Standing Up Strong

Standing Up Strong with Dr. Michelle McQuaid

• The Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center • Season 2 • Episode 1

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“When we can start to reach for and engage and develop our strengths, those things we're good at and enjoy doing, then it is going to not just energize us a bit more in the face of all those challenges but give us more confidence to try to muddle our way through and get to the other side.” 
- Dr. Michelle McQuaid 

Feeling stretched thin by all the change around you? In this uplifting episode of Standing Up Strong, author and researcher Dr. Michelle McQuaid joins Dr. Jillian Coppley of the VIA Institute on Character —a global leader in the science and practice of character strengths—to reveal how our character strengths can help us rise above stress and “quiet cracking.” Discover how leaning into what makes you strong, paired with a dose of self-compassion, can boost your confidence, build resilience, and help you thrive even when life feels overwhelming. 

Dr. Michelle McQuaid is an award-winning researcher, LinkedIn Top Voice for Mental Health, and honorary fellow at Melbourne University's Centre for Wellbeing Science and her team runs workshops, designs tools, and delivers coaching to help care for well-being, supercharge psychosocial safety, and co-create change in workplaces, schools, and communities around the world. 

Dr. Jillian Coppley is a visionary executive recognized internationally for her expertise in character strengths, wellbeing, and organizational transformation. With deep experience in positive psychology, strategy, and change, she has led large-scale collaborations, built global programs, strategic partnerships, and thriving organizational cultures that empower individuals, teams and organizations to flourish. Her leadership blends strategic vision, research-based innovation, and deep personal care for others —creating environments where people and programs thrive and where meaningful, lasting impact takes root.

Our thanks to the Mayerson Family Foundation and the VIA Institute on Character for their support of this series.  
https://www.mayersonfoundation.org/  
https://www.viacharacter.org/  

This series is part of the Cynthia & Harold Guttman Family Center for Storytelling at the Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, where the science of character strengths is integral to our work creating a community of upstanders. 
https://www.holocaustandhumanity.org/  
https://www.youtube.com/@holocaustandhumanity 

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Episode Resources  

Take the Character Strengths survey for free and find out your top strengths 
https://www.viacharacter.org/  

Find out more about Dr. McQuaid and her work 
https://www.michellemcquaid.com/  
https://www.linkedin.com/in/chellemcquaid/

Michelle’s “HEART of change” steps to navigating change in our lives: Honoring feelings, Engaging purposefully, Appreciating strengths, Reaching out, and Taking tiny steps. 
https://www.michellemcquaid.com/research/heart-of-change-insights-report/

Follow Dr. Jillian Coppley on LinkedIn for more insights about character strengths and how they can help us thrive 
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jcoppley/

Jackie Congedo:

Inside you lie unique character strengths just waiting to be used. Standing up strong is where we harness them to build resilience, spark hope, and inspire courage. Lean into the best parts of who you are and lift others as you rise.

Dr. Jillian Coppley:

Hello and welcome. I'm Dr Jillian Coppley, and in my work at the VIA Institute on Character and for the more than a decade my work in the field of positive psychology, I've been incredibly fortunate to meet some of the greatest hearts and greatest minds in the field true global experts in the field of human flourishing, thinking about flourishing in the places we live and work and play and learn, and today, we are joined by Dr Michelle McQuaid, one of those luminaries in the field that I feel so proud and so delighted to know. Michelle is going to talk to us about change. So if any of you out there have experienced change or find it confusing time a disruptive time, and what in the world is going on in the world, and wonder if other people are experiencing it and how to address it. Michelle is the one that you need to listen to. So there are so many things that I could share with you about Michelle. I'm going to limit myself to just name a few that I just really want you to know so Michelle is an award winning researcher. She is a LinkedIn top voice in mental health. She's an Honorary Fellow at the Melbourne University Center for Wellbeing Science - that just seems too small. She's an entrepreneur. She's a million other things. Those things are all impressive. The other thing I want you to know is that, in the spirit of this podcast, Standing Up Strong, Michelle really embodies that. You know, from a beginning story that was one full of challenge, truly, Michelle transcended that with just a remarkable resilience and rose to the top of a global organization in leadership and really in so many ways, just impressive boundary breaking work that she was doing and abundance in so many areas of her life, until, in her own words, she found herself a stressed out, good girl mess. So we'll talk more about that, I'm sure, true to Michelle's nature as being a decided, determined learner and leader. Experiencing that, she went back to school and decided I'm going to learn everything I possibly can about human flourishing. And she did just that, and we are all better for it. She has translated everything she has learned into playful and practical tools, workshops, coaching that help people in workplaces, schools and communities around the world, around the world, to help them thrive, even in the most challenging of times. So with all of that, welcome, Michelle. I'm so happy you're here.

