Career Conversations | S1 EP2: Emotional Divestment in the Workplace

Show Notes

Emotional Divestment in the Workplace

with Yejin Lee (she/her)

Are you too emotionally invested in your job? Equity and justice coach/consultant Yejin Lee explains the importance of finding the right questions to ask yourself as you think about your relationship with work, especially for people of color navigating inequity in the workplace. These strategies can help you find your focus, reduce harm, and center your path to personal and professional success.

Social Change Ecosystem Map — This framework is referenced several times in Yejin Lee’s talk.

Yejin Lee is a New York-based Korean-American equity & justice coach and consultant with over 12 years of experience in the NYC nonprofit sector as an organizer, fundraiser, staff advocate, and organizational design aficionado. Her primary mission as a coach is to support the liberation of people of color by guiding them in finding values-driven pathways for their careers and lives, and by building their capacity to strategize around and survive inequitable experiences within institutions. Her secondary mission is to reduce the harm experienced by people of color within institutions, and she does this through her leadership coaching services & organizational consulting practice. Yejin received her BA from Boston College in History, American Studies, and African Diaspora Studies, has been trained by the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond in Undoing Racism, and has completed an equity-informed mediation basics training from Resolutions Northwest.

Learn more at Yejin Lee’s homepage.

Music by Lesfm from Pixabay

Creators and Guests

Host

Michaela Gormley

Michaela Gormley (she/her) is a proud alum of the University of Washington, graduating in 2009 from the Foster School of Business with a degree in Business Administration – Marketing and a minor in Spanish. She recently started a new role in tech sales after 10+ years in marketing. She served as a member of the UWAA GOLD (Graduates of the Last Decade) Council for two years, including one year leading the diversity, equity and inclusion subcommittee. As a proud member of the UW Alumni community and as a first-generation college student herself, Michaela is passionate about increasing the inclusivity and accessibility of higher education. She is excited to be back for the second round of UWAA Career Conversations and is grateful to be part of a resource that helps others achieve their personal and professional goals. In her free time, Michaela is an avid fan of Husky Athletics and has been a football season ticket holder since graduation. She loves spending time in the sunshine of Eastern Washington with her family and friends and prides herself on being a cool aunt to all of her nieces and nephews.

Guest

Yejin Lee

Yejin Lee is a New York-based Korean-American equity & justice coach and consultant with over 12 years of experience in the NYC nonprofit sector as an organizer, fundraiser, staff advocate, and organizational design aficionado. Her primary mission as a coach is to support the liberation of people of color by guiding them in finding values-driven pathways for their careers and lives, and by building their capacity to strategize around and survive inequitable experiences within institutions. Her secondary mission is to reduce the harm experienced by people of color within institutions, and she does this through her leadership coaching services & organizational consulting practice. Yejin received her BA from Boston College in History, American Studies, and African Diaspora Studies, has been trained by the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond in Undoing Racism, and has completed an equity-informed mediation basics training from Resolutions Northwest. Learn more at Yejin Lee’s homepage.

What is Career Conversations ?

Frank conversations to help you take control of your career.

Going beyond resumes, interviews, and cover letters, each conversation brings a unique perspective on relevant topics for you and your professional development.

Presented by Pepsi, Career Conversations is produced by the University of Washington Alumni Association.

Learn more: https://www.washington.edu/alumni/career-conversations/

Thank you for tuning in to career conversations, an audio series created for the University of Washington alumni community that focuses on deeper topics to help you create and sustain a fulfilling career. I'm your host, Michaela Gormley. I'm a proud University of Washington alum and graduated in 2009 from the Foster School of Business. I'm an active member of the UW alumni community and recently finished a two year term serving as a member of the Alumni Association's gold council. The topic of today's career conversation is divesting from the workplace, and I'm thrilled to be joined in this conversation by Yejin Lee. Yejin is a New York based Korean-American equity and justice coach and consultant with over 12 years of experience in the New York City nonprofit sector as an organizer, fundraiser, staff advocate and organizational design aficionado. Her primary mission as a coach is to support the liberation of people of color by guiding them in finding values driven pathways for their careers and lives, and by building their capacity to strategize around and survive inequitable experiences within institutions. Her secondary mission is to reduce the harm experienced by people of color within institutions, and she does this through her leadership, coaching services and organizational consulting practice. Yejin, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thank you so much for having me.

Yes, we're going to be talking about divesting from the workplace on our career conversations podcast, which is going to be fun and I'm really excited to talk about it a little bit. Sort of the flip side of the career is. Sort of emotionally divesting from that. So, I'm excited to dive into it, can you just start us off with telling us what exactly you mean or what divesting from the workplace, how you would define that?

Yeah, excellent question. I mean, I think it's maybe a little easier to start by talking about emotional investment because I feel like that's a much more commonly used phrase. And, you know, we get emotionally invested in shows and characters in friends and often, especially folks who are sort of mission-oriented in our jobs. So I feel like emotional investment is like an experience where we focus our emotions into something that we generally hope will help us grow or sustain ourselves. So when we become emotionally invested in our jobs or careers, for example, we put pieces of ourselves, our thoughts, our feelings, our labor in hopes that this will sort of ultimately be emotionally and mentally and tangibly fulfilling. And I feel like the use of the word investment here suggests that we intend to get something in return for sharing so much of ourselves.

