A lack of empathy is kind of being fostered online, and then that comes out of our phones into the real world, and then that exists in the real world, and that comes back into our phones, and we're just swimming in it.

Are you scared of saying the wrong thing at work or perhaps in your non work life.

Claire Stevens, who's the former editor in chief at Mamma Mia, knows this fear intimately.

She once wrote an article so tone deaf about only fans that the backlash consumed her completely.

But here's what's fascinating.

It wasn't the angry voice notes that changed her mind.

It was the people who took time to explain why she'd hurt them.

By the end of my conversation with Claire, you will have a completely different framework for handling criticism, for making apologies that actually work, and for leading without constantly second guessing yourself.

Plus, Claire reveals the decision making hack that helped her walk away from her dream job to build something entirely of her own.

Welcome to How I Work, a show about habits, rituals, and strategies.

For optimizing your day.

I'm your host, Doctor Amantha Imber.

I know that you've spent a lot of time thinking about an analyzing cancel culture and what happens when people get canceled?

What do people misunderstand?

Still, do you think about getting canceled and cancel culture?

It's interesting I often try to avoid despite having a podcast that was called Canceled, a common podcast that kind of looked at celebrity crimes and made fun of it all, I try to avoid using the term cancel culture just because I think it brings in a lot of stuff that has really subjective meaning to different people.

For example, councel culture can bring up Harvey Weinstein and you think, okay, well that is somebody who was convicted of serious crimes and went to prison, and in terms of being canceled, yeah, yeah, actually that makes sense.

Whereas I like to think instead about the idea of public shaming or the social media pylon.

John Ronson wrote a book I think it was twenty thirteen, So You've been Publicly Shamed, which I loved at the time and I think has become even more relevant you over a decade later, where I think what people really misunderstand is the deep psychological emotional experience of being at the center of Internet outrage.

In particular, I think when we live online, which so many of us do, when you are being ostracized and dehumanized and and even just criticized from all angles, it feels really, really, really suffocating, and it feels like you don't belong and you have no worth and you have no purpose.

And I think the other thing is you're not really when you're in the thick of that emotional experience, you're not meant to talk about it because if you talk about it, you're centering yourself and you're not thinking about all the bad things that you've done.

So that's the part of it that I am fascinated by.

I studied psychology, and I'm really fascinated by the idea of shame and whether it's a motivator or not, and whether public shaming, for example, actually changes anyone's minds.

I'd love to know, Claire, have you experienced this yourself?

Yeah, I think to a very small extent.

I'm not a very important person.

Stop it.

It's not working.

In media, I wrote an article that was about only fans when OnlyFans first came out, and the tone was just wrong.

It was just wrong.

It was insensitive.

I was trying to be funny.

It wasn't funny.

It was actually incredibly ironically dehumanizing of sex workers.

It just I cringed when I think about it.

And when I wrote that article, I got a lot of There are a lot of comments criticizing it, and I actually got a few very detailed emails that went through why people were hurt by it.

And it was the emails that made me think, now, hold on, you've got a point here.

You're right, And I ended up deleting it, taking it down, because I was like, na, this isn't what I meant to do.

But I do remember at that time I also got voice notes.

People would send voice notes that were literally just shouting at me, and weirdly, I thought, had I not had the people who were gracious and kind enough to actually tell me why what I had done was offensive, I might have actually got defensive.

I might've actually been like, hey, stop attacking me and doubled down.

So I'm really glad that people took the time to explain it, because they don't owe.

Me that, so can I ask?

Then?

With that OnlyFans example, it sounds like that happened a few years.

Ago do you remember how you worked through that?

I guess psychologically, but also just practically.

It really pulls you in.

I was obsessed.

I remember just being on my phone and I couldn't get off it, and I was at my parents' place, and my sister and my brother's were like, what are you doing?

Like?

Who cares?

Like?

These people are random?

Who cares to me?

It was the most important thing in the world that I felt like I'd been misunderstood and there were people thinking things about me that weren't true.