Dr. Michelle McQuaid:

It is such a pleasure and privilege to be with you.

Dr. Jillian Coppley:

So today, of all the things that we could talk about, I'm happy to say you have new research, hot off the presses, talking about change, which, of course, is so relevant for all of us right now. I feel like no matter where we are, I mean, I'm here in Cincinnati, Ohio, you're all the way around the world in Australia, and getting up in the middle of the night for us nearly so I'm so grateful for that, too. Oh, and I should have said a personal thing I know about you is that you've just recently been to Mount Kilimanjaro, so we could talk about that as well, but we'll stick to your research right now. So Michelle and her team have done this extraordinary research, and they have titled it thriving through the super cycle of change. And in this work, introduced this concept of quiet cracking. And I am just so eager for you to talk to us about that. And there's one point that I would love to hear you talk in particular more about. I'd love to hear all of it, but that when you disaggregated the data by age groups, you found some really striking differences. So I'd love to hear more about all of it, Michelle.

Dr. Michelle McQuaid:

Amazing. Well, we were noticing around the start of this year that it was like people's nervous system seemed to be fraying, Jillian, was the way we were describing it at the time, everybody just seemed a little more fraught, little more on edge, a little more overwhelmed. We actually learned from futurist Amy Webb. She calls this the Oh FUDs, the Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, F-U-D, that comes when we're navigating just a pace and complexity of change that I think few of us have really experienced in our lifetimes before, and so this nervous system playing, and there's actually in a U.S. study, we first saw this term, "quiet cracking," and we're like, "Oh, my goodness, that sounds exactly like what we are seeing. What is this quiet cracking?" And interestingly, the U.S. there was a study on workplace well being, and they hadn't actually assessed quiet cracking directly, but they'd used it as a term wrapped together everything they were seeing about workers in the US at that time. And so as the data nerd that I am, I was like, right,"Let's go and ask people, What does quiet cracking even mean?" Because it just seemed like this word was really capturing what we were seeing. So we went, we asked more than 1000 workers, and we said, Are you quietly cracking? And for those that scored positive on that scale, we asked them, in their own words to define what that meant and what came up over and over in their various descriptions was this theme that, "You know what? On the outside I'm trying so hard to hold it all together, while I'm hiding that inside, I'm really falling apart." And what we found was that one in two workers were feeling like,"Right now, I am quietly cracking." And as you touch to we really saw an age divide on this with young workers, 18 to 24 in their case, actually it was 75% of them. And so it's sort of, you know, it tapers off a little bit the older that we get, but for many of us really struggling right now to navigate and all that's happening.

Dr. Jillian Coppley:

Yeah, I certainly, I feel that so deeply, certainly in my own life and the people I work with, the organizations we work with. I even if people aren't yet using that term, that sense of, "Wow, I'm moving moment to moment to hold it together," is really real. And this sense, you know, we talk a lot in my work at VIA and thinking about character strengths, about the sense of"masking" in general, right when it when we're stepping outside of being true to ourselves. So I want to just take a tiny bird walk, and then we're going to come back to interventions around you know what that what organizations can do, what individuals can do when they're having that experience, but this little bird walk I want to do is to talk about your "good girl" work, because I noticed a similarity, if you don't mind going there for a minute, which is you disaggregated that data too. And yet again, it seemed like our youngest workers were really the ones suffering the most. Do I remember that correctly? Is that right?

