Disrupted—Not Derailed

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Izabel Loinaz: How do you start to reframe the discomfort as an invitation to get curious as to what's happening, slow it down enough to be able to choose how you want to move forward, choose whether this is a real threat, or if this is something that needs some time and attention and resources to understand and then move forward? The discomfort is an opportunity to be curious and understand what's happening a little bit more. 

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Jill Finlayson: Welcome to the Future of Work podcast with Berkeley Extension. UC Berkeley Extension is the continuing education arm of the University of California at Berkeley. 

Every generation of workers has faced change, but today's professionals are navigating a lot of change all at once-- near-constant disruption, massively shifting priorities, high volume of information, and of course, a stream of new technologies. In this environment, waiting until things feel certain or comfortable is no longer an option. 

In this episode, we'll explore why learning to work through discomfort may be one of the most valuable professional skills of the next decade. We'll discuss how leaders and employers can distinguish between healthy discomfort and toxic workplaces, how you can make sound decisions amid uncertainty, build confidence through action rather than certainty, and develop resilience needed to thrive in a world where ambiguity has become the norm. 

To discuss this topic, we're excited to welcome Izabel Loinaz, an esteemed UC Berkeley Extension instructor in the Leadership and Management certificate. Izabel is an organizational consultant and leadership coach with expertise in building high-impact teams and driving organizational transformation. 

Izabel brings extensive experience in leadership development, strategic change, organizational strategy across corporate, academic, and entrepreneurial settings. Her consulting work focuses on guiding executives and teams through complex change, facilitating high-impact program, and coaching leaders on navigating diversity, culture, and strategic decision making. 

And here's the fascinating part. Izabel's approach is grounded in behavioral psychology, systems thinking, and human-centered design. She holds an MBA in sustainable management from Presidio Graduate School and a BA in psychology from San Francisco State University. She is a contributing author to business publications and an in-demand speaker on leadership and organizational strategies. Welcome, Izabel. 

Izabel Loinaz: Thank you, Jill. 

Jill Finlayson: Well, I am wondering why we're talking about discomfort. Because discomfort in the workplace is not new, but it does feel like there's so much more of it these days. 

Izabel Loinaz: Oh, there certainly is. We're talking about it because, despite the fact that we have more and more discomfort, we're finding that our tolerance and capacity to hold that level of discomfort is potentially diminishing over time with just saturation. 
And so it's important to revisit, what are those skills? How do you develop those skills in such a way that we can navigate all the disruptions that we are all experiencing right now over and over again at an accelerated rate? 

Some are advancing our lives in terms of the comforts, ultimately, that they might bring, and some are actually adding to the complexities, and we really don't where they are taking us. So our ability to hold all of this information and uncertainty and still be able to make decisions, live our lives, have a level of comfort within our own selves and in our relationships in that work is really critical. 

Jill Finlayson: What is saturation, and why is it causing problems? 

Izabel Loinaz: Any time you overflood a system, you get saturation. So we have been overflooded with a lot of uncertainty, a lot of disruption, a lot of unknown futures, unprecedented situations, and we have to contextualize them constantly. And so when we're in constant novelty, our brain is having to acclimate to constant novelty, we start to shut down. Our ability to maintain our faculties start to get taxed. 

Jill Finlayson: So this discomfort-- how is it actually showing up both emotionally and physically in our lives? 

Izabel Loinaz: Hmm. So let's start with physically. We get brain fog, indecision. We get elevated heart rates. We get symptoms of anxiety. And that can inhibit our ability to stay present and clearheaded in the moment and be able to juggle complex and competing issues or stressors in our lives. 

So that's the physicality of it. But how that manifests is reactivity, quick decision making, maybe perhaps with-- even if you don't have the ability to have perfect information-- we have to let go of some of that perfect information. But not being able to pause long enough to get enough information to make a decision as to what the next thing is. So it can manifest in more tension, more friction than the present issue really dictates. And we get into that "fight or flight or freeze" oftentimes. 

Jill Finlayson: So how do we reframe this always-on anxiety into something that's more manageable? 

Izabel Loinaz: Well, this is where, then, we've been talking a little bit about that discomfort tolerance. How do you start to reframe the discomfort as an invitation to get curious as to what's happening, slow it down enough to be able to choose how you want to move forward, choose whether this is a real threat or if this is something that needs some time and attention and resources to understand and then move forward. It's an opportunity, I think, a reframe that the discomfort is an opportunity to be curious and understand what's happening a little bit more. 

