Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Opinions expressed in this episode are personal. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this streaming platform.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: Good day, everyone, and welcome to another edition of let's Be Diverse. I am your host, Andrew Stout. This episode is dedicated to all my loved ones who supported me through this journey. Those who have left us will always be in our hearts and will never be forgotten. Today we're going to be discussing a topic called Comparison Trap, Managing envy and self doubt at work. I am so honored to have this individual as a guest today. She's just dynamic. Her name is Marta Fernandez. Marta, welcome to the show. So happy to have you on here today.
[00:00:41] Speaker C: Hi, hi. Hi, everybody. Thank you, Andrew, for having me. I'm so excited.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: You're very, you're, you're very welcome. How are things with you, Marta? What's going on in your world? Give me the tea, give me the deets, give me it all. What's going on?
[00:00:55] Speaker C: Well, what can I tell you? So lately I've been working so hard on my podcast. If you guys kind of introducing myself over here a bit farther. So my name is Martha Fernandez. I'm an HR generalist and the host of a podcast, HR Arya listening. And I've been focusing a lot on my project in the podcast. I recently wrapped up my season one, which was very exciting. Taking some time to reevaluate myself as a host. Know what could I improve? How could I improve my guest experience for my speakers that come in and whatnot? But in the meantime, I've been doing short content, guys, and I can tell you that it's a journey of itself, but all fun, a good learning curves and that's. That's all about it.
[00:01:36] Speaker B: Well, yes, you do such a great job on your podcast and I, I do see so much content that you put out there. So it is a lot of fun and, and that. And we'll go into a little bit deeper as far as your podcast goes, but later on so people could check it out as well. But yeah, it's, you do such a great job. You introduce your guests well and I believe that your topics are just so fun and very engaging. So, yeah, yeah.
[00:01:58] Speaker C: Thank you. Thank you. Not to say give a shout out to Andrew because he was a guest. My. Actually he was my last guest of season one. Guys. Go check that out. He did an amazing job and he shared a very powerful story. So if you want to feel empowered, go check that out. That story out a little late.
[00:02:15] Speaker B: So before we begin, Marta, I always have a fun, thought provoking question to ask my guest to get Things going. Are you ready for yours today?
[00:02:26] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:02:27] Speaker B: So your question today is, if you found a genie that would grant you one wish, what would you wish for and why?
[00:02:36] Speaker C: That's a great question.
[00:02:37] Speaker B: I.
[00:02:39] Speaker C: Think that the wish that I would ask is to always have patience and knowledge. And the reason why is because in life, life is very unpredictable. And whatever you are, you just don't know. There's always uncertainty, there's always ambiguity. And for you to thrive and become resilient and move on in life and be able to assist others, not only to yourself, you require knowledge and patience. Knowledge is something that people say that is acquired through time as you grow. But I also believe knowledge comes within you. Doesn't matter what age you are. But you cannot exercise and implement your knowledge if you don't have patience.
[00:03:18] Speaker B: So, yeah, I agree with you on that one because, yeah, patience is key. I know that I'm not one of the most patient people in the world. I like stuff, certain things quicker than I can get them done. But sometimes I have to kind of push back, get myself rewired, my mind rewired, and rethinking stuff. And I do have some amazing people in my network who helped me through that as well. Because, yeah, if it wasn't for them, I would be probably going nuts sometimes. But it is what it is.
[00:03:50] Speaker C: Yeah. I think patience is one of one virtue that people we tend to kind of forget about. But no matter where you are in your life, that was probably one virtue that everybody should want to have. I mean, I could ask for a lot of things for a genie, but I cannot control what people's desires want. So, like, if I ask for a desire for other people, like, I don't. I'm imposing my desires to others versus just making sure that I can do my best and be the best for my people and for everybody else.
