Empathy Is Cool: Content Creator and Entrepreneur Kinsey Grant On The Importance Of Offering Herself — And Her Employees — The Freedom To Feel Bad
“I’ll tell my team ‘Hey, I’m pretty anxious today, I’m going to go rest for a bit.’ I feel totally comfortable doing that. I know they’re not going to think any differently of me for being honest."
“Consuming. Distracting. Diminishing.” That’s how Kinsey Grant — host of the Thinking Is Cool podcast, co-founder of content creator support biz Smooth Ops, and generally great Internet follow — describes what it feels like when her anxiety begins to manifest itself. “When it sets in, it’s sudden. And all-encompassing.”
The process of addressing her anxiety, however, feels nearly the exact opposite. It's empowering and uplifting, full of a welcome sense that control has been regained. The kicker? This process is typically a slower and longer one — something that can give her “super Type A, deeply perfectionist” personality a run for its money.
It starts, she says, with giving herself the freedom to lean into the suck. “Instead of trying to power through a bout of anxiety, I’ve learned to pause and recognize it as a valid feeling that’s appeared in my life for some reason. Then, I give myself some time and space to just feel it.”
With this, I realize that Kinsey has internalized an uncomfortable truth in a much deeper way than most of us have: not all human feelings are good feelings. She understands that happiness and excitement and elatedness aren’t the default. Sadness and doubt and stress are just as natural.
And better yet, she’s cool with it!
“Experiencing these things,” Kinsey continues, “doesn’t mean we’re not on the right path or that we’re not good at what we’re doing or that we’re failing in some way. It’s just part of the human condition.” This view of anxiety as a neutral happening — a simple fact of life and not the result of any wrongdoing — is why she believes it’s so important to dish out “a ton of self-forgiveness” when you do encounter it.
But what, you might be wondering, is the next step? What do we do once anxious feelings have shown up to the party and we’ve given ourselves grace for letting them in? The answer: overwhelm them with good stuff.
For Kinsey, this looks like stepping away from work for an afternoon to reset. It’s setting aside a block of time to be creative in a “non-revenue generating way.” It’s indulging her “painfully on-brand” love of bingeing podcasts and newsletter content. It’s sitting on the couch streaming badly produced Netflix rom-coms.
The gist here: you don’t have to follow the “just truck through it” line of thinking that has been the norm for so long. You’re allowed to be off until you’re on again.
And while all of our stress-relievers will look different, Kinsey calls out two universal components for success: setting firm boundaries to ensure that the time needed to engage in your desired pursuits actually exists, and surrounding yourself with people who respect those boundaries.
Of course, as a couple of Women In Business™, our conversation inevitably shifts from the micro to the macro. I ask her how she thinks all of this applies to the not one, but two (!) companies she’s running at age twenty-seven.
Her answer — it’s integral. Attention to employee mental health is no longer a bullet point thrown into the back of the pitch deck. It’s a Page 1 strategic initiative. And I tend to agree.
Over the last 2 years, we've all changed. How we understand the world around us has changed. Our work-life balance equations have changed. Our work has quite literally changed. And what’s more, we’ve gotten to a place where it’s acceptable to have mental health conversations — both at work and among peer groups.
Because of these cultural shifts, Kinsey believes “performative corporate stuff” like a bolded list of progressive values or a month’s free subscription to a therapy app isn’t going to cut it anymore. To retain top talent, companies need to show real empathy day-in and day-out. “Not to the point of toxic positivity,” she adds some nuance, “but employees should really feel free to act on their mental and emotional boundaries as they need.”
I probe on the best ways to ensure that this feeling of freedom actually comes to life at an organization. The answer is two-parted.
First, Kinsey posits, leadership must do, not say. “Multiple times I’ve told my employees ‘Hey, I’m pretty anxious today and for me, that usually manifests via nausea, so I’m going to go rest for a bit.’ I feel totally comfortable doing that. I know they’re not going to think any differently of me for being honest.”
And she also knows that her team understands something crucial — by taking a bit of time away when she needs it, Kinsey will come back with a clear mind, fresh ideas, and do better work. Living out this practice as a leader signals to her junior employees that they can do the same.
The second key to an empathetic workplace is to accurately communicate the reality of the situation that employees find themselves in. Kinsey explains, “At Smooth Ops, we go to very serious lengths to make sure everyone knows that while we are coworkers and friends — we are not family. We’re a company. To project anything else is a super harmful mindset.”
She’s speaking to the "like family" corporate culture popularized by big tech in the last 10-15 years. And she’s right, it is harmful. Because if you’re family, the insinuation is that you have to show up and be there for one another 100% of the time. Which is simply not true of an employment setting. As Kinsey puts it, “work should never be your everything and company initiatives are never going to account for all of your mental health needs — you have to find fulfillment elsewhere.”
On this profound note, we shift our focus forward. Kinsey is hopeful for the future of the workplace mental health dynamic. She believes that young people, in particular, wield the power to continue changing it for the better — and for good.
Her advice for fresh or soon-to-be graduates is sage: interview employers as much as they interview you. “Early in my career I thought companies were doing me a favor by offering me a job, so I was inclined to take the first one that came to me. I wouldn’t press on benefits or try to look into what the work-life balance was really like.”
But she knows now that this is not true. Offers aren’t favors or emotionally charged in any way. They’re simply contracts; work in exchange for pay. And within this realization lies the opportunity for us Zoomers and Zillennials and whatever weirdly-named generation comes of age next to push the workplace mental health conversation forward.
If we seize it — if we ask questions and set standards and expect honesty and encourage empathy — Kinsey concludes, “just think about how far we can go.”
I’m thinking, and I’m smiling.