Jill Finlayson: So discomfort doesn't necessarily mean you've done something wrong. 

Izabel Loinaz: Correct. And sometimes, actually, the discomfort is that you've done something, and that's OK. So then, also, the discomfort with the humanity of yourself-- [CHUCKLES]-- that, of course, sometimes we are going to make mistakes. Sometimes we are going to make the quote-unquote "wrong" decision. 

But that also is still information. We're in an environment-- we have a lot of paradox that is thrusted upon us. We are asked-- as leaders and as people in the workforce, we are asked to be both a stabilizing force and a transforming force. 

And so to be able to hold those two things, where we have to be able to be agile and responsive, innovative and transformative, but then we also need to maintain stability and be able to have resiliency in that agility-- that there is a certain amount of stability and structure that comes with it and repeatability-- that there's dependability. 

So those can feel like conflicting forces and conflicting priorities. But the reality is, is you can have the "yes, and" scenario, but that takes some skill to be able to do both, and that's that toggling between managing and leading constantly, back and forth, which is a skill set to develop. 

Jill Finlayson: So managing opposing goals and aims and being able to flow between them a little bit? 

Izabel Loinaz: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. Being able to have that flow-- it takes a certain amount of discernment, and discernment requires you to have some clarity within yourself as to what that criteria is for the discernment. So when we are activated and we are overwhelmed, we are in that fight or flight, we are fighting against our own discomfort with the discomfort-- [CHUCKLES]-- it is very difficult to then have discernment. 

So there are our techniques to help. Just work with your own discomfort, and then also to help your team, help your organization, your community-- wherever you are a leader, or even just participating in a group or towards a project, how you can be a model of that kind of slowing down enough to be able to move from discernment rather than reactivity. 

Jill Finlayson: Yeah, I'd like to learn more about the techniques, because our brains are really hardwired to seek the path of least resistance, shield ourselves from awkwardness. We want to pad our environment to decrease discomfort, which seems reasonable, but it sounds like not realistic. 

Izabel Loinaz: Right, which is fair. It's fair to not want to be uncomfortable. We can forgive ourselves for wanting to be comfortable. That is a totally reasonable thing to be pursuing. And I'm not advocating for so much tolerance that you're tolerating inappropriate behavior, tolerating toxic environments, or just over-regulating yourself to the point where then you don't even react to things that you should be reacting to. So that's not what I'm suggesting at all. 

So the techniques are more just that you can give yourself a little bit of space, and that that becomes a skill-- and the tolerance is that you can pause long enough to understand what it is, and pause long enough that you can develop the skill of understanding-- like I was saying, understanding yourself in response to discomfort. 

And you may find that, actually, it ebbs-- it crests and then falls. And then you can move forward. And so not retracting or reacting or acting before, it has a chance to give you the information it needs to give you, rise, fall, and then move on. And you may find that, actually, there's less urgency, in reality, to the situation than what was first presented. With a little bit of space, a little bit of information-- that you're able to move forward. 

And with things that are terribly complex and we don't get to have perfect information, we don't have all the information, then that's where clarity on what the criteria is as to what to prioritize and what is that criteria. And the rest of it, you have to either monitor, back burner or let go. 

Prioritization is the hardest thing. So you are going to prioritize in your understanding of the situation to be able to make those quick decisions. But the other ones are for monitoring or delegating or back burner. And some of them, they are trade-offs. Not all of it is relevant to what you're dealing with right now. 

And so the pieces that are relevant-- you got to get really, really clear on what those are, or we end up with way too many priorities. And some of them are given to us, and we don't have a lot of choice as to what those are. But you have to get really clear on, in your role, in your sphere of influence, what are those top priorities? And that's where your focus is. That's where the discernment is. 

And there's that research coming out of the-- uncertainty-- what is it-- The State of Uncertainty Survey from the uncertainty experts. This is Sam Conniff and Katherine Templar-Lewis. They just did some research that they published this year around decision making and snap decision making, and they found-- it was over 3,000 surveys of leaders. 