Ooh, yeah, that's a good point.

And so when you think about like, divestment, then we're talking about taking that away. I mean, it's a very negative framing in a way, but it's about like depriving an employer of our wholeness and in some ways, our hope for being or for meaningful growth and for reciprocity. And I know that sounds mad depressing, but how and why people get to this place where they may need to rely on emotional divestment from work is also mad depressing. But I hope that this conversation will also be hopeful and generative. But Yeah.

Yes yes, I think I like the term mad depressing because sometimes it does feel that way. But I think in talking to you before and just learning about some of this, I think it is hopeful still. So I'm excited to dive into that. So how did you arrive at a place where you realized that emotionally divesting from the workplace was an important thing and something that you wanted to do and wanted to help other people do as well?

Yeah, you know, a lot of my approach to this work is about like rooting things in our subjectivities and our own journey. So I don't believe in, you know, universalized anything that I'm sharing right now. But what I will do is I'll share some of my experience and you know, to your question or on arrival how I got to this place. So I am actually someone as you read my bio as someone who is like, deeply invested in the world of nonprofit for a very long time.

Yeah, I imagine that the nonprofit world, especially there's even more emotional investment. People probably feel even more so than it, maybe a more corporate setting that this is sort of my life's work. This is I have to give my whole self to this.

That's totally right. I think, you know, not realizing for everyone. I think some folks treat jobs like jobs, but at least for me and the people that I really deeply connected to, they were drawn to this world one because it was like one of the few places where you get paid for passion and purpose that's often related to equity and justice. So it's like, damn, I to get paid for this work. And so, you know, put so much of myself in it, and I was someone who was raised with this idea that if you care about something, you put like 5,000% effort into it.

Right.

And you know, I think that's true for a lot of people. But for me specifically, that was like a value in my household. So as I became someone who cared deeply about, you know, racial equity and justice, I ended up getting these jobs where I was like paid to do that work.

Wow right. That's amazing, of course.

Yeah and I definitely was someone who was like, you know, bright eyed and bushy tailed about this work. And I think as someone who also grew up being very attuned to what it actually looks like and feels like and sounds like to embody a principle Thanks to my mother and all the wisdom she imparted in me, I started sort of quickly seeing like, we're talking about these things in sort of the external world, but like the treatment of staff is not matching what we're saying. And so I spent a lot of my career both, you know, deeply invested in the actual work. The external work, like the mission of this organization, is to x, y, z, and I think that's amazing. And then on the other side, also doing lots and lots of organizing within each of the jobs, trying to advocate for more equitable experiences for staff and was often met with, you know, that classic sort of generational divide, like you're just whippersnapper, like you should stay in your lane. You haven't, like, worked here long enough to be complaining. And so I would have these dual experiences. So I was invested in two ways. I was invested in like mission fulfillment, and I was also invested in, you know, making sure that my colleagues. Particularly those who have, you know, multiple marginalized or minoritized identities like folks of color, women, you know, gender expansive folks. And so I would like double doubly invested. And I think what also being, I don't think that this is specific to New York city, but I think there's this added component of like, you know, it's kind of flex for a while to be really busy to be like, Oh yeah, I worked 80 hours this week and then I did like this extra work. And so I feel like all of that was sort of, I don't know, entangling into this mess of me putting all of my emotional eggs in the basket of work, thinking that the only way that I was meant to demonstrate passion and purpose was in my jobs. And so I was the classic millennial who like, hopped from job to job every one to two years, in part because, like, I'm a Gemini and easily distracted, but also in part because I was like getting in trouble at every single job for doing this advocacy work.

So I can imagine, especially if you're working in the nonprofit sector and you're working in a space where it's all about equity and justice and all of these things. There must be sort of a funny. I think this is what you're describing, but a funny internal struggle of like the mission of this organization doesn't match the way that I'm being treated. We're fighting for equity and justice. But as an employee, I don't feel that I'm being treated equitably or justly. And then you're, yeah, you're doing twice that twice the work.

Yeah and that's I think that something that I've realized along the way. I mean, I studied, you know, like history and African Diaspora Studies and postcolonial theory in college and really struggled what I first started working to like, translate these really theoretical things into practice. But I sort of realized early on in my career the first time I had to, for example, write like a legislative memo. I used ridiculously dense language and people were like, what the F am I reading it like? This is so wildly inaccessible. And so I became really obsessed with this idea of like, how do you actually translate these things into action? How can we actually tangibly recognize and know when people are embodying values of equity and justice? And so it became sort of my life's mission to understand what that was, both for the external like, what does it mean if an organization who genuinely doesn't understand what equity work looks like says that they care about it and then operates its programming in a particular way? And also, what does it mean for the people that they're hiring, particularly if they're hiring folks who look like and sound like and are like the communities being served? And so you started developing this muscle and practicing it and developing this amazing community of colleagues who helped me grow in that way. But you know, to your point, I think that there was something particularly heartbreaking. I mean, at least for me, about this, not only the gap, like it's OK for gaps to exist, but you know, the lack of growth, orientation, the lack of accountability, the lack of humility and being able to identify like, Oh yeah, I actually didn't really know that the work of equity really needs to translate to pay equity or that like the way we do internal communications, who I think is deserving of knowledge is actually very much based in who we value and how we value them. And so, you know, I've accumulated these like observations over the years. It's not that I just had all of them, but I feel like, you know, the reason, OK, very long winded answer to your question. So it actually wasn't really until I got laid off from my latest job, full time job that I recognized. You know, I'd been for years been told by people like, you should just care less judgment, you should just care less. And I would be like, literally, how do you care less? I don't know how to do it.