Dr. Michelle McQuaid:

Yeah, absolutely. So this was another study we had done with, again, more than 1000 women, and we were asking them, do you feel the pressure to be a "good girl," to perform perfectly, to try to keep everybody happy, to protect others, often by silencing yourself? And again, we saw an overwhelming majority of women, no matter what age they were, just over 50% going,"Yeah, I really feel this pressure to be this good girl." In fact, it was fascinating how often we only have to say to women, are you a good girl? And women start nodding their heads as well. But as you were talking, we saw this much higher for younger women, again, sort of 71 72% of young women 18 to 24 going, "Oh my goodness, yes, I feel this pressure to be a good girl." And that really surprised me, because I'm, you know, a woman in my 50s. I thought it was more of my generation thing, of how I was brought up. I didn't expect that for young women, this pressure would still be so acute for them. And so like you, as the data nerd I am, I'm like,"What's going on with these patterns for our younger workers, our younger people?" And really, what I think often we find sits behind this is the pressure of expectations that we often feel growing up for whether that's society's expectations that we're good girls or our workplaces, expectations that we hold it all together no matter what's happening on the inside, and balance that with, often, our lack of resources. So on the quiet cracking side, we were finding the lack of resources that young people were really struggling with that was driving that result was, "Look, I'm early in my career. I'm worried about job security. I'm struggling with cost of living. I don't have as much savings. I don't have as much money coming in." On the good girl's side, it was a lack of personal resources. I think growing up is hard to do for so many of us, and I think perhaps right now, it's particularly challenging for our young people.

Dr. Jillian Coppley:

Yeah, oh my gosh, that that resonates so deeply and and, and, of course, we know that in the midst of these things across our generations, dealing with change, dealing with expectations that you know are unreal, that there are solutions, there are interventions. And I loved in in the report that you not only examined in all of your work. Truly, Michelle, you, you not only tease apart and examine these complex issues with real data from real people, but you offer us hope and solutions and possibility. I mean truly, in the name of this podcast again, Standing Up Strong you, you're showing the way how to do that. I love that. And you know one of. Ways, of course, that you mentioned is truly people being able to do what they're good at right, and developing a sense of confidence, and therefore buffering against both this quiet cracking, but then even what could devolve into, you know, actually burnout, which is so hard to come back from. So I know you looked at a lot of other interventions, and I'd love to hear more about those. Let's talk about those.

Dr. Michelle McQuaid:

Yeah. So we tested lots of things because my character strengths, curiosity and creativity, and I'm at my best when I put those things together. So very clear, and the creativity is the what do we do about this part? And so we did. We tested lots of factors around what might help reduce this risk of quiet cracking. And you're right. We did find also that if I was quietly cracking, I was six times more likely to wind up burnt out. And so really, for me, it's like, right? What can we do to try to, you know, mitigate these challenges? There were two parts to what can help us reduce the quiet cracking. One part was, what can we do as organizations and leaders, and so they're absolutely trying to help people balance the demands of their jobs, the resources we're providing, but also making sure we're supporting workplace stability. Basically treating each other with respect to care, went a long way to reduce the quiet cracking. But individually, what could we also do? Is always a question that I'm curious about, and there the overwhelming factor, as you touched on, is developing our strengths. Developing our strengths, finding to use our strengths, was the number one thing that seemed to be helping us individually and to your point, when we're quietly cracking, we're feeling overwhelmed. We've got the Oh FUDs, the fear, uncertainty and doubt. When we can start to reach for and engage and develop our strengths, those things we're good at and enjoy doing, then it is going to not just energize us a bit more in the face of all those challenges, but give us more confidence to try to muddle our way through and get to the other side. The other factor, though, that was high, and I think it's interesting to think this goes hand in hand with us using our strengths, was self compassion. And so self compassion being that part to be that wise and kind friend to ourselves, like we are to other people. And I think about trying to use my strengths in the middle of the Oh FUDs and the challenges that we're all encountering with all the changes we're experiencing. And you know what? Sometimes I'm going to nail that, and sometimes it's not going to be there yet. And so when it's not there yet, how do I reach for my self compassion to think about how might I be over playing or underplaying my strengths, or where might my strengths be colliding with others. So I thought was so fascinating in the data Jillian, that these two things seem to go hand in help look after us.