And I wanted to yell back, like, that wasn't my attention, That's not what I meant.

That was meant to be a joke, like those sorts of things.

But then I think you've kind of got to distinguish between if somebody's yelled at you, calling you names, there's probably not a lot of utility that's going to come from that, But if somebody sends something that's really well thought out, that's the way to engage in a conversation and to change someone's mind.

What were the lasting effects of that, like, you know, in terms of how you approached putting out your views and content, like after that experience, I think.

On the one hand, I try to be a lot more careful and consider it.

And it's sort of a double edged sword.

As I'm writing or speaking or anything, I'm always kind of editing myself in my head.

And I think that that's important.

I think we have to do that.

I think we have to talk about especially particularly sensitive issues.

If I say anything about motherhood, I'm really aware that what I'm saying is going to land differently depending on where somebody's at.

And I think that's just basic empathy.

That's not you know, having to censor, and that's not impacting your free speech.

I just think it's important to be aware that your experience is not the only experience.

And that's really what I learned about that particular article was hold on my frame of reference is very, very very narrow.

The other thing is I think the lasting effect, I hope the lasting effect is having curiosity.

So with that in particular, I realized that's a blind spot for me.

And so I've read a lot, I've spoken to a lot of people.

I've had really good conversations, safe conversations where I've been able to put an idea out there and have it be challenged and then think, ah, actually, yeah, no, you're right, I just didn't know that argument.

I'd love to know, because it sounds like you did so much research for your debut novel, The worst thing I've ever done.

And I love that title, by the way, I love that title, and it's so hard to title a book.

But it sounds like you spoke to a lot.

Of people that had been through different forms of pylons and cancelation, Like what advice would you give to that, Claire now?

Like knowing everything that you do, I.

Think I did this naturally, but I would tell myself to do it again.

Is don't engage.

If somebody is coming at you and swearing at you and making quite dehumanizing and broad statements about who you are because of one tiny thing you've done, I don't think there's any point going back and arguing with that person.

Because they're seeing you a certain way.

Anything you say is going to be they're primed to see you that way.

You're not going to change their opinion.

So I'm glad I didn't double down or post anything.

I'm glad I didn't do anything impulsive.

I think the really important thing is to sit back and think and let it percolate, because as soon as it happens, you want to defend yourself because you believe that you're a good person and that you don't have bad intentions and that you never want to hurt anyone, and you want to say, I'm not an idiot, I'm not the things you're calling me.

But I don't think that's necessarily the moment to do it, because people aren't going to hear you, Whereas the thing to do is to live your life by your own moral compass rather than other peoples.

I think if you're trying to please and satisfy anonymous people, you don't know them, they don't know you.

If you're trying to satisfy them and meet some criteria for them, that is a fruitless pursuit.

So for me, it was me going I did do something wrong, and so what I'm going to do is read about this and understand it and not do that again, and be really aware of the kind of stereotypes I buy into when I speak, when I write, and I'm going to be really conscious of that.

And for me as an individual, that's enough.

And we can't kind of put our own morality in the hands of somebody else.

To live up to that, because I think we've got to trust that we know who we are and the way we live in our real life is the real thing, not necessarily what we put on Instagram.

I want to talk about cancelation, and I know I take what you say about cancel culture as a term, but thinking about that in the workplace.

And a couple of years now, I think.

It was a couple of years ago my company Inventium did some research into the future of work and we spoke to a bunch of leaders and something that came out.

Is that a lot of leaders are really.

Scared of saying the wrong thing and being canceled in their own workplace.

And I'd love to know, like, where are the parallels to you know, what we see in you know, online and social media when there is a pylon versus you know, this form of cancel culture that I think a lot of leaders are quite fearful of in workplaces.

I think they really overlap.

I think it's all the same ecosystem.

My theory in the book and kind of ongoing theory, is that a lack of empathy is kind of being fostered online and then that comes out of our phones into the real world, and then that exists in the real world, and that comes back into our phones, and we're just swimming in it.

We're swimming in this very fast, snap judgment culture of not giving people dignity.

