어색함을 포용하기: 개인적 발전을 위한 길

### 어색함을 포용하기: 개인적 발전을 위한 길
* 😅 헤나는 유명 회계법인에 입사한 첫 직장에서 **잘못된 이름으로 불리는 어색한 상황**을 겪으며 사회적 규범의 불편함에 대해 생각해 보게 되었습니다.
* 📱 그녀는 실수로 고객에게 불만 사항을 전달하고 인사말을 잘못 해석하는 등 당황스러운 순간들을 이야기하며 **이러한 경험이 위험과 어색함에 대한 우리의 인식을 어떻게 형성**하는지를 강조했습니다.
* 🧠 연구에 따르면 청소년기에 접어들면서 자의식이 강해져 사회적 규범을 내면화하게 되고, 이는 나중에 **직업적 환경에서 위험을 감수하려는 의지를 저해하는 요인**이 됩니다.
* 📉 인정받고자 하는 욕구는 종종 우리가 인식하는 방식과 우리 자신에 대해 느끼는 방식 사이에 간극을 만들어 **개인의 성장을 추구하기보다는 어색함을 피하는 데 집중하는 사고방식**을 낳습니다.
* 💪 승인 마인드는 외부 목표를 달성하도록 우리를 이끌 수 있지만, 진정한 개선은 **우리의 행동을 내부 동기와 일치**시키고 개인적인 목표를 설정하는 데서 비롯됩니다.
* 🔄 개선 마인드를 키우려면 **불편함을 받아들이고 어색하더라도 성장의 기회**를 찾는 것이 중요합니다.
* 🌱 헤나는 개인이 자신의 목표를 파악하고 불편한 상황에 직면하는 연습을 통해 **위험을 감수하고 개선할 수 있는 능력**을 강화하도록 장려합니다.
* 🥤 궁극적으로 그녀는 외부의 인정보다 개인의 성장을 중시하는 것이 중요하다고 강조하며, **목표를 추구하는 데 있어 어색함을 극복하는 방법**에 대한 대화를 나누도록 청중을 초대합니다.

헤나는 어색함을 포용하여 인정과 개인적 성장 사이의 간극을 좁힐 것을 권장합니다.

I was in my first job out of college at a shiny, prestigious big four public accounting firm. I gave that work paper to Helen to work on. Helen will finish it up and give it back to the client. It's my third week in, and the partner kept calling me Helen. My name is Henna, by the way. But because I didn't correct him the first time he said it, I felt like that ship had sailed. To say something now would feel a little risky and a lot awkward. Wish I could say that was an isolated incident in my career, but I've had plenty of those. I once texted a snarky complaint about a client to my work friend, which instead went to the client. Recently went to hug someone at work who instead was going in for the fist bump, and he ended up punching me in the chest instead. That was fun. But my niece Arya is seven, and interestingly, she has never once said to me, Hanala, this is awkward, but I can't open my Capri on. Kids don't feel awkward because they

haven't yet learned they should feel that way. I think a lot of us would love to take more risks and feel less awkward. So, what gives? Can we be more like Arya? Research from the Association of Psychological Science discovered that it's early adolescence that our brains change, and we start to internalize social norms and become much more self-conscious. And as we grow up, there are inevitably times when we violate those norms, intentionally or not, and we start to notice and remember how that felt, which is usually a little icky. And because we don't love to feel a little icky, we start to act in ways that avoid that feel. We become conditioned to look for who we are through the lens of those expected norms. In other words, who do other people see, and more importantly, do they approve of who they see? And as we continue into our professional lives, another interesting thing happens. Even though our experience and confidence go up, so does our deep desire to fit in with those social norms. And as a result, our tolerance for

professional risk-taking or any risk-taking absolutely goes down. It goes down for big risks, things like negotiating a new job salary or taking a new job in general, but it also goes down for small everyday risks, things like apologizing for a misdirected snarky text or correcting someone when they've said your name wrong. Why is that? Because thanks to those social norms behind the scenes, we start creating an ever-widening gap between how other people see us—confident, smart, articulate—and how we feel about what we think they see—nervous, hot mess. Without realizing it, we start hanging out on this side of the gap. On this side of the gap, we care a lot about what other people think of us, on preserving our existing gains. People think you're smart now, huh? They may not think you're so smart after this. That instead of improving, instead of leveling up, instead of playing to win, we play not to lose. On this side of the gap, we're stuck in an approval mindset. An approval mindset tap dances.

