#165 Don’t Be Afraid of Building Friendships at Work with Shasta Nelson
// Shasta Nelson is a friendship expert and a leading voice on loneliness and creating healthy relationships. Whether she’s speaking at conferences or on TEDx stages or giving media interviews to outlets such as the New York Times and The Washington Post, she is constantly teaching all of us how to create healthier and more fulfilling relationships in our lives.
Shasta’s latest book, The Business of Friendship: Making the Most of Relationships Where We Spend Most of Our Time, teaches us why we need to foster better relationships in our jobs and that’s what we’re diving into today.
In this episode, Shasta shares how our relationships impact our physical and mental health, that more friendships at work do not always equal more drama in the workplace, the benefits of cultivating workplace friendships as a leader in your organization, that friendships are still possible in a highly competitive environment, the role vulnerability place in workplace friendships, why she doesn’t like it when people say it’s lonely at the top, how she is personally handling the relationships in her life with people who have differing political views than she does, how she developed her voice of influence, and more.
Mentioned in this episode:
- Shasta Nelson’s Book | The Business of Friendship: Making the Most of Relationships Where We Spend Most of Our Time
- Get Your FREE Chapter of Shasta’s Book by texting FRIENDSHIP to 474747
- Shasta Nelson’s YouTube Channel
- Gallup CliftonStrengths Assessment
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Transcript
So, today, on the Voice of Influence podcast, I have Shasta Nelson. And Shasta, I’m going to introduce you real quick. Shasta is a friendship expert. She is a leading voice on loneliness and creating healthy relationships. Whether she’s speaking at conferences or on TEDx stages, giving media interviews to outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, she is constantly teaching all of us how to create healthier and more fulfilling relationships in our lives. And her newest book – this is what we’re going to be talking about today – The Business of Friendship: Making the Most of Relationships Where We Spend Most of Our Time teaches us while why we need to foster better relationships in our jobs.
Andrea: So, Shasta, it is great to have you here with me today on the Voice of Influence podcast.
Shasta Nelson: Thank you, Andrea, for having me. I love it!
Andrea: Okay, so we were just like talking here before we started going, and we were already off onto three or four different topics I think we could talk all day about. So, I’m super excited to dive into this conversation. So, Shasta, to begin with, very simply, why are friendships important to cultivate specifically at work?
Shasta Nelson: Well, relationships, in general, are important to cultivate because they are showing up as… and this is kind of mind-blowing to a lot of us, but it’s, like, the number one factor to our happiness for sure. Like, 70% of our happiness… they’re now saying when they look at all the different studies and bring them together, 70% of our happiness comes down to something relational, which is huge. And then when you look at health perspectives, it’s one of the – if not the – main factor to our health.
I just got several Google Alerts yesterday as [it] being directly correlated to diabetes 2. It’s a good predictor of, you know, how severe your Parkinson’s is going to be… I mean, it’s like, we’ve known for a long while at strokes… I mean, it’s amazing the list of health stuff that comes down to how our bodies feel supported or not. And so from a health perspective, it’s so crucial. So, if you just kind of take relationships in general, it’s just way more important than like, “Oh, we should have one more guys’ weekend a year,” or “Oh, just call that girlfriend one more time.” I mean, this is like a big, big deal, more important than exercise and what we’re eating.
But when you look at it from the workplace with that being – and I use the word workplace loosely, whether it’s a remote office or wherever – these are the people we’re interacting with more than we are our non-work friends. We are interacting with them more regularly, and they sometimes know more about our lives on a day-to-day basis. We might have other friends that we would say, “tell anything to,” but these are the people we’re actually telling things to on a more regular basis. And so, these people have more to do with our happiness and health than those really, really, really good friends that we may not talk to or see all that often.
So, these are the relationships that decide whether we actually enjoy our job. Our job satisfaction is linked to it; our success at that job, how well we treat customers is linked to whether we have a friend at work, whether we call in sick, or whether we’re excited to go into work on the proverbial Monday morning. I mean, if you look down the list of what we have to gain from it as individuals, if we feel supported, if we feel like there’s people we enjoy there, if we have that friend, we are going to just be so much more successful and happy and healthy, which is all things that we chase after.
Andrea: Oh my gosh, it’s so true. And one of the things that I’ve been seeing through my research is the fact that friendships and that connection is a huge piece of decreasing stress, and decreasing stress is important for brain health and all that. So, yes, I totally agree with you. I think it’s so good. And you have so much… like, your book is packed full of research, which is really helpful to those of us who are looking for that concrete evidence.
Shasta Nelson: Yeah, because I think we all kind of know… like, we know when we come back having spent good time with a friend or feeling really seen or having that conversation, we know we feel better. But yeah, one of my favorite studies that I put in the book is the study of when we go into the MRI machines, and they kind of intermittently mildly shock the person in the MRI machine. And then they take brain image scans of the brain, and there’s three big red splotches of cortisol or stress activating the brain, kind of never knowing when the next little intermittent shock will happen. And so, it’s kind of replicating and showing in picture form what that stress is doing in our brains.
And then they do the exact same study – you’re still being shocked or electrocuted or whatever is going on in there – except this time you’re holding the hand of a friend, somebody that you feel loved by outside of that MRI machine. And this time, only about a third of the red lights up in the brain. And so, you’re still being shocked, but it shows how… I mean, to me, this is kind of the equivalent of, like, back in the day when they would be like, “These are your lungs when you’re smoking; these are your lungs when you’re not smoking.” You know it’s, like, this tangible thing where you’re just like, “Oh, wow, I don’t want black lungs,” and it kind of helps show you visually how important something is.
And when you look and say to your point, that stress is so damaging to our bodies and our mental health, and when you say, “If there’s a way that I could feel like my hand is being held, I feel supported and it actually protects my body from absorbing almost two-thirds of the stress…” Like, you still have the stress going on in your lives, all those things are still happening, but if you actually could protect your body or buffer your body from taking that on… wow, that is huge. That’s just huge. So, yeah, visually, that feeling of being supported, it just kind of metabolizes that stress differently and really is protected from it, which is crazy impressive.