I've got a little bit of a passage in the book about how I don't know if you've noticed this, but in the last decade working in mediat, there's a lot of stuff published about, like things not to say when you're helping someone who's grieving, things not to say if your friend has been through trauma, whatever.

Those things are so deeply embedded in my brain that when I then go to support someone, I don't know what to say because I have read all the things I'm not meant to say.

And I think that's the worst, because simply the worst thing you can do if your friend is lost to their father, the worst thing you can do is not say anything.

Or if somebody's just been through a traumatic event, you not acknowledging it at all.

Is weird.

And what people do in their daily lives, we all do in our relationships, is we say the wrong thing all the time.

You say the wrong thing, and then five minutes later you might say sorry, that I said that I didn't know what to say.

I've had people say things to me that if I was going to write an essay about it, I might say that was the wrong thing, But I.

Know that their intentions were good.

That's not what they meant, and the overwhelming reality of that relationship is so much more than that tiny transgression.

So I think that it's really seeped.

Into our interactions with each other where we're really scared that if we say the wrong thing, use the wrong language, whatever, that we are going to get into trouble.

But I also think that for the vast, vast, vast majority of people, it's just not the case.

I think for most of us, we are socially intelligent enough to give people grace and if somebody apologizes, to accept that and move on.

But I do think the more we reward this thing online of like calling people out, holding people to a ca out for something very very very very small, I worry that that then seeps in.

And I kind of understand why leaders are worried.

I remember being anxious as editor in chief when I was managing people, and I go into a meeting and think, I'm really nervous about exactly how I deliver this feedback and what I say, and whether this person's going to take it a certain way and make it you know, a huge judgment about me, But you're actually a worse leader if you can't be direct, like so it's really kind of it stuffs up a lot of our relationships.

I think, Yeah, like I you know, when I heard other leaders talking about this, I remember just going I so experienced that, like in my own business, where you know, there have been times where I've just been so like conscious of what I'm saying, like in like you know and all staff meeting and like rehearsing.

Which which seems like ridiculous.

We're a small business, we're a small team, but like just having that real fear of like if I say even the wrong phrase or the wrong sentence, like people could just turn on me.

And I feel like some of that's irrational.

But then, you know, I've also seen instances, you know, in people I work with and advise where it's like, ah, yeah, you know that can kind of happen.

So like, how did you navigate it when you were editor in chief?

I tried to very much except that I was going to make mistakes and other people were going to make mistakes.

What's hard is probably if you have a culture where you're really hard on other people for making mistakes and quite you know, really making it about who they are rather than what they did.

I think that probably comes back at you.

Whereas if you foster a culture of we all have to try things, and we are all going to stuff up and do the wrong thing and make the wrong call, but we've got to make decisions and we've got to move forward, and I'm prepared to learn from my missteps and I want you to be as well.

I think a big part of that is autonomy.

Fostering autonomy because then people see that they make mistakes too, and if there's grace for those, they'll give you grace.

But yeah, I think it's because as a leader as well, pragmatism is so important, and pragmatism is different from idealism, and there are many times where you cannot do the ideal thing because of a million different factors.

And it's really easy when you don't have the responsibility to look up and think, well, I would have done it this way, and I would have just done this, and you're like, oh god, if you were juggling all the invisible things are juggling and had to make the tough call, and it's like, maybe you would have, and I'm sure you get the opportunity one day.

But you know, there's a lot about being a leader that's really hard.

So I think that that's the important thing.

Having a culture where people are allowed to make mistakes and you give them praise to that, and where communication is really direct and open, so there's no kind of not bitchiness, but there's no kind of you know, this invisible tension that's bubbling away where you're actually nipping things in the butt.

I think that that makes a big difference.

It's really tempting to think that the best apology is long and carefully explained, but Claire says that's really true online.

The more you explain, the more you fuel the fire.

Up next, we're going to be talking about what really makes a good apology at work, why the leaders fear saying the wrong thing, and the surprising ways comparison can help shape your career, even when the person you're measuring yourself against is your own twin.