[00:04:21] Speaker B: Oh, for sure. Well, thank you so much for having fun with me, Marta. I really appreciate you having fun with me. It's always a great way for me to get started these episodes. It's a great way to get started, have fun and engage with my guest and the listeners. So thank you so much for having fun with me. I know you kind of dabbled a little bit about yourself there before, but I like a little bit more in depth version of Marta. So why don't we tell. Tell us a little more about yourself and I'd love to hear about your why as well.
[00:04:48] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. So as I mentioned, my name is Marta. I'm an HR generalist. I ho I have a podcast, I host a podcast. But who I am particularly, I am someone that cares for people. So I grew up in a third world country, Nicaragua. I was born in Costa Rica, but my parents aren't from Nicaragua. And that molds me a lot on how I view the world. Not to mention that I have had opportunity to live across the globe. I have been in Taiwan, I lived there for a bit. I have also lived in Asia, in Europe, I have lived in Barcelona. And not to mention the amount of travels that I have done as well, I have lived in Canada. Actually, Canada is where I've lived the most. Eight years, to be more exact. But during my journey, I stumbled upon two opportunity. Becoming an HR generalist for a startup in 2018.
And I found the love of my life. I'm very passionate about hr. I believe that hr, it's very crucial for people to really thrive in their lives. Work is. Takes a big part of our life and it shouldn't be something that we dread or we feel uncomfortable or, you know, you feel that you're not. You don't have a voice. I don't know. But a little bit about the third world country work experience is a bit different than in America, United States of America. And I just fall in love with the fact that I can support people through my job and assist them in the best ways that I can. Right. And protect them also. Right.
So my why is actually ultimately learning how to be selfless, provide service in this world.
I am that type of person that I always reach out to people, regardless who they are, regardless of their actions, regardless of their past. I feel everybody deserves second chances. I feel everybody should be seen and acknowledged and accepted. And that's my why. My why is to serve. I think that's my passion. That's something that I've understood and embrace it in the best way I can too.
[00:06:45] Speaker B: There's so many amazing things that you mentioned there, Marta. So one of the things that jumped out at me is earlier you had said that you had a lot of patience or you always had the knowledge for patience and you want to learn it more. And I think in your role, I believe that you have to have a lot of patience because you're dealing with a lot of situations, you're dealing with a lot of people. And because of those situations and people, everyone's different. You mentioned that you lived in different areas, different. See, those people had different backgrounds in those areas, different cultures, and you have to have a lot of patience for that. So I think that everything that you've talked about has served you well when it comes to patience and passion and learning about selflessness and helping people. It all goes in one circle.
[00:07:31] Speaker C: Yeah, it does. A lot of. I'm very privileged. I have just kind of clarified that I'm very privileged to have traveled. Not everybody has the opportunity to do so, especially such a young age. Just to guys, to give you an idea, the first time I traveled, I was 18, my first solo travel, and I went to France.
That was my first experience. And I will tell you, it was very humbling, but it definitely taught me to be open and curious and to invite people's or embrace people's culture and mindsets. In a third world country, we tend to be very conservative mindsets. But for some reason, my mind was very curious. And I love the idea that I can talk to other people who have different points of views of mind and just learn from that. Definitely my patients have grown through that experiences, not to mention HR definitely. It's a place where you need to thrive with patients, or at least it's one of the virtues that you must have or must practice every day.
[00:08:31] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think with all that learning and all the traveling that you did, patience is important. But I think we've also learned, excuse me, about assumptions as well. Because you're going into different cultures, you. You learned to not assume certain things about certain people and certain cultures. And because of that, when you've come back to Canada and home and you settled and you're meeting people from these different countries that you actually lived in, you're having a little bit better understanding as far as what they went through, how what their upbringing was, what they learned. All of that stuff has helped you to serve as a HR generous, for sure.
[00:09:08] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah, I agree with you.
[00:09:10] Speaker B: So, Marta, why do you think comparison and envy are so common in professional settings today?
[00:09:17] Speaker C: So just to clarify, I live in United States and I will speak my experience within working in United States and working in Canada, because I've lived in Canada.