Andrea: Yes, it totally is. And I’m thinking about people who might be in positions of leadership where maybe they’re not natural hand-holders, and it’s sort of overwhelming to think that this could be placed on them, this kind of responsibility. Especially, like… I think of drama, like drama at work can be a problem and is certainly a fear for a lot of leaders. So, in your book, you dispel the myth that having more relationships at work means more drama at work, and I loved that. Would you please explain to us why is it not true that more friendships at work do not equate more drama? I kind of… double negative there, sorry,
Shasta Nelson: No, I love it. I love it. No, it is funny because when I would tell people that I’m writing this book on friendships in the workplace… you know, my previous books were like how to make friends as an adult or how to build deeper friendships, and nobody ever was like, “Oh, really, are you sure you should write about that?” Everyone’s like, “Oh, cool!” And this one, it was like, “Oh, I don’t know.” And I got all kinds of pushback from people that were just like, “I don’t know if that’s appropriate.” And so, I surveyed and did like, “What are you most afraid of when we talk about friendships at work?” And you know, favoritism was the number one fear and then gossip, and you know, the list just goes on. And I share all of those in my book and talk about each one of them.
But to your point – this word drama – like, we just have this fear that all of these things are going to have the people standing around our metaphoric water cooler, like rehashing the details of their life and crying. And we have this picture of people not working and then just, like, talking. And the truth of the matter is when you list what we’re afraid of with friendship, those actually aren’t friendship things we’re afraid of. Those are actually just human nature things we’re afraid of, human dynamic things we’re afraid of. And if you train people to have healthy friendship – if you teach them how to have healthy friendship, if you expect it of them, if you model it, if you ask them to do it and inspire them to do it – they actually learn better relationship skills that then translate into your entire office having better relationships, more trust of each other, more willingness to brainstorm, a better sense of creativity, and wanting to have each other’s backs.
And when you look at the research, the more friends we have in an office, the more we like our team, the more we trust them, the more we want to show up for them, the more we want to cover for them if they need to be out of the office or something’s going on… the research shows we lean in and want better for the people if we have friends at work. Those of us who don’t have friends at work are the ones who are most likely to not want it for other people. You start showing up with less empathy, less willing to take big risks, more willing to cast blame and be defensive.
And so, really from a standpoint of good leadership, we have less turnover if our employees have a friend at work. They are going to treat their customers better. It’s going to be so much easier to make manage them. And I’m always saying, all those things that you’re afraid of, you could refuse to have friends; you could say, “Nobody’s allowed to have a friend,” you could make sure that nobody has a friend, and that’s not going to eliminate favoritism. That’s not going to eliminate gossip. I mean, friendship isn’t the reason those things are happening. Friendship actually can help reduce those things better than saying, “We don’t want friendship.”
Friendship is healthy relationships. We want our people to have healthy relationships because the more they learn how to do it, the more practice they have, the more they can extend it to each other and to our customers and to our vendors and all that stuff. So, it’s definitely a win-win. But you’re right, our brains just immediately think of drama. And I’m like, “I think you can actually reduce the drama if you teach healthy relationship as opposed to avoid the subject or just deny the research, you know.”
The research is so compelling. It’s a little crazy, but after twenty years… I mean, Gallup, for two decades, has been telling us that the employees who say they have a best friend at work are seven times more engaged. Seven! I mean, if it were just twice as engaged, I would be impressed, but seven times more engaged, and that’s been two decades. They’ve been testing that and trying out different things. And they come back, and they say it just continues to bear out, that if they say they have a best friend, they are more engaged. And these are your best employees. And so, at this point, it’s a little silly for us to just be afraid of what could happen rather than say, “Here’s the data. What can we do to actually lean into the best healthiest dynamics possible?”
Andrea: Okay, so I totally agree with that. But then there’s this thing of competition at work, I mean, at least, most places. People vying for position, they’re vying for opportunities, they’re sort of wanting to prove that they have what it takes, you know, maybe comparing benefits or whatever it might be. How do you handle friendship in a context where there’s a lot of competition?
Shasta Nelson: It’s a great question. And I would say competition is going to be tricky in any situation. But it will be just as tricky, if not trickier, if we don’t actually like each other and want the best for each other. And again, I do think it’s a better thing to have us like each other, and so that even if I don’t win, I still want you to win that. I still feel good knowing that that’s benefiting somebody I love, and appreciate, and admire. I’m a really big fan, as you’ll know in my book when I speak to this… is it’s not just like, “Let’s go have friends.” And here’s the truth of the matter is, work is the number one place adults make friends. So it’s happening, and most of us have made a really good friend at work.
So, it’s happening. We just don’t talk about it and we’re uncomfortable with it. But it’s happening, so the bigger deal is let’s acknowledge it is happening. Let’s be more mature about it. Let’s teach expectations. If we’re friends at work, we should have the responsibility and the expectation that we should have more honest conversations about some of these things before we’re competing. It’d be so great if we could go out for lunch, and here’s kind of an expectation that good friends have these conversations, and good friends say, “What’s your greatest fear in us working together and being friends? And it’d be great for you to share that and for me to share what my fear is. And if that worst fear were to happen, what would you want me to do in that situation, and what would you want from me? What does support look like?”
And to have these conversations before there’s that dynamic, to sit there and say, “What if we both wanted the same job? What would you want me to do in that situation? What would be the thing that we could do that would protect our friendship and really, you know, make sure that we both are succeeding in our careers and moving up the ladder? And what would that look like?” and have that conversation. And I mean, it would be so bonding. It does several things that deepens your friendship right now.
The best of relationships are not just people who are in a relationship but talk about their relationship, kind of meta-narrative, and it also puts in our heads, “This could happen, and that’s okay. It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be friends. Let’s just acknowledge it could happen.” You know, it’s like we do this all the time in our life. We’ll say, “What if my parents don’t like the person I’m dating?” “Well, maybe they don’t, but let’s talk about what we would do in that situation.” That doesn’t mean we don’t date anyone. It means, “Okay, so if that happens, I need to talk to my parents here, and we need to do this.”