They found that 72% of new managers prefer to look decisive and then get it wrong, rather than admit uncertainty and get it right. So it's that-- that's where the pause comes in. Because imagine-- 72% rather be perceived as being certain, and then-- at the risk of it being wrong, versus the pause and being able to say, let me get back to you, ask a few questions, clarifying questions, so you buy yourself a little bit of time-- just anything to put a pause in it. 

The threat of being perceived as being indecisive-- that's a cultural pressure. That is a systemic pressure. But it is not the current reality of what we're dealing with. We do need a little bit of space to be able to discern. If you don't have that space, then that risk is very high of error. 

Jill Finlayson: So how can you be perceived as confident and decisive and still take this pause? 

Izabel Loinaz: I think it takes a certain amount of modeling to help shift the culture. It is on the senior leaders to be able to model that kind of behavior in order to give permission for that kind of self-awareness, that kind of honesty, and frankly, building trust. That, in that trust, that we will find the answer. 

This is not me passing the buck and not being able to be decisive. I just want to make sure that I reduce my error margin by asking more questions, by bringing someone else in, by allowing for a little bit more information, and then determining, at what point do we have enough to make a decision? 

Jill Finlayson: It's really the type of discomfort where you're talking decision making, where you're talking about modeling of behavior, of asking more clarifying questions or making sure the right people are in the room. 

Izabel Loinaz: Right, right. So for example-- so I teach the Leadership and Management Foundations course in the certificate program at UC Berkeley Extension. And one of the principles that I am practicing with the students in the classes-- how to get this discomfort tolerance thing. 

And so we have different kinds of discomfort that we work through. So there's the discomfort of having ambiguous information. So I'll put them in situations where they have some information, but not enough information, and they have to work together in a very time-compressed environment. 

And they've been learning these tools and how to apply those tools in such a way that they can work with their assumptions, work with their discomfort of the ambiguity of the directions, even. And how do they form a solution or a presentation or the answers to some questions that have been given to them? 

So I'm putting them in uncomfortable situations pretty much constantly. [CHUCKLES] And they're like little micro-experiments we're doing in these laboratories because it's a really safe environment for us to do so. So I do that by doing things like putting them in random teams where they don't know who they're about to work with, which can really spike someone's cortisol. But then we also work around competing priorities and what you do in that sort of situation. 

Holding paradox-- this is that concept of perform and transform. This is out of research out of Korn Ferry around what is needed for leadership of the future, of present day and the future. 

And they found in this tension of being able to perform that only 14% of leaders are really equipped to be able to do both. They will lean into one or the other. They're very visionary and transformative, or they're really operational, and it's all about the performance. It is very difficult to straddle the two. It doesn't mean that this is a talent issue. It just means there's some structural limitations out there-- again, the cultural kind of forces. 

But the reality is that that's actually what's needed with all of this disruption, is the ability to hold the tension between the two. And so that's at every level. We're not talking about just C-suite here. We're talking about middle management, is actually where this all sits pretty hard. And it's really difficult to be able to operate that way because you have the pressure and the forces coming in both directions from above and below. 

Jill Finlayson: I appreciate the concrete examples because it makes it more clear what the discomfort is about. So this is related more to chronic ambiguity, moving goalposts, competing or shifting strategies, these paradoxes that we have to hold. 

We're not talking about stretch assignments, which of course, are great things, too, where you try to do something that's a little harder than what you've done before. This is a more systemic, I would say, ambiguity. [CHUCKLES] So what kind of supports do people need to have, or what should leaders do to support people in adjusting to this discomfort in a productive way? 

Izabel Loinaz: The three things to focus on is, one, just the reframing of discomfort-- reframing it as an opportunity, as an invitation. So I think that happens personally. I think that happens within a team, and a leader building that culture and then as an organization. So I think that's true-- all three. 

The next one is that pause that we've been talking about. So the pause can come with a breath. The pause can come with timelines. The pause can come in many different formats. You can scale that out through the team and organizationally, so figuring out what "pause" means to each of those levels. 

So at a personal level, the pause can be a breath. That may be all you get in the moment. And the pause can be in that moment of-- and this is both at the team and at the individual level, that it's OK to say, let me get back to you, even if you have to give a time frame of, I'll need five minutes. I'm on a different priority right now, and I would like to give this the appropriate attention. 

Give me five minutes, and I can get back to you, and we'll talk about this. Anything that buys you that little bit of the pause to then start to get curious, and that's the third step-- get really curious. Start asking yourself questions, asking each other questions that get deeper into what is actually happening right now. 

