How do you become fully confident and in control of your emotions and experience at work? It’s by mastering your own psychology and that of others. On this show, we decode the science of success, exploring how to get out of your own way and advance your career to new levels without becoming someone you’re not.

I’m Melody Wilding, bestselling author, human behavior professor and award winning executive coach. Get ready and let’s put psychology to work for you.

All I can say is, wow, it has been a heck of a few weeks around here, a roller coaster, for sure, in the best way possible. And I want to start off today by thanking you as a listener of this show, because my new book, Managing Up How to Get What You Need From the People in Charge came out less than a week ago on March 4th, 2025.

And because of your support, it skyrocketed to the top of multiple Amazon categories since its release in the last few days. I am deeply grateful for how you have helped spread the word wherever that has been. Whether it’s sharing on LinkedIn or Instagram, recommending the book to your friends, your colleagues, inviting me to speak at your organization, choosing it for your book club. Whatever it has been, the response to this book in just one week alone has been Incredible.

It’s been overwhelming and I have been so fortunate to be able to already share these ideas on dozens of amazing podcasts, to speak to so many organizations that are really dedicated to giving their teams. Better tools to navigate the workplace dynamics around them. But all of this is actually just the beginning of what’s been happening behind the scenes over here. You may have noticed some changes lately. You may have noticed that the Psychology at Work podcast has a bolder refreshed look. My website, my newsletter as well. My team has been working tirelessly behind the scenes to get this rebrand live and it looks absolutely stunning. But more importantly, these changes reflect something much more significant. A deeper, more focused evolution of my work that’s been in development for well over a year now.

And at the heart of all of these changes is something I’ve been developing and testing with our clients for quite a while now. And it’s what I call your Professional Power Position. That’s the sweet spot where confidence in yourself meets real influence with others. Because true success, it requires that you master both your own psychology and the psychology of those around you.

That’s the entire thesis behind the show. And I’ll break this down more in just a minute. But in today’s episode, what I wanted to do is pull back the curtain, take you behind the scenes to share some never before told stories, things I have not talked about anywhere else, about how this framework really came together and also maybe confess a few things about my own struggles that actually led us here. Let me take you back to spring 2021 when my first book, Trust Yourself, came out. If you haven’t read it yet, that book is really all about how to stop overthinking, how to channel your emotions for success at work as a person who is what I define as a sensitive striver. Someone who is both highly sensitive, meaning you think and feel everything more deeply, and how you achieving, you set a lot of goals for yourself.

You put a lot of pressure on yourself to succeed. That book, thankfully. And thank you to your support. If you have read it, that book has done really well, multiple translations, readers worldwide, as it has reached more and more people. I started to notice patterns in the feedback that I was getting and the questions that people were asking.

Readers would come to me, they would say, okay, I feel like I understand my sensitivity more. I feel so much more validated in my experience. I have the vocabulary. I have the tools to get out of my own way at work. But there was this fascinating thread, something that surprised me actually, that kept coming up again and again.

And people would say to me, I, I understand now I get why I process things so deeply. But I can’t seem to translate that insight into actually getting my ideas heard with other people,or they would say, I feel more confident in who I am, the value that I bring to the table, but all of that starts to fall apart when I have to deal with people in authority. Or when power dynamics come into play, I get intimidated. I shut down. I don’t know how to handle the situation. Or I know my worth, but I can’t seem to articulate my ideas effectively.

I understand myself better, but I’m still struggling to navigate the politics around me.

These threads kept coming up again and again, and that was the first sign to me, the first thing that made my ears perk up that something was missing in how I was approaching this work. That these very smart, capable, thoughtful professionals, they had gained a lot of valuable insight into how to manage themselves, their own emotions and reactions, but they were missing that bridge between that and real influence with other people. They knew they had worth. They felt confident in that, but they weren’t sure how to demonstrate it, articulate it, assert it. In a way that actually got noticed and got respected.

They had a lot of emotional intelligence. They were very perceptive to what was going on around them. They could notice those nuances, but they weren’t sure how to leverage that strategically to get what they wanted to advance in their careers.

Now, on top of that, there was something else brewing too, something more personal that I have never shared anywhere until now. And the truth is that I have been changing. And for years, I felt like I had this carefully maintained image of the Sensitive Striver expert. Someone who was gentle, was sweet, was always empathetic and understanding. And don’t get me wrong, that is a big part of who I am.

But there is another side to me that I felt like I had to keep under wraps, that I felt like I had to squelch down. And honestly, it started to become pretty exhausting, because I do also see myself as someone who see things pretty clearly. I can cut through the noise to what really matters. There is this practical, no nonsense side of me that I was tamping down and I would find myself softening my words, feeling like I had to wrap everything in layers of cushioning. When what my readers, my listeners, my clients often needed was someone who could help them see the situation for what it is, someone who would not BS them, who would be real with them, who would give them clear, actionable steps forward. But I found myself holding back because that didn’t fit this sort of gentle, nurturing image that I thought I had to maintain. That I thought people expected and wanted of me. It was my own form of people pleasing.