And it could happen, but let’s talk about it. And that’s not a reason to not do it. It’s a reason to say, “Okay, let’s recognize the benefits outweigh the risks, but let’s be honest about those risks and think through how we would both feel better approaching that at that time.” And I think that helps us cast a vision, hearing ourselves say, “Well, I would be sad, but I would want to toast you. I want to be the kind of friends that celebrate each other’s success.” Okay, that casts a vision for who we both want to step into that at that time. It might still be hard, but we hear ourselves saying, “This was likely at some point, and this is how I want to be in this situation.”
Andrea: Yeah. And, “Maybe I’ll be okay.”
Shasta Nelson: Yeah.
Andrea: I love that you’re talking about this in a corporate environment because – well, any environment really – how many people feel comfortable having a conversation like that, though? I think you and I are the kind of people that apparently go to these… like, we’re probably the people… like, if you’re like me, everybody knows when I show up to the friend’s dinner or whatever that they’re going to expect that I’m going to ask some deep question that gets everyone to think, and gets everybody to share, and all that kind of stuff. But not most people do that so I’m glad that you’re giving people the vision for that, and it sounds like some words that they can use to some things that they can actually say. Because I think sometimes people just need to know, “What do I actually say?”
Shasta Nelson: Totally. I mean, I treat the different components of relationships as muscles that we have to practice and build. And so, similar to going to the gym, you know, we don’t go to the gym and say, “Oh, my goodness, I’m starting to breathe a little heavy. I should stop. This is bad.” Or “Oh, wow, I might be sweating. Like, this must be horrible. I need to get out of here!” We go expecting it to be strenuous. That’s why we workout is we know that we won’t have physical health unless we breathe a little faster, lift a little heavier, and push ourselves a little bit more. We’re not shocked when it happens; we expect it to happen.
And yet, when it’s relational health, we are the exact opposite. We’re like, “Oh, this is awkward.” “This is uncomfortable.” And we think, “This must be bad,” and we pull away. And I’m just like, “No, you’re starting to sweat a little bit, but that’s good. Like, that’s not bad. That just means this is new for you. This just means you’re growing. This means you’re getting healthier relationally.” Is it awkward to ask that deep question? Maybe, because you don’t do it very often. But some of us have built that muscle, and it’s not awkward at all to do it anymore. We’re just like, “Let’s get to the meaningful stuff.”
But it’s a muscle that we can grow and build, and I think, so often, we want the benefits of relational health without being willing to go to the “gym” for it. And I just think, “Don’t be afraid of a little bit of sweat, a little bit of muscle strain. You’re building new muscles. You’re trying new things.” But you can’t get relationally fit unless you kind of show up. We know what you have to do to feel close to people. Like, let’s do those things, even if they’re a little awkward.
And I think we just have been so fearful of awkward or you know, one manager said to me, “Well, I think if I do this question around the video conference, it will feel a little forced.” And I’m just like, “So?” And he’s like, “Well, it won’t feel natural.” And I’m like, “It never feels natural when I go to the gym. I force myself to go.” I mean, there’s a lot of things we do in life that don’t feel natural, but we just naturally are like, “Oh, I just had this random thought.” We are strategic and intentional. We do things all the time because we know it leads to something better. And I was like, “So yeah, it feels a little awkward. They roll their eyes. Everyone kind of groans a little bit. Who cares? The goal is to build your team so ask the question, hold the space, affirm them, and let’s keep bonding,” you know.
So, I do you think that we have to keep casting the vision for that because we’re not used to it. We’re not comfortable with it, but that doesn’t make it wrong.
Andrea: We’re so afraid of it being messy. And another thought that I was kind of recalling when you were talking just now is sort of the image of building up your pain tolerance, your physical pain tolerance. It’s like building up your emotional pain tolerance.
You can do that. It’s possible.
Shasta Nelson: Yeah.
Andrea: Yeah, this is exciting to help people to see that. I know that you talk about three different key components or characteristics of a really, you know, deepening friendship, and I know one of those is vulnerability. So, before we go into the other ones, would you mind helping us to see like… this is what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about being vulnerable or saying, “I might mess up when I say this. I might sound awkward when I say this. I might appear like I’m forcing this if I say this.” You gave us a lot right now, but do you have any other thoughts on how that’s vulnerable and why it’s okay to be vulnerable?
Shasta Nelson: Yes, so Vulnerability is our desire to be seen. And I teach that there are different levels of appropriateness, of how much we need seen, and how we do it safely, and with whom we do it, and what that looks like. And I teach different levels of that in the book. But in a moment, you and I, we show up in this conversation, and we both want to feel seen for who we are. We don’t want to have to feel like we’re, you know, filtering ourselves a huge way or that we need to fit into some little thing. Like, we want to both feel like we got to, you know, share a little bit. And I’ll probably get off and wish I’d asked way more questions about it to you, and it feels one-sided. But I’m like, “In a typical moment, we both want to feel seen for that context.”
And that’s true for every time somebody gets on team meetings, any time you’re having a contact with a salesperson, whenever we’re having a conversation with our boss, like we all just kind of want to be known and seen. And so, it doesn’t mean I have to disclose my whole life history or tell them what’s going on with my romantic relationship, but those are things that are held for the highest level of our relationships. And in our deepest relationships, we do want to be seen in all these other ways and to feel like we are accepted in those. And the reason this is so important is that, at the end of the day, every single one of us wants to be loved.
In the workplace, we may not use that word. We want to be appreciated though, and we want to feel enough. And where else would we want to be seen more so than in our work, where we are arguably making one of our biggest contributions in the world, where we’re using our gifts, our strengths? We’re investing our time, our ideas. Like, we’re showing up and saying, “This matters enough to me to block off a huge amount of my life to be putting into this. Of course, I want to be seen for the strengths I bring, the personality I have, the ideas that I bring to the table, the way I handled that problem, the way I did this, the way I negotiated that.” Of course, we want to be seen. And vulnerability is letting ourselves be seen in those ways in the appropriate context, and that sometimes means being seen with our emotions and our humanity.
I was watching a sports thing the other night, and the guy who had to drop out of the race just buried his head in his hands. And you could just see the pain, and his coach comes over and puts his hand on the shoulder. And I was like, “That’s beautiful vulnerability.” Like, there’s nothing there that’s breaking down the moment. Every single one of us, our hearts hurt for him. We don’t need him showing up acting like this doesn’t matter or that he’s not disappointed. We’re so often afraid of like that.