I think the comparison and envy comes down to the culture. So especially in United States, it's embedded the competition. They could call it friendly competition. And there's the competitive. Competitive, which is also a character characteristic of some people, which is fine. But in our culture that we live in, it's presented as individualistic perspective. So if you want to succeed in life, if you want to be somebody, like, there's always a competition. Whether your parents taught you the value of comparison in a positive way or in a healthy way, because comparison is not bad. It's just how you are being taught about it. But most of the time in United States I have learned and in Canada that a lot of parents are very competitive, especially if they have a sort of background of success where they're like, you need to be better than blah, blah, blah. And they do it when you were little, you know, when they're like, you know, your cousin here is doing all this, this and they're like, well, I'm not doing that. And they push this pressure on you since very little. It's comes with the generation of how they, you know, people were taught how to be parents and it's not their fault, but we thrive at that. To, for the economy to succeed, for everybody to, you know, keep moving. Competition is required for you to climb up the ladder, for you to become the next entrepreneurial. It doesn't matter where you at, there's always some sort of competition. But the difference is how you present that competition. Is it competition within you? You know, if you start talking to people holistically, they will talk about. The competition is within me. I compete with myself. Other people, they need some sort of measurement. They need a measurement outside of themselves. So who they will see. I want to be the next HR leader. So I'm going to look at this person and that relationship. It's double sword. Because now you become in. In that ambience or dancing with the idea of envy because you're not no longer competing. You're also creating enviness because you're t. You're trying to see someone else. Just my thoughts.
[00:11:30] Speaker B: So yeah, there's great, there's great thoughts. And when I think of envy, I just mentioned the word assumptions when I think of envy equals assumptions as well. So a lot of people look at. So if I'm working in the same company as you, Marta or I, I was working there and you came in later and you were getting some stuff that maybe I thought I should get jobs that I should get or projects I should get. So I'm feeling a little bit of envy. But it doesn't necessarily mean that you're better than me at doing that job. It just means that the company wanted to have you do that particular project and they wanted me to do other projects. Doesn't mean that we can't work together on other stuff as well. We just have to understand.
I think leaders understand that they know or good leaders understand what things that they're good at and one things that they need that they continuously learn on. And I think it goes with people who are Individual contributors as well continuously learn. There are certain things that you're going to be maybe good at. There's certain things that you're, I wouldn't say not good at but that you need to learn to be better and progress at it. And I just think we, if we, we are worried too much about what others are doing or assuming that things are a certain way in our heads and that I think that's when we get ourselves in trouble.
[00:12:46] Speaker C: I, I will have to add there because when we're talking about envy, it also has to do with your self doubt and your self awareness and lack of confidence. So envy becomes a motivator. So don't get me wrong, like envy comes from a place of a lot of self doubt and lack of confidence and whatnot. That's a whole journey itself. But at work envy becomes a motivator for some people that's like psychology, like one like you know, when, when you are envying someone that pushes you to try to prove yourself and you know, maybe not be the best motivator for people to say the least. But it's a motivator if you, if you think it intrinsically that becomes someone's and clearly comes is rooted with other psychological issues. Right. Like self doubt. It comes also with the value of not seeing you value more individualistic work. There's versus community work which is a bit different. So I think what you say is right. We assume a lot of things when we, when we have envy, but it's also the perception of how we perceive envy.
[00:13:49] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. And I, you know the word patience is probably going to come up quite a bit in this conversation. But yes, patience in that, in this situation is very important as well. It may not be your time to, to get a certain thing that you were, you would like and it's just a matter of continuous learning and keeping going and, and, and, and working really hard. So that's what that's really important.
[00:14:14] Speaker C: Yeah, patience. I think, I think in, in competition work environment because we talk about the professional settings, competition comes also with patience. So if you are a good competitor, you know that you're going to lose some battles and other battles, you're going to win them.