What does that mean? That's like telling someone, well, just don't think about it. Just don't. You're really worried about that. Have you tried just not worrying about it? Yeah, talking about it's the least helpful advice.

You know, I have friends who have, you know, anxiety and people that are just like, don't be anxious. Oh, so helpful. Thank you.

Thank you. Yeah, Yeah. As an over thinker, I have that all the time of like, OK, just stop thinking about it and then that just makes you think about it more.

So like how? How but you know, I think that I got to a place where, you know, I was laid off. That was heartbreaking. I'd never been laid off before, and I had to do my own emotional processing around that because I was really tethering this like, oh, I could recognize my utility for this organization. And it was somehow not matching with like, what ultimately happens. And so I decided to try this thing that I've been doing now and have been experiencing abundance around with the coaching and consulting. But it wasn't really until I had this sort of distance from this. You know, if you asked me two years ago if I would do my own thing, I would probably say 1,000% no disinterest in doing my own thing. 100% going to be someone who is forever in the nonprofit world, in the institutional world. And so this sort of forced distance gave me the space. And then, you know, I started focusing a lot of my efforts on coaching, and I have been coaching mostly women and femmes of color and, you know, hearing over and over again. So many of the traumatizing and retraumatizing experiences people are having in the workplace and supporting them and identifying strategies to simply survive their experience because there's the reality that like, we need to rely on our economic work to, you know, eat and live.

Yeah.

Yeah, those are very good things to do. Yeah so I just like after really supporting so many people in, yeah, just like surviving their experiences, even in the mission driven world, I realized that the strategy of like, oh, sometimes people in order to just simply have the space to not even do the work of healing, healing work is forever work right, but just have enough emotional spaciousness to not be emotionally reactive. And I don't mean that in a victim blaming way. I just mean that if you experience racism over and over again, it's, you know, you feel raw, you feel vulnerable, and a lot of times people become emotionally reactive and it makes it harder to have full ownership and agency of decision making. When that happens, so it just really actually came about as a way of supporting my coaching clients. And I was like, oh, how do we get enough of that distance. So that you can start having full agency of how you are responding to situations? And it sucks. It literally sucks so hard that people have to do that work in addition to experiencing their horrible experiences, like having to do the emotional labor of figuring out strategy. But that's sort of where it came from. So really, just like supporting people of color and surviving their work experiences?

Right? yeah, it sounds like it sort of came about naturally. Like you said you, you weren't even necessarily looking to be in the position that you are now, of course, getting laid off. And then this sort of came about as a natural thing that you were already helping a lot of people do and had experienced yourself. And then just sort of. Came about the role sort of naturally following where your strengths already were, which I think is amazing. So you talked a little bit about. And divestment for people of color, and I know that's a lot of the work that you do. How does it look different for people of color versus white people in the workplace?

Yeah, you know, I really appreciate this question. I think a lot of the work around equity and justice is just like simply self location work, identifying the ways in which we have power and the way that affects our realities and how we move through the world. I do want to say that I think everyone should learn how to be discerning about how they relate to work. And I say this as someone who was like fully 1,000% I am my job and I am my, you know, the role that I play in this organization, right? So I think that should be something that everyone can think about, because obviously people of color are not the only ones who experience workplace trauma, they're not the only ones who experience the violence labor extraction.

Sure. But it is still a very different experience.

Absolutely And so I think, you know what, I support folks in doing when I coach is like surfacing all the data, right? So how do we surface internal data, external data so that we can all have agency and determining how we respond to moments of stress? Because, you know, as I was saying, relying on our defaults without discernment can lead to greater experiences of pain and harm. And I think that's true for everyone. But to your point, I think the impact of extractive practices in the workplace is different for people of color because of the deep and complex layer of racism and white supremacy and sometimes specifically anti-blackness. And a lot of times the indicators of harm are white folks and/or people who have internalized white supremacy, and sometimes that can be done by people of color. But, you know, I think because of white supremacy, people of color are often already perceived as folks who must prove their value over and over again. So when we emotionally divest from work, we're more likely to get in trouble for it. You know, so some of the coaching that I do is to anticipate this resistance, the punishment and to work around it. And the labor is, you know, quite frankly, quite exhausting. And I would say that, you know, the way that people relate to and show up and work is inherently going to be racialized, it's inherently going to be gendered. And so one of the things that I see in a lot of my coaching clients of color around this, like, say, they made the decision like, OK, I know what I need right now is some relative emotional spaciousness because I keep getting triggered over and over again. The wound keeps being reopened over and over again, and so I want to emotionally divest. Let's say someone made that decision, but let's also say that they've been conditioned by racism to be hyper vigilant, that they have to perform. So much more that they are scrutinized because of confirmation bias, whether or not their manager or the leadership or their peers know it. Racism in these like subtle, subtle for people who experience it, doesn't feel subtle. But, you know, I think the accumulation of microaggressions and also in addition to that, this layer of gaslighting, like I think that some of the work that I do also is like just humbling people, humbling leadership, humbling white folks to be like, you actually probably don't have an operational definition of racism and you probably overestimate your ability to identify when something is or is not racist. And so on top of this layer of feeling like, you know, people have to overperform in order to be left alone, quite frankly. There's also this idea like, oh, you're bringing race into it. No one here is racist. And so I think that when the...