In the workplace, you know, I think about diversity and inclusion. I think if you just hire for diversity, but you don’t have the vulnerability to say, “How does your diversity shape our vision?” “How are you bringing a different experience to the table?” “How do we put out a different product based upon what you’re sharing and how you perceive this?” Like, actually letting ourselves be affected by that diversity and learn from that diversity takes vulnerability rather than, “Just sit at the table and act like one of us.” “Sit at the table and bring what’s different about you,” takes incredible vulnerability.
And we have so many people who are new hires, who have diversity, who are poor, mental, physical health, have anything that makes them feel other… showing up at work feeling like they have to hide who they are or not feeling accepted for who they are, we’re missing out on so, so much. So, “Is there an appropriate place, and how much should we be vulnerable?” that’s an important conversation. At the end of the day, though, every single one of us wants to feel like we’re enough, and we won’t feel like we’re enough if we don’t feel like, “You actually know something about me.” Like, “If you’re just adoring me, but don’t know anything about me, that doesn’t feel that meaningful.” We want to feel known, and so we want that at work, too.
As leaders, we want people to see us for what we’re giving, and appreciate us, and see us as the human we are too. I mean, I interviewed so many leaders, and at the end of the day, I heard so many leaders say, “I just wish that I could be honest with my team that I don’t have the answer to this,” or “I wish that I didn’t always feel stuck between what the upper levels are telling me to say to the lower. I feel caught between the two,” or “I don’t know if my team is really telling me what they think or just what I want to hear.”
I mean, we use all this language. Like, vulnerability is the answer to all those things that we list as leaders wanting. We just want to feel like we can see each other. That’s a long answer. Sorry, I get all worked up.
Andrea: No, that’s great. Yeah, I mean, that’s how I look at influence too. I mean, you have to be able to be affected by one another. And if we’re not allowing ourselves to be influenced by others or affected by them, allowing the diversity that you were mentioning before and any kind of collaborative effort, you can’t just come in wanting your influence to be the influence of the day. Because if you do, then people will not buy-in, they will not be engaged, all that stuff. But if they feel like their voice matters, if their voice matters to you – to someone in the group, specifically – then it makes a huge difference in how they show up and how they engage with you. And then it’s this more beautiful kind of, like, relational picture that you’re painting.
Shasta Nelson: That might be a good place for me to tie in the other two requirements of relationship. Because it’s one thing to be vulnerable, and it is so important. At the end of the day, we all want to be seen for who we are in the places we’re at, but it has to be in conjunction of the other two requirements. And so those other two requirements are Positivity, meaning more positive emotion. We want to feel accepted after we share that, we want to feel empathy perhaps after we share that, or we want to feel like you’re celebrating after we share that. Depending on what we share, we want to feel good for having shared it.
And so, the worst thing we want to do is share who we are, and then be judged for it or ostracized or, you know, kind of shut down; then nobody’s wanting to be vulnerable in that situation, right? We want to be seen, and then we want to be appreciated for being seen. So, that positive emotion is so, so key. And then the Consistency is the third requirement. And consistency is our time that we’re logging. It’s our pattern. It’s our shared experiences. It’s our interaction. It’s our communication. It’s kind of like the time we’re spending together, the way we’re interacting.
And again, I teach that in conjunction with vulnerability. Our vulnerability should only be as high as our consistency is. So, when our consistency somewhat low – we don’t know each other super well, we don’t have a lot of history, we’re not seeing each other frequently – our vulnerability should appropriately be low as well. And it’s only as that consistency increases that every time we interact, we should get to learn each other and learn a little bit more about each other. But both should be incremental, and vulnerability should only increase as our safety and that consistency increases.
So, it should never feel like this big scary, like, “Should I be vulnerable with this person and just, like, vomit everything on them?” No, you shouldn’t. It should always be like, “I’ve shared a little bit. It felt good. It had some positive emotions. We’ve done it a couple times here. Okay, I can take a little risk and do a little bit more.” And like, “Okay, I was rewarded for that. I feel good, I feel loved, I don’t feel judged, and I’m learning more about them.” And as you practice these three things in conjunction, that’s where we build the vulnerability incrementally in a way that feels safe. It’s like training at the gym again. We’re not just going out and running twenty miles tomorrow. We’re building up to that slowly, and over time, and safe to prevent injury. And the same is true of vulnerability.
So, I think the vulnerability conversation is really important to tie in… that when we look and measure all healthy relationships, these are the three things that all healthy relationships have. And we want all three of them for everybody, and they should all be in conjunction, growing at the same time incrementally. So, the goal isn’t just, “Go be vulnerable.” It’s, “How can I be seen a little bit more in this relationship in a safe way that leaves us both feeling good, and let’s practice that.” And as we do these three things over and over and over, that’s what builds the bond. It’s not just doing one of them really fast and big, but it’s doing all three together, which I think might help the vulnerability piece feel a little safer and a little bit more in context.
Andrea: Yeah, yeah. I like that. And then there’s also this confusion I think people have about… you were talking about how much to share, but I think a lot of people feel like if they’re not completely honest and they don’t just say whatever comes out of their minds that they’re not being real. This is not true. I believe it. I’m pretty sure you believe it. So, why is that not true?
Shasta Nelson: Yeah. Again, I’m a very big fan of incremental, slow vulnerability. I have met a lot of people who just think, “Well, I’m an open book.” And I was like, “Yeah, but nobody wants to read the whole book having the books pushed on them all at once;” you know, where they’re just like, “Oh, I wear my emotions on my sleeve.” Yeah, well, emotions aren’t meant to be on your sleeve. You know, like, I’m somebody who’s like, “Yes, there’s an authenticity.” There’s like what’s appropriate for this context in this moment, but it’s a recognition that while we can be super friendly, while we can be kind, I don’t put more on the relationship than we have practiced together.
And so, it’s showing up for who I am in this moment, but especially at the beginning, that positivity… We know that positive emotions have to be five to one – five positive emotions for every negative emotion – for a relationship to feel healthy, for us to want to keep leaning, and for us to want to be consistent with you, for us to want to be vulnerable with you.