But what I’ve learned is that real empathy, true empathy is not about sugarcoating. I’m always telling my clients there’s a difference between being nice and being kind. Right? Real empathy is about caring enough to tell people what they need to hear. Not just what they want to hear. Of course, doing that in a diplomatic, pragmatic way, but sometimes the most supportive thing you can do is help someone cut through their own excuses and see a situation for what it really is.

Now, I say this somewhat jokingly, but I credit a lot of this to growing up in New Jersey, which taught me that there is a lot of power in just being a straight talker.

I’m a very, very proud New Jerseyan. I’ve lived here all of my life. If you have ever spent any time here, then you know, we do not do passive aggressive. We do not hint at what we mean. We tell it like it is, not because we’re trying to be harsh, but because clarity is kindness.

And I see this dynamic now, or rather, I started to see this more and more play out in my work than when a client would come to me frustrated because they’re not getting promoted, despite the fact that they feel like they’re doing everything right.

They are volunteering for extra work. They’re being the reliable team player. Other coaches might tell them you have to increase your visibility. You have to work on your leadership presence.

But instead I would tell them, look, you being the dependable workhorse, that reliable executor, that’s actually what is getting in your way of you getting promoted. You are too valuable right where you are. You have made yourself indispensable and that’s not a good thing. And we need to change both how you’re positioned and how you’re perceived.

Or when someone is struggling with a political colleague, they might hear advice like focus on building bridges, find the common ground. Good, but I have found that is more helpful to be to the point to say that this colleague, this person, they have shown you exactly who they are. So instead of trying to change them, let’s focus on protecting your work, building other allies who can advocate for you when you are not in the room. This is not about being cynical. This is being pragmatic. It’s about dealing with the workplace as it actually is, not as we wish it was.

The truth is, sometimes you can’t have it all. Sometimes you do have to choose between being liked and being respected. And as I have done more of this for myself, more people tell me that that directness is so refreshing.

Because deep down, they already know these things. They already know these truths. They are just waiting for someone to validate what their gut has been telling them all along.

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So on top of all of that, some of those internal shifts, I started to have that being reflected back from other people in my life.

And in the span of just a few months, I had multiple people, mentors, colleagues, tell me that I needed more swagger. And they would pretty directly say to me that I was playing small. I felt very called out by this, but almost in a good way. You know, when someone gives you feedback like that hurts, that stings it’s because it confirms something you knew deep down, you want it to change.

And so getting that sort of feedback, that was really a wake up call, especially. I missed out on several business opportunities. They passed me by because the people on the other side didn’t think I had the background, the credibility, the expertise, they assumed that I was just another coach that hung up a shingle one day. Yet here I was someone who had over a decade of experience. I am a professor of human behavior. I am a former emotions researcher. I have been getting proven results with clients at the world’s top companies. You name it, we’ve probably worked with someone there. And I wasn’t letting any of that come through. I was so focused again on maintaining this very approachable down to earth image that I was actually beginning to do a disservice to the people I could help and to my business and the people my business supports.

Then there’s also the fact that between 2021, when my first book, Trust Yourself came out and now, the world has obviously changed dramatically. We have seen massive, massive shifts in how we relate to both our work and our jobs.

We had the great resignation. We had quiet quitting. We have returned to office mandates, layoffs. And through all of this, I kept hearing the same thing from people that they were feeling more and more helpless, powerless. They were just feeling at the mercy jerked around by forces that felt beyond their control. And this really, really struck a chord with me because one of my core values, one of my core beliefs is personal agency.

The idea that we cannot control everything around us, but we can absolutely influence our environment through our own behavior. And when we do that, that changes how other people respond to us.

And I get it. You cannot control when your boss schedules last minute meetings that derail your entire afternoon. You can’t control when that colleague goes above your head with concerns about your project. You can’t control when leadership announces yet another reorg that’s going to impact you and your team.

You can’t control any of those situations, but you can absolutely influence how they play out. Let me give you a few more examples of this.

You can’t control when a senior leader interrupts you in a meeting, but you can master techniques to reclaim the floor to ensure your point gets heard. You can’t control that tight project deadline, but you can learn to push back strategically and negotiate for the resources you need to make it successful.

You can’t control when the people above you have already made up their mind about something, but you can learn to spot those signals earlier to position your input when it can actually make a bigger difference.

But to do that effectively, you need both inner confidence, you need belief in yourself, and you need external savvy and strategy.

With other people, you need to understand yourself and know how to navigate the subtle dynamics, the unwritten rules that determine who’s getting ahead, who’s getting overlooked.