If you're looking for more tips to improve the way you work can live, I write a short weekly newsletter that contains tactics I've discovered that have helped me personally.

You can sign up for that at Amantha dot com.

That's Amantha dot Com.

I want to know about apologies because that's obviously generally some kind of conclusion is an apology, and I feel like there's been so much written about how to apologize.

Tell me, like, what is the best way to apologize?

In the book, I explore very much the fact that online, I'm not sure there is a best way to apologize.

I have seen people apologize in really, really effective ways, But I think there's certain types of people who already have very, very very good grace and are only guilty in inverted commas of certain relatively minor social crimes.

But I think.

Once you are perceived in a certain way, no matter what you say is going to be interpreted in bad faith.

For example, there are many many cases where you really want to explain the context behind something that's happened, because you're thinking, if only people knew the context, finally, people knew all the behind the scenes things that led to this decision.

Most of the time people don't care, and most of the time people will.

Tear them apart because there's no way.

There's not enough words to add the right weight to that and to provide all the relevant details.

There's just not so I think often the best way to apologize is short and no, unreservedly.

There's no excuses.

There's just I'm apologizing and then actually move on.

Because the thing about the media cycle, and this has been a really interesting thing to learn working in digital media, is an apology is another story.

So if I'm working in digital media and say there's the Coldplay scandal that blew up recently, the guy the Coldplay concert who cheats on his wife and hooks up with someone, that story is just going nuts writing about it, writing about it, writing about it.

If he publishes an apology, there was a fake one, there's all that stuff, which adds so much complexity.

But if he publishes an apology, that's another opportunity to run a story.

And then if he posts something else about it, that's another opportunity.

So the more you do, the more it actually just adds fuel to the fire.

So the less you do, the quicker the fire ends.

For the mental health of the person at the center of it.

I think that's ideal, but I think you have to accept that you're not going to satisfy everyone.

There has never been an apology online that has satisfied moral benchmark for every single person, and so you just have to be as direct and I think brief as possible.

And it's a really important thing as well for people whose work depends on being online.

Be area ware that who you are online is not who you are.

That is an avatar, that is a version of you, that is a character, and the real you that goes home and has relationships with your family and goes through the world is a different person, and not to conflate the two.

I think that's when it gets really dangerous.

How about apologies in the workplace.

I imagine you've had to make apologies when you're in a leadership role.

What are the differences.

I have made many, many, many apologies probably looking back, and I think probably some people I managed would say there's probably too many.

I think there's a line between being very accepting of the fact that you make mistakes and then being a bit of a people pleaser, and being a people pleaser is socially confusing for people.

I very much kind of came out the other end of being editor in chief thinking, that's actually not helpful for people if you tell them what they want to hear all the time.

So if someone's annoyed at you, that's not necessarily something you have to apologize for.

And I only learned that recently.

If somebody was annoyed at me, I was like, I am so sorry, I've done the wrong thing.

How did you learn that lesson.

From my interactions with other people who didn't do that.

And I think it's a maturity thing.

I've had female managers who are just freaking brilliant at being able to say like, I can see you're frustrated, I can see you're upset, let's move forward, but they're not apologizing for what they did because they often haven't done the wrong thing.

But it also just it makes you feel safe.

It makes you feel safe that they own their decision making and that they are being honest with you.

They're not telling you what you want to hear.

I think that that's the best thing in the workplace is transparency and honesty.

So I think apologize when you've done the wrong thing, even and this is hard, but to I think sometimes I'm thinking like, as leader apologizing to your team, but also apologizing upwards when you stuff up, which can be really embarrassing.

But I think if you say, hey, you gave me this project and I really run with it and in hindsight I run in the wrong direction, like that just shows a lot of self awareness and definitely shows that person that they can trust you again because you've learned your lesson.

I want to talk about the time that you were editor in chief in Mum and Mia, and I've heard you talk about how that was, like that was the pinnacle for you.