And so, at the very beginning, especially, it’s a bank account that you need to make more deposits than withdrawals and build that ratio up, honestly. And I know a lot of people who come, and 61% of us are lonely on a regular basis. So, when most of us are making friends right now, we’re coming so with a deficit. Most of us don’t feel that seen in that many relationships. Many of us don’t have anybody we’re confiding in. We don’t have anyone who really knows our lives.
It makes sense that when we show up and we meet somebody who we like, and they’re friendly and they’re kind of a friend, it’s easy for us to all of a sudden be like, “Oh, my best friend” and think that we just need to tell them everything. And it’s like, “No, no, sweetheart. This is a triangle, and we are all starting on the bottom, and you only get to move up to that “best friend transparent, tell you everything and give you advice in my life” on at the top levels of friendship.
And so, I do think that’s one of the really valuable contributions this book helps is teaching it’s not, “Should I be vulnerable or not?” It’s, “How vulnerable should I be, and what’s appropriate in this relationship?” And you really should only be doing that “transparency, without filters” kind of showing up at the very, very highest levels of relationship. Like, I shouldn’t have to be guarded with my husband and my close friends. I can risk saying something out loud and then being like, “Uh, actually, I don’t feel that way.” Or “Well, actually, no, when you say it that way.” We can work that out with those relationships. We’ve practiced that. We’ve built up to that. We have so much positivity in the bank that we can kind of like risk seeing it the wrong way, and we know that they’re not going to take it the wrong way`1.
But we don’t know that at the early stages, and it’s not appropriate for us to suddenly be like, “Oh, Andrea is so nice, and she’s my new best friend.” And like, “Let me just vomit my life on her.” And many of us, I think the challenge with vulnerability is for each of us listening to kind of be like, “Am I somebody who tends to go too fast on the vulnerability! I’m so hungry to be seen that if I’m seen, we’re bonded even if I’m not seeing the other person, even if it’s more one-sided. Like, do I overshare?” Or is the other side… I think a lot of us are undersharers. We’re so used to being the listener, so used to getting accolades for being the helper, the one who has it all together, the strong one, the leader, and that we actually aren’t showing up and sharing very much. We’re kind of letting everyone else do it.
And I think that inquiry there is for all of us that if you do err on one side, which side is it? And growth might look like practicing the other side a little bit more. You know, if you are an oversharer or somebody who thinks you just give it all, maybe it’s showing up and expressing more curiosity in other people and listening more, you know. And for some of us, though, the invitation is what would it look like to share a little bit more, to reveal a little bit more, to be a little more authentic? And that will look different, so I guess the growth on vulnerability looks different for all of us. But I think it’s good self-awareness to kind of know which one you are and to be more thoughtful with how you might build the opposite muscle. We’re doing a lot of physical health today, but yeah, you want to cross-train.
Andrea: Yeah. Do you think that there’s also a difference in the person that you’re talking to – like, based on who I’m talking to, not just the relationship itself but also the person – and what they can handle? People start to talk to me, and then they, you know, get into it aways and then like, “Whoa, I just shared a lot with you.” And they’re like, “I’m so sorry.” And I’m like, “Actually, this is very normal. It happens all the time.” I don’t know how to say it quite right, probably, but you know, you see what I’m saying? Like, there’s also a difference in what people can handle.
Shasta Nelson: Yes, but even that, they’re doing that because of who you are and how you’re showing up. And I would say, even in that moment, you’re showing up with positivity, meaning that you’re giving clues of like you’re present. So you have consistency, you’re present, you’re giving eye contact, you’re nodding, you’re leaving them feeling like it’s a safe place. So, you’re creating a lot of those three things so they’re picking up on that from you for sure. And I think, yeah, it’s a beautiful point. It’s completely appropriate that we have some relationships that don’t create this healthy, mutual relationship. What’s important is for each of us to be super clear to then not have expectations of that relationship being mutual and being all three of these things.
So, for example, there are people in my life that I stay in relationship with who do not have the positivity piece coming forward. I’m drained when I’m interacting with them, right? But I choose to stay in their life because I’m related to them, because I’ve decided they need that, or I want to serve. But I’m clear that this is me doing this because I love them in some respect and want to be that for them, but I’m very clear that this is not a mutual friendship that then I have expectations of it that this is a mutual friendship. So, I don’t get off the phone disappointed that they didn’t ask me about my life, or disappointed that they were complaining the whole time. That’s what I’m there for, and I only do that knowing that I am building up other healthy relationships where I do feel seen and safe in satisfying ways.
And so then, because my cup is full, I can show up in other relationships and say, “I have extra to give here, and I’m happy to give, and this is a way that I will serve. And it sounds like you do that too, where it’s like, “I can listen. I can hold that space for you. I can do this.” But then you’re not also being like, “Wow, we’re such good friends,” because they didn’t ask you anything about you. So, it’s not a friendship, it’s a different relationship, and it can be a, you know, kind of like a counselor, you know, therapist-patient relationship, or a parent-child relationship. There’s a lot of other good relationships in this world, but don’t confuse it then as a close, meaningful friendship when you are lonely.
I think that’s where we’re talking about we need to be making… Our friendships need to have all three of these things present in both directions. But that’s not to say that you can’t also have other relationships that don’t fit those, but do it knowingly. And then change your expectations that this isn’t a healthy friendship that you should be expecting certain things from. Does that make sense?
Andrea: Yeah, totally. And it seems like there’s also people just end up playing different roles in your life. It sounds like kind of what you’re saying too; like, maybe this isn’t that person for me. I’ve told this to my daughter. She’s 13 so she’s navigating all these new kinds of friendships. Friendship is such a big, big deal, and I’m like, “You don’t have to expect one person to be able to understand every little piece of you. You can go to that person with this area of your life and you can go to another person with another area of your life, and it’s okay. Let them be what they are.” Is that kind of what you see too?
Shasta Nelson: Totally, I love that. That’s a great example, absolutely. And so when we give the example of positivity, every relationship needs to leave us feeling more good than not over time. But how we feel good… this relationship might feel good because we go out, and we have such a fun time. We go to movies, we enjoy each other, we have these conversations, and that’s what feels good. This relationship might feel good because they have good empathy, and when I share stuff, I end up feeling like they really empathize with me and validated, and I feel good. And so that we can get fed in different ways, and so all the other examples of preferences of, like, what I want in a friend, those are all examples of these three things.
