenticity. Now it's a little different. And as he said, it's somebody who's very real, who admits they're not perfect. That's the people we trust more than the person who's always put together. Yeah. Back to being like little kids.

0:39:58
 Wasn't that fascinating? He said, you know, my 18-month-old, everything's abundant. My 14-year-old niece, everything's limited. It's something that we learn over time. Well, listen, a special thanks to Brent Klein, our amazing producer. Of course, we love Christy Lawrence, who finds all these amazing guests for us. Most of all, thank you for listening in. We really hope if this podcast helped two or three of you to deal with your anxiety,

0:40:22
 then we've had some success. If you want to support the podcast don't just stream it download it that does help us Build a big following and we can get even more cool guests invited If you'd like to we'd also invite you to join our online community. We thrive together dot global Where we've created a really safe place to talk about anxiety and mental health at work And you know what if you're dealing with things I do and whatnot give somebody a call, you know reach out don't suffer in silence. It's never a good idea. Well, we're delighted you spent some time with us today and Adrian, always great for me to spend some time with you. Have a great day you guys and we hope to see you

0:41:00
 again soon.