Why is it always about race or that sort of quote that we often hear?

Totally and you know, I've had, you know, managers or people say things like, oh, no one here is racist or that's not about race. And I would ask and they would not like it, but I would just say, like, what gives you the authority to determine what is and is not racism? Can you explain to me when something is or is not racist? Like, I would just love to hear it, and they definitely don't like that?

No, I don't imagine that they do, right? I mean, yeah, as a white woman, I imagine that would be a hard question for me to hear, even though I don't actively tried to be racist or act in that way, but it's so ingrained in our culture, in our jobs, in who we are. But I'm sure that would be a hard question for me to answer as well.

Yeah and you know, I'm not saying this to make white folks feel bad, but simply to locate that, you know, there are so much emotional labor that people with minoritized and marginalized identities do behind the scenes because of obliviousness. And you know, I think the obliviousness and, you know, we are conditioned by white supremacy. We are conditioned by capitalism to be oblivious. But I think that the combination of obliviousness plus this sort of hubris of like, I know what is and is not racism. And I know that you seem less invested in work. And I also don't think you're experiencing racism. So like, I feel like that constant reminder that, you know, this is not a place for me. This place was not designed for me and people can do this work of diversity and inclusion. But I know and I feel from my experiences that I don't belong here. And I think so that is something that is more specific to folks of marginalized identities. And if we're talking about issues of white supremacy and white supremacy culture, that's obviously something specific to people of color. So, you know, I think that doing the work of excavating data, whether it's like internal personal data, like what are my triggers? What are my wounds, how do they show up? What's my default when I'm in stress, you know, and then also surfacing external data like what are the policies and procedures that could help or hurt me? What are all of this is important for everyone to be able to do? But specifically, especially because my focus is really on like not only supporting people of color and surviving their workplaces, but also like finding laboratory pathways. Yeah, there are many, many differences, I think.

Sure yes, I love that. Thank you for. For breaking that down for us a little bit. So I know you are very specific in not giving sort of universalized advice of just saying this is what everyone should do. This is this is how it's going to look for everyone. But could you give us an example of maybe a specific scenario of a situation and how you would maybe advise a person to move forward in emotionally divesting from their situation?

Yeah, absolutely, I appreciate your seeing and hearing this part of my approach. And, you know, just to reiterate, I think that there can be a danger to universalize advice when we have so many different experiences and perspectives and identities and intersecting identities. It can accidentally be like an exclusionary experience and painful to have these blanket wisdoms if someone doesn't identify with it, that can make someone feel even more othered. So yeah, what I'll generally say is I think it's important for people to identify their most immediate and urgent needs. You know, and I think in order to do that, we need to do the work of building awareness. I've mentioned this internal external thing. So awareness about ourselves, our stories where we learn our relationship to things like work or to power or authority our triggers or hurt the expressions of our emotional reactivity, like I think that building this level of awareness is really important. I'm also very clear with my coaching clients like I am not a therapist, I am not a healer. But I do think that doing the work of learning and unlearning power is inherently personal. So, you know, a lot of times the work is like, where did we learn our relationship to authority? Because that might actually be getting in the way of someone's ability to even incrementally emotionally divest from work. So we go there. But I will also be like, ooh, this feels like work for a healer. Here is how I can support you. But like, I am not therapist.

That's a little bit beyond my licensing.

Yeah, totally, totally. So I think that, you know, surfacing all of that internal awareness and you know, obviously this doesn't happen in like one session because also it's like maybe not healthy to just back to back to back like these really deeply personal questions. So I would say that that's like the building of internal awareness is just generally, I think, really, really useful. And then awareness of our surroundings again, like pieces of the organizational culture, the people who are causing harm, their orientation, their default to conflict. And you know, the work I do with clients is often to support them in identifying strategic ways to attain this really like self centering goal and by self centering. I don't mean like be a selfish person, but I think in a world that centers whiteness and dissenters people of color, it is really hard to not feel selfish or to not feel like centering our needs and our goals is accessible. So that is the thing that I support a lot of my coaching clients and doing and how they arrive at their strategy is fully dependent on their incredibly subjective needs. So, for example, there might be someone who is triggered super hard by a thing that doesn't trigger me, and so that should impact the strategy that they create or that we create together. So they identify what they need in order to feel safest and most secure. And then we sort of surface all of the internal external pieces of information we need to and then use all of that to sort of formulate a plan so I can give an example, if that's helpful.

Yeah, that would be super helpful.

OK, so let's say I have a woman of color coaching client who was hired at a nonprofit because of her expertise in racial equity, but is actually constantly experiencing punishment both formal and informal. So formal might be like they're getting written up with a performance improvement plan, and informal might be either getting iced out of certain meetings where they actually should be a decision maker for raising issues of racial inequity in the organization. This is actually a depressingly common experience, and it sounds specific, but it is not actually.

Helpful. But but yes, mad depressing.

It's depressing.

Yeah, that's the title of this episode.

No, we'll get caught up.

We're going to circle back around the promise. I promise.