And so, one friendship might feed me in a different way with positivity than another relationship might feed me. But we do, at the end of the day, measure the health of a friendship by, “Do you feel good when you’re with this person,” whether good is defined by enjoying the same activity together or whether good is defined by, “This person really listens well and tells me that they love me.” But at the end of the day, we need to feel good. How we get to the good will look different in different relationships, absolutely.
Vulnerability is the same, you know. I don’t tell everybody everything. I view my life like this person lives… like, if I’m a map of a country, Shasta the country, I think these people live in the town of my speaking. And so they know a lot about me vulnerably about my speaking, and about my career and about how I got there, and what my finances… Like, we’ve had masterminds, we talk. But then I have another town where it’s, like, the town of my neighborhood and my San Francisco local life, and so we can be vulnerable in that space. But I’m not telling both groups the same things. Like, they’re getting to know a different side of me, right?
And then there’s a town where it’s, like, my kids’ school, and this is the town of, like, my work. And so yes, to your point, every friend will know different things about us. As we get closer to certain friends, they will start kind of, like, visiting other towns of ours. And they will see me, and hear about my different life, and they’ll know more of… this is the metaphors running out, but they’ll know more of the terrain of Shasta. But there’s certain people that will just stay in that one little town and you can be vulnerable in that town. Like, we both have cancer, we can be super vulnerable and have that be our town, but that’s not the same as knowing everything about Shasta.
And so, I do you think what you’re saying to your daughter is great. Like, vulnerability is not all or nothing. Certain friends, you’ll feel safer talking about certain things with them than other friends. You’ll feed different positivity with each other, but the important thing is at the end of the day, can you be seen with this friend? Is there vulnerability? Does it feel good, and can you trust this person? Can you keep building this and be showing up in them? I think that’s where we have to look back and let friends be different friends. But at the end of the day, all of them need to be, hopefully, building these three things, but yeah.
Andrea: Shasta, why don’t you like the phrase that “it’s lonely at the top”?
Shasta Nelson: Because those are my leaders out there. Leaders are the people… like, we know when we’re lonely that we are less compassionate, we’re less visionary, we’re more protective. We can be a little meaner, actually. So, if there’s anybody in the organizations that I want functioning from a place of support and connections, it’s our leaders. They’re the ones making decisions that affect us. They’re the ones casting the vision that all of us are going to be following. They’re the ones who are helping resource us, and equip us, and encourage us.
I’m not okay, I’m not okay at all with us allowing and just saying, “Well, it’s okay for everyone else to be friends, but we can’t let our managers be friends.” It’s just not okay. I mean, I want everyone feeling supported, but if anything, if I had to choose who I’d be like, “We need our leaders feeling so supported, feeling so seen, having a safe place for them to be vulnerable. That’s just a high, high priority. I don’t think we’re doing leadership right. There’s range of studies out there, but you know, any of them were anywhere between 60% and 80% of our leaders out there feel lonely and feel like they can’t talk to anybody about the decisions they’re making and what’s going on. And that’s just not okay with me at all. The way we’re doing current leadership is… when you have those kinds of numbers coming out, it’s clearly not working.
Andrea: Yeah. I mean, it’s difficult, though, because there are times when you’re not able to talk about things, when you have to kind of be quiet or not say things to certain people. And it seems like, at least in my experience, the more that I look at this, the more that I’m seeing that people just have to have those certain people in their life that they know that they can count on to be able to talk to about x, y, and z. And maybe they’re not great friends with everybody and everything, but at least they have some sort of support.
Shasta Nelson: Yeah, we do. We all have to figure that out, and it will look different depending on our workplace, you know, what the culture is there and what’s available and what the industry is we have. I mean, certain industries lend themselves to a lot more loneliness than other industries because of what’s the norm. But yeah, at the end of the day, every single one of us has to say… not just because it’d be fun and be helpful, but when you look at your health, and we’ve got leaders – leadership is stressful – the more stress you have in your life, the more decisions you have to make, the more power you have, the more responsibility you have the more support we need to be putting around you, the more we need to be encouraging you to have friends, the more we need to be making it okay.
And every single one of us, this is not an area that we can just say, “Well, I hope it happens,” or “Well, there’s not just anyone there that I really like.” We can put strangers in a room. We can put any two people in a room, and we can do exercises and activities that practice vulnerability and positivity and consistency, and we can bond people. This isn’t a matter of you needing to pick the right person even. It’s you need to figure out how to do this, and we’ve got to be talking more about the options, not less. But yeah, this loneliness is really, really prevalent, and it’s contagious, and the last thing we want is more of our workplaces showing up with more loneliness.
There was one leader I went and spoke, and I can assure you not enough… nobody’s googling, hardly anyone’s googling “friendship speaker”. Like, most leaders aren’t thinking, “That’s what we need.” But I was so impressed when this one woman brought me in, and she said, “I know that my employees need better friends, and so just come in and do this keynote,” and then I was like, “Visionary;” I was like so impressed with her. And then in her introduction, she got up and put pictures up on the slideshow of her and her friends, and she was like, “These are my best friends I met from work,” and she was the boss of several of them. “We get together. We go travel together every year, dah dah dah.” She’s like, “I could not have done my career without having friends at work, and I want that for you.”
And I just thought, “Wow, not only has she caught the vision, she’s up there modeling it up. Everything she’s doing is giving permission to them to do that and casting the vision for that where they want it.” And that’s something that a lot of people don’t think their leaders want from them. A lot of people in our teams, we want the friends, but then we think that we need to hide it from our leaders actually. If they’re walking by, we don’t want to be seen talking or laughing or something, you know. And so we feel guilty for having… I mean, this is the crazy thing is we all have friends at work, and yet we feel guilty for it, we feel awkward about it. I was like, “This is just the silly that we have this kind of shame around getting our needs met.”
Andrea: You know, I think that when people are working from home too, it’s easy to feel like your time doesn’t count unless you’re working on work. Whereas, when we were working at work, we would have those random conversations and joke with each other about x, y, and z and be able to have that familiarity and all that stuff that you talked about, I guess.