on our caveman brain and reminds us that belonging feels better than almost anything else. It explains why many of us, at a deep level, are still people pleasers. We chase external validation. We care a lot about how we look to our leaders, our colleagues, our direct reports, our TEDx audience. What are you looking at? And this brings us back to feeling awkward. Feeling awkward is a nudge from our modern brain that says, Careful, there's risk ahead, and other people are watching you. That feeling tries to protect us. It tells us to zip our lips instead of speaking up. It tells us to just take the offered salary instead of negotiating. Tells us, Helen isn't such a terrible name for a Pakistani girl, is it? Sorry, Mom and Dad. Sometimes that nudge is a gentle poke. Stop fidgeting, Henna. Sometimes that nudge feels like a giant shove. Who says you're ready for a TEDx? And to be clear, many of us live in a system that rewards us with raises and promotions and likes when someone else

approves an approval mindset isn't all bad. In fact, we've picked up some pretty useful skills in an approval mindset. In an approval mindset, we learn to set the bar high for what we want. If we want to set our bar high for earning our boss's praise, or making a client happy, or innovating on a new project, we develop a desire to take action towards that bar. I'm a recovering overachiever, and the minute someone else sets a target for me, I'm in motion. Not only will I hit it, I'll exceed it. Challenge accepted. And we adapt and change our behavior on our way to that bar. As an executive coach, I see my clients contort themselves into new ways of behaving in order to earn the respect of a new boss, or to avoid making waves in a meeting. And for 14 years in Staffing, I would watch candidates shape-shift in interviews in order to get the job. Maybe you've done that too, and if you have, I'm with you because each and every time you get a piping hot

cup of approval at the end, but even so, you're no puppet. Even in an approval mindset, you're in control. You're setting the bar, you're taking action, you're adapting, but you're doing it for someone else. You're doing it for external reasons. An approval mindset is when you decide to change to meet someone else's expectations. In this mindset, your biggest, beefiest goals come from outside of you. Now, case in point, a 2019 KPMG study found in a survey of over 2,000 college-educated women that they were significantly more comfortable taking risks that would benefit their group or company over one that would benefit themselves as individuals. I believe it. Telling the partner my name was actually Henna was way harder for me than telling the client that the audit report was going to be delayed by over two weeks. Correcting him meant his approval of me, Henna, not Helen, and all that that approval signified as far as my job, my level of responsibility, was suddenly at

risk. What will he think if I say something now? What if he judges me for not saying something before either? Choice felt awkward and both carried huge risks, or at least I thought they did. But what I learned is when it comes to taking a risk in the moment is that we allow our deep desire for other people to approve outweigh whether we personally improve. You see, the more we stay on this side of the Gap, the more that Gap widens to a Chasm, the cringe Chasm, a hurdle to overcome on our road to self-improvement. The bigger the risk, the more visible it is to others whose approval we so desperately want, the more awkward it feels, and at work, the stakes feel high. We are taking risks in front of people, often with KPIs and success metrics on the line. Feels like everyone everywhere is watching us cross the cringe Chasm. So, we tell ourselves if I don't say the thing or take the chance, then I don't have to worry about whether anybody else approves, and bonus, I also

also don't have to acknowledge the possibility that I might stumble or fall, and neither their approval nor anything else is at risk. And that may be true, but when we stay on this side of the Gap, when we avoid all awkwardness, we never truly have a chance to personally improve, to speak up, to self-advocate, to innovate or negotiate, or try something new, to do the very things that are proven to reduce risk over time. And leaving your potential on the table, that's the greatest risk of all. It makes me cringe to have to correct someone about my name. It makes me cringe even more to imagine walking through life as someone who allows other people to call her the wrong name. Both of them are a risk: one risk of losing approval, the other risk of losing my identity, who I am or who I want to become. Which one am I going to take? Which one would you take? Awkwardness is what we feel when we reach this moment of choice. That feeling tells us we're standing at the edge of the

chasm. That feeling tells us it's time to jump, and at the edge, you're also going to find what I like to call ick moments, when you're wincing and cringing and going ick. Remind yourself that improvement comes after cringe. Now, there are some benefits to an approval mindset, remember, and it's not all bad. It will get you somewhere in your life, in your career, and in your business. But you know what's even more powerful? When you decide to change to meet your own expectations, when your biggest, beefiest goals come from inside of you. Now, from a business perspective, five separate studies confirm that internal motivation for internally set goals leads to greater persistence, higher learning, better employee engagement, better performance, and better retention. It's the alignment that makes the achievement possible. It's the alignment that helps you embrace the most awkward situations and helps you cross the cringe chasm. And I have good news: you already have the skills that you built over in the approval side to get you to where you want to go when you're in an improvement.