So on a personal level, this is, why am I uncomfortable? What is this discomfort? First naming it, calling it. What is this discomfort that's happening? It may start at a physical level-- elevated heart rate, your face is getting hot. So you may notice that first before you understand cognitively what is going on. You just know that you're retracting. 

And at the team and organizational level, I would say it's more of a-- we are noticing some dysfunction in the team. Something has gone off. Something is off. There's tensions within the team. Deadlines are not being met. That is an indication of something going on. There's a discomfort there. 

And so the next question is, why does it matter? Why is it important that this discomfort be tended to? And in that time, maybe the urgency may have already passed, and you realize it's actually not that important. 

But it helps you then get clarity on why it's important to you personally, but is it important to the project, to the team, to the company? Is this really relevant to my priorities here? 

And you can differentiate-- this is important to me personally, but it is not necessarily important to whatever it is that I am trying to address. And so then you can differentiate between your own discomfort and working with your own discomfort and the discomfort of an incongruency in your team that you need to address. 

And then the next one is, what resources do I need right now? Do I need a little bit of space? So at the personal level, maybe you need to-- like I said, give me five minutes. I'm on a different priority right now. I would like to give this my full attention. I need five minutes, 10 minutes. I need an hour-- whatever you feel comfortable. 

But then that builds the culture within your team to do the same as a leader. You're giving permission to your team to be able to do the same back. If you are modeling that as a leader, your team is able to model that back. That gives them permission to have that space. Then you're much more likely to have the right kind of information for the next step, as opposed to their reactivity. 

And then you can get really clear as to, what do you expect them to be able to have on the dime, that in that crisis moment, in that moment of urgency, you want-- you can go to for which priorities, for which really split decision kind of decision making that you need to go to, because that clarity in terms of the priorities has been set. 

Because really, those resources that you are trying to figure out what those resources are-- time, breath, money-- maybe it's food. Maybe you're just really hungry. Once you figure that out, the intention is to be able to stay engaged. You're not running away. You're not ignoring. You're not fleeing. You're not freezing. You are staying engaged. You are staying present to what's happening. You staying present to whatever is stimulating this discomfort. 

Jill Finlayson: One of the phrases you used was, let me give this the attention it deserves. And I really like that phrase. Are there other terminology that you-- or prompts that you would use that would help facilitate these discomfort and conversations? 

Izabel Loinaz: Sometimes the discomfort is, someone else is really having a hard time, and the urgency has really elevated. And so you're noticing you're uncomfortable with someone else feeling really uncomfortable. And so that's what you're-- by asking several questions deep for both of you, both of you are finding, what's the root issue here, or at least getting a little bit closer, so then what resources are needed for the next action? 

And you may find that that other person then actually arrives at what they need, and you didn't have to provide it at all. They were able to arrive at what was needed without you having to provide it, simply by slowing them down, by asking three clarifying questions. 

And what else? How else can you find that information? Do we have what we need to actually make a decision? What would that information be? Where might we get that? So asking questions back-- am the right person to ask this of? Do I have the right information? Am I the right resource for this particular issue? 

Jill Finlayson: You talked about the challenges that leadership is facing. So one, holding this paradox of operationalizing and transforming at the same time. How do they drive their teams knowing that their teams are also grappling with this same paradox? 

Izabel Loinaz: Well, I think-- we talked about the modeling. So that's first in terms of just behavior that sets expectations. But you can also put some structure in there. You can institutionalize it or create some structure around providing space for allowing for that "go slow to move fast" kind of mentality. 

Or there are structures to making sure that there's enough retrospectives so that you can learn through those iteration phases. And many organizations have their structures for this, but just making sure that those are in place so that you can reflect and learn through that. And that actually alleviates a lot of the discomfort within the team. 

And then the other piece of this is destigmatizing the needing to find information. That we're in an age where information is actually so much easier to find. The fact that you need to go find it should entirely be destigmatized at this point. We work as a team together to find solutions. That kind of cultural shift can make a huge difference in structuralizing that kind of thing. 

Building the workforce amongst AI and an AI-ready workforce-- and we're building that blueprint as we're doing it. So all of that is so iterative, so you have to be able to say, I don't know. You have to be able to take a beat and reassess because you don't have perfect information. You will not have perfect information because it's being iterated over and over again in real time. 