Shasta Nelson: Yeah. We confuse productivity. We think productivity just means getting a task done, and we forget that productivity is fueled by all this connection and all this other stuff, you know. And I think that there are some really interesting studies out there that show that groups that take the time to talk and connect a little bit ahead of time end up being more productive and getting the task accomplished in less time. But I think we often feel like, “This is a waste of time, and I’m, like, delaying what we need to be doing.”
But I think about, like, we send our kids to school, some of us, knowing that if they miss school and we have to take their work home for the day to work on or they homeschool, we actually know they can get all that work done – that they’re at school for, like, seven hours – they can get that done in ninety minutes at home, like in two hours, maybe. But we send them there for all the other stuff around that actual getting the worksheet done piece, right? And so, yes, we could get it done faster at home.
But we understand for our kids that recess is important, that having somebody up front talking and inspiring you even if we’re not being productive but teaching us and having the bigger conversations is important. We understand all that stuff for our kids, and then for some reason, when it comes to us, we’re just like, “Oh no, we must just be productive at all times.” This is why I wrote the book. Our numbers are massively discouraging about how lonely we collectively are. So, the way we’re doing our lives right now isn’t working, and me talking one more person into one more phone call in their off-work hours is not going to change the needle on this.
And at the end of the day, if we’re coming home lonely from work, if we’re turning the screen off at the end of the day and don’t feel more seen, don’t feel more connected, don’t feel more supported, then we are not going to be able to make this up in our off-work hours. That’s the deal is as long as friendship stays in the bucket of personal life – where it has to compete with our kids, and working out, and watching TV, and doing errands, and chores, and cooking, and sleeping and all those other things – as long as it competes with all of that, we will never build the relationships that we really want, the deep meaningful relationships where we feel really seen. So, it becomes really important that we get at least half those social needs met, where we’re interacting during our work hours. There’s no other way around it.
Andrea: Can I ask you a personal question about how you’re handling something that I think is a problem for a lot of us right now? And that is the issue of politics in our relationships, and the election is around the time that your episode comes out. There’s so much heightened emotion, and fear, and deep concern pretty much across the board. If you’re thinking about it at all, you’re concerned about it. But I find myself not wanting to be around people that think differently than me because I don’t want to, like, go there. You know, there’s a temptation. Mind if I ask, how are you handling this in terms of friendships and connecting with people in your own life?
Shasta Nelson: It is a very good question, and I have one relationship that comes to mind right away that I have had a very hard time with for a number of years. And it became my guinea pig because I tried every strategy. “Let’s avoid the subject.” “Okay, let’s try to talk about the subject but do so kindly.” I kept trying, and I was like, “Oh my word, this is, like, so hard.” So, I don’t know that there’s, like, this perfect answer to it other than the research shows that having the same religious background or political views is no more of a determining predictive factor to who we can bond with than whether we both dislike fast food or we both like Madonna concerts in the ’80s. It’s not a bigger predictive of who will bond with, but in our brains, we have a lot of story and narrative around it that makes it obviously very hard for us to practice vulnerability, positivity, and consistency.
And so, I don’t have a clear answer to that. I’ve done several videos on YouTube that have been helpful to some people that some people might want to go Google. But in short, I would say what we have to do in these relationships is we’ve got to figure out how to still walk away with that positivity factor boosted, how to walk away leaving both people feeling appreciated and seen, and that is really, really hard to do. But I lean toward trying to ask questions, and I lean toward trying to just affirm where I can what we have in common and to be like, “Ah, yeah, I don’t want any more abortions either.” I mean, all of us can agree, we don’t want more shootings at schools, right? Like, finding the thing where we can all agree on that. Where we’re disagreeing is the “how” to solve that, maybe, and so just kind of trying to keep in perspective, like, all of us want a world that everybody is equal.
We might disagree whether that’s happening or we might disagree how to go about getting that done, but all of us want this. And so, those are things like… all of us want the earth to last forever. So, what are the things that, “We all want the same thing here.” Are our disagreements coming down to the “how”… and this is way, way easier to say than to do. I have struggled with this too. But I do think we have to come back to if we want the relationship to make it… and we need to. We’re related to some of these people. We can’t just only have friends we agree with on certain things. But yeah, I do think that it’s important to figure out, “How do I practice the positivity piece;” it’s probably the hardest one in that. And the more negativity we have in that relationship, the less we’re going to want to interact with them and have to do the other two things of relationship.
But yeah, I’d be curious, what have you found? Because it’s a tricky one and it’s hard if we have a story – and all of us do, myself included – of kind of like what that means if they believe this, you know. And it’s becoming more and more clear [that it’s] that way. It’s hard.
Andrea: Yeah. I feel like at this point, it’s going to help a lot when it’s not on our face all the time. So, the heightened intensity of it right now… at least for people who are paying attention. If you’re not really paying attention, then it may not feel that way to you. But if you’re really paying attention, then it does feel like it is one of the biggest things in your life. So, when it consumes this much of my life and I can’t talk about that with you, then maybe it’s just best to back off for a little bit. That’s kind of what I’ve decided. I don’t need to go there with everybody, and also, am I trying to influence people in this?
Shasta Nelson: Yeah.
Andrea: Or am I trying to connect with somebody? Because there’s a big, big difference. And so if I’m trying to influence, then I really need to think about whether or not I even have a voice with that person in the first place. Isn’t worth it?
Shasta Nelson: Yes, and are they showing curiosity and wanting to be influenced?
Andrea: Yeah.
Shasta Nelson: That was really the sticking point for me with this one relationship was – when I really peel that back – I said, “It really isn’t the differing opinions because I know other people who have these opinions, and it’s not as volatile.” I said, “It’s that this person keeps… I feel like she’s constantly trying to change me. It’s like… I feel like she’s constantly trying to influence me.” And so that’s the part that gets exhausting is not ever feeling kind of like, you know, accepted. So, if we could figure out a way, I love that. I mean, if we could figure out a way… to have this, like, “I value you, I value our relationship and I want to connect with you. And let’s just agree, neither of us are asking to be changed,” you know?