mindset. You're still setting the bar for what you want. You're still taking action towards that bar. You're still adapting. When you align your own internal motivation with your own internal goals, that's how you cross to the Improvement mindset and stay there. And here's what's critical about assessing risk: if in this moment your self-improvement, hell, your self-identity is more important to you than their approval, then my friends, it is time to jump. So, what needs to change? The only thing that needs to change is whose goals you're pointing to, the direction of why you do what you do. Fitness trainers have known this for years. If you do the same exercises in the same order, your bodies get used to it, a new plateau. That's because routines also reduce our capability to improve. So, to improve, we change the direction of the circuit. So now we're going to take all those skills, those muscles we've built over on the approval circuit, and work them in a new, slightly uncomfortable way so that we can improve.

our ability to take small risks when we need to, to condition for awkward, and we condition by seeking out strategic micro-stressors and deliberate discomfort in the exact places where there's the most room for change at work. Instead of backing away from an uncomfortable conversation, changing direction might look like naming how awkward it is to have to talk about this, maybe with a little bit of humor, or let's say get called on a meeting and whoops, you totally zoned out. Instead of running from the awkwardness, which research actually says backfires and makes things even more awkward long term, been there done that, maybe you'll try owning it and just admitting that you will recover faster than you think. The truth is your internal motivation is always burning inside of you. The question is, are you going to use that spark to ignite your own improvement or to feed a fire of someone else's making? And are you going to purposely look for those ick moments, those opportunities where improvement can come after the

cringe. Are you going to make your internal motivation muscles stronger now? One final word of warning: changing direction isn't easy. It takes deliberate practice, much like stepping into the TEDx lights for the first time. Trying something new is awkward as hell. The approval mindset is blaring. I hear it right now. It's easy to peter out when your mindset muscles start saying, This is hard. But if you want to play to win and not just not to lose, you can start right now. Find one goal you want to feel awkward for so that you can cross the chasm towards improvement and practice embracing the awkward every day so that you're as strong as you can be for the moments when it counts. What you risk reveals what you value. Not every twinge of cringe needs to be overcome, just the one stopping you from getting to where you want to go. It's up to you if you want to jump, and if you don't know where to start, let's talk about it over a Capri Sun. I promise I won't make it awkward, but I

promise you, they taste damn good. Thank you. [Applause]

Want to Get Ahead at Work? Risk the Awkward Moments | Henna Pryor | TED

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사회적 규범이 위험 감수성에 미치는 영향

직장에 갓 입사한 헤나는 자주 잘못된 이름으로 불려서 이를 바로잡는 것이 어색합니다.

우리는 성장하면서 사회적 규범을 내면화하여 자의식이 높아지고 위험을 감수하는 데 대한 관용이 줄어듭니다.

이로 인해 다른 사람들이 우리를 인식하는 방식과 우리가 느끼는 방식 사이에 격차가 생겨 위험을 감수하는 것보다 기존의 이익을 보존하는 것을 우선시하는 승인 마인드가 형성됩니다.

승인 마인드가 행동에 미치는 영향

소속감과 외부 검증에 대한 우리의 뿌리 깊은 욕구는 다른 사람을 기쁘게 하고 그들의 의견에 관심을 갖도록 유도합니다.

어색함은 현대인의 뇌가 잠재적 위험을 경고하고 행동에 영향을 미치는 넛지 역할을 합니다.

승인 사고방식은 가치 있는 기술과 목표 설정으로 이어질 수 있지만, 종종 자신의 목표를 추구하기보다는 타인의 기대에 맞추기 위해 행동을 변경하는 결과를 낳습니다.

크링의 틈: 위험을 감수하는 것에 대한 두려움 극복하기

순간적으로 위험을 감수하는 것은 종종 어색하게 느껴지고 타인의 승인에 대한 부담감을 동반합니다.

이러한 위험을 피하면 현재와 원하는 목표 사이의 격차가 더 커져 궁극적으로 개인의 발전을 저해할 수 있습니다.

어색함을 받아들이고 스스로 설정한 목표에 대한 내적 동기를 부여하면 끈기와 학습, 전반적인 성공으로 이어질 수 있습니다.

자기 계발을 위한 내적 동기의 힘

내적 동기를 목표에 맞추는 것은 개선 마인드를 유지하는 데 있어 핵심적인 요소입니다.

노력의 방향을 바꾸고 미세한 스트레스 요인을 찾아내면 일상에서 벗어나 성장을 촉진하는 데 도움이 될 수 있습니다.

어색함을 받아들이고 불편한 상황을 인정하면 더 빠른 회복과 더 큰 개인적 발전으로 이어질 수 있습니다.

방향을 바꾸고 새로운 것을 시도하는 것은 어려운 일이지만, 개인의 성장을 위해서는 필수적인 일입니다.

어색함을 받아들이고 불편함을 느낄 정도로 한 가지 목표를 설정하면 발전으로 이어질 수 있습니다.

움츠러드는 것에 대한 두려움을 극복하는 것은 자신이 소중히 여기는 것을 드러내고 목표에 더 가까이 다가가는 데 도움이 되므로 중요합니다.