It is anticipating that there will be moments where you don't know. There will be moments where it will be really messy and uncomfortable, and how are you going to suspend judgment long enough to allow that discomfort to settle into a pattern and a rhythm that you can then recognize? And then you can apply-- leave a little bit of space for chaos, because in chaos, you learn a lot. 

Jill Finlayson: I love that point. That's a great one to think about, and it is part of this transformation. And we talk a lot about terms like "psychological safety." If you're going to transform, you have to experiment. If you experiment, you're going to fail. And you want people to be able to fail. Otherwise, they won't experiment. So it's this circular challenge. 

Izabel Loinaz: Right. And so I guess that's what I mean by the reframe and the giving permission and acceptance that there's a certain amount of chaos that comes with change. That's a predictable path, actually. Any sort of change has a predictable path-- that there is a moment in that curve as it comes downward, as that change is happening, whether you asked for it or not-- there is a moment of chaos, and that's where disillusionment comes on. 

There's a lot that happens in that moment, where there's a lot of what Tuckman calls the "storming phase" of a team as it's moving through its progression, where it does get quite chaotic. There's so much good that can happen in that. There's so much knowledge there. There's so much information. 

So if you can suspend enough time to gather that information, have people settle into their rhythms and find their way through, you can guide them through it. And actually, on the other side is an incredible amount of connectivity if it's done intentionally-- connectivity, a lot of productivity, a lot of satisfaction, a lot of ownership for the success of that curve in coming out the other side. 

Jill Finlayson: That is one of my favorite phrases-- so the forming, storming, norming, performing. Are we getting to performing, or are we constantly in the norming phase now? 

Izabel Loinaz: Oh, we talk about this a lot in our class, and I'm constantly putting them through that cycle. We do that cycle almost every class. So that's part of the getting used to those cycles. I'm trying to communicate this image of how that cycle works in terms of teams, projects, the cycle of team formation. 

And it's not linear in any way. And it's circular, but not in a progression circular always. It is a spiral. It's where we are cycling through as a team. Sometimes there's a disruption, and you get to the performing, you're humming, you're humming, and something comes in, either a new team member, a reorg, a new technology, a disruptor in the market. 

There's so many different things that could interrupt that flow. And you have to go right back to that storming. And that's actually a good thing, because then you can reevaluate. And being OK with the discomfort that-- oh, we had it all good. We were humming, we were performing, and now this is chaos. There's a lot that can be held in that chaos. 

Jill Finlayson: That's a fascinating point, and kind of goes counter to the rules, right? You want to get out of the storming phase. And what you're saying is the storming is actually productive. 

Izabel Loinaz: It can be. So again, chaos also can spin out of control, and that can really decimate a project or a team. But with intentional management, understanding that there's going to be a phase like that, it's inevitable, then you can plan for it, you can control for it, you can harness it. 

Jill Finlayson: We're seeing a lot of therapy talk sort of seeping into the workplace. Is that a good thing? Does that help us to improve team dynamics? 

Izabel Loinaz: I think it's a good thing, and it's something, like anything else, can be overutilized, inappropriately used, applied in ways that it wasn't really intended to be used. I think what it's indicative of is that I think we're in a time where people really-- they need some congruency between their personal lives and their work lives, because that is your life. 

And so they're using an understanding of self to be able to operate within a system that understands that they are humans. So now we have some language to be able to communicate around that. 

On the flip side, there's organizational psychology. There's all kinds of disciplines that really understand how people operate, not only just to optimize the organization, but also for the health and wellness of the people who are in your workforce. 

So I think having the language-- both as a leader and as someone in the workforce, having the language really helps define what's real and what's happening in a way that then, at least, there is a little more clarity where there was previously some ambiguity and assumptions. 

And you say the toxic environment-- before you were asking, how do we know? Having some of that language helps us then differentiate for ourselves and then also policy wise, to really understand why toxic environments-- and explain them with the right kind of language-- why they're counter to the intention of the organization. There are ways where it can be overused in such a way to deflect, it can be overused in ways to weaponize, and then they can be used in ways that it's just, that's not the appropriate use for it. 

That's really intended for the therapy office and for people who really understand the consequences, context, the complexities of it. We are not ourselves professional therapists, so we cannot use them in such a way that they are appropriate. They just help us put some frames around things and understand. 