Dr. Jillian Coppley:

Yeah, oh, I love that. Michelle is so important, so important. And, you know, I think, like, like, so many critical things for our own well being, it would seem like we should do them by default. It would seem like evolution would have made us that way in order to enhance our well being, but it's something we really have to work at, don't we?

Dr. Michelle McQuaid:

We really do and I think, look, evolution did make us that way, right? Evolution wired us to be perfectly imperfect so that we could learn and grow and adapt and evolve as the world around us and within each of us keeps changing. I think the challenge is often we've grown up in societies who perhaps have mistakenly made us think that we should have it all perfectly done, and it's just us that can't figure it out, and therefore there's something wrong with us, and we get so mired in that deficit lens of ourselves. And I think this is where the self compassion might become so important to be able to go. You know what? Nobody's got it all figured out. This is just what the human experience is. So how do I keep reaching for my strengths as I navigate it? I think that permission sets us free in ways that we all need to be able to thrive.

Dr. Jillian Coppley:

Right, absolutely and our own unique set of strengths, right? That we are at once with our 24 strengths, all connected and at once our own unique expression of those 24 which is truly one of my favorite things about about doing this work and thinking about character strengths. You said something really interesting I wanted to go back to for a minute, which is you talked about overuse and under use. And obviously that's such a critical part of the science of character strengths. And you talked about it interpersonal, you know, within ourselves, right, intra personally, and in another part of the report, you talk about psychological safety and the importance of that. And you know a lot that's many things I know. One of the things I frequently think will think about is that strengths can be a wonderful language for creating that kind of respect of the other and seeing one another. Are as different from me, but deeply valuable and and a means to getting in part, to psychological safety. But I am so eager to hear you talk a little bit more about psychological safety. And you know, it's, it's buffering effect on some of these changes and some of these experiences you're talking about.

Dr. Michelle McQuaid:

Yeah, so psychological safety. I love the work of Dr Amy Edmondson in this space, and she talks about, how do we be open and honest with each other about what's really going on, and how do we learn alongside each other in ways that feel safe enough doesn't have to be perfectly safe, but safe enough that we can make mistakes and bump up against our limitations and fall short of our ideals sometimes, and know that we will still respect and value each other in that process. And so again, we think about hiding part of the quiet cracking, the masking that you were touching on before, Jillian. And when we have psychological safety, we feel it's safe enough to be more open and honest with each other, we don't have to do all that work of the masking and the hiding. What I love in our team is we will often talk to each other about, "Hey, could you dial up this strength, or could you dial down that strength a bit," when we're overplaying or underplaying, and times where we've had strength collisions, where perhaps we've got a team member who's really high in prudence, sticking to the plan and managing the budget, and we've got another team member, not thinking of anyone who's very high in creativity. Couple it with some zest, and anyone that would be like that Jillian, and it's like oil and water sometimes when our strengths come together in a teaming environment, but what the language of strengths allows us to have is to see the best in each other, to understand and value that that might be different from my set of strengths, but we want those strengths. We want diversity of strengths in teams. And so thank you for what you do that I don't want to do, and how do we respect that as we work alongside each other? So I do think that language of strengths to build that psychological safety and have more of those open and honest as we go learning discussions rather than biting our tongues and getting stuck on the hump of politeness with each other is so important.

