Good Awkward Is Why We Practice
What Henna Pryor Reminded Me About This Work
This week I sat in on a fireside chat with Henna Pryor, CSP , hosted by Women of Color in Staffing — a community The Humanity Practice is proud to sponsor and I personally love being part of.
Her frame is the one I want to share with you.
Awkwardness is a social emotion. You don't feel it when you're alone. You feel it in front of other people, right before the moments that matter. Advocating for yourself. Challenging a client. Naming what's true in a room. Asking for what you need.
And her reframe — the one that landed for me — you feel awkward because you're doing something brave in a system that wasn't built for your ease.
I walked out of that conversation with something I hadn't expected. Not a new idea. A confirmation. Of why I'm building this business at all. Of why practice is the word that holds it together.
That's the frame I walked out with. I want to give it to you too.
And Henna — thank you. For showing up early to share your bold, brilliant, badass perspective with this community, and for giving me language that named something I'd been building toward for a long time. Henna's book — Good Awkward — is worth a place on everyone's bookshelf. Go buy it today, ya'll!
The Practice Is Awkward
This week's practice is Make Room, Don't Make Assumptions.
Originally framed for holidays. For Mother's Day. For the moments leaders default to a cheerful acknowledgment and call it care.
What I want to add: making room is almost always awkward room. The practice shows up when it costs your timeline, your comfort, or the version of yourself you'd rather present.
That's the version of the practice the people around you actually feel.
Four Women, One Pattern, And This Week It Was Me
Over the last month, I've been in conversation with four women navigating four different versions of the same thing.
One was over-explaining — softening every ask with three reasons why she was asking, apologizing before she'd even said the thing.
One was under-asserting — second-guessing herself in meetings where she had every right to be the loudest voice in the room.
One was being talked over — by people who should have been letting her own her work.
One was overwhelmed — and hadn't asked for help, because she didn't believe there was a version of asking that didn't cost her.
Four shapes. One pattern underneath all of it: each of them was trying to be perfect in a system that wouldn't have room for her if she wasn't. So she over-accommodated. She took on what wasn't hers, or gave away what was. She softened the ask. She stayed quiet when she should have spoken. She did not ask for the help she needed.
I know how each of these feels because I have been all of them.
And this week, I was the one feeling a bit overwhelmed.
I had a launch I wanted to ship. I didn't bring my finance partner into the conversation early enough — because asking felt like a cost I didn't want to pay this week. He saw what I would have missed. I needed him before I asked for him.
This is the diagnosis Henna's frame gave me language for. Perfect doesn't have room for the awkward. Practice does.
Practice doesn't require you to be perfect. It allows you to be awkward.
That is why I am building a business based on practice. Workplace culture has been graded on perfect — the polished values statement, the right language, the engagement score, the leader who knows what to say. And the cost of that grade is four women trying to be perfect in rooms that were never going to give them ease, and a founder who forgot to ask for help because she was trying to be the same.
So here's what I'm asking myself this week. Maybe it's worth asking yourself too.
- Where am I trying to be perfect when the moment is asking me to practice?
- Who in my orbit is doing one of those four things — and what's the awkward thing I haven't said to her yet?
- What would change in my week if I let myself be proud instead of needing to be perfect?
Tired, Exhilarated, And So Excited to Build Anyway
I am tired. I am exhilarated. Both. At the same time.
This is the kind of week that reminds me why I'm building something that goes into people's hands instead of sitting on a shelf.
The cost is real. The bike ride I skipped. The conversations with friends I had to reschedule — sorry y'all, I'll get back on it. The kind of tired that doesn't leave just because Friday came.
And — this is the part I want you to feel — this is what doing what you love looks like. This is what conviction looks like. This is what purpose personified feels like. I am exhausted and I would not trade a thing. The practice is working. The kits are landing. The business is becoming the thing I've been telling you it would become.
I am not pretending the cost isn't real. I am telling you the cost of staying true to your purpose — your due north — is worth it.
I am so excited for what we are launching to you next week. Here's why: Pronouns at Work — practice infrastructure for moving pronouns from awkward moment to normal business communication. Without the freeze, the workaround, or the apology.
So I'll be building. Awkward, imperfect, and proud of helping to change the world of work — one story, one conversation, one action at a time.
What To Do With This
Build the practice in your organization.
The free kit — Build Your Organization's Humanity Practice — gives you everything you need to start. Designed to be facilitated, not just read. Designed for proud, not perfect.
P.S.
Henna has a new book coming — The Signal Gap: How to Boost Believability and Influence in the Age of Doubt — about why polished communication is breaking down in a world where AI can manufacture polish on demand. Pre-order it. I am.
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