Jill Finlayson: That's a good point, that having a shared language as a foundation so we can talk about some of the dynamics. Is there anything that we could take from traditional behavioral therapy that might help us personally deal with discomfort? 

Izabel Loinaz: I think the main thing is being able to name it-- what it is. What is it that's making this uncomfortable? So even just being able to have the words to be able to explain it can make a world of difference. You can say, oh, this is overwhelm. This is me feeling like my status is in question or my integrity being in question. 

There's so many ways that you can use the language to help understand why you're activated, why this is so uncomfortable. And then once you have the language around it, then it helps you then be able to take action or at least understand what you want to do about it. 

Jill Finlayson: I don't know why this is coming to mind, but this whole idea of "fake it till you make it"-- how do you portray confidence in the face of discomfort, and what are the right or wrong ways to do that? Because you said, snap decision making is not the way. 

Izabel Loinaz: Sometimes you're forced to snap, and so I'm not saying that it's not the way. It's just a disproportionate amount of people are doing it a lot out of just urgency and fear of looking like they don't know what they're doing. So we can reduce that percentage a little bit. 

Confidence is built with experience. You can have a base level of confidence coming into something because you feel prepared, but oftentimes, what you prepared for is not what ends up being the case. And so that comes from repetition. Confidence comes from both the successes and the failures. being able to survive the failures and come back again and apply what you learned-- that's how confidence is built. 

So it's built through allowing yourself to be uncomfortable, being able to tolerate that long enough to persevere through the experience, to get the experience, and then you build the confidence. And so the confidence of the discomfort tolerance comes from practicing it in small little increments. It's that networking conundrum. That's one of the best ways to get your next role, is through that social capital that you build. 

And if that's not something that you're innately leaning into because that's part of your personality, that's something that you're going to have to build over time, because it is a need in terms of being able to advance. And so little experiments of it builds that confidence in it. 

Even if it's not your strongest suit, you can actually build it as a skill, and it becomes less and less uncomfortable, or at least your capacity to be able to tolerate that discomfort long enough to do the thing that you need to do. And then you go regroup the way you need to regroup. You recharge the way that you need to recharge. So you just-- you can sustain it long enough to do the thing you need to do, and then you can recoup as needed. 

Jill Finlayson: Do you have some examples from your classes where you saw this repetition actually yield results in your students? 

Izabel Loinaz: Yes, many examples. So they have to do a bunch of case studies, and they do a lot of them. And it is the output that happens towards the end. And every single time, it's a random combination of who they are, the level of trust and comfort, agility, and responsiveness and sophistication in their thinking and the kind of output by the end of the term from over and over and over again being thrown into the situation with new little variables. 

The end result-- they say that when they begin the class, the case studies are their least favorite part. By the end of the class, it's one of their favorite parts. 

Because of that repetition of being able to practice it over and over again, they actually have way more comfort being thrown into a bit of a chaotic, ambiguous situation and knowing that they'll be able to persevere on the other end, and something comes out of it, and they actually grow with it. 

And the other piece that I see a lot is when I meet with students after they've taken the course-- and I love having lunch with former students and checking in and seeing how it's going. 

Almost all of them say that the most sticky part was that the Tuckman-- the forming, norming, storming-- that whole progression-- that where they have the most success is in being able to be in the storming phase and recognize and say, ah, here we here. we're in the storming phase. And not be intimidated by it, and be, actually, able to harness it and be in that-- and guide their team. 

Even if they're not the leader of the team, if they're a member of the team, to be able to guide from within the team through that storming phase and be super successful with it because they were able to recognize it, name it, harness it, get the information that they needed, iterate as needed, and they got themselves to the perform. 

And to the point, I actually have a student who now intentionally throws his team into a bit of a storming on purpose. When they start to get a little bit too calcified in their performance and things are just a little bit too comfortable, he throws them into a little bit of a storming phase, throws in a little bit of a disruptor just to keep them sharp and test any assumptions that they have that maybe didn't get tested. 

Jill Finlayson: It's really great to hear their reflection on the case studies being, it's no longer the thing they fear. It's the thing that makes them most engaged or curious. In our last podcast, we talked about a multigenerational workforce. How are you seeing discomfort play out across the generations? 