And that’s when it really started to hit me. Yes, you have to trust yourself for sure, but you also have to know how to leverage and convert that self trust into influence with others. How to take all of that self awareness and emotional intelligence and turn it into tangible results for yourself, whether that’s a promotion, a raise, respect, the ability to make things happen in your organization and in your career.

And that’s when this concept of stepping into your Professional Power Position was really born. Now, as I mentioned earlier, your Professional Power Position is that sweet spot. We’re mastering your own psychology and managing up and influencing others. Where those two things come together.

So imagine it as a Venn diagram on one side, you have your psychology at work. That’s your relationship with yourself, how you process challenges, make decisions, handle stress, show up in situations without letting overthinking self doubt people pleasing derail you.

So that’s things like, you know, dealing with the anxiety before a high stakes presentation or a difficult conversation setting boundaries with less guilt that comes with saying no. Processing feedback without taking it personally. Staying calm and clear headed when you’re feeling emotional. Turning off work at the end of the day, fully disconnecting.

So that’s one side of the equation.

Now, on the other side of that Venn diagram, you have others’ psychology at work. Understanding how people actually make decisions, what drives their behavior, what makes them tick, how power dynamics change interactions so you can position yourself and build relationships in a way that builds trust and gets results.

And that side of the equation, mastering other people’s psychology may look like spotting the hidden agenda items in a meeting before they come up and they throw your project off track. Knowing when to push for a direction versus when to build consensus. Reading between the lines of feedback to address what’s the real deeper concern. Turning skeptics into allies before you need their support. Creating visibility for your work without coming across as self promotional.

And the magic happens when those two sides come together.

That’s your Professional Power Position, where your inner confidence meets your outer influence. Because think about it, it is not enough to just focus on one side or the other. You might internally feel very self assured, but you may then still be watching other people that have less experience than you get promoted, go ahead of you because they know how to get buy in for their ideas.

Or maybe you have controlled your overthinking enough to actually speak up in meetings, but your recommendations keep getting overlooked because you haven’t learned to frame them in a way that resonates with the people up the chain of the command.

Or on the flip side, you might know the exact language that would get your boss’s attention, but fear gets in your way. You second guess yourself and you water down your message. Or you see a huge opportunity emerging, imposter syndrome comes up and it convinces you that you should just wait until you’re more qualified.

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want to tell you a story that perfectly shows what happens when these two sides mastering your own psychology and theirs, when those come together.

So one of my clients, I’ll call her Brenda, she was a very experienced marketing leader. And she unfortunately found herself in a pretty tough spot after her company had their second reorg of just that year. And through that process, she ended up going from leading a team of about three, four people to being stripped down to being an individual contributor.

And now she was also reporting to a new manager that she didn’t totally respect, let’s put it that way, or connect very well with. And I’m sure. You can imagine how this shook her. She was starting to question her value. She was overanalyzing every interaction, holding back because she didn’t want to rock the boat anymore.

That’s where the internal psychology piece came into play first. She had to learn how to manage her reactions to stay grounded when her boss dismissed her ideas, gave her vague feedback. She had to learn how to handle that without spiraling into self doubt or taking it personally.

So she worked on things like separating facts from stories, she was telling herself, distinguishing between what had actually happened versus the meaning she was attaching to it. She also had to learn, frankly, to trust her judgment again. She had to rebuild that muscle. And when she felt her boss was making a questionable decision that she didn’t totally agree with, instead of just swallowing her concerns to keep the peace, she learned to raise them constructively.

When she disagreed with her manager’s approach, she practiced expressing her perspective clearly and calmly. She didn’t get so attached to the idea, the fear of being labeled difficult, not a team player, and allow that to paralyze her into silence.

All of that internal work was very, very crucial, but not enough on its own.

So Brenda also needed to be thoughtful about how she was navigating this new reality. Now, after this second reorg of the year, when a lot of things were in flux and she realized she couldn’t change her direct manager overnight, right? She couldn’t just stop working for him overnight. But what she could do was start building relationships elsewhere.

And that’s exactly what she did.She started deliberately cultivating a relationship with her skip level VP. Not by going around her boss, but by consistently demonstrating value. She paid attention to what kept her VP up at night. She started proactively bringing solutions to those problems. And over time, this paid off in a big, big way, because when the company decided to build out a new analytics arm, her VP approached Brenda to lead it. So now not only did she get to write her own job description from scratch, she also got to rebuild her team. And this time it was on her terms.

So I hope you see here how real success, professional growth, the kind that gets you noticed, respected, rewarded, it happens when you can be both strategic and decisive.

When you can read the room and trust yourself enough to act on those instincts, when you can spot opportunities and have the confidence to go after them, that’s when you are fully stepping into your professional power position. I have been exactly where you are. I have had a boss who could not communicate clear expectations if they’re life dependent on it.

