The Awkward Middle

Navigating the Heebie Jeebies of Learning in Public

We love growth. We just don't necessarily love letting other people watch us grow.

There's an awkward middle between deciding you want to get better at something and actually becoming good at it—a place where you don't quite know what you're doing yet, other people may be watching, and you can't control what they think about your performance.

For many of us, that's when preparation starts to look awfully attractive.

One more course. A little more research. Another degree. A few more donor touches. Just a little more practice before we put ourselves out there.

But when does responsible preparation become hiding?

In this episode of The Brave & Balanced Fundraiser, I'm exploring the vulnerability of learning in public—and sharing some of my own discomfort with doing exactly that as I learn how to podcast. We'll look at why being a capable, accomplished adult can actually make beginnerhood harder, what research tells us about women's desire to feel prepared before pursuing professional opportunities, and why avoiding discomfort can quietly cost us the very experience we need to grow.

We'll also look at how this shows up in fundraising: delaying the major-gift ask, researching instead of talking to donors, waiting until we can answer every possible question, or convincing ourselves we're not quite ready for the next opportunity.

Because eventually, there's something preparation can't give us:

Experience.

In this episode:

• Why being inexperienced is not the same as being incompetent
• How preparation can quietly turn into hiding
• Why avoiding vulnerability feels so good in the short term—and what it costs us over time
• The difference between waiting until you're completely ready and being ready enough to learn the rest by doing it
• How fear of not knowing the answer can keep fundraisers from having the conversations that actually move the needle
• Why confidence and capability are often the result of taking action, not prerequisites for it
• A simple experiment for becoming more willing to let other people see you learn

The goal isn't to become fearless.

It's to become safe enough within yourself to say:

You might see me struggle. You might see me make a mistake. You might see me learn. And I'm going to do it anyway.

Because that's how we get from here to there.

Research mentioned in this episode

Tara Sophia Mohr, “Why Women Don't Apply for Jobs Unless They're 100% Qualified,” Harvard Business Review.

Mohr is also the author of Playing Big: Practical Wisdom for Women Who Want to Speak Up, Create, and Lead.

The episode also references subsequent research examining gender differences in how prepared people want to feel before applying for jobs—and why the commonly repeated “women apply at 100%, men at 60%” statistic shouldn't be treated as established scientific fact.