Dr. Jillian Coppley:

Yeah, yeah. So we're going to get to one of the matters that I think is on many of our minds today, whether we're, you know, experience it in our work, our personal life, or thinking about our political conversations, and that's artificial intelligence. So we're going to put a placeholder there and come back to it, because I think the findings you have in your report are just fascinating and concerning, as many things are around AI, but before we get there, I'd love to know, I it's just so rich and dense what you have done, Michelle, and we've just scratched the surface on a couple of things. Is there anything else from you know, again, your most this, most recent report that you just want us to hear and know from you.

Dr. Michelle McQuaid:

Yeah, I think one thing we found is an additional tool to kind of bring all of these things together for very busy workers and very busy leaders, was to think about it, the heart of change. The reality is we are now living in a super cycle of change, where economically, technologically, politically, socially, environmentally, we have a lot of things happening at once, and they are amplifying and colliding with each other. So where many of us are feeling like this year, whoa, there's a lot of change, you're absolutely right. And the reality is, we are at the start of this super cycle, and the next going to bring a lot of change for all of us. So how do we have the skills to navigate that? How do we know how to draw on our strengths and engage them? So we created this little HEART acronym out of all of the findings that many are finding useful, and the H is to honor the feelings, just to know there's going to be ups and downs, and that's okay. This is hard. Yep, there's nothing wrong with you. This is hard to to Engage purposely, to figure out what in the changes matter most to us right now, and prioritize on those things, to Appreciate our strengths, of course, to Reach out for help. Very few of us are going to be able to do any of this alone, and then just to keep Taking tiny steps forward. So again, lots of beautiful research on tiny being mighty when it comes to navigating change rather than biting off more issues. So if people are interested, there's more at our website and lots of little tiny somatic nudges for our nervous systems to help us be navigating this cycle of change.

Dr. Jillian Coppley:

Oh, super important, and we will have those links available with the video so people can get to them directly. Okay, so another really important matter that came up, of course, was when you were looking at these 1000s of professionals. And looking at who were the biggest users of AI in their work life, and how they were experiencing, really their well being differently, and I just want to read a couple of these so workers who were, I guess, in the most frequent users, so often using AI reported a 37% lower score in well being than those who are rarely using AI. And I'll share just one more, and then I just love to have you talk to us about this. Workers again, who are most frequently using or often using, show 20% less the very thing you've just been telling us we need self compassion. So in a sense, we're becoming just as we become users of AI, maybe just the opposite of what we need in terms of becoming our worst critics, and, you know, lacking in self compassion. So I'd love to have you talk a little bit about that to us, because it seems so very important.

Dr. Michelle McQuaid:

Yeah, we were fascinated by the impact that the use of AI tools is having on our well being in workplaces, because that's what we've been studying for more than a decade. While we definitely saw in the data that people who were using AI tools did see some increase in their performance. Now, interestingly, this does go through a kind of U shape. So if I'm not using AI at all, I was sitting at like a 73 out of 100 for my performance. When I sometimes start using it in my role, it dips down to about a 69 out of 100 and then when I'm often using it, it comes back up to 76 so it ends higher where it started. But there is this U shaped curve, and I think it's interesting that this U shaped curve, and then what impact it's having on our well being. In contrast, that U shape like, you know, there's kind of a bit of a learning dip, and then, you know, we see the outcomes that are promised. That wasn't the same story with well being. So when we had well being, if I was rarely using AI, my well being was 98 out of 100 really high and healthy up there. But the moment I sometimes started using it, it dropped to 68 and if I was often using it, to your point, Gillian, it was 61 so it kind of just goes straight down and it doesn't recover. And I think using it personally or professionally, we've been playing with these tools. We've all probably had an experience by now where some days it does something you're like, wow. Like, just wow. I you know, couldn't imagine that the technology could ever do that. But we've also had a lot of days where it's like, what is wrong with this thing?