Like everything you did when you started working at that company was working up and up and up, and you thought that that was that was the utopian kind of career dream, if you like.

But then you step down from that role, Can you tell me about that decision making process.

I loved doing that for I did it for maybe three years, and I loved it.

I loved making decisions.

I think making creative decisions.

I'm quite I'll do it and back myself absolutely best team, absolutely loved them.

But a chunk of it was during COVID, which managing people remotely was really difficult.

But I think it was also a bit of a moment of clarity for a lot of people about what they actually wanted to do, and so for me, it gave me the opportunity to slow down and think, what is it that I most enjoy doing?

What do I want in life?

Had COVID not happened, I probably would have kept climbing a ladder without being conscious of it.

But it sort of gave me an opportunity to think back to where my passion started, and I realized it's writing and creativity, and I love that opportunity to be creative.

Basically, you've got finite energy.

And I quite liked managing people because I love people and I loved I loved the team.

But I was like, I've got finite energy, and if my energy is going towards processes and plans and the architecture of a team, then my energy's not going towards writing.

And I don't have.

As much as I'd like to think I have infinite time, I don't.

So it.

Yeah, it made me sort of recalibrate and think that I wanted to focus more on writing and podcasting because at that time, when I was editor in Cheap, I hadn't really done any podcasting and I loved it, loved listening to podcasts, and I had all these ideas and I just went, well, I've got to do it.

I can't just sit around and think about it.

So I went to my boss and said, I think I want to actually change my role and go into podcasting, and they thankfully allowed that to happen.

Yeah.

Wow, did you have doubts when you went into that conversation, like am I doing the right thing here?

I probably did, But I remember when they said they were like okay, and then they kind of were working out what to do with the team, and I said my deputy at the time, I said, she needs to be promoted.

She can do the job with her eyes closed.

And when I saw her doing the job, I didn't feel jealous.

Sometimes I think like that's a good barometer of whether you've made the right decision, is when you look at someone doing, yeah, what you were just doing, and I thought, I was like, she's good at that job.

I've got one hundred percent faith in her.

I'm over here doing this thing.

That's how it should be.

So I didn't kind of second guess it.

And now I want to say, I feel like you've sort of got like a bit of a portfolio career where you're doing different things at a range of things.

You like, talk me through what that looks like, And I guess, more importantly, how do you decide what to take on when you're in this position where you don't have the structure.

That you would have had when you're in that editor in chief role.

Yeah, So I left mum maya beginning of this year.

I'd submitted my book, already had written for a TV show, Strife on Binge seasons one and two, so had done that.

So I felt like I knew what I enjoyed doing and where the opportunities were and all of that.

But I also knew that the biggest thing was going to be saying no, even when my natural impulse is to just say yes to everything.

And I was like, the more I say no, the more I'm giving myself time to work on the stuff I really really care about.

And sometimes saying yes can almost be procrastination, Like if you've got a big project.

I've got a big project I've been working on all year that is hopefully coming out next month, a podcast project.

And there are many times where I've been offered something and want to take it, and then I think, no, that's just you kind of choosing the safe route that's easier than backing yourself.

So I've said no to a lot.

I sort of really think about time.

Zoe Foster Blake has a really good decision making hack about this.

She says, and I'm probably going to butcher it, but she says, like, you draw a line from one to ten and you remove five and six, and then you've got to choose how much you want to do it.

And I find that really really clarifying because often I'm.

Like, ugh, it's a four.

It's a four, so it's a no like and I think when you're really passionate about something, it kind of screams at you.

I love what you say about how saying yes can just be procrastinating and that's actually the easy way out.

One of my favorite podcast interviews that I've listened to has got to be I think what you're referred to as episode zero, but are you Happy where Claire Murphy interviewed you, which was a podcast that you hosted I think for a couple of seasons.

I know it's sort of changed format now around asking people that seem to have it all.

That are you happy?

And I love that episode.

It's funny how like sometimes when you listen to a podcast episode that really moves you, like you remember exactly where you were when you listen to that episode, and I remember I was going on an early morning run and I just was so engrossed in that conversation.