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Transcript

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Erin McQuade-Wright 0:02

Welcome to The Brave and Balanced Fundraiser, the podcast I wish I'd had during my 15 years as a professional fundraiser. I'm your host, Erin McQuade Wright. This is your space to breathe, realign, and reconnect with the part of you that chose this work for a reason. Together, we'll explore tools and practices that help you show up less stressed and spread thin and more grounded, brave, and on purpose. I'm so glad you're here. Let's get started I don't know if you're like me, but I love growth. I love to be able to chart that I used to be like this about a topic, and now I'm like that about a topic, and that happened because I grew And that's what we're talking about in this episode today, the awkward middle which gets us to that place of, "I did it. I grew!" It's a deeply uncomfortable place where you're learning something new, and other people can actually see you doing it. This is my nightmare. I love the growth. I don't love learning in front of people. And so let's talk about it. By the end of this episode, you're gonna have a better way to recognize when preparation has quietly turned into hiding and how to actually move through the heebie-jeebies of it instead of letting them prevent you from gaining the experience you need to grow. I think I'm not alone in this. I don't know about you, but I know a lot of people love growth. It feels really good to grow, and growing can be measured sometimes by getting a promotion. Yes, we want that. We wanna become better leaders. We wanna be able to be recognized for our leadership a lot of the time. We wanna make bigger asks. We wanna try something new, maybe speak on stages, or have more creative autonomy. Having people trust us to do the thing without having to look so closely over our shoulder. Maybe we wanna build something we've never built before. But there's a part of growth we don't talk about very much, and here it is. For a while, you're not gonna be very good at the new thing, and people might see that. That is the awkward middle we're talking about today, and as I tell you about this, look, y'all, I can feel myself, like, getting all kinds of tension in my belly. It's just a part of life that feels really awkward in my body, and it probably feels awkward in your body too if you're being honest about it. You're no longer standing safely on the shore saying, "I'd like to learn how to swim someday." You're actually in the water, and somebody is watching, and they might have opinions about how you are learning to swim in the water. So the question is, how can you become good at something if you are truly unwilling to let anyone see you while you're still learning? And I remember when I was a little kid, there was a time in my life where I thought it was completely possible to learn everything in private and only have other people see me do a new thing- When I had mastered it, I thought that I was gonna be able to control scenarios and life to that extent. No, I'll just learn it on my own, and then, and then I'll do it in front of people. The way the, the l- house, the way our house was set up, we would have to get in the car and drive to see our friends. So, you know, when you watch Stranger Things or you think about the '80s when I was growing up You think about kids riding bikes through housing developments and going to each other's houses and, you know, dropping their bikes in the yard and running in and getting a drink or something to eat from this house, and then riding their bikes and doing something at another kid's house. And my living situation wasn't set up like that. We were in a farmhouse surrounded by fields and train tracks and a stream. Uh, so those were the four sides of my house. So it was a little bit isolated. Gosh, I loved that place. It was so peaceful and calm, and if someone came over, it had to be planned. So there was... There were very few surprises of people dropping by. Certainly, no kids were riding their bike off the highway that was nearby to get to us and dropping their bikes in the yard. So I kind of had this skewed assumption that going out into the world was something that I could do when I was ready, and that I could prepare for it. And I remember being a little kid walking outside of my house and thinking, "I've got a really big test coming up, and I'm nervous about it. But once that test is over, ah, smooth sailing. Life will be easy." And I really believed that, and I was such a sweet little innocent one that didn't wanna be surprised by bad things happening. And I would think, "Oh, but wait a minute, then I've got this dance recital coming up, and that's gonna be kind of anxiety-producing. So once I get through the test and once I get through the dance recital, then I'll be happy and peaceful." And I realized at some point, oh, there's just always gonna be something. There's always gonna be something on the horizon, and these things aren't only coming more and more as I get older. I'm not getting fewer and fewer opportunities to grow. They're snowballing, right? I'm being asked to do more as a student. I'm being asked to do more as a daughter, as a responsible person who's growing up on track to become a responsible adult. There's more and more opportunities that are coming my way, and I can't shut them off. Darn it, I'm gonna have to learn in front of people I was talking with a friend yesterday who's a college professor, and she is getting ready for her year to start. She's starting school, and this year she's stepping in for a friend who had a whole other set of responsibilities, and she's teaching that. She's doing that, adding it to what she's doing as a professor, and it is going to require learning in front of people. All the stuff that she's been able to master in her own education as a professor, in her own writing, in her own scholarship, in her own history of teaching, she's now having to step into something new so that her colleague can take some time away, which she's really excited about. She's that kind of