Nice Work: The personal is political. It's also professional.

Hey there,

I was hoping to share some new tools and templates for teams this week, but…well, last week was rough. Instead of writing and creating, I found myself doomscrolling and swearing at Twitter. I was distressed, distracted, and just plain mad. 

I’m sure some of you would prefer I don’t talk about abortion in this newsletter. Can’t we stick to leadership topics? But abortion rights aren’t just a personal issue. They’re a work issue, too. We already know that gender and racial bias make it harder for women, particularly women of color, to thrive in American workplaces. If women and other pregnant people can’t get access to the healthcare they need, that’s one more barrier keeping them from equitable salaries and professional opportunities. That’s just one more way their economic stability and power is limited. 

I don’t have any grand answers right now. Mostly, I’m sad and scared. But as my local abortion fund posted last week, “abortions are still legal and we are still funding them.” So I’m gonna keep helping them make that possible.

And you can, too—while deepening your leadership skills at the same time!

On May 25, my colleague Jen Dionisio and I are hosting a new event called Present Leadership. It’s a two-hour workshop for leaders who want to get better at managing their self-doubt, so they can support their teams through hard times. We designed it based on what we heard in our recent research about the need for deep listening right now. Tickets are $97, and we’ve decided to donate 100% of the revenue to the Abortion Liberation Fund of PA.

Details are below. And if your company might get weird about supporting abortion access, we’ve got you covered. Your registration confirmation and receipt won’t say a word about where we’re sending the money. They’ll just know you’re becoming a better leader. It’s a win for everyone.

— Sara 

Workshop: Present Leadership

Learn to get out of your own head, listen more deeply, and support your team more effectively.

May 25 from 1-3pm ET on Zoom • Tickets: $97

What's the #1 way to make your team feel supported right now? Listening. In fact, in our recent research, it's what tech and design workers said most sets supportive managers apart from terrible ones. 

But deep listening is hard when you’re also struggling with your own human stuff: maybe you’re exhausted from the past two years of chaos, plagued with doubt about whether you belong in leadership, or feeling stretched thin because you’re scared to say no.

When we’re under stress, the voices in our heads tend to have a heyday. The perfectionist whispers that our work isn’t good enough. The avoider tells us to just get back under the covers. The destroyer tells us we might as well blow our whole lives up.

Left unchecked, these voices can wreak havoc on our management practices. When we’re stuck in our own heads and driven by fear, we can’t listen deeply—and when we can’t listen, we can’t offer the support, validation, and advocacy our people need and deserve.

In this workshop, we’ll take you through a two-part process: First, we’ll show you how to understand, quiet, and even befriend those enemies in your head. And then we’ll show you what’s possible once you do: deep, compassionate listening—the kind that your team needs to feel heard and valued, instead of running for the door.

What you’ll learn

• How to identify the inner voices that hamper your ability to show up for yourself—and your people—with courage and confidence

• Techniques for retraining those voices' harmful behaviors into helpful ones

• Practices to help you set aside your own agenda and judgments and listen more deeply

• How to get out of fix-it mode, and become a more powerful advocate for your team in the process

Again, we’re sending 100% of the money we make from this to the Abortion Liberation Fund of PA. They provide emergency financial assistance to people who need an abortion, but can’t afford one and aren’t able to use insurance to get one. They’ve been doing this work since 1985, and they plan to keep doing it, no matter what. We’re delighted to help them.