But that's the kicker. When ambit kicks in, there's no patience because you want to move so fast and you will do whatever it takes when you start acting very unethical or very questionable to reach that ladder. So I think that's when the work environment becomes a bit more toxic.
[00:14:46] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So how can leaders or managers Create environments that reduce competition and foster genuine support.
[00:14:56] Speaker C: To be honest, I don't think leaders or managers can reduce competition. I think they have to learn how to manage competition. How I said if you have a work environment, you will have multiple people with different backgrounds and competition is just within them. If they were brought up that way, you know, it affects how you were mold in general. So you're not going to take away the competition out of someone. I think you have to foster healthy competition to be able to eventually create a work environment of genuine support, if that makes sense. So by promoting healthy competition within your company and the way you will do it, first and foremost is acknowledging that it's not bad to have competition. But it's also acknowledging that in, in that boat of competition, we all always won. If the department fails, we fail. So you're going to fail regardless in your own competition because you're not going to be able to move forward because everybody fails. So learning how to make coexistence or make coexist these two realities of sense of community, sense of support with competition in a healthy way, I think that's the best way to go about it. And I think leaders need to also to be able to manage, they need to know, they need to know their employees, who they are, what motivates them, how I said envy. It's a motivator. And you need to learn what intrinsically motivates them and what extrinsically motivates them. What is it that it's triggers them to become competitive. Sometimes people are competitive, but with themselves. So you need to use those as advantages. Look, when someone is acting out of envy or because their competition, their competitiveness is getting the best out of them and acting in a funny way or questionable way, that is hurting the, you know, the community, the people around it, their colleagues, that is something then the manager or the leader needs to step in and try to correct that. But this is a behavioral aspect, so people need to understand this. Sometimes leaders might be able to correct this behavior if the person is willing to change that mindset. If the person is not going to be able to change the mindset, it is what it is. Your parts waste. But you cannot take out competition out of workplace. It's part of it. I would say yes.
[00:17:08] Speaker B: And I love when you talk about fostering or foster health, healthy competition. I believe that support comes in there too. So if you are in an environment where you're competitive with your co worker and but and there's no support there when it's needed, that for me is not a healthy environment. I think you have to have that support regardless where someone will, I can. We need help with that. I can come and help you with that. Or asking if somebody needs help instead of just saying, oh, well, I don't want to do that because I'm in competition with them. That's not a healthy environment. We want to have support. We want to have a collaborative environment like you and I have a collaborative environment, Marta. We want to continue to have that as well, inside of work and outside of work as well.
[00:17:53] Speaker C: I agree. That's actually true. Part of healthy competition, you have a supportive team. That's actually true. Yeah.
[00:18:00] Speaker B: When you have a supportive team and you have a healthy work environment, which is people are always willing to come in. And when you're excited to go into work, which is. I know some people are going to be wondering, like, who's. How many people are excited to go to work. But there's a lot of people that I've spoken to that are excited to go to work because they're excited about what they're doing, they're excited about their projects, they're excited about the people that they're working with. They're excited about the environment. That's the type of environment that you want to go into every day. And when you have a supportive environment, then you're going to have that for sure.
[00:18:33] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:33] Speaker B: So in your view, what I know we talked about a healthy environment.
So what does a healthy culture look like when it comes to celebrating success without breeding envy?
[00:18:45] Speaker C: That's a great question. I mean, to be honest, I don't know. I think culture is so complex because it's a melting pot.