friend, and she volunteered to do this thing, and she's kind of... We were talking, and she's kind of dreading it, you know? And this is exactly what we're talking about today. Doing something new in front of people, and at best, they're just watching you do something new. But more likely, because we're all humans, they're having a judgment about how you're doing as you learn something new in front of them. It's really cringe-worthy. It's really hard, and yet we want growth, and no matter how old we get, it feels kinda like a slap in the face that we're gonna have to learn something new in front of people. I'm really proud of my friend. She is an accomplished, tenured professional, and she's accustomed to being the expert in her field, and she is doing a humbling thing of learning where people can see her. And this is, this brings up an identity tension within us. Like, "I should know how to do this. What if they see that I don't know how to do this? Maybe I should wait until I've figured it all out." And that shoulding, I should know how to do this, like Carrie Bradshaw said in her compu- computer on Sex and the City, "We're shoulding all over ourselves," that's the part that hurts. For me, that's the part that hurts. It's not the act of doing something new in front of others. It's the story I'm making up about how they're judging me for how I'm doing it. "I should know this already. Why can't I get it together and already have this skill? Why didn't I learn this before?" I'm judging myself, and it's the judging that hurts. Does that make sense? Being inexperienced at something is not the same thing as being incompetent, but it can feel in our body the very same way that feeling incompetent feels. Somebody invited me to go roller skating, and I was flabbergasted. I mean, I used to love roller skating. I used to I used to have the roller skates that you'd, you'd tighten with a key. Back in the '70s, man, those were the things. They were, they were metal. It wasn't one size for... I mean, it was one size fits all. You could make- you could extend them and make them bigger, or you could make them smaller, and you'd just step your shoe in there. And then the, the metal part would kinda snuggle in. You'd tighten it with the key, and you had your rollers. It was beautiful engineering, I have to say. But doing that now as a grown woman, even someone who is, like, takes her fitness very seriously and minds it, I know that I would be very very hurt. It would be a big problem. If I fell down, recovery w- time would not be like it was when I was a little kid learning to do this in the safety of my own yard. Being inexperienced is not the same thing as being incompetent, but we can feel like the little kid who's just learning to roller skate or the adult who's just coming back to us. Man, it's awkward. And so what does it look like to be enormously capable and still be a beginner? Those two ideas feel like polar opposites. But someone said recently to me, and I've really tried to hold onto this, "Being an adult, being mature, is the ability to hold two different things at the same time, two opposing views at the same time." And so I'm interested in how- You know, being an accomplished and responsible adult can make be- beginnerhood even more uncomfortable, even more far off, and seemingly even more unreachable because competence has become part of our identity. I'm not a person who doesn't know what she's doing, no. So anything that comes along, any opportunity that comes along for me to be a person who doesn't know what she's doing doesn't fit into my identity, and therefore I reject it, just like I'm doing with this theoretical invitation to roller skate. No, I will not do it because it is going to be painful, and I'm going to be confronted with using muscles that I didn't know I had, and that really uncomfortable feeling of, oh gosh, I'm bracing, I'm bracing, and now I'm falling. No, thanks. I can just, like, hard pass on that whole thing at this point in my life. I don't need to feel that So I'm titling this episode the heebie-jeebies because that's what I feel when I think about learning in public, and I'm curious about how it lands in your body when you think about doing something new and having other people watch you do that. Does it feel like tightness or activation in your body? Does it feel like a clench in your belly or, ugh, heaviness in your chest? And h- what are the actions you do? Do you over-prepare? Do you rehearse endlessly? Do you keep saying, "Just one more week, just one more week. Let me, let me... I, I'm not there yet. I'm not ready yet"? Do you compare it, yourself to somebody who's been doing it for 10 years? It can seem really logical when we're in that position of feeling the heebie-jeebies to say, "Now isn't the right time. I'm sorry, now isn't the right time." And this is a little bit of a slippery situation because avoidance doesn't always look like avoidance. Sometimes it looks really responsible. "Oh, I'm doing more research. I'm taking another course. I'm getting really good at it, so when I offer my services, I will feel so competent. I need a little more practice. I just wanna make sure I'm doing this right. I'm gonna ask for a couple of other opinions about how the other people are doing it." You know, these things aren't inherently bad, they're responsible, but there comes a point when preparation becomes hiding You may have heard the statistic that women don't apply for jobs unless they meet 100% of the qualifications, while men apply when they meet just 60% of the qualifications on a job posting. But that's not really established research. I looked it up and couldn't find that that was a replicable study. That became enormously popular. It was shared in some books, but the evidence isn't really there as solidly as it was presented. But what research does support is that women appear to have a higher threshold for how prepared they wanna feel before they put themselves forward. One study said that women wanted to meet about 79% of the listed qualifications before applying compared with seventy-two percent for men. And more research