So, “What could it look like? How could we have this conversation where we can share a little bit about what’s meaningful to us? How can we do it where we remove any desire to try to change the other person?” You know, kind of, like, coming back to, like, if you have two parents and one chooses to stay at home and one chooses to go back to work, how do we have this conversation where we can both share what’s hard and what’s positive about what we’re experiencing without us feeling like we’re at risk of the other person feeling like we think they should make the same choices we make, you know?
So, we allow for, “You’re making the best choice for you, and I’m making the best choice for me? How can we both still share this side of our lives and acknowledge that there’s good and there’s bad with this without it like… And I think if we could kind of find that way of asking that question, that’d be an interesting question to ask some people. “Do you think there’s a way we could connect it all on the topic of this? How would it look different if we just both knew we weren’t going to change to get a person? What would that look like?” That’d be an interesting conversation to have. Like, what if we’re talking about politics with some of these people rather than the actual politics? “How could we talk about politics? Can we learn and grow about this?” Or “What’s the thing that lights you up the most right now in this? What’s the thing that gets you most upset? Can we do this in such a way where we just take off the hat of trying to change each other?”
And I don’t know. That’s hard, I think, especially with the more fear and anxiety and loneliness we all have, we’re more prone to take things personally. So, even if the other person’s not trying to change us, it’s easy for us to be like, “Well, they think they’re better than we are.” Like, it’s easy to feel judged when somebody’s not even trying to judge us, but that would be an interesting way to go about it, is just to state, “I want us to connect and acknowledge the elephant in the room, and I don’t want you to feel like I’m trying to change you. And I don’t want to feel that you’re trying to change me, but I don’t want us to feel like we can’t talk about this. Like, do you have any ideas? What would feel good to you?” That would be relationship building, to just talk about the fact that it’s hard to talk about it, and ask questions like, “Is there anything that would feel better to you? How can we talk about this in a way that left us both feeling seen, you know? This is a big part of our lives, how do we do this where we don’t feel judged by each other?” It would be an interesting angle to try.
Andrea: Not feeling judged by each other is pretty hard when the big narrative around it might be “good versus evil”.
Shasta Nelson. I know.
Andrea: That’s a really tough one.
Shasta Nelson: Yeah, it really is.
Andrea: I think connecting like you’re talking about and just building up the relationships on all these other levels helps us to remember that the other people are human. It’s not just, you know, good versus evil. It’s me; like, I’m a human being, they’re human beings. We can connect as human beings. I love that. I love your message.
Shasta, one more question for you. So, a “voice of influence” is somebody who knows who they are. They have a mission, and they are able to get other people on board with that mission. You are somebody who has a well-developed “voice of influence”. Do you have any last tip that you would like to leave or suggestion for our audience? I guess something that you have done to help you develop your “voice of influence” that you think other people might benefit from as well?
Shasta Nelson: Yes. Well, so what comes to my mind, for me, the most helpful thing to my influence has actually been, like, doing self-evaluation. So, like taking Gallup StrengthsFinder inventory, for example, and identifying which of my strengths are the influence. There’s a category, and there’s thirty-four strengths. You might not have an influencing strength in your top five, but we all have all thirty-four strengths and so you do have an influencing strength. Which one is your highest influencing strength? For me, I have a lot of my top five strengths in influencing. So, for me, this is an area that I do naturally and get energy from. The most helpful thing to me is to realize, “How do I influence that’s in alignment with who I am?” which is different than how somebody else influences.
So, for example, one of my strengths of influence is Maximizer; how do we make something better, you know? So, every book I’ve written, every talk I’ve given, you will see my Maximizer showing up. Another one of my strengths is Activator. Like, I’m just like, “Why are we still talking about this? Let’s do something about it.” And you will hear me lean in and be like, “We need to be doing this. Like, go to the gym and stay in there.” And so, I am playing to my strengths, and I think anybody is better off not trying to be somebody else. I think you’re most influential when you are knowing your strengths and show up in your armor, so to speak.
I remember there was a pastor once that I heard of a huge megachurch who I felt like had so much influence. And I remember being young and watching him, and he just stood behind the podium and just kind of very quietly and under spoken and eloquently just kind of read his notes. And it just seems so sincere and so influential. And I was like, “I want to be like that. I don’t want to be big and theatrical, you know. Like, that just is so…” And I’ve tried to model that, and I was just boring, you know.
And I think it’s really important for all of us to not try to emulate someone else, but to be like, “Who is Shasta?” “Who is Andrea?” And “If I wanted to shine my brightest, what do I bring that’s different than what somebody else brings?” I love how he was influential, but that is not me. I am going to be walking the stage. I’m going to be leaning in. I’m going to be like, “Come on,” and telling the stories, and I don’t know. So, for me, the short answer is we all have influence. I think it’s naming how do I influence, and kind of being clear on that strength, and giving myself permission to play to it is so, so, so important.
Andrea: It’s great. All right, Shasta, thank you so much for being a “voice of influence” for our listeners today. I really appreciate it. I’m glad that you are who you are and you’re being who you are. We all need it.
Shasta Nelson: Thank you!. And thanks for your inspiration and your influence, inspiring all of us and resourcing and equipping and encouraging all of us. Thank you!
Andrea: Oh, Shasta, one more thing. I think you have a chapter of your book, maybe, that’s available to people? I forgot to mention that.
Shasta Nelson: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, if you want some of the research around the health and happiness friendship studies around how much it matters to you, then you’ll want to text the word Friendship to 474747. So, the word Friendship to 474747 and that will give you the free chapter of the book, The Business of Friendship. Or you can order the entire book, and it’s on Amazon and everywhere else. And I will say that at thebusinessoffriendship.com there is a team toolkit that – for leaders, especially – has all kinds of extra resources in there, and assessments, and sharing questions to ask people at those team meetings, and all the different videos that you can watch with your team to talk about friendship and to model that. So that’s at thebusinessoffriendship.com. There’s an entire toolkit for leaders and that too. So if any of that helpful, there you go.
Andrea: All right. We’ll make sure to put those in the show notes too. Voiceofinfluence.net/podcast is where to find your episode. So, thank you so much, Shasta. Have a good day!
Shasta Nelson: Thank you!