I promise. But so let's say that she's experienced this at multiple jobs now, so it's not specific to this. And now she's gotten to the point where she feels like existentially demoralized can no longer even identify her own strengths because of all of the negative messaging that she receives and internalizes from leadership. And so let's say she's having a hard time not falling into the same patterns of pointing out the problem. So say, like, it's not that the problem is that she's pointing out the problems. The problem is that the organization isn't able to receive critical feedback and is therefore punishing her, even though they are allegedly hired her to do what she's doing right. So it's not that it's her fault, but it's that, you know, this is a practice because of the organization's positioning that is leading to her experiencing negative things over and over again. So, her, let's say, one of her barriers to, you know, emotionally divest. Thing is that like she can't stop intervening, she can't stop intervening because she's very principled, she sees problems, and let's also say that for her, the stakes are high because if she doesn't intervene, she feels like people of color who are served by the organization will experience racial inequity. So with this person, we would probably talk about like, what is your most urgent priority? Is it to just get the F out of there? It's a to stop yourself from identifying and expressing problems related to racial inequity. Is it to get your manager to do their job and protect you from punishment? Is it to make space for your racial healing? Because I feel like each of these different priorities would take different steps and different work. So if she identifies that she just doesn't have the emotional bandwidth to go through a job hunting and interview process at this time, and that she is fully economically reliant on this job, we might conclude together that she needs to operationally stop caring what we talked about just enough to stop getting in trouble. And again, I'm not saying that the blame is on her. The blame is 100% on the organization. But her participation in this, I mean, ultimately, she should find an organization that actually wants to name and address issues. And, you know, finding that kind of organization is also something that takes some work. But let's say that she just wants to stop intervening all the time. I just want to reiterate, you know, I've said this before, but like, she shouldn't be the one doing this work, right? Like she shouldn't be the one making the adjustments. The org should those who are causing her harm, should the people who hired her allegedly for this reason should. But, you know, because people aren't doing the work they should be doing, people of color have to do it. So getting someone who cares about things not to care about things as we talked about is kind of like the worst advice ever. Right? like, how do we do it? And honestly, I've actually learned from this experience of also learning as I go as a coach, you know, I'm drawing from my experiences. I even draw from my experiences in therapy and share it with some of my coaching clients. But I think that there are ways to learn how to express our care less. So it's not about caring less. It's about expressing it less. And you know, the work that I do with folks is largely again around, like identifying our default responses and then interrupting them so that we actually have full agency. Our brains, our hearts, our bodies are the things that are actively choosing how we're responding to a situation. So for this person, I might ask her to think about how and when her expressions of care around racial equity show up. So I would ask her to surface like, oh, I didn't even realize that it happens when a person says this kind of thing, and I'll, you know, ask her to identify what it feels like before, during and after she expresses it, because this level of awareness can help to disrupt or interrupt these default ways of moving. So, for example, for me, I am someone who's very comfortable in rage. I'm very I like translate ideas to action really quickly. And so my default is actually to just like, dive into conflict, which can be like a useful quality for sure. But it can also be a really bad on strategic quality.

Sure Yeah. You're trying to be strategic. That one sometimes is a bit. Alarming to other people or puts people on the defensive a little bit more.

Totally, totally. And you know, I think that there's a time in place for it and we are agents in deciding whether it's more important for us to express our truth, no filter or it's more important for us to be strategic. But for me, sometimes I would get in a lot of trouble for really not no reason, but it would be like I. I did not think this through and there was no way I was going to win this to begin with. So like, why am I experiencing punishment for that? Or even worse, sometimes I would be trying to advocate for a colleague of mine and because I didn't think something through they would experience punishment for my on strategic advocacy. So, you know, I think having more control over how we respond. So if another person's default is to completely withdraw, but that is going to go against ultimately the strategy that they want to utilize in order to emotionally divest and also being able to identify, oh, this is what my body is doing. I can tell I'm withdrawing or I can tell I'm about to go into fight mode, you know, whatever it is, being able to recognize it as, it's happening to be like. OK, let's take a step back from this. Assess a little bit and then have more agency in deciding how it respond. Sure you know, so you know, we work on incrementally building this set of tools to help her back to this person to help her disrupt and interrupt it. And maybe we create a set of talking points so that, you know, whenever she feels her body reacting to something inequitable, she can take a pause, look at the talking points and use a generic statement instead of what she wants to say. Because let's say that getting her to not speak is actually going to be really triggering in a different way. So maybe it's not about not saying anything for this person. Maybe it's actually about like, OK, what do we say instead? Sure so just or it could also be like, here's a breathing exercise that enables her to choose not to engage. And, you know, I think that making this really specific to people's needs and experiences is really important because what I'm willing to sacrifice. You know, I've gotten in trouble in so many jobs and I've been OK with it, in part because of some of the privileges that I have. And that's not always accessible to everyone. For other people, I've supported them in sort of identifying next jobs that ultimately they don't really give a shit about so that they can make space for their own healing and have a healthier approach to their emotional investment and work so that next time, when they find a job again, that they identify with that they care about, they have a different relationship. And maybe they've had the space to do some healing from racial trauma in the workplace.