has also found that a consistent gender difference exists in the desire to feel prepared before applying. So it isn't simply like women need more confidence. The more interesting is, what happens when preparedness tips into hiding? If your internal rule is, "I shouldn't put myself forward until I already know how to do nearly all of this," then you may simply freeze in your career. You might not be just protecting yourself from embarrassment, you might be protecting yourself from opportunity to grow, to get that salary, to step into that larger role One of my favorite researchers and authors who writes about this is Tara Moore And you can find her book. I've talked about it on the podcast before. It's called Playing Big. Um, and she also wrote about this in Har- Harvard Business Review. And here's an example. For me, doing a podcast is very humbling. I'm learning in front of you. And I'm You know, I have listeners who listen to this podcast, and I don't, it's I don't keep a really close eye on how many listeners listen to this podcast. And for me, I'm saying, like, right now, I launched this a few months ago, about half a year ago, and if there's not a million people listening to it, and there's not, that's kinda good, 'cause I'm learning in front of people. It's awkward. I am not exactly sure what I'm doing. I'm just going with it. I'm making a thing because I wanna grow, and it's really easy for me to make this for you because I can picture you, and I know that you are who You are me and I am you, right? So I'm doing this as a love offering to the fundraiser I used to be and anybody else who's along for the ride. And I'm happy to do it, but it is uncomfortable. And I know and I recognize that I am creating episodes and posting them. I've been putting out an episode a week ever since I launched in January of 2026. I feel really good about that. But here's the other side of that coin. I'm not posting it on social media except for rare occasions. So there's, like, a, a post and then like, "Oh, phew, I did that," and then a little bit of a courage hangover about, like, mm, am I gonna put it on social media? Am I gonna promote it? Well, yeah, that's what you do, but that's not actually what I've been doing. So I'm right there with you in terms of this being awkward. Welcome to being human. And as a fully grown, fully baked adult, I am still learning how to do this kind of stuff. If there was a way that I could have become an experienced podcaster and then start podcasting, I would've done it. I would've done it. I would've learned in the comfort of my office very slowly, very carefully, and then put it out there. But it had to be the other way around. I started podcasting and then became experienced by doing it, and that's, that's the way it actually goes. That's the way it actually goes for everyone. So I've been doing it. I've been finding my voice. I've been interviewing guests. I've been structuring episodes in a way that I think will be most helpful for you. I'm figuring out which titles connect, Doing some promotion, but mostly avoiding it. I'm getting... I'm on the journey. I'm working on that. Listening back to myself, I'm doing my own edits and posting, and I've got my ear to the ground as much as possible to discover what you guys are responding to and changing things in real time as I find out what's of value and what's not. The podcast itself is teaching me how to podcast And look, I get it. Putting off something important feels really good. You encounter something that makes you feel vulnerable, you feel the discomfort, and then you avoid it, and you get relief. Ah. Just like when we're little and we touch something hot, it's discomfort, and so we avoid it. We don't touch the stove anymore, and we feel relief, right? I avoided getting burned. But the nervous system gets the message, "Good, we escaped. Don't do something new." If it's going to be uncomfortable, we avoid it and we feel relief. Like, that's the formula that our nervous system can get when we avoid uncomfortable conversations, when we avoid uncomfortable moments of growth. But the longer sequence there is we feel discomfort, we avoid it, we feel temporary relief, and then we get no new experience w- no new skill is built, and then we are back to continued discomfort because we're being overlooked, because we're being undervalued or underpaid, and we get resentful. And I'm here to tell you, that resentment costs you something. That resentment costs your energy. It costs you your life force because you're doing this internal boxing match that you're refereeing, and it's like, "I should do this, I wanna do that, and I feel uncomfortable, but taking action is going to hurt. So I'm not gonna take action. But I feel uncomfortable with being overlooked," right? And we're just leaking our energy all over the place. We think we're pro- postponing discomfort, but we're actually postponing the competence that comes from doing something new and growing. And I think for fundraisers, this looks like holding off on making a major gift ask because we just need to do a little bit more research, or we need to find some more prospects, and we need to get more signals from the donor that they're a good prospect for us. And we wanna feel like we've gotten a bunch of those touches that aren't an ask done, underway, like, checked off the list before we actually make the ask, so they don't feel like a walking ATM. Again, this is a, an example of what looks like responsibility That can tip into avoidance, that can tip into hiding. And maybe it's the development director who won't present an audacious idea to her supervisor or the development committee until she has an answer for every, every possible objection. I was working with a client last week, and the reason she uncovered the reason why she wasn't taking action toward her goal was because what if they asked her a question that she didn't know how to answer? And I've seen this in other clients before too. They are getting so smart, they are doing so much research, they are becoming experts quietly in the comfort of their own office because they are so