It's a melting pot. And if you have a healthy culture, for me, first and foremost, you need to foster diversity of thoughts. And for that to succeed, you need to foster a healthy sense of belonging. And so what that means in simple terms for people, it means there's a lot of people with different backgrounds with these different ideologies, and that comes with different behavioral aspects, competitiveness, one envious one. But to create this or have this beautiful culture for me ultimately means people being themselves in the professional ambience. Right. There is a difference between, hey, Marta Fernandez as a professional HR at work, and there's a Marta outside of work. There's a difference between that. At least I acknowledge that not everybody does at work. You cannot always bring yourself fully. You need to protect yourself. You need to create a barrier and boundaries of healthy relationship. So for have a healthy culture. Yes, we need to address envy. But envy will come natural because we're humans. It's whether it's in a, in the competition, whether you're envy yourself, it that is it comes with us as a human being. It's just know how to address it. Because sometimes envy shows odd, is not, is not expected. So how envy shows up in the world culture is subjected to the person and the company, if that makes sense. So if we look at the patterns of how someone presents envy, we will see that envy shows up differently for each person because it's a behavioral aspect.
So when you're trying to build a healthy culture and celebrate that and reduce envy, you need to acknowledge that to create sense of belonging. You also need to embrace diverse of thought. And when you bring diverse of thoughts, it also ultimately will be clashing with other people's ideas. And it's like a, it's a melting pot. So envy is going to still be there. It's just acknowledging how it shows up and learn how to mitigate if that makes sense.
A healthy work culture, it's a never ending pursuit idea.
I don't think we will be able to get one. There's always going to be challenges. Envy is going to be one of those. But how I said it's a behavioral aspect and therefore you need to look into those behavioral patterns as a leader, as an employee and then how you foster healthy work culture. Well, it starts with you, you know, acknowledge when you're envy, acknowledge when you're acting questionable. Because even leaders and even managers, they have that aspect. It comes out if you know, maybe that leaders envy because another leader is doing better than him. And it was like, well, why this person here, you know, why everybody wants that he's not a big deal. When you be like I'm a good person, I'm a good leader, my team likes me, but maybe the other person is more successful or maybe has a better skills at leadership. I don't know. You get my point though, like envy stuff going to still be there. But just embrace that sense of diversity of thought and belongingness I think will help mitigate some sort of the enviness.
[00:22:02] Speaker B: You're bang on when you say it is a melting pot. And I think we have to look into situations like this. I think communication is definitely key here because I think you want to know why are you feeling envious of that person. And I feel by communicating, having a conversation with that and being open with that employee or that individual, it's going to show them a that you care because you're asking why they're feeling that way and you may or may not be able to solve the issue, but just showing them or listening to them and maybe not even give them a solution, but just being there, just to listen to what they have to say is super important or maybe even more important than you think to them. I definitely think communication again is key.
[00:22:49] Speaker C: I agree actually. Definitely part of navigating this topics and reducing envy comes with having honest, vulnerable conversations that will require people to always be self aware. And then that's the challenge. So how I said envy is presented in different ways. It's not always the same. So people act up and so the manager or the leader needs to be very self aware and very candid and very vulnerable to bring this conversation up. So you know, if I come to you, Andrew is like, hey Andrew, let's have this conversation. You're acting up. I could see, I could see something in you that you have not seen yourself. I'm sorry, this comes very psychological, but it's actually a thing. So if I come to you and I talk to you as a leader, I'm bringing, I'm opening the doors for you to feel comfortable and talk to me about what's happening. Right. But at the same time in HR I've learned that not everybody knows what's happening within them. It takes them time to address, to acknowledge was this is what I'm doing. Oh, I didn't know that. I didn't know that I was acting up. So it could. This is. This type of candid conversations requires leaders and managers to be self aware, to have vulnerable conversations, to know how to have this type of candid conversations were very sensitive because you're calling out someone's behavior and maybe that person is not even aware that they're doing that behavior. So communication and having honest and transparent communication is just one aspect because you need to let it breathe. You need to let that person feel safe in that environment to even maybe remotely acknowledge that that's what they're doing.