Dr. Jillian Coppley:

Sounds about like technology

Dr. Michelle McQuaid:

And I think often then we blame ourselves. It's like, No, it's not the technology. The technology is artificially intelligent. It must be me, like, I don't know how to prompt it or tell it or it's just me. I was up late last night. Was like the keyboard was going across

Dr. Jillian Coppley:

Thank you for sharing that with us. the room. Someone who knows everything about well being and self compassion is still throwing a keyboard that's made us all feel so much better. Michelle,

Dr. Michelle McQuaid:

hey, human, just like the rest of us perfectly imperfect. So I do think, you know, some of it, perhaps, is learning curve, and we'll figure it out as we go. But I do have a concern that in our rush for productivity and performance, we're not thinking about the human impact of the users of these tools. And if I think about my strengths. Jillian, you know, the AI tools can write often now better than I can. That wasn't the case six months ago most of the times it can outright me now, but writing is one of my creativity uses of that strength that I love, and so just editing and curating what the AI tool has written is not that state of flow that we get when my strengths are in that just right zone. And so I've really had to intentionally think about, how am I using these AI tools in ways that support my strengths and self compassion, and where is my trade off between product and performance and my well being to find the path that's right for me? And I think this is a question we all need to keep asking ourselves. The one other finding, I'll just add Jillian, was the other thing that went down dramatically with people using AI tools more was civility. So again, respect and care for each other, and if I come back to me throwing the keyboard across the room last night, I'm gonna confess, and I'm sure I'm not alone here, that there are times I speak to that AI tool the way I'd never speak to anybody else. Of course, this changes the way our brain wired and interacting with others as well. And so I think, both for our own use of strengths and the way we connect with each other in the world, there is a lot here for us to be mindful of and thinking about how. These tools going forward.

Dr. Jillian Coppley:

Yeah, so much more to learn and understand there. I'm glad I'm not the only one who gets terse with my prompts from now and now and then.

Dr. Michelle McQuaid:

I start out so compassionate and kind, Jillian, but by the time I'm at it for an hour and the thing is still not doing what I want it to do, I've got to say, we will have our moments.

Dr. Jillian Coppley:

absolutely so I mean, as always, Michelle talking to you, I feel like there's a number of takeaways I'm going to have, and I'm going to think about and apply. I'm curious, from your perspective, if the folks who are listening in just, you know, take away one thing that they are going to know now, or they're going to do now, or maybe both, what would you want us to be thinking about as kind of the top of the list?

Dr. Michelle McQuaid:

So whether it's using AI, whether it's navigating your girl beliefs, whether it's trying to just deal with the amount of change that we're all experiencing, I think our strengths, again, over and over, offer us this path to help manage our energy, to bring energy to these challenges, but also to keep reaching for our self compassion as we try to navigate them, even when we're reaching for our strengths, we don't always hit that state of flow and nail it. We are going to underplay and overplay and collide. And so just see those as nudges, right? They're learning opportunities that are helping us continue to learn, grow and evolve.

Dr. Jillian Coppley:

Oh my gosh, so so beautifully said, as always, my friend, what a joy to be able to talk to you today. Thank you so much for joining us. I really, really appreciate your heart and wisdom.

Dr. Michelle McQuaid:

Right back at you

Dr. Jillian Coppley:

and thank you to everyone who's joined in listening today. Let's just keep showing up and standing up and looking for the very best in one another and ourselves moment to moment. That's how we'll create a better world.

Jackie Congedo:

Standing Up Strong is a production of the Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center in partnership with the VIA Institute on Character. Find the link in the show notes to take a character strengths survey for free. Managing producer is Anne Thompson. Technical Producer is Robert Mills, and Technical Director is Josh Emerson. This series is part of the Cynthia & Harold Guttman Family Center for Storytelling and is generously supported by the Mayerson Family Foundation. It is recorded at Technical Consulting Partner studios in Cincinnati, Ohio.