scared of being in conversation with someone who asks them a question that they are not able to answer. Even thinking about that possibility is so uncomfortable for my client that they don't-- they create the conditions by which they're just hiding and not out there having the conversations that are actually gonna move the needle for them, bring in the donation, get a new client for their business, right? So they are standing in their own way because it feels like a kindness to do for themselves to, to say, "Oh, I'm not gonna let myself touch that hot stove of, of someone asking me a question I don't have the answer for. I'm just gonna avoid the stove entirely." But baby, the stove is where you eat. I'm, I'm maybe taking this metaphor to, to too, too far a conclusion. But if you never get near the stove, how are you gonna eat? I'm talking about the executive director who doesn't wanna put herself forward for the speaking opportunity. The fundraiser who is contemplating a transformational ask, but keeps waiting until she knows exactly how the conversation should go. The nonprofit professional staring at a job description and focusing on the three bullet points she hasn't mastered instead of the seven that she has And I am here to tell you, as somebody who thinks a lot and sometimes overthinks, you can't think your way into experience You know, you're asking, "Am I completely ready?" But maybe instead you could try asking, "Am I ready enough to learn the rest by doing it?" Am I ready enough to take a chance and believe in myself to just start doing it, to try? And I'm curious about what we're actually afraid of when we hold ourselves back. Maybe the deep fear isn't, "Can I do this?" Maybe it's, "Can I tolerate someone seeing me mess up because I didn't know any better? Can I tolerate them seeing me- In a way that I could be telling myself they think I'm incompetent. Can I, can I handle that? Can I ask a question that reveals that I don't understand? Can I try something and have it fall flat? Can I receive feedback? Ugh, that's a big one. I had a boss who used to say, "Feedback is a gift." And he said that To elicit feedback from me and from others. And I thought, "Wow, that's really bold to say, to put yourself in a posture where you're open to receiving feedback." And sometimes he said, "Feedback is a gift," through gritted teeth 'cause he really didn't wanna hear the thing. But he still said it, and I gave him credit for that. That's a hard thing to do sometimes to get that feedback. Or maybe we're wondering, "Can I be in a room with someone who's better at this than I am without making their expertise ma- mean something about my worth?" Right? "Can I be in a room with someone who's better at this than I am and not compare myself to them? Can I allow someone to form an opinion of me that I cannot control?" And that, my friends, is vulnerability, which brings us back to the central question: How can we actually grow if we're never vulnerable? So I want you to play with me. Just a little experiment. This is gonna cost you nothing I want you to think of a place in your life right now where you're hesitating to move. Some place that feels like you're frozen, and you've probably been beating yourself up about it. And I want you to ask yourself, "Where am I insisting on competence before I will allow myself experience? Where am I insisting on competence before I've stepped out on courage to experience it, to build my experience?" And I want you to ask yourself, what am I waiting to know before I begin? I've literally asked someone in my life, "How many degrees do you need to collect before you feel like you're enough?" I want you to ask yourself, can I actually learn without doing the thing? What am I afraid someone will think about me if they see me learning? Has preparation become hiding for me what's the opportunity that I might be sacrificing in order to avoid feeling incompetent? What's the only thing, what is one thing I could do imperfectly this week that would give me actual experience toward the place I'm trying to get to? We're not talking about go out and become fearless. Go. No I wanna set you up for success. So let's make it smaller than that. Let's shrink it right now all the way down to Become willing to be seen learning. Give your brain evidence that you can be seen learning something new and not die. That's really the challenge that I have for you today. You're just building that evidence. I tried it. I was new at it. I messed up. There were people watching, and I survived that. Because as we age and get more mature, I don't know about you, but for me, I think we become less apt to take risks. We become less willing to be seen learning in front of other people. We become less adventuresome in that way Okay, so here are your five key takeaways from this episode. Number one, being inexperienced is not the same as being incompetent. You can be highly capable and still be a beginner at something. Number two, preparation can become hiding. More research, another class, another degree, or just a little more practice can feel responsible at first, but what you're actually doing is protecting you from being seen learning. Number three, we think we're postponing discomfort, but we're often postponing competence, and competence comes with a bigger paycheck. At some point, the only way to get better at the thing is to do the thing. Number four, you cannot think your way into experience. Confidence and capability come after action, not before it. And number five, vulnerability isn't an unfortunate side effect of growth. It may be one of the conditions that growth actually requires. If you're only willing to do what you know how to do well, you're not protecting your competence, you're protecting your limitations So maybe the goal isn't to get so good that you no longer feel the heebie-jeebies. Maybe it's becoming safe enough within yourself to say, "You might see me struggle with this. You might see me make a mistake. You might see me learn, and I'm going to do it anyway because that's how I get from here to there." Thanks for being here. We'll see you next time