Just taking, taking, taking a step back with the job that they don't feel so invested in. And maybe that just gives them the opportunity to get out of a situation that's been harming them in the moment and just says, OK, I'm going to go do something anything else and give them the space and then try again. And yeah, and with some of the tools that they've learned with you.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that's amazing. Do you have any advice for people of like questions they can kind of ask themselves or things to think about if they are trying to do some of this work on their own, if they find themselves in a situation where they feel like they probably need to divest a little bit from their workplace, but they're not sure how to do it, just things they could think about or sort of exercises they. Do on their own.

Totally, I think that. My hope is that a lot of people will ask themselves questions and relate differently to work, and you know, I also want to say in the same way that I'm like, I shouldn't universalize my experiences or with friends. I also don't think that if someone feels really good about being super emotionally invested in work and like they feel OK with that and they don't feel like they have to lose pieces of themselves like, that's great. I'm not trying to say that no one should invest in work, right? But, you know, I think that just even questioning our relationship to work is useful. So some questions that people can ask themselves, how do you know when you're emotionally invested in anything in anything. And people can think about something less high stakes, like how do you know you're emotionally invested in a particular character in your favorite show? Like, what does that feel like? What does it look like? What you know, what does that sound like in your brain? So I think just being able to recognize, like the mechanics of emotional investments is really helpful. And so, yeah, like questions about what are the mechanics behind your care? What are the things that get you to care the most? And how can knowledge about this help you to interrupt it or to have full control over your expressions of care? So I'll actually share an example that my therapist helped me me come to.

Oh, a little free therapy for me.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. So at some point I'd been with my therapist for a long time at this point, and I like, just left another job. And he was like, yeah, Jen, are you ready to take ownership for pieces of this pattern? And I was like, fine. Like, sure, we can totally acknowledge the, you know, the fact that many organizations were practicing inequity and many organizations were, you know, enacting hubris and gaslight like we can recognize all of that and identify that I was contributing or, you know, making choices and was an agent of my choices in many ways. So he was like, OK, are you ready for this? I was like, fuck fine, I'm ready. And he so he is really the one who actually taught me about this like mechanics of my care. And so he's like, OK, yeah, do you want to try something new starting this new job? I was like, sure, let's give it a whirl.

Why not?

And he was like, can I share an observation with you? And I was like, sure. And he was like, Yeah. And I think that the reason that you get so emotionally invested in your job, especially around issues of inequity, is because you develop deep friendships with your colleagues really quickly. And I was like, oh, I think that's true. And so the moment this is the kind of friend I am, I'm like that loyal friend with a bat like the moment, something a person that I care about experiences harm, whether it's from a person of from an organizational perspective, like, I will just immediately go in. And one of my favorite things is to just like, know someone deeply and do that really quickly, you know, put their head in my hands and just stare into their eyes and know them and care about them. I am very intense, by the way, as a human, you can probably tell.

I love it.

Oh, thank you. Thank you. But anyway, so so he was like, I think that if you he's like, I'm not trying to tell you not to care about your colleagues, your new colleagues, but rather than do the head and hands, let me fall in love with you immediately vibe, maybe just like, allow it to happen more slowly and more naturally. So that you have more space from the things that emotionally trigger you into diving into conflict, because that's sort of like my pattern. And so I realized in that moment I was like, oh, the trigger for me to care in a way where I am not strategic is really rationality. And so obviously, that's not to say that is a bad thing. I think it's a really wonderful quality of mine. And I could recognize in that moment that was like I needed space from that in order to relate to work differently. So I think that again, just thinking about like, what are the things that get you to care in a way that you're not thinking? And then how do you incrementally build a different relationship to it so that you have a little bit of greater agency and control? I think thinking about even our greatest strengths and things that we like about ourselves as like a valve and being the one to decide, like how much am I going to use this thing? How much am I not going to use this thing in service of what we need and service of? Maybe even like I have identified that me caring so much about this person and you know, staying in my default is actually the thing that leads to their harm because I cannot control my anger. For example. Yeah, so I think that, you know, thinking about those things and then thinking also about what are the things that might get in the way of emotional divestment, what are the internal things? So again, surfacing this example of like, I have this practice of hypervigilance because I have been taught as a woman of color that I need to prove myself over and over again. There might be another thing which is like, I love being high achieving. I love external validation and being recognized, and none of these things are inherently bad. The point isn't to judge them is just simply to know, like, what are the things that I might do that might make it hard to do this thing? And then also the external right, like what are if my manager is going to notice that I'm spending less time working on this particular project because they are a person who is like activating and triggering me, how do I think about what I need in order to get them off my back, right? So I think that that's some like more technical advice, but bigger picture and sort of going into the more hopeful because I've been a huge bummer so far. Sorry, Michaela, is thinking about where we can also express passion and purpose. And for me, that's specifically been around community and one's role in community.

Yeah, I was. That's a great segue. I was just going to ask you, I know we're talking a lot about career and sort of finding your value almost in our careers is a big thing and divesting from that, but. How do you view that versus sort of finding value in other roles that a person might have, maybe their role in their community, in their family and in just who they are inherently? Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, totally. I think that as someone who has previously put all the passion and purpose eggs in the work basket, the economic work basket, I can say that from my experience as someone who is also easily heartbroken and my moon is in Pisces, I don't know if that means anything to you, but I have all the feelings.

I'm a Pisces. I'm a big time Pisces.