And it was so interesting, like hearing because you're a twin.

Your twin sister is Jesse Stevens, and you know, listeners of how I work that also Mum and me or and Mum and Mia out loud fans will know Jesse.

And it was so interesting how you talked about comparison, where like you're born with a comparison point that is, you know, like with you every day, and I would love to know, like, now you know that interview was a couple of years ago, what does comparison look like, either with your twin sister or just in general with like how that shows up in your work?

Now, thank you for saying that.

That's really nice.

That's lovely to hear that you listen to that and enjoyed it.

I think I'm a little bit better now in terms of comparison.

I think leaving Mum maya has been a really healthy thing to get more in touch with my instincts and what I'm drawn to that might be the same as what Jesse is or different.

And it's also been really important for learning to back myself without that safety net, which I think was a big part of the comparison equation, like I am in or of Jesse and how clever, and I mean, it feels weird talking about your sister like that because usually we're just nagging each other, but someone who is so clever and articulate and funny and hard working that having her behind me sometimes felt like a safety net, Like a lot of the stuff we did was together, and I would think, oh, it's only good because of the Jesse ingredient, not because of the Me ingredient.

So going out of my own I think has been a big test of that and seeing, you know, and I'm sure that there's stuff that I do that people are like, oh, yeah, no, I only liked it when it was Claire and Jesse, and it's like, that's fine.

But I think the older I.

Get, the more comfortable I'm getting with imperfection and difference.

And I think also motherhood has challenged it a little bit because when you have a child and they come into the world and you look at them and think you are just perfect, exactly as you are.

You never have to do anything to prove it to me.

You just have inherent value because you're here and you are you, and that's it.

I think weirdly, that was quite a recalibrating moment for me that I thought, oh, if I feel that way about my daughter whiter and I feel that way about myself, and then also being aware that I want to model that for my daughter.

But I would hate for my daughter to compare herself to anyone because she is just hilarious.

She is just her, And I'm like, if you ever wanted to be anything other than the weird little toddler she is, I'd be devastated.

And I think, also, weirdly, so I had, well, my twin sister had her daughter, and then I had my daughter five months later, and I was very aware beforehand that it could be another opportunity for comparison, and I was a little bit scared about what if I compare, what if Jesse compares, what if other people compare?

And I don't think it happens.

I think they're so different, and I think it's been a lesson in like, you see two people that are so so so different and equally as valuable, which has like rocked my world because I almost had this binary in my head that there's always better or worse, smarter or dumber, creative or less creative, and that's just not how people work.

So I think it's like a bit of an ongoing journey that yeah, for me, motherhood has helped.

I love that inside.

I love hearing you speak about that and kind of where you've come to in the last couple of years.

I know that we have to wrap up, and Claire, I'm just so glad that we got to have this conversation.

I cannot wait to read your book.

And I was saying before we started recording, I always read the books of guests that I have on the show, but in this case there was.

No opportunity to.

But I'm kind of glad because I want to read it on holidays and really like soak it up.

So I'm so excited to read it.

I think it's so exciting that you know you've made this courageous step of going out on your own, and yes, just been a joy to talk to you, so, thank you.

Thank you.

I really appreciate it.

That was lots of fun.

Claire reminded me something simple but hard to live by.

Resist the urge to explain when you get it wrong, apologize cleanly, then step away.

So next time you feel yourself typing out that long justification, just stop own it briefly, then let your actions prove the rest.

Oh and Claire's new book is out now.

It's called the worst Thing I've Ever done, and it's brilliant.

It goes deep into the world of online trolling and pylons, and if you want to keep exploring these themes, you might enjoy listening to my conversation with Flight Story CEO Georgie Holt about leaning through criticism and building resilience under pressure.

To that in the show notes, thank you so much for spending this time with me, and give this episode help you shift your perspective.

Share it with someone who needs to hear it today.

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How I Work was recorded

On the traditional land of the Warrangery People, part of the Cooler Nation