I have watched colleagues get tapped for exciting opportunities while I felt invisible and left in the dust. I have struggled to navigate the dynamics around me, always feeling like I was one step behind or that some people got this playbook that I just missed the lesson on one day . And like so many of the people we work with, I blamed myself for all of this. I overthought everything. I became a people pleaser. I made myself miserable.

Here’s what I know now though. The problem wasn’t me. And it’s not you either. And I see it now as my responsibility to teach you what no one else is teaching.

Which is how to actually navigate these invisible forces that drive your success in your career. My background in psychology and human behavior really gives me a unique lens on all of this. I can break down some of those complex principles that usually is locked away in the ivory tower. I can translate those into practical tools you can use immediately.

And if you’ve been around here any amount of time, you know that I don’t do just empty inspirational fluff. I don’t like to give you just empty platitudes. I’d like to give you proven techniques that are backed by science that have been refined through work with thousands of people just like you.

You don’t need a psychology degree to master this.

I have that and I’m going to help you. What you need is someone who can show you how to combine that inner confidence with influence. Someone who can teach you to translate your natural strengths into real impact.

And just think about it. We spend most of our waking hours at work, 70, 80 percent of our lives. Yet no one has ever shown you how to quiet that self doubt before the big meeting to handle the anxiety of pushing back on your boss. To stay confident when you are the only one challenging the status quo. You deserve better than spending your days feeling like you are at the mercy of other people’s behavior. You deserve to have your expertise recognized and compensated accordingly. And that is exactly what I am here to help you do.

This new direction, it has so much more energy and determination behind it. And because of that, it needed a new look to match. So I spent months with my team thinking through how do we translate this visually for you?

So when you interact with my work now, whether it’s, it’s listening to this podcast, it’s reading my newsletter, scrolling through my website, I want you to feel a surge of possibility.

So you may have noticed that we’ve made some changes to represent that. We’ve moved from a safe, traditional palette with navies and creams, to one that’s much more bolder, has a lot more contrast. We’ve moved to black and white with pops of really bold colors. We have traded soft edges and wavy lines for straight angular. The whole look and feel is much more clean, clear.

This new direction is meant to speak to professionals, hopefully just like you, who see bigger things for themselves, not people who are just trying to survive and get through yet another day or another week, or people who keep telling themselves the excuse that their sensitivity holds them back.

Because what I know for certain is that your emotional intelligence, that is actually your competitive edge. If you are willing to accept that and use it that way. I believe that when thoughtful, perceptive, caring, good hearted people step into positions of power, everyone benefits. And all of my work is about helping you leverage that superpower, your ability to read situations, to understand people, to use that to create positive change for yourself and everyone around you because we need more people like you influencing decisions at the highest level.

When you have that sway, when you have that power, that’s when you can change things to be better for everyone else.

And so this is why you’re going to hear me talking much more openly about the results we are getting with our clients. When someone lands that skip level promotion, designs their own role from scratch, like Brenda. Negotiates a six figure bonus.

And I’m doing that because it is proof of what is possible. You are driven, you are capable, and you are ready to break through barriers that you maybe haven’t faced before. And even if you have a steady paycheck, a nice title, you have the external markers of success, you’re here because you want more.

Maybe that’s more peace, more ease in your interactions.Maybe that’s more of a say in how, when, where you do your job, or to have greater input on the direction your career takes. Whatever it is, whatever your version of more is, what makes you different is that you don’t just want more for the sake of it. You know that these wins are a sign of what you are capable of. They are part of you proving to yourself what you are made of.

As I wrap up today, I hope this episode has given you some aha moments. I hope my story gives you permission to look at the parts of yourself you might be holding back. Because maybe, like me, You’ve been softening your edges. You’ve been downplaying yourself because you think that’s what will be accepted. But what I have learned is that the very qualities that you’re suppressing or you feel make you weird, or too much, that might be exactly what becomes your differentiator. And you will find that how others respond to you evolves too. People start treating you differently when you show up differently.

I have so, so much more in store for you in the coming weeks. Lots of practical tools, strategies you can use to step into your own Power Position. Here on the podcast, we’ll be bringing you conversations with some top creators, authors, thought leaders. I’m going to be launching new programs specifically designed to help you influence, communicate concisely and crisply.

And speaking of new things, make sure you check out my new website at melodywilding.com and then come over to LinkedIn. Let me know what you think. I would love to hear your thoughts.

Thank you so much for joining me to celebrate this milestone today, and I will see you in the next episode. Thanks for tuning in to today’s episode of psychology at work. If you enjoyed the show, I’d be so grateful if you could take just a minute to rate and review wherever you are listening. It’s how we reach more professionals just like you. And if you’d like to see even more content on how to feel more self assured, grounded, and in control of your emotions and reactions at work, follow me on LinkedIn or head to the links in the show notes.