So Yeah. So, you know, like just in the fields all the time. And so this idea that I would put my everything into something and feel betrayed and heartbroken and then do it over and over again, like, what are you doing? So this I just even using that metaphor, like sharing some of the eggs across other baskets so that when, if and when we experience heartbreak, it's not that all of the eggs have been broken. So I think there is, you know, just a really simple way. There's that. But for me, something that has been really generative. And so positive and so joyful is really thinking about the way that I want to relate to community. Whatever that means for people that can be a familial community, it can be a geographic one. It can be an internet one, you know? But there's this beautiful resource by Deepa Iyer, and I think it's a collaboration with the building movement project. I'll actually share the resource with you after called the social change ecosystem map. And it's been a really helpful resource for me and also something that I use with my coaching clients. For those who want to shift like this idea, who that passion and purpose can only be found in certain ways, especially if you care about equity and justice. We want it to go somewhere, right? And so if we're not going to put it in the work economic work basket, it is admittedly very hard to do that when like, it's possible to get paid for that work. But I think that thinking about community role instead of career role, or maybe not necessarily instead of, but in addition to so I'm not trying to tell people to not care about their careers, but you know, rather than just think about like, oh, my trajectory is to eventually become an executive director of a blah. It could be helpful to be like. How do I want to show up for my people, whoever I define those people?

Sure.

And you know, there's so many ways to care about things they don't have to manifest solely in economic work. In fact, I feel like a lot of the people I support are actually harmed by the nonprofit world or organizations that use religious language. So, you know, disentangling passion and purpose from economic work and instead also figuring out, like, how else can it be expressed? How can I impact community in really cool and generative ways? And so back to this resource. It helps people identify like how to get in right relationship with social change values, and it can sort of serve as a guide, an anchor on how we decide to express our care. So it has a bunch of different roles. And I love them. I'm just going to read them for you.

OK, great.

The roles are Weaver's experimenters, frontline responders, visionaries, builders, caregivers, disruptors, healers and storytellers. Oh, I missed one and guides. OK and I highly, highly recommend listeners look up this resource again. I'll share it with you. So it's just easier for people.

Can you tell me again what it's called?

Yeah, it is called the social change ecosystem map.

Oh, OK, Yeah. Well, we'll share it with people. That's a great resource. But I'm going to look it up.

Yeah, it's so beautiful, and I like to ask coaching clients which roles they identify with which ones they feel really good at. And then I also ask them to think about the roles they play at work, not because they want to, but because it's sort of fallen into it. So, for example, I have served as a disrupter in many jobs. So this one, this resource says disruptors take uncomfortable and risky actions to shake up the status quo, to raise awareness, to build power. And I became good at this as a way of supporting my colleagues, but it really exhausted me. Like I would cry a lot after doing it, so people would get very surprised because they would see this one part of me. And I'm just like, Oh my god, I'm such on this, you know? And sometimes I felt broken by it. And so when I think about the role that I love to play the most, I actually go towards caregiver, which in this resource is described as folks who nurture and nourish people around them by creating a sustaining and sustaining a community of care, joy and connection. So when I think about like, how can I make different choices in my life so that I can more often serve as a caregiver, whether it's within or outside of my economic work, it helps guide my choices, right? So if I can't find and express this way that I love to show it for community and my economic work, maybe it means that I'm going to spend a little less emotional energies there so that I can express this caregiving form, this role that I love in other parts of my life, and I have done that. So, for example, sometimes I would make or bake foods and then just like, deliver them to my friends. And especially if I knew and I was like, this feels so lovely. Or there might be like friends of mine who are organizers who are particularly depleted. So organize a platonic digital love fest and watch an anime together. Like, I think that, you know, these are not necessarily expressions of care that feel inherently guided by equity and justice. But I do think that focusing on community care and figuring out the ways we can support our people to me is inherently a political act in a world that is largely individualistic in a world that you know, we even see, yeah, expressions of individualism now, you know, not to get particularly political around covid, but like I think that. Being able to do community work and identify how to express joy and community in whatever role feels best for you. That is a way of sort of displacing some of this idea that all of our passion and purpose has to come from economic work. We can find it and express it in so many ways, and it can be a genuinely joyful and beloved experience with people that you really love and care about.

I love that I'm going to be thinking about that for a long time. I think even when you're talking about asking people who care a lot to not care, right, that's sort of impossible, ask but if it's. Sort of transfer that care to something that's maybe outside of your economic work that feels maybe more possible or just better in some way, right, that we're not asking or you're not suggesting that people just stop caring about the things they truly care about at all. But finding different outlets and ways to express that care in your community or in your family, whatever that might be seems like a more possible task.

Yeah, totally. I am very much about, you know. Building, building blocks for shifts, I actually as someone who I joke that the way that I grow is wildly inefficient because I'm like bounced from one extreme to another, extreme in a pendulum and I move really quickly. I mean, even like the way that I speak, the way that it's very fast and sometimes it's people admire that. And sure, but what I will say is that I actually find, at least for myself, gentle shifts to be the ones that last. Sometimes I'll like have this amazing epiphany and realization and then like, immediately forget about it and because I'm like onto the next idea onto the next project. But I think that I've learned. One of the shifts that I've experienced in the last year and 1/2 is the value of being really slow and purposeful and deliberate. So whatever it looks like, it doesn't have to be like 60 to zero, right? Like my work is my everything to then, you know, being like my work is my nothing. I think we can shift gently and be like, you know what? I actually want to Express Care by like, doing more storytelling work. I never knew that it was called storytelling because I never identified as a writer. But like, let me express it in this small way in my group of friends. Like, I think that those shifts are important. And then, you know, the one last thing that I'll say about this in particular, I've been focusing very much just because of the nature of my work on emotional divestment from work simply as like a survival tool. But I think for people who are interested in, you know, I will say, I love the Gen Z generation like people. Oh, I just love them so much. I feel like the Mean Girls mom, the cool mom, I just like, want to be like them. I like one of them, so proud of them. And you know, a lot of them are just like, I will not have this toxic relationship to my job or they, you know, there are lines being drawn. And I'm like, damn, I love you.