Izabel Loinaz: Yeah, that's a really good question. And I want to caveat this that I want to be really careful to over-generalize about an entire generation when there are a lot of cultural and regional differences. And then across the socioeconomic strata, there are differences. 

But that being said, I think we have two sides of a coin with the emerging-- well, let's say this-- the complexity of having so many generations where you have-- Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z, and then maybe even some interns that are Gen Alpha, possibly. So that's a lot of generations to have all in one place, whether they all interface or not-- it is probably unlikely that they all interface all at the same time. 

But that being said, I think there is observably, and I think there's been plenty of research to back this up, is that the trajectory is towards a different relationship to discomfort. And whereas Baby Boomers and Gen X and a little bit of the older Millennials-- there's some of this toughing it through. 

There tends to be a little bit more of that, you've got to tough it through. That's part of building character. That overcoming and persevering is the theme, and hyper-autonomy-- that you really can handle it all on your own, and proving that you can is part of showing your chop. 

Where we have this progression towards more of a communal approach, more of a dependency on each other, dependency on other resources because that's the environment that they've been raised on-- that resources are actually-- in terms of information, in terms of education, in terms of getting expertise-- all of that is far more accessible. 

And so you have the ability to rely on a bigger system to execute what you need to execute. So there's less of this need to prove the expertise and a lot more of wanting to be a human in the world. [CHUCKLES] And you can understand and be seen as a human and not necessarily persevering over for what? A lot more questioning of why? Why would I do this? 

And that's a fair question. Some of us could learn from that, of like, really? There's a lot of burnout of this persevering, persevering at all costs. And so there's some information that's coming that's actually really positive in understanding that we do have limitations, that there's some discomforts that are worth actually really taking care of. 

We can understand why the new generations coming in have higher expectations of the organizations that they work for to make it actually a more humane environment, despite the environments oftentimes are going in the opposite direction. I think that friction is information. It is necessary. It should be paid attention to. I think there's some wisdom in how they're dealing with it, and I think there's also some resources that they need to actually be able to develop those skills. 

And that's what we're talking about, those resources to develop those skills, because they do need it, because it is uncomfortable, and they cannot control that part of it. We cannot control the fact that it's going to increasingly become more and more uncertain, disruptive, chaotic. So they do need to develop that skill. 

Jill Finlayson: Absolutely. And as we have covered a lot of ground, what do you think is the most important idea that folks can take from this conversation on getting comfortable with discomfort and chaos, and what can they act upon today? 

Izabel Loinaz: I think we can go back to that framework we talked about earlier, just on a personal level, and then you can scale that up as it's appropriate for your situation. But that reframing discomfort as an invitation-- what does that look like for you in your organization, in your team? Pause long enough to understand or at least perceive what's happening, so feeling it, understanding what it is that you're feeling in the moment, understanding what's happening in the moment. 

And then get really curious. This is where, then, you ask the questions enough so that you have a little bit more clarity so that you can be discerning. So it's having that arc-- giving yourself permission to have that arc I think would be the first step-- practicing it in small doses as you get more and more confident, then applying that in bigger situations. 

Jill Finlayson: For you personally, what has been your biggest ROI on being in discomfort? 

Izabel Loinaz: My biggest ROI on my tolerance for discomfort. Oh my goodness-- my energy. I have so much more energy, actually. I am able to find my anchor so much quicker and easier by developing this skill. 

I will say, so many more opportunities have opened up to me because of this skill. I would have to say, by building that capacity for myself, I am far happier, much more content amongst way more chaos in my life. A lot more disruption I can point to, and I'm actually more anchored and calm than I would have been with less chaos, to be honest. 

Jill Finlayson: Well, thank you so much for helping our listeners learn how to find their anchor amongst discomfort and chaos. And thank you so much for the concrete tips and guidance along the way. 

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Izabel Loinaz: You got it. It was my pleasure. It was really fun. Thank you, Jill. 

Jill Finlayson: Thank you. And with that, I hope you enjoyed this latest in a long series of podcasts that we'll be sending your way every month. Please share with friends and colleagues who may be interested in taking this Future of Work journey with us. 

And make sure to check out to extension.berkeley.edu to find a variety of courses and certificates to help you thrive in this new working landscape. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll be back next month to continue our Future of Work journey. The Future of Work podcast is hosted by Jill Finlayson, produced by Sarah Benzuly, and edited by Matt Dipietro. 

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