[00:24:23] Speaker B: So yeah, and maybe because you're clear, you're approaching them and asking them that they might be in a scenario. Because let's be frank, a lot of people who are not in HR don't feel safe to go to people in HR for situations to talk to them. So if you're being open to that person and saying, hey, let's have a conversation like you just mentioned before, let's have a conversation and let's talk about what's going on and try to find out psychologically what's happening with them. You're like you said, you're going to bring stuff out, but then they're going to see like, hey, they actually I can go to them with something. Not that I'm going to go to them every week or about everything, but if I do have something on my mind or a concern, I can go to them and I can trust that what I'm saying is going to help me and possibly help them. So it's super important.
[00:25:17] Speaker C: Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, the HR relationship, or even if you're talking about not only hr, but any leader or any manager, that relationship to build that trust or being just candid enough to bring that conversation required a lot of work. It's a lot of interpersonal work that we need to put how I said, it's something that you need to have the skill sets to have. Because if you're bringing. It's like calling out someone and exposing them, their behavior. And sometimes people feel shame. Like they don't.
It's, it's not, it's rough. So, yeah, I think, I think people need to be mindful of this one because this is. Just because you have the touch, just because you have the knowledge, just because you have all the information doesn't mean it's your time to call it out. You need to be able to be mindful of how you come up with this conversation. Because safety, having someone to come to you and being safe or feel safe or create that safety work environment. It also requires you to be candid and compassionate and empathetic. And I don't, I don't think it's an easy one because dealing with behavioral actions or behavioral patterns, it's probably one of the hardest things in HR that we deal with how you tell someone, maybe how said, maybe they don't even know that they're doing stuff like that. So how do you tell them without bringing shame to them or, or anger or whatever other emotion comes with it? So, yeah, I agree with you, though.
[00:26:41] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So before we wrap up here, what is one key takeaway that you'd like our listeners to remember from this episode?
[00:26:49] Speaker C: So there's two things. First, if you're a competitive person, it's okay that you're a competitive person. Just practice healthy competitiveness. And what does that mean? Well, it means that even you're in the competition and trying to move up the ladder or whatever, you're trying to reach your personal goals or your professional goals. You could also be compassionate. You could also support other people along the way, you could also give a hand when people need it. You're not going to stop running the mountain because you decided to step two seconds away to see the other person next to you who's struggling. A lot of times I know that competitive personalities were laser focused and that's the only thing that they focus, but they miss the whole view. And if you're in that mountain and you're already up there, you'll see a lot of things that you, you know, might not necessarily see because you're laser focused. So showing empatheticness and showing up to other people doesn't make you less competitive, actually makes you a better competitor just the same. And the other thing I was going to say is just part of acknowledging your patterns, your behavioral patterns like envy, jealousy, things that not necessarily bring the best out of you. It starts with working on yourself, creating self awareness, feeling empowered, acknowledging that you have weaknesses and that's okay. And the part of it is when you acknowledge those things that are not the best out of you, it's people will accept them as they are and they will help you out to improve them if they need to improve. Right. And so to reduce or mitigate envy and jealousy or this negative behaviors, which are humans by the way, they're always going to be there. You can manage them by creating more self awareness, learning more about yourself, taking time to heal yourself, taking time to know you, who you are, be curious with your own self if that makes sense.
[00:28:34] Speaker B: So yeah, that makes total sense. I am fully on board with what you just said there. My call to action today would be to like share and follow this episode. Marta, I would like to thank you for coming on today. I just admire your ability to shine in every situation, your drive, your creativity. I want to thank you again for connecting with me. I just think it's been so great since we've connected and just being such a great human. I really appreciate you and appreciate everything that you do. So thank you again for coming on and thank you just for being you.
[00:29:06] Speaker C: Oh, thank you. Thank you for being you. I appreciate you.
[00:29:10] Speaker B: You're very, very welcome. So on behalf of myself and my guest Martha, I would like to thank you all for listening today. And until next time, be safe. And remember everyone that if we all work together, we can accomplish anything.
[00:29:25] Speaker A: You have been listening to. Let's be diverse with Andrew Stout to stay up to date with future content. Hit Subscribe.