They're like, I'm good at boundaries. You know, they're so good at not me. I'm not a millennial. They are right there. They're so good at so many things. And yeah, I just love watching them, watching them go. I think it's amazing. It's very inspiring to me. I adore them.

And I think that, you know, this doesn't have to be just like a you've experienced some harmful crap at work. And so it can be a more future facing and generative thing to write. Like I, I'll share that I am a student of abolition, and one of the things that I've been learning in the practice is like the importance of imagination. Like, I used to think that as someone who was like very operations oriented and organizations that like, oh, the dreamers are like the visionaries, like what is the function of that? If you don't know how to operationalize it like in a kind of a real way, but also like my own snobby way.

For sure, right?

And this question this idea of something that I've learned in the last year and a half is actually what is more practical that if you're trying to rebuild something, if you're trying to build something new that is based in values that are not reflected in the current system, what is actually more practical than dreaming and identifying a place to build? I mean, if you build a map, you're like building it towards something. And so something that I've been doing that also has been helping with some emotional divestment from work is just like really imagining, OK, what might it look like if white supremacy weren't a thing in this particular job? What might it mean about your relationship to work? What might it mean about your relationship to community, what is completely upended and different? And then figuring out what is a small way to integrate some of that into my approach to work or into my maybe like something surfaces around balance that you know, people hadn't thought of before. So you know, you want it to not end on like everything is terrible, but really like there is something. There's so much generative possibility in imagining something different. And so I just wanted to express that for folks who feel like their relationship to work is the only relationship to work that they can have. I think that we can invite small shifts. We can think a little bit more about community versus career in ways that feel good for each individual. It doesn't have to look the same, and we can rely on this like New practice of imagining to help us build that different something.

I love that. I think that is so hopeful and. Just a positive. Outlook on it, right, that we can dream of a different world and that imagining that can help us make some of those small shifts to get there eventually.

Yeah, yeah, it's funny. I identify. I tell people that I identify as an angry optimist. That's perfect. I feel like, you know, I'm an optimist because I ultimately believe that people and many, not all, but many institutions can be transformed. And I'm angry because people are not doing the thing that they should be doing. But I actually think my orientation, even if it doesn't sound like it, is a very hopeful one. That's what I think, anyway. I think some may disagree with me.

I will, I'm going to go with it. I think I'm going to adopt that as well. I love that. An angry optimist. Well, yeah, Jim, thank you so much for joining me today. Is there? Is there anything else that we need to take away that you would send us with anything we haven't discussed yet that you wanted to add?

Well, maybe I'll just sum up. A thing I feel like. It's really helpful to learn how to identify, disrupt and reroute our default orientations to things like working community. And ultimately, I believe that, you know, autonomy and agency and community are just really key parts of the work of liberation, and that is something that I want for everyone.

That's wonderful. Thank you so much, I love your angry optimism. I'm glad that this wasn't all mad, depressing we got we circled back around to hope and I hope that people find it helpful and that they're able to sort of ask themselves the questions that they need to ask. If people want to find your work or find you, what's the best way for them to do that?

They can do that by going to my website at https://yejinlee.co. I had to remember for a second why yejinlee.co, and people can also follow me on Instagram. And that is yejin_lee just a warning. It is not a professional page like one of the things that I really like about the life that I've been living since I was laid off. Is that like I want to and get to be a whole person. So I have, you know, anti-imperialist content and then I have, you know, anti-racist content. But then also like dancing TikToks and I have so many animal TikTok videos that I share as well. So it is definitely random mish mash of things. So if you're interested in that? Feel free to follow if any of those things feel weird. Also, you totally don't have to feel pressure.

No pressure. I love that. I love that. Well, thank you so much and I can't wait for everyone to hear what we talked about today, and I look forward to talking to you again soon.

Me too. Thanks so much for having me. This was really fun.

Yeah Thanks. Yeah thank you all for tuning into career conversations. This series is one of the many programs and events created and supported by the University of Washington Alumni Association to help keep alumni, students and friends connected to the University and to each other. If you haven't already, make sure to create your profile on Husky Landing, the professional networking platform designed specifically for the UW community. Husky Landing makes it easy to connect with fellow Huskies based on your shared backgrounds and interests. It's built in tools make it simple to engage with others, join or initiate conversations, find career resources, workshops and more. It's a great tool, and it's built just for the UW community. If you're on LinkedIn, please join us in the University of Washington alumni group with more than 35,000 members. It's another great way to make UW connections. Throughout the year, UWAA creates and promotes helpful career content and workshops, so be sure to look out for those opportunities on Husky Landing and at UWalum.com. I'm your host, Michaela Gormley. Thanks so